Catching Up

I’ve been gone for a minute. I needed Summer to regroup and repair my soul a bit. I thought I was coping well enough with my mom’s passing and with the car accident my daughter had that seriously injured my husband. In retrospect that might have been a little wishful thinking. It was a lot, all in a very short time span. I probably didn’t process either of those events very well at the time.

I miss my mom. Holy heck do I miss her. We often battled and she was a tough cookie, but I know she loved me fiercely and always had my best interests in mind, even when we disagreed over what those best interests actually were.

I have been at my (usually) happy place since mid July. In my entire life I have probably never been here for more than a week or two without one or both of my parents. Their absence has left me reeling. I have such amazing memories here with them. I’m trying to rely on those to carry me through. It helps, certainly, but the grief still comes in hard, powerful waves at unexpected times. Even the smell of the beach can bring me to tears if I don’t brace myself. I really feel a bit adrift without both of them. Not lost, just… unmoored. Like I’m trying to find where I belong now that I’m untethered from them. I’m a 53 year old orphan. That’s tough to get my head around.

I’ve had another major life change too. Handsome had to retire from his job due to his injuries from the car accident with my daughter. (I am so lucky and grateful that no one was killed. It was that bad, and easily could have been much worse.) His retirement has me losing sleep for multiple reasons. First, losing an entire salary two years before our eldest heads off to college wasn’t in the fiscal game plan. Not even close. Second, although he has been really wonderful for multiple years at this point, I do worry about him getting bored and spiraling.

Let me explain. I have a dear friend married to a lovely man. He has multiple degrees from Ivy League schools and, before he met my friend, he had an amazing work history. He gave up his last (to die for) job to move to a small Midwest city to be with my friend and he simply fell out of the job market. He went on dozens and dozens of interviews and nothing materialized. (He was often told that he was over-qualified and/or that they couldn’t pay him what he was worth – even when he was ready to take any offer.) After literally years of rejection, they decided he would stay home and she would work outside the home. Cool. I have no issue with that. But if you spend a few hours with this couple you see the mental and verbal gymnastics my friend does to make her husband feel valued and important. We all like to feel valued and important but I don’t have the bandwidth to pump someone’s ego up every day. I can’t fake not knowing how to do something so he can jump in and save the day. I need to be able to make decisions for certain things on my own without prior consultation. (Not big things, but small stuff… what doormat to buy or what flowers to plant, etc.) Most importantly, he can’t wield a credit card like a light saber when I’m the one actually paying the bill. I’ll be certifiably miserable if I have to deal with this with Handsome. I recognize that may be uncharitable and bitchy but I know myself. Valuing his contributions to the household and showing legitimate appreciation is one thing, but having I would seriously resent having to coddle him.

Fortunately, Handsome has been running his tush off shuttling children, running errands, and overseeing major construction on our home (that we contracted and paid for before the accident). He literally hasn’t had time to be bored or feel unimportant. I’m not sure how long that will continue. He has been sober since DDay, and has given me no reason (in several years) to be wary. But recovering addicts are still addicts. It would be cocky to think otherwise. I don’t know if he can find fulfillment in being a stay-at-home dad or if the absence of adrenaline rushes from work will take a toll. (His therapist jokingly told him to teach kids to drive if he’s desperate for a rush.)

These are both “new normals” that are going to take some adjustment. I’m game, but I’m also exhausted from the weight of these things on my shoulders. I know I’m still grieving. And I’ve always been okay being the primary breadwinner but being the sole breadwinner is a unique kind of pressure. It’s no one’s fault. My mom fought valiantly to stay alive and Handsome didn’t cause the car accident and had no intention of giving up his career. Things just happen. Life happens and it isn’t always filled with sunshine. I get it, but I’m already wishing 2023 out the door and hoping 2024 will bring more peace and perhaps some joy.

Questioning Karma

It may not seem like it here, but I am a reasonably optimistic person. My glass is more than half full. I have said on more than one occasion that karma would sort stuff out, so I need not worry over it. Generally it worked well for me (or for my little slice of the universe).

