Hello! I am new here...I really need some words of encouragement! This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me! A year this past February, I lost my first love, high school sweetheart and love of my life...

i am 51 yrs old (he was 52) and we got reconnected in mid 2015. We were each other’s first loves more than 30 yrs ago. He found me on FB and sent me a friend request, which I prompty accepted. I hadn’t seen him in more than 10 yrs as we live in the same city. I knew he was divorced from his first wife and had 2 kids but that was about it. We began chatting on a daily basis, catching up on each other’s lives. He told me that I was the love of his life and in all these years, he thought about me constantly. He had remarried four years earlier and I am married as well with 3 daughters. One thing led to another and it quickly escalated into a full blown affair. The old feelings reignited and it seemed that time had not passed. I was in heaven and so was he.....until his wife found out....then the nightmare began.

A vicious cycle of disappearing and reappearing started, as his wife was on to him like a hawk. She checked his phone continuously and even had it tracked among other horrific things like blocking me from all social media, calling my husband and even telling people so my in laws would know all about our affair. All this took a tremendous toll on me, him and our relationship. He would tell me he loved me and would leave her (even had me look for apartments) and then just bail on me only to come back a few days later telling me she knew it all and wouldn’t let him even use the phone!!! Even though this was happening, I do believe he really loved me as I felt it in his words, his touch and his embraces.....He just didn’t have the tools, or guts, to do what needed to be done....

The last time I saw him was Feb 2, 2017. We went to our usual spot. We kissed, we hugged, we laid in bed together blissfully as he told me he needed more time to settle his business with her so we could finally be together forever. As we were walking towards the door to say goodbye, he said he would call me so we could meet the following day. (I never called him as I didn’t want to cause him any more trouble.) He told me he loved me, we talked on the phone on our way to our respective homes.  I never heard from him again.

On February 22, a friend of mine called me and told me he passed away that morning due to cardiac arrest....I fell to the floor sobbing desperately as I knew what was coming (or not coming) next. I couldn’t go to the funeral, the mass, I couldn’t talk to any family members, I got no condolences, no sympathy for my pain. I was officially invisible. Plus, now I had to wonder what happened, why didn’t he contact me prior to that day. To make matters even more painful, I wrote his wife twice, once to offer my condolences that very same day, and another one a few months later apologizing for all this mess and I never received an answer....I was ignored once again!

It’s been a year already and I still cry every day in hiding. I can’t talk to anyone as no one understands the devastation this has caused me. My soul has been destroyed and my heart has been shattered. He is constantly on my mind and I feel him talking to me, as if trying to comfort me. I guess I’ll never really know what his real feelings were....I just try to believe they were true for my own sanity. This has been the most painful episode of my life. My questions will be left unanswered forever....How do I continue living with this pain?