Thanks everybody - you have all made helpful and valid points. When i look back at the whole saga i think i was living in a state of crisis. I had gone over in august last year to spend two weeks with him - he was drunk every night i was with him. when we went out, the people he insisted we socialized with were i hate to say it but the 'dregs' one was a guy who flaunted his gf in front of his depressed wife until his wife committed suicide. i was horrified at my AH or should i say stbaxh for wanting to keep such company. at the end of the 2 weeks i said to him the way things have been going i don't see myself ever coming back and he basically looked down at the floor, refused to look me in the eye and said - fine. while i desperately tried to be with someone else i just felt sad at the thought of any intimacy with them and the relationship was over by the new year. By the time my AH took up with new gf he was well aware of this and had told me how the thought of me coming to see him made him sick etc etc . i hear constantly how i should move on but i just hurt so much and apart from going to al-anon dont really know what to do. my AH has shall i say got a dwindling income and has just convinced his wealthy mother who has dementia to go and live with him and his gf abroad. i was so obsessed with him at the time he met her i spend my time spying and snooping on him. she had initially said she was young enough to be his daughter and could only ever be 'just friends' with him. i was horrified to see him reply - begging her to be with him as he could not sleep or eat as he was being driven crazy by her as he loved her so much! he said he could help her financially and in time she might not need alcohol to be with him . when we were together i was constantly told about how i was not pulling my weight and was not doing enough to help us financially - (mind you i did enough to pay for the house outright including most of the furniture inside it!) i was shocked when i then heard that yes they were indeed together. what happened? did love just suddenly blossom? yes i think i was desperately unhappy when i told him i had met someone else - i did expect some attempt to keep me - but the total denial of any drink problem really threw me. the absolute refusal to accept that drinking played any part in our breakup. But yet he promised his gf's mother he would stop drinking and told our daughter he has really cut back. i am hurt that this was a girl that i knew - i had met her while i was on holiday with my AH as she had been going out with AH's older friend. i believe they broke up because she had no interest in working or earning her own money but wanted the finer things in life, As for the game playing - maybe i was trying to make him jealous but at the time i just wanted the pain to stop. he was or had become somebody i was embarassed about, dishevelled, unkempt, dirty and unwashed. No matter what i said or did he stayed that way till now, and all of a sudden he is clean and paying attention to his appearance. Why could he not make that effort towards our relationship?