OW #1- Husband divorced her.

OW#2 – Husband became incapacitated so now she has to care for him 24/7 on welfare.

OW#3 – Repeatedly arrested and occasionally homeless.

It goes on and on. Karma.

And yet my own fate/ luck these last few months has been utterly awful. Or has it??

Shortly after I last posted, Handsome and my 16 yo (who was driving on her learner’s permit) were in a terrible car accident. I had to drive to the accident scene and there were 3 ambulances and two fire trucks there. Car was totaled. The car she hit was totaled. Daughter black and blue head to toe. Handsome has a lumbar fracture. Awful scene.

Then, my 90 yo mom passed away last week. She was in 3 facilities over 2 months, but was discharged to come home the day before her birthday. Six days later she had to return to the hospital with a pneumonia that killed her shortly thereafter. She was fully alert till her last breath and I was with her, holding her hand.

I really started wondering who I wronged in the universe for all these awful things to happen. Who did I wrong or betray? Was I selfish or greedy or just a general jackass? Why?

And then I took a deep breath and tried to step outside myself for just a minute. Yes, these things were all terrible and sad and stressful. (So very stressful.) And yet… there is also unquestionably good fortune in each.

My husband and daughter are alive. They can walk. Not everyone walks away from an accident like they had, but they did. Yes, Handsome is injured but he can and hopefully will heal. The car is replaceable. They are not.

I’m so very sad about my mom. She lived with me for the last 6 years. I saw her every day. I’m really missing her. But she had a good, fulfilling, long life and was in reasonably good health and had all her faculties up until the very last minute. I had her for 53 years. I know how lucky I am. Yes, she died and it hurts and I’m crushed, but I was so very fortunate to have her for my mom and to have her for as long as I did.

Maybe my karma was the good kind after all.

Unexpected Consequences

On my DDay, almost four and a half years ago, my children were 8 and 11. After assessing who knew of Handsome’s behavior and what the possibilities were of the kids learning anything, I made the decision not to tell them about their dad’s infidelity and sex addiction. There was simply no reason for them to know.

Handsome was drinking often before DDay. While they never saw him drunk, they did see him drink daily. We did have some discussions with the kids when he stopped drinking about why he made that decision. We also talked to them about why he went to Sierra Tucson for 6 weeks for mood disorder treatment and what he hoped to accomplish after his inpatient stay.

Here we are these few years later and, while I still believe that not telling them about his infidelity/SA was what was right for them (given our particular circumstances) I now see some unintended consequences of that decision. Namely, all of Handsome’s prior bad behavior witnessed by the kids has a reason attached to it in their minds. Dad drank too much so of course he was miserable. Dad yelled a lot because he couldn’t regulate his emotions. Dad didn’t have the meds or the skills he needed to control his moods.

Those reasons are true. But…

The cherry-picking of what my kids know vs what they don’t know means that they have some context for his behavior whereas I now see that they have zero context for mine. During an argument, my now 15 year old daughter said “It’s like you woke up one day a few years ago and just decided to be mean.” 💔 I just wanted to hold her close and say “no, darling… one day your father tore my heart apart and irreparably changed me. He took my peace, my patience, my sense of humor, and my sense of self-worth. I’m still working on getting those things back and it’s hard and sometimes I still struggle. Sometimes I fail.”

That lack of context occasionally means that I get blamed for the consequences of my husband’s actions. One child expressed frustration recently that we don’t stay home for Thanksgiving (which would be a trigger for me). I was seen as the one making that decision and thus got the blame. Handsome had to step into that discussion to say “I ruined Thanksgiving at home for mom, so blame me and not her.” They assumed he meant that he ruined it with his drinking, so the explanation was accepted. That doesn’t work so well though for things like “why is mom so quick to anger” or “why does mom startle so easily?” How do we explain my CPTSD when they only know half the story?

