Letter To Past Self
Hey dumbass,
I don’t really know how to start this without it feeling unreal, because where you are right now… none of this would make sense to you yet. You’re about to meet her, and if I’m being honest, you’re going to walk into that moment open, hopeful, and completely unguarded in the best way. That’s who you are. You don’t half-love, you don’t hold pieces of yourself back "just in case." When you choose someone, you choose them fully. You’re about to do that for the first real time in your life full of trauma and heartbreak, and it’s going to feel right. She feels right. You will be open with her in a way you have never been with anyone before.
And that’s what makes this so hard to tell you.
Because the life you’re about to build, it’s going to look exactly like the one you always dreamed of.
You’re going to have three kids. Three, your boy first, then two girls. And they are going to be everything to you. I’m not saying that lightly. They’re going to become the center of your entire world in a way you won’t understand until you’re holding them for the first time. You’ll look down at them and feel something so deep and so steady that it almost scares you. You’ll realize that you would do anything for them without even thinking about it. You’ll sit on the floor playing with them after long days, half exhausted, completely content, and you’ll think to yourself, "this is it, this is what life is supposed to be. Its so much more than I ever deserved." You will look at her holding your children with a love that grows more with each passing day, year, and decade.
You’re going to work harder than you ever have. Not because anyone forces you to, but because you want to give them something solid, something you never had. Something safe. You’re going to push through stress, through long days, through pressure that builds up in ways you don’t really talk about, and slowly, piece by piece, you’re going to build a life you’re proud of. Your going to literally break your body down but it is worth every day of physical pain to which will never leave fully.
You’re going to buy the house you always pictured. The one that feels like home the second you walk into it. Not perfect, not always clean or in perfect repair, but yours. A place where your kids will run down the hallway, where birthdays and Christmas mornings and random Tuesday nights all stack up into something meaningful. A place where you’ll sit sometimes, after everyone’s asleep, and just take it in quietly, thinking "I can’t believe this is my life. I can’t believe I have the wife of my dreams and the family that makes me richer than a king."
You’re going to get the truck you always wanted. The travel trailer too. And you’re going to load your family into it and go camping. Fires at night, kids running around, the kind of simple moments that don’t seem like much but end up meaning everything. You’ll watch them laugh, watch them be free, and there will be this quiet feeling in your chest like, "I did it. I built something good."
Life is going to get busy. It’s going to revolve around the kids more than anything else. Schedules, practices, school, responsibilities, bills, it’s going to feel like you’re being pulled in a hundred directions at once sometimes. There will be stress, of course there will but we will handle it together for our family we have created. There will be moments where you and her aren’t perfectly in sync, where things feel heavier than they should but deep down you believe it is you and her as a team. TEAM G
But even then, you’re going to believe in it.
You’re going to believe that underneath all the stress and the chaos, there’s something real holding it all together. That the love is still there, that the commitment is shared, that everything you’re pouring into this life is being matched on the other side.
You’re going to believe you’re part of something honest.
And I need you to understand-- that’s the part that breaks you.
Because while all of that is happening, while you’re building this life with everything you have, there’s something sitting underneath it that you don’t know about. Something that’s been there since the very beginning. Something that never allowed her to be connected to you, something that kept a distance unbeknownst to you.
Before you even get married, she’s already betrayed you. She cheats on you before the wedding, and you never find out. Not then. Not when it matters. Not when you still have a choice. She has been with someone for a year and a half before the wedding and keeps it going for another half year after.
You walk into that marriage thinking it’s real, thinking you’re both standing there with the same truth, making the same commitment. You’re not. You never were. And you don’t even know it.
She brings him to the wedding, you will know E and not trust his intentions with her but she convinces you your foolish, You finally relent and allow him at the wedding with his wife, you shake his hand making the hairs on your neck stand, and even watch him dance with her in her wedding dress. I wish I could explain to you what that actually means, but you won’t feel it until years later when it’s too late to do anything about it. The person she betrayed you with is standing there, inside one of the most important days of your life. Inside your memories. Inside something you will look back on as sacred, is now literally the worst day of your life.
