Wow I just posted a loooong reply and it disappeared into the ether. Probably for the best.
The shorter (slightly) version is that our stories have a lot of overlap... I was also cheated on at a party that I was present at. And afterwards he broke up with me for getting angry. And also refused to call it cheating. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to terrible,mean behavior when drunk.
I took him back, and then he tells me he's leaving the country in a week and not coming back for months.
But I've been so beaten down by him for so long that I feel like no one will ever love me, that the relationship I want doesn't exist. He was extremely vocal about wanting to be in an open relationship, not always finding me attractive, who he wanted to sleep with, etc. He's got me to a place where I have this irrational belief that all men are like that.
So it's kind of like... intellectually I know that's wrong. But I was also deliberately single for a few years before meeting him, so I guess I couldn't shake that firm belief I had that the next relationship I had was going to be it. I was waiting for the big, life-changing relationship, and I chose him. It felt like it was at first. Even as it fell apart, I kept trying to make him The One even as he very literally was telling me he wasn't. So I let him destroy my self esteem over the course of the last couple years. I'm a shell of who I was when I met him. My life is a mess. I've relapsed again and again in my drinking after being sober for a long time prior to him. Every time I started feeling good in the relationship, he'd get drunk and do something awful.
So yeah. Angry doesn't even begin to describe how I feel right now. I am probably the angriest I've ever been in my life, and this is coming from someone who went through a bloody layoff from a company I loved. I know what from anger