Most days we're "okay" but the stench of it has never left and continues to permeate our marriage. Why not just leave? That ship sailed long ago.
I might be seeing it differently because for me the Marriage was never that important, I could not care less to be married or not to a woman I love, because the love is what already sealed the union from the first moment in my eyes.
Marriage is just a formalization of something that already exists, to legally protect your partner and offspring in the case of your death.
Might be either an 'anomaly' or the result of trauma, but I legally married my cheater about 4 years after her last cheating.
Religious marriage because she is religious, while I am agnostic, so I never cared, either way was fine for me, I went with what was important to her.
However after her first betrayal and the heaviest betrayal where she left me for a few months for the affair partner, the relationship was already dead, everything that lead to the Marriage was just my Trauma Bond to her.
I left her for her first betrayal (only admitted and finally confessed few weeks ago, but dating back to when we just met), and stupidly took her back, I can see at that stage it was already no longer love but trauma.
She betrayed me every single year since then, physically or emotionally, until I came to here country to live together.
Then 10 years ago we married.
I always lead and fought hard for her since the first day. Because the love I felt for the first time in my life was real.
But I fucked up, in reality we never have love, it was always one sided, only me.
Hence there is no marriage, because it was dead from the start.
Could not care less if she bears my name or wears a ring (I do not, I always refused, the ring was giving me itch, now I realized why at last).
We are not married because she was never the person I thought she was.
And now I finally treat her like that.
She may suffer it, she is walking on eggshell afraid I will leave at any moment.
It sucks to be her, for 20 years it sucked to be me, now I just do not care.