And you’re smiling. You’re happy. You’re completely unaware. And then she lies to you about it. Not just once. Not just to get past it.
For fifteen years.
Fifteen years where you build a life on top of that lie. Fifteen years where every memory, every moment, every piece of trust you feel is tied to something that isn’t real. You become a husband, a father, a man who is proud of the life he’s built, and the entire time, there’s this truth sitting underneath it that you were never allowed to see.
When it finally comes out, it doesn’t come out in a way that even respects what it is.
She laughs. "you always suspected." When asked why she insisted on ruining your day she said with almost nostalgia "I wanted to share MY special day with him. I really cared about him you know."
You’re sitting there, at a football game of all places, your whole world starting to collapse, trying to even understand what you’re hearing.....and she laughs while telling you. Like it’s a story. Like it’s something small. Like it doesn’t carry the weight that it actually does.
And somehow, that’s not even the worst part.
Because while she’s telling you about that betrayal from the past, she’s still betraying you in the present. There’s someone else.
Another man, another hidden life, running right alongside the one you think you’re living. And in that moment, while you’re sitting there breaking, she’s messaging him. Talking to him. Letting him know where you are sitting because he is at the same game. Letting him see it. Letting him witness your pain like it’s something to watch instead of something to protect.
I don’t think you can really prepare for what that feels like. It’s not just betrayal. It’s not just heartbreak. It’s humiliation in a way that sticks to you.
It’s realizing that your most vulnerable moment in time, where you literally where losing the last bit of innocence and joy, wasn’t just ignored, it was shared.
And then everything starts to unravel.
You start to see that this wasn’t one mistake. It wasn’t something in the past that just needed to be processed and moved on from. It was a pattern. A way of living. A way of choosing everything except you while still keeping you there.
You start remembering things. Moments that didn’t quite make sense. Times you felt distance but couldn’t explain it. Times you tried to fix things, tried to talk, tried to pull the relationship back to something closer.
Two years before everything finally breaks, you tell her that her job is destroying your relationship. You see it happening. You say it out loud. You try to protect what you have.
She doesn’t listen. She never thought of your feelings or put you above even strangers passing by in the wind.
Instead of turning toward you, she turns away. Instead of leaning on you, she leans somewhere else. Emotionally first, then physically. Quietly. Secretly. While you’re still there trying to hold everything together.
And at the same time, she’s telling other people a completely different version of you.
You become the angry one. The cold one. The problem. The reason things aren’t working. Conversations are happening about you that you don’t even know exist, shaping how people see you, even shaping how your own kids start to see you.
You don’t even get a voice in your own story.
There are jokes about cheating, about how she is going to betray you again, about how awkward it was seeing you the night she first fucked her new affair and how funny it was that you had no idea. Casual, careless text conversations where something that would destroy you is treated like it’s nothing. Like it’s normal. Like it’s funny.
You believe in commitment. You believe that love is something you fight for, something you don’t just walk away from when it gets hard. You think if you just try harder, understand more, give more, you can fix it.
But you can’t fix something that was never honest.
The affair goes on for a year. A full year of her living a second life while coming home to you like everything is normal. Smiling. Acting present. Acting like the life you built together is still intact. She leaves early to see him. Comes home late because of him.
You’re the one carrying the weight of the kids, the house, the responsibilities… while she’s giving her time, her energy, her attention somewhere else.
She uses your truck. Yes the one you love and worked so hard to pay for to make sure the family enjoys the camping.
I want you to really hear that. Something you worked for, something that meant something to you, becomes part of the betrayal. It’s not just emotional anymore. It’s everywhere.
When you start to find out, the truth doesn’t come clean. You have to drag it out. Piece by piece. Conversation by conversation. Lie by lie.
Even when you ask directly, even when you give her the chance to just be honest, she lies. Easily. Quickly. Without hesitation. Names hidden. Messages deleted. Entire conversations erased while she looks you in the eye and tells you there’s nothing there.