Telling them now is unacceptable for the same reasons that were valid 4 years ago. I’m not going that route. They just don’t need to know. It is frustrating though that in my efforts to preserve their relationship with Handsome I seem to have unintentionally harmed my relationship with them in the process. Could we just blame everything on his drinking and call it a day? Sure. It just doesn’t explain everything.

Perhaps the problem is that I’m not the right person to address the issue. Maybe Handsome needs to step up more, like he did when the matter of Thanksgiving came up. That was incredibly helpful. I don’t mind being the “heavy” with my kids when it’s needed and appropriate, but I didn’t anticipate catching flak for things I can’t really control.

On being small

I recently had an experience with my 89 year old mother that opened my eyes to a lingering side effect of my husband’s infidelity and related nonsense. Namely, I am accustomed to making myself small.

I am not small in stature or in voice. Despite that, I realized that my goal since DDay, has been to blend in with the wallpaper. The seeds were certainly sowed before then, during the period of my marriage where I was slowly manipulated into making my needs nonexistent. I was astonished though to see how it still impacts me, even when I least expect it.

Picture a stereotypical New England clam shack at a beach. Great lobster rolls and seating at picnic tables with paper towels for napkins. It’s me, Handsome, and my mom. We have a terrific meal. As we go to leave, my mom gets her legs kind of caught up on the picnic table bench. At her age, her skin is incredibly thin. She immediately has blood pouring from both shins.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a normal person slow trickle from a scrape. By your standards or mine, these were small contusions. Nonetheless, I’m talking about a blood thinner- induced river of red that was running down her shins, pooling in her shoes, and soaking the ground around her feet. We were totally silent, but yet the mere fact of the situation made every movement seem loud.

I’m somewhat accustomed to this. It happens any time my mom gets cut and the slightest bruise makes her look like she has been battered. But there we sit, in the midst of this outdoor dining area, and I found myself resenting my mom for drawing attention to us. For inconveniencing the other diners. For ensuring we were sticking out like sore thumbs. For taking up too much “space” in that moment. WTF??

Of course, like a diligent and loving daughter I was on my hands and knees in the sand trying to stop the bleeding, fielding offers of assistance, and trying to get my mom situated to get her to our car. And I was so incredibly, terribly uncomfortable. Just to pile on, I recognized the absurdity of the discomfort in the moment and it made me angry at myself. Have I really allowed myself to be shoved into such a tiny box that a minor accident makes me feel bad for inconveniencing (at worst) a bunch of strangers??

Having had some time to sit with this I can look back and note times where, during Handsome’s acting out, my whole being revolved exclusively around him and our kids. Therereally was no me. Yes, I worked, but I never really got to enjoy the fruits of that labor other than on a vacation or two. Forget self-care. I recall enduring incredible inconvenience and sacrifice to accommodate him and his needs. I recall not asking for anything, ever, because I knew my request would be discounted or ignored. I’ve written elsewhere here about the one Christmas where I got absolutely nothing from him, and the birthdays and Mother’s Days where I bought gifts for our kids to give me because he couldn’t be bothered and had probably spent all his money on skanks and sex.

When you grow accustomed to that smallness, of course you start to believe that your very existence is likely a nuisance to those who don’t even know you. Fast forward to a sunny day at a clam shack and I was turned right back into that gaslit, manipulated woman, undeserving of space to exist. And I deflected that right onto my mom. How dare she have needs, in public.

I swear, trauma is a bugger. Every time I start to feel like I’m making some progress, something like this kicks me in the butt.

I often de-escalate myself in these situations by telling myself “that was then, this is now.” I need to deliberately remind myself “this is reasonable” to counter all the residual effects of the gaslighting telling me that my needs or wants are unreasonable.

In this instance, Handsome was there, working with me to help my mom and offering reassurances to us both that it would be fine. He wasn’t focused on himself. He was present, both literally and mentally. He was trying to be helpful.

He knew I was suffering, but not why. I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I’m not sure I could make it sound logical. And yet clearly this compulsion to not take up space, not make waves or rock the boat, is still deep inside me. I want it to be gone.

