How can the pain be just as intense almost three years post D-Day

Tonight I’m convinced that there’s just no healing for me. The pain just doesn’t stop. I’ve spent three years trying to make sense of the madness so that I can find some piece of myself still breathing in the rubble. No success. It all seems so utterly hopeless.
I’m 42 years old. I have been with D since I was 16 years old, and knew him even before that. I have never even held the hand of another man. We were like twins — two halves of the same whole, or so I thought. We were in band together, debate together, drama together. We had the same GPA, won the same scholarships, had the same intellectual interests, the same sense of humor. We went to college together, took the same major, lived in the same dorm, had the same profs. We were together every day. We married when I was 21 and moved out of state to work for the State Senate. Once again, we had the same job. After three years, we took the LSAT (got the same score) and applied to law schools. We were accepted at the same schools, moved to Ann Arbor and spent three years studying together. When we were finished, we had the same job offers and decided between the two of us who would take a job with which firm. After a year working full-time, we had a son. I went part-time to be a mostly stay-at-home mom. Two years later, we had a baby girl. All along, we’d been active in church groups, leading the Christian Law Students organization and becoming members of a local Baptist church when we moved back to GR. We read the bible together, prayed together, decided to throw out the TV together (to minimize the kids’ exposure to inconsistent values), and through it all, I believed him to be my best friend.
And then that world exploded. Almost my entire history was erased. I became unnamed.
Three years ago (starting with hints that there was an “emotional” affair with someone at his office), I learned the truth about my own life for the first time. We spent 8 months in marriage counseling — where only the “emotional” affair was ever disclosed — only to have the reality of his addiction and fantasy world ripped open when I hacked into his corporate expense account (after years of frustration wondering where all the money was going and believing every explanation he concocted). It would take an entire book to walk you through how the lies were unwound, half-truths told, and more lies uncovered. Most of what I know now about my life I learned in the context of a three hour disclosure/polygraph exam. I would have gladly welcomed death by the time it was completed.
Every year of my marriage has been a lie. The infidelities began even before we were married. In total, he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on phone sex, pornography, and lavish gifts/getaways for girlfriends. There have been anonymous hook ups through Craig’s list. There have been invitations to the secretaries at his office (some of whom have taken him up on the offer to be sexual in the office). There have been long-term girlfriends (all of whom believe they are the only one and that he is about to divorce me for them). There have been fake business trips leading to out-of-town hook-ups. The long hours at the office and the need to work every weekend — all lies. At the end, he was spending 2-3 hours a day keeping track of his double life. The last three years have included an Asian obsession. He compulsively hits on every Asian woman he meets — including his best friend’s wife — and her 60-year old mother–and her sister. There has been unprotected sex. There is at least one broken marriage. He has offered money to our 18-year old baby sitter to be sexual with him. She is the daughter of his co-worker. He has taken our children to meet two of his mistresses over the years. He has had one in the house. When I found out about a second affair (before I knew many of the details I just shared with you), I was so devastated that I told him he needed to move down the street to an apartment until he learned to speak the truth. He claimed he wanted to be restored to his family. We filled up his apartment with bible verse art, pictures of the family and stuffed animals given to him by the kids (who understood he was going to work on recovering from a spending addiction and were devastated by the temporary move-out). Within two weeks, he was taking yet another girlfriend into his apartment. She is married with two children. Through the spending records, I have learned so many details that are hard to forget– like the fact that he sent flowers to his favorite girlfriend on Mother’s Day (I got nothing), and that he ditched me on my birthday (he was too busy at work) and two days later spent $500 on a crystal tiger for his girlfriend’s birthday. He has put us on the verge of bankruptcy. All of our work over the last 15 years has been frittered away in the pursuit of lust. I live in a home with no equity. We have no assets. We have no savings. Our 401K had to be gutted to pay our taxes. And through it all, he has continued giving expensive gifts to his girlfriends and spending hundreds of dollars a month on porn and phone sex.
I know what it feels like to be disemboweled while fully awake. I am gutted. I have lost my identity. When I asked him how he could have possibly maintained a double life when we were together every minute of the day in the early years of our marriage, he explained that as soon as I stepped into the shower, “I picked up the phone and the credit card.” When I asked how he could have lied to me for so long — stealing my life from me as if it were worthless — he explained that when he is in the fantasy realm, I don’t exist. And so I was erased. He was the center of my world for 20+ years — I served him, cared for him, put his desires/needs above my own — and to him, I didn’t even exist. I have been unable to really work for nearly three years now (the partners at my law firm have been very understanding — while I couldn’t share any of the details with them, I explained that I had suffered a psychological trauma and needed some time.) It is like waking up to find that your best friend is really an alien, sent to earth to destroy your mind and soul in a unique and excruciating way. He was supposed to be my protector. Instead, he was intent on, or at least indifferent to, my destruction. His standard “pick-up” was to tell his targets lies about me, my family, and the marriage (claiming that we had no sexual relationship, our marriage was never “real,” and that we don’t get along) in an effort to get their sympathy and get them into bed. He has given me an STD (it was only after my report came back he finally admitted that the hotel bills were associated with physical encounters — he had been trying to get me to believe he was paying $250 for a hotel room to masturbate in). He has endangered my life and the life of my children.
And now we are in recovery. Our children adore him. They believe the illusion I believed for 20 + years. I will do anything to save them from the pain of having a father who remains an active sex-addict. I would do anything to save them from the pain of divorce. I will do anything to keep them from experiencing this darkness I have been battling for three years. If the unveiling of this truth can render an adult woman incapable of functioning, what would the this truth do to 10 and 12-year old? I keep thinking I can sacrifice my own peace and happiness and fake it long enough for the kids to reach 18. That that is best for them. But then there are nights like tonight. When I’d prefer to just stop breathing.