And when the truth finally comes, it’s not because she chose you.It’s because she ran out of ways to hide it.
She risks your health, not even caring enough to use condoms. Lets them cum in her and sleeps with you at night cum still drying in her underwear.
She risks your sanity.
She risks the stability of your kids.
All to avoid facing what she’s done.
And then she tells other people a version of the story where you’re still the problem. Where your pain is control. Where your need for truth is somehow wrong.
Even then… you try.
You try to understand. You try to rebuild. You try to set boundaries and explain what you need for this to even have a chance.
And she still chooses him. Even knowing it will cost her everything with you. Even knowing it’s the line you can’t come back from.
And somehow… even after all of that… there are still more lies.
Smaller ones, maybe, but enough to remind you that even now, you don’t have the full truth. It takes months just to get something close to a complete picture. Months of realizing that what you’re told today might change tomorrow. Months of not having solid ground under your feet.
And even at the end, when you both talk about separating, about doing things in a way that’s respectful and fair, You get blindsided again. Because the pattern never actually stops.
And the worst part of all of it isn’t just what she did. It’s what it takes from you.
It takes your ability to trust your own reality. It takes your sense of what your life actually was. It takes memories that meant everything to you and reshapes them into something you don’t even recognize anymore. It takes the idea that what you built together was real. Because you gave everything you had.
Everything.
And you never even got the truth in return. So I’m telling you now, before you meet her, before you step into this with your whole heart like you always do… pay attention to the things that don’t feel right. Don’t ignore them just because you want the story to be real. Don’t talk yourself out of your own instincts just to protect something you hope exists.
You deserve something honest from the beginning.
You deserve to be chosen fully.
You deserve a life where the ground under your feet is actually real.
Because the man writing this? 
He’s not who you are right now. And that change didn’t come from love. It came from surviving what love was supposed to protect you from.
I’m sorry.
I really am.
Future broken destroyed You
4 comments posted: Monday, March 30th, 2026
This feels like the worst betrayal and D-Day I have ever heard of (Oct.18th- 27th)
SATURDAY the 18th at a football game I got blindsided by an affair right up to our wedding almost 15 years ago, and she brought him to our wedding.
After staying out until Sunday I came home and when I asked about it and if there where more she swore up and down no and then she went into a panic attack. I had no time to grieve or think, I consoled her and brought her off the edge for the sake of the kids and family. We talked when she calmed down and I was hoping for reconciliation due to her obvious regret. I again pressed her that it was the only time now was the time for full transparency. I sent her to her parents and spent the day with the children after finding out they remained in contact for 5 months past the wedding.
MONDAY she asked to come back and that she really wanted to make it work. I threw out my wedding ring, her dress, and all the pictures. GONE FOREVER. I agreed to allow her to remain and we talked calmly and affectionately, she jumped my bones that night and slept soundly, I however didn't sleep or eat and curled into the couch to stare at the wall and cry alone.
TUESDAY after work she had another "panic attack" and once again I consoled so the children didn't see her like that. I made supper, did homework, played Roblox and went to bed once the house was quiet, I again took the couch.
WEDNESDAY HOLY FUCKING SHIT PILE DAY after work I had come up with a great plan to get the truth out of her because I knew there was more to the story. I told her I had booked a local lie detector test for the following day and if she failed even one answer it would be instant divorce. I knew by her reaction I was in for a shit storm. She hadn't been faithful for the entire relationship, her most recent only months ago. She had been fucking this latest one, 4-5 times so she says, in my truck when she would get fake work calls at night and early mornings. In my truck because her van broke and I let her use it until we could afford to fix the van. No protection and married as well with three kids. I kicked her out of my car and drove away to clear my head. She called and texted several times for me to come back and talk, I stupidly did. While I was gone she had a panic attack again but I am not consoling this time. I told her to come out to my car, I didn't yell I remained very calm and relentlessly bereded her and insulted her until she was so panicked she puked and flopped out of my car in a pile of panic attack. I never laid a hand on her nor even raised my voice while I told her how awful and soulless she was, that I hated her to her very core. I walked away and told her to figure it out herself, I went inside and made supper for our kids (ham, rice, and corn).