Girl Code vs. Awkward Work Event

I saw this in the New York Times yesterday and, frankly, I’m just not sure what to make of it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/style/baby-shower-do-i-have-to-go.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage

How would I handle the situation?  I’d get a nice gift for the baby and find any reasonable excuse to be out of/ away from the office that day.

I absolutely understand why the woman who wrote the letter is uncomfortable participating in the shower. You don’t have to be a betrayed spouse to feel awkward about celebrating someone who apparently had no qualms about ripping apart a family (or at least felt no need to hide it).

Thoughts?

On being betrayed

I was poking around the depths of the internet recently and I found an old, but still relevant, article on betrayal in the NY Times: https://nyti.ms/2k8oupp .  As much as I dislike the level of discourse in most comment sections, the NY Times moderates and curates theirs pretty carefully.  Two comments to the article hit really close to home:

From stuenan in Kansas:

Liars are also thieves. They steal time and possibilities. What life might you have led if you hadn’t believed all their lies? What opportunities did you miss out on because you made choices based on the lies you were told? What did you give up and sacrifice for someone you loved, believed in and trusted?

It’s hard not to feel that you have been preyed on in the worst way and that your life has been wasted.

and

From Amy in Chicago:

Discovering betrayal is like taking a hit from a baseball bat to the knees. It takes a lifetime to learn to walk upright again and look the world in the eye.

To me, both comments ring true in a very personal way. Yes, Handsome is a sex addict, but his addiction involved multiple forms of cheating and betrayal. I’m no different from any other betrayed spouse except my cheater now goes to 12-step meetings. Any infidelity is sufficient to cause these feelings, whether the betrayal is emotional, physical, or otherwise.  Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t even think it matters much if your spouse cheated five times or five hundred, or over the course of one week or one decade. While some may find consolation that what their spouse did wasn’t “as bad” as what another spouse did (or, conversely, believe that their misery is greater because of a longer duration or greater number of misdeeds) it’s a distinction without a difference.

If you are betrayed, you suffer. You hurt. You cry, rage, scream, and lash out. You question. You doubt. And then you suffer some more, usually for a very long time.

What life might I have led if I hadn’t believed all of Handsome’s lies? On my good days I think that if I had pressed harder in 2012 (after the Flame reared her ugly head the first time) maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today.  Perhaps I should have believed less or doubted more.  On my not so charitable days, I feel as though I was sold a bill of goods about Handsome from the very beginning and that had I been shown a truthful picture of him from the start, I’d be blissfully living a trigger-free life with someone else. I can’t imagine being with anyone else and the very thought of it makes me sad, but still…

What opportunities did I miss out on because I made choices based on the lies I was told?  What did I give up and sacrifice for Handsome? I left an amazing job with fantastic benefits, dear friends, and a full, independent life in a big city to move back to where he and I met, because he said he’d love and honor me forever.  And here we are, facing the fallout of that unfulfilled promise. I seem to have also sacrificed healthy portions of my self-esteem, dignity, and confidence to his lies as well.

Most days, I get by okay. Some days now, I actually do well. My mind only reels for portions of the day, not all of it. Nonetheless, Handsome’s betrayal has maimed me and inflicted a trauma of the type I’ve never had to deal with before: a Tonya Harding-esque bat to the knees for sure. So, when Handsome exited his therapy session with the Doc yesterday and started talking about forgiving himself? Well, forgive me, but my initial reaction was along the lines of “Now? So soon? That’s it? You’re told to magically let this years-long shit storm you created go after 6 months, but I get the joy of dealing with it, and you, forever?” Uh, no.

I should have seen this coming though. As the article says: “…it is often the person who lied or cheated who has the easier time. People who transgressed might feel self-loathing, regret or shame. But they have the possibility of change going forward, and their sense of their own narrative, problematic though it may be, is intact.” Yes, Handsome certainly knows his own story, while I grasp at straws to figure it out. He knew the life he was living, even if it was compartmentalized. My narrative, on the other hand? My life hasn’t been what I thought it was for a very long time.

