I concur with the rest. Men and women have different behaviours when someone else is in the picture, and she is displaying the standard resolute female behavior that her mind and heart are somewhere else.
A Couple of years back my then best friend told me at the beginning of July that she was thinking of breaking up with her boyfriend of 5 years, gave me lost of BS reasons how she wanted to get married and he wasn't even close to moving in together, blabla, I told her she was wrong and if he has not rushed into getting married was simply the age difference, they met that she was 30 and he was 25 so when we had the conversation he was about to hit 30 and I told her, miracles happen when men hit 30, they finally start to seriously think about marriage and I know he loved her very much, so I told her to hang on, but seemed like her mind was completely made up, and I knew then she wasn't telling me the whole story, anyway she dumped him the week after. Couple of months later in september she announced through the famous Facebook damned status she was in a relationship with some new dude. The following year July 2nd the new boyfriend posted on her facebook "happy 1 year anniversay" I saw it and recalling the date of our conversations I was like: No wonder you were so resolute and determinated that things were not gonna progress with Boyfriend #1...you had been seeing the other dude for a while if you actually got together in July.
Another little story: an Ex of mine, when we met he was going through a very painful divorce. He had met his wife at University and was love at first sight, he married about a year after. I saw many photos of them and from how I know him and how generous and loving he was in our relationship I have no doubts for 7 years he believed that she was the love of his life, yet she cheated on him real bad, had to get a detective to take proof of the affair and then of course as she got found out things turned sour. When I met him he was in a bad time of his life, heartbroken that his life had crashed, that his princess had betrayed him and his self-esteem was quite low, probably some of the reasons things didn't work out for us but we are great friends to this day, and guess what? He's now happily married and has a lovely 4 years old daughter.
@ RRH sorry If I may come across not too empathic, believe me I am, but I've been through enough heartaches to be able to think with my head more than my heart and I'll say this:
it sucks for your son that the relationship/marriage went downhill, and I know you as his Mom want to do all you can to protect him from pain, but reality is he's not the first nor the last, we all had our heart broken from someone we thought was the love of our life. If she took their marriage so lightly to me just shows she wasn't the love if his life after all. I have friends that for various reasons live or had to live continents apart for lengthy periods but never considered breaking up or cheating. So the long distance is a pure excuse.
He may not see it right away but there is 3 positive things that will come out this situation:
1) as mentioned by Theocratic Sedition if there's no children or house involved is a matter of paperwork.
2) From your description your son comes across still fairly young in his 20's means that he has lots of life and opportunities still to live
3) at least he saw her true colors now and not 20 years from now.
How can you help? Just be there for your son, I know you feel helpless but just let him know if he needs someone to talk to, or a shoulder to cry on you and your husband will be there for him for the rest don't medel too much in it, he also needs to figure in his own how to move forward. Truly that is the best you guys can do.
