The Catch a Feeling thread

Just found out today that my ex wife is dating someone who used to be one of my closest friends.

My feels are anger. And I want to punch into his face.

Edit:

Here is the backstory. I've lived on the same block in New Orleans for the full 5.5 years I've been here. Obviously, my wife used to live on this block, too. The week of Hurricane Isaac (Aug 2012), a new couple moved in across the street. The hurricane knocked out power on our block for about a week, and so all the neighbors banded together to ride it out. My ex and I were only on a "hey, how's it going?" basis with three of our neighbors at that point, but Isaac brought everyone together. The new couple, we'll call the wife AS and the husband NS, also met everyone that week. The whole lot of us grew to be very close.

Fast forward a few years and my ex and I would hang out with this couple often. We were closer with them than anyone else on the block. We would go out to dinner with them, they'd cook for us, we'd go to parades together, the whole nine yards. NS and I would also play soccer together once or twice a week with a large group of international friends of his (he is from Trinidad). We went on vacations with this couple. We planned birthday parties together. We even invited them to come back to Mississippi with us to stay with another couple we were friends with.

While NS and I hung out fairly often doing "dude things," he also was growing a solid friendship with my ex. He was a little older and was a good listener (he is also a whiner, could be a real downer, and never treated his wife all that well), so I noticed my wife relying on him for emotional connections at an increased rate. This was near the end of our relationship when I was pretty emotionally unavailable.

In early November of 2014, my ex left our home to stay in a hotel for the first time. She had come to realize that she wanted out of the marriage. While I knew she was not very happy, it came as a total shock to me that she was interested in a for real separation and possible divorce. I was devastated. That night, I felt like I couldn't be alone. So, I texted NS and asked if I could come over and talk.

When I got over there, I found out that NS's wife AS had left him the night before. It was insanely strange timing. It was no secret that NS and AS were having serious trouble. They never got along. She had recently become devoutly religious and he was an atheist/Buddhist, which I think just made things worse for them. That night, we helped each other deal with the situation by having some beers, talking, and playing some video games. I very much needed that distraction.

Over the next weeks, we would hang out regularly as a means of coping and distracting ourselves. He seemed a lot more okay with the separation than I because he wasn't sure he really wanted to be with AS any longer. She was very interested in going to couple's therapy and he wasn't interested in making things work. In his mind, she never wanted to spend any time with him. She was becoming very successful at work and working increasingly longer hours. He suspected she was having an emotional relationship with her boss. He also hated that she was spending her free time away from him. She was in a small Broadway style production in her free time, and other nights was going to church alone. The writing was on the wall that they were done.

In the meantime, I'm doing everything I can to get my ex back. NS is being a great listener for me and giving me what I felt at the time to be great advice. He is also visiting my ex to check on her. He would tell me how she was feeling, to an extent, and give me advice on how I should react and try to win her back.

As helpful as he was, and I still maintain that I needed his friendship at that time for sanity purposes, he was spending more and more time with her, fulfilling roles that I would've fulfilled had my ex allowed me to do so. She had just moved into a new house and he would help her fix things, bring her food, etc. Selfishly, I wanted her to not have someone to help her with those things so that in some twisted way she would miss me and want me back. I know it doesn't make much sense.

I'm not an overly jealous person, but I had been weary of his friendship with my ex for months prior to the separation. I knew the things she was looking for from me and I knew what I was not able to provide for her at that time, namely being there for her emotionally. He was that kind of person. Her love language was mostly acts of service and also quality time. Increasingly, I was being more and more distant and when we were together I was not open to her. He would cook for us, send her encouraging articles, and be there for advice.

I know I've given this man a lot of praise, but he was also a bit of a womanizer. I don't think he necessarily cheated on AS, but he was always talking to other women in shady ways. He was also the type of person who seemed very motivated and driven on paper, but never did anything to achieve his goals. He complained a lot, belittled his wife, and could be pretty annoying about trying to get attention from others.

Anyway, he moved out of the neighborhood about 7-8 months ago, and I haven't spoken to him but maybe twice since. I had lost all respect and trust in him. Let me tell you why.

So, about 2-3 months into the separation, I was feeling less and less optimistic that I had any chance of my ex and I ever reconciling. Every attempt I made at trying to spend time with her, she would dismiss and decline. It culminated one Friday afternoon after work when I invited her to our house for a cooked dinner and opportunity for us to talk. She basically said that maybe I had the wrong idea about things and that she had no interest in any of that. I went to the movies with some friends to distract myself, but that night I had an emotional breakdown. I stayed awake in my room staring at the ceiling until around 4 am. I thought about suicide probably the most legitimately I've ever thought about it because I viewed my life as over. I slept maybe two hours that night. The next day, I sat on my porch and stared at the tree in front of my house for hours. At some point, my next door neighbor and his wife came outside and invited me to dinner. Another neighbor, who lived in the other side of NS's shotgun house, came with us. We'll call her JL. I was not in a good place mentally.

By the end of the night, we were all drunk and JL invited me to her house to get high. I was borderline black out drunk when we went over there. Long story short, we ended up making out and I slept over on a blow up mattress. The next morning, I snuck across the street to my house, still very drunk. I didn't know how to process the night, but I honestly felt like I needed that to happen. It gave me a glimmer of happiness or at least excitement. I spoke privately to NS about the situation because I needed to process it. NS was not very happy about it, but he listened.

JL couldn't handle the secrecy and ended up going to my ex's new home one night and confessed everything. My ex called me about it a day or so later and we had a difficult conversation. I think of that moment as possibly the final straw.

Fast forward about six months. I had been dating for about four months at this time. I was getting better each week and becoming happy with my single life and myself. I then find out that my ex knew about JL a lot earlier than JL ever told her. According to my source, my ex said she had "eyes and ears on the block about everything I was doing." She never confronted me about JL until JL herself told her because she didn't want to give away that she had someone informing her about everything.

NS had been going to my ex and telling her things I told him in confidence, including about JL. I have no idea if he was telling her lies, exaggerating things, or simply just breaking my trust. I mean, I talked to this guy about everything during that time. I trusted him at my most vulnerable time.

So when my ex text me yesterday to tell me that had something difficult to talk about, I KNEW she was going to tell me that they were dating. And lo and behold, they are.

I'm no saint. I've been dating other people for months now. Numerous women, as anyone who frequents this thread is aware of. I've wanted her to find someone new and be happy. But not him. I don't trust him. He never treated his ex wife with any respect. I just want to punch him in his throat.