I’m all in favor of Handsome not carrying shame with him every day for the rest of his life. Shame was a driver for his acting out. And yes, at an appropriate point he should forgive himself. To me, however, that point comes after he has (i) made a full accounting of his behavior and the harm he has caused, (ii) endeavored to make amends for that harm, and (iii) evidenced the commitment to never betray his family again by living a life of integrity day in and day out for longer than a red-hot minute. Once he does these things I will be prepared to forgive him as well. But he’s nowhere near that point, and neither am I. I’m still struggling to walk upright again and look the world in the eye.

 

Reclaiming Mother’s Day (Part 2)

Mother’s Day flowers

Just a quick update. In short, Handsome did go away to visit his dad and I had a pretty terrific weekend with the kids.  The flowers? My 8-year-old son came shopping and helped me pick them out and we made arrangements for me and for my mom.

On Sunday I had a hearty breakfast of berries and cookies in bed (better than it sounds because there was no syrup to clean off the cat… or the steps… or the carpet…). In the evening we went to a great new steakhouse downtown for dinner.  I love seeing my kids dressed up. I love seeing them in anything really, but when they’re all shiny and clean it just rocks.

Handsome wasn’t great about observing the boundaries of the day, but I had my phone off so it didn’t matter.  He called twice and texted me once and then tried to text the kids (“Tell Mom I said… .”). Whatever.  I had the wonderful day I wanted and he was utterly uninvolved.

Back to reality today as Handsome returns home and there are a few things we need to deal with from last week.  I’ll write about those later. But for now I’m still basking in the glow of a terrific weekend. Thanks to everyone for the kind words of encouragement. I needed that support and I needed this weekend to myself.

Reclaiming Mother’s Day

So very true.

I’ve sent Handsome away. Not permanently, mind you, but for a long weekend this weekend. “But it’s Mother’s Day,” you say? Yep. Exactly.

Last year over this weekend, Handsome was at our summer home, ostensibly for the purpose of getting it ready for the season for our family, but rampantly texting three other women the entire time. He was sexting one of those women – the Whore – as well, taking dick pics throughout the house and exchanging them with her for pictures of her dirty vajeen. There were videos too, if I recall correctly. (sigh…)

In the text messages on Mother’s Day specifically, he flattered each of the women, praising them as exemplary parents and shining examples of motherhood. That includes the Whore who, you may recall, was arrested and jailed for punching her young son in the face with a closed fist. Handsome knew that, but he fawned over her the same as the others. Angel Baby doesn’t have custody of her first illegitimate child, but she was praised as well.

What did I get last Mother’s Day? A five-minute phone call from him completely devoid of any praise or affection. And the gifts and cards from my awesome kiddos… that I had bought and paid for myself.

“But he’s so busy getting the house ready! You can’t expect him to chat forever.”

“He’s a little strapped for cash, but if you buy your own gifts at least you’ll get what you want.”

“You’re not his mom.”

Those were the things I told myself. And then I sucked up the hurt and enjoyed myself with my kids.

I have the specifics about last year because I was able to see the text messages. I have to assume that the prior two Mother’s Days during his acting out were more of the same. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

So, even though Handsome took this weekend off, I’m not inclined to celebrate with him. I don’t even want to see him, frankly. I’ll buy my own flowers, enjoy a great meal somewhere with my mom and kids, and try to demonstrate to myself that he is utterly unnecessary in order for me to enjoy this holiday. The whores will not ruin it for me and neither will he.

He is traveling to visit his father who lives several hundred miles away. (I didn’t want him here, but I did want someone keeping an eye on him.) I’m sure that on Sunday he will miss his own mother who passed away in 2012. Hopefully, when Handsome and his dad go out to eat on Sunday and he sees all the families celebrating together he’ll take a moment to process why he is excluded this year and why his wife can’t bear to look at him on that day. I’m sure it would be a comfort to him to be with me and the kids instead, but this weekend my self-care means having him be far, far away.