Little did I know that when I texted her to come out she had called my sister and her work mates leaving the phone on without my knowledge throughout the entire conversation. My sister texted my two oldest children and told them not to talk to me and to trust her they were in danger and to leave while her dad came and got them. I finished making dinner and set the table for four seeing her dad had picked her up, I called the kids but only the seven year old came to the table, I called my sons phone and heard it ring. I saw the text from MY sister and knew they had taken the kids. I texted her and told her to get them back and she went off saying she heard the whole conversation and that I am abusive and that every time we have fought in the past must have been like that. I called my wife who was now in the hospital with a debilitating panic attack, she didn't answer so I called her dad and he just said he is keeping the kids. Not ten minutes later 3 OPP police officers showed up and detained me on my porch.
Little did I know my wife had started her period and had filled the washroom garbage with bloody tampons and my doggo had decided to feast and make a texas chainsaw massacre scene while I was trying to find the children. So the police needed to go into the house to make sure everyone was fine due to the call from MY SISTER stating I was out of control and in poor mental health. Well when they get to the washroom they think I must have killed my wife and they read me my rights and detained me. I frantically called my wife's father and her repeatedly at this point, all the while I hear my seven year old ask the officer if he would like to play Roblox with her because they are taking me away from the game. Finally my wife talked to the police and everything was cleared up. I asked them the first thing that came to mind when I looked through the window at my beautiful innocent girl laughing and playing "If I was such a danger and such a horrible person why would anyone legitimately concerned for my children take the 11 and 13 year old but leave the 7 year old behind?" They warned me that this was likely a call to prove something untrue at custody hearings in the future, I shook their hands and they left.
THURSDAY my wife and sister came to the house for clothes expecting me to be at work (I have my daughter to take care of and I was in no shape for any work related issues), they send my older children into their rooms to pack bags and try to get my youngest to leave. She said "I am not leaving Daddy's side" and refused to go. I tried to talk to the other kids but they where ushered away immediately.
FRIDAY after threatening to involve a court order my children where returned to me. My wife is staying at my sisters acting like the poor abused wife and again I have no time to grieve the life I thought I had. I booked IC immediately and he is great affirming that I am not at fault and in his 50 years of practice he has never seen something like this. I had a great night of movies, chips, colouring, and of course Roblox. My wife called and stating she wanted to come home now that she is heavily medicated and our sons birthday is Sunday, I told her she could come over Saturday night and stay Sunday.
SATURDAY night rolls around and she comes in and says we can take turns week for week staying at my sisters and I told her to think again. I am staying in my home with what I hope are my children, and she has the legal right to as well in the unfinished basement on our old couch. The children light up as we are all in the same house again and I play nerf and dress in our Halloween costumes for the night.
SUNDAY we have a great day (me smiling and laughing for my sons birthday dying inside) she invites her father and mother and sister over for the party, yes the ones who stole and tried to turn my children on me, so I cook spaghetti sauce all morning and make supper and serve everyone like the good little fuck with a smile for my sons sake. I couldn't eat or talk to these people so I cleaned and went out for many smoke breaks, so many my fingers are now disgustingly yellow. Everyone leaves finally and my "wife" gets into our bed like nothing. I am being made out to be a monster and I have to take care of everything for my children's sake. She has done nothing to reconcile and is using her mental breakdown "from supposed guilt" as a crutch.
FML. Sorry this was so long winded but I am fucking exhausted and destroyed on all levels of manhood and humanity, but I fucking love my children more than myself so for now until separation papers are signed and the house is decided I keep carrying on. I am going to therapy biweekly and am trying to stay afloat. I take responsibility for not being a great husband, I am avoidant and very closed I am learning, but I do not deserve this. I know I am a good man and a great father.
57 comments posted: Sunday, November 23rd, 2025