To tell the truth – the polygraph

In light of all of the new revelations from DDay #2, and my uncertainty over the veracity of his insistence that he had told me everything (because, let’s be honest, I’d heard that no less than a dozen times before), I scheduled Handsome for a polygraph test.  I wrote out about 25 yes/ no questions that I wanted answers to, and, together with the polygraph examiner, we winnowed those down to 5 comprehensive questions that I considered to be fundamental to moving forward with the marriage. Handsome wrote out a statement based on those questions and answered each of them head on. Then he was tested based on the truthfulness of the statement.  The test was this morning.

I expected – if Handsome was telling me the truth – that the whole process would make me feel better. Initially, I do feel relieved, but in the moment of the test I found myself questioning what I had done.  I probably shouldn’t feel that way, but I did. For all his manly bluster, Handsome is a newly diagnosed SA. His shame and guilt and torment are, at the moment, overwhelming and profound. And yet there he sat, patiently waiting for someone to truss him up to the polygraph machine. Shaming and humiliating him further was never the goal.

Handsome answered all of the questions multiple times. After the test the examiner (who was very professional and non-judgmental and kind) advised me that the responses appeared to be truthful, both according to his own observation of the results and based on a separate algorithm that he runs on the results. In fact, according to the algorithm there was a less than 1% chance of falsehood. Thank heaven. I do feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders or a shadow has passed over me. Both are good things and I got the answers I desperately needed; however, if I am honest, I’m likely to be a bit haunted by the fact that my comfort came at the expense of more of Handsome’s dignity. (Mind you, I completely understand and agree that my dignity was never a consideration for him throughout two and a half of the last three years, but the whole point of this is to move beyond that.)

Would I do it again if I had to do it all over?  Yes, but I might have waited till Handsome had a few more SA meetings under his belt.  Or maybe that wouldn’t make a difference. I just keep thinking of how very sad it is when the facts of a marriage are so in doubt that a polygraph is needed to affirm or to refute the story. In my case, the story was affirmed, but I’m sure in many others it is not.

The Plot Twist – he’s not just a cheater

With this blog post I fully recognize that I may drive some folks away, anger others, and generally disappoint a few folks. I’m sorry/ not sorry. For the second time (at least) in three months, my reality was completely upended AGAIN just days ago. I knew full well that during our big talk last week Handsome had only told me the truth that he was capable of telling me at that moment. I felt that he tried, but did not overly stretch himself. I figured that there was more to come, but based on the prior trickle truth I guessed that additional disclosures would be about the number of times various sexual acts occurred or the duration of the affair with the Whore or things along those lines. I was wrong. Boy was I wrong.

It just so happens that on the day of the big talk I had pulled together all of Handsome’s credit card and bank statements going back to January 2015. I had not had time to go through them prior to our talk. Once I did, I found three things:

  1. several charges of not insignificant amounts at a very nice restaurant I have never been to;
  2. several charges at a nearby casual chain that the kids and I have been to exactly once with Handsome (at which time he plainly stated he had never visited before);
  3. a charge to a website in the Netherlands for a small but suspicious amount of money.

So, four days after the big talk we are again at our kitchen table.  First up: the restaurants. Deny, deny, deny. Fine, but his anxiety level was clearly increasing. He got up and started pacing, finding little tasks to do, stretching, sighing loudly, etc. I knew something was up.

Contrary to what you see on TV, under questioning by a lawyer (think cross examination of a witness or defendant) people rarely fess up. So rarely, in fact, that in the real world most lawyers rarely try to get that broken down confession on the stand. There are too many things that can go wrong, and it almost never turns out the way you’d hope. But Handsome was going to make me work for every sliver of concession (or confession as the case may be), so I put on my lawyer hat and we started talking about the credit card charge – to an entity called 2buysafe dot com. Their website looks ridiculous, but when you use Google reasonably well it’s easy to find out that they serve as a third party billing service for Seeking Arrangements and sites of similar ilk. I had done my homework. I knew this.  I had proof printed out, in hand.

When confronted, originally Handsome denied knowing what the charge was, said it must have been a mistake, all the usual.  Then he took a deep breath, stretched, and blurted out “okay, yes, I signed up… I signed up on that site.” Amen. That was the beginning of hours of discussion and additional disclosures. As to the site itself, he says he signed up, created a profile, and received emails from women all over the world but that it was just “too freaky” for him (plus he doesn’t have enough money of his own to function as a sugar daddy) so he let the account expire. I believe that could be true, but I also believe that taking that step, and failing, is what led to the next step for him – starting the affair with the Whore.

But, because nothing is ever that simple in Crazytown, there was more. Much more. In short:

  • He admitted that he occasionally took a young girl from the town he works in to dinner and to lunches. He had mentioned this girl to me often in the past, back to when she was a young teenager. At the time, I warned him to keep his distance because I feared she had an unhealthy crush on him and could make accusations against him. (Note: I was not afraid of what he would do – as I had no reason to fear that at the time- but rather I feared her.) I think he did keep his distance then, but years have passed and she has since gotten older (I believe she is now 24) and needier. We will call her Angel Baby.
  • He said Angel Baby came to our house and drove him to the airport once when he was flying to meet up with me and the kids “because she needed the money” and he wanted to give her the money rather than a taxi. He never mentioned this to me.
  • He admitted that this past July, before he flew up to meet the kids and me on vacation, he brought Angel Baby to our home. He says he found her crying on the street in the rain and that she had nowhere to stay. (Boo fucking hoo, right??) She spent two nights there. On both nights, they shared a bed. In my house. There are five other beds in my house, all of which were free, but for some reason he just had to sleep with her. Go figure. Handsome insists “nothing happened” and that there was no sexual contact at all. (I call complete bullshit on this, by the way. I assume he fucked her. In fact, I’m pretty much going to assume he fucked everyone from here on out.)
  • He also admitted that he has been in contact with the old girlfriend again for several years, ever since he bought his burner phone. (I mention her briefly here https://betrayedwife.net/2018/02/05/dday-deceit-as-a-lifestyle-choice/ .)  We will call her the Flame. According to him, he took her to lunch once since he resumed contact with her. They called and texted “often” until, he still claims, he tossed the burner phone in the river back in November. (I have never fully believed that he doesn’t have the phone. I believe he may not be actively using it, but Handsome is a keeper of things. I doubt very strongly that he tossed it.) This burns me. I thought seriously about separating from him over her back in 2012, but didn’t. He assured me it was nothing and it was over. And here she is again, years down the pike.

If you are keeping score, that means that in July 2017, Handsome was involved outside our marriage (emotionally, physically, or both) with the Whore, Angel Baby, and the Flame. But, of course, there is still more.

  • On July 26th, he took a woman from the town he works in to dinner. Handsome had A FUCKING DATE. He drove 7 miles to pick her up, drove about 10 miles back to the lovely restaurant, paid for dinner, and then drove her home. He says he kissed her but nothing more. (Again, I assume he fucked her too.) Contact with her started a few weeks before the date  – probably around the same time Angel Baby was shacking up in my home and right before our summer vacation – and allegedly ended about 4-6 weeks after the date.

Final tally for July 2017: four other women, plus me.

When it was simply the Whore, I thought I was just dealing with a cheater. Even if you added in the Flame and what I knew from 2012.  A common, garden variety philanderer, but nothing special.  That was brutal and devastating and awful and horrendous.  However, when you add all of this insane escalating behavior together, the result is clear to me. My husband, my dear darling, still beloved Handsome is a sex addict. He is a broken, deeply troubled man. It is real. It is unquestionable. And now we have to deal with it. He found and attended his first SA meeting the following morning, of his own volition. Two days later he met with his therapist and admitted that he has been lying to him all along. I am grateful he finally admitted all of this to me and that he took those steps, and I have told him so, but still…

This is not what I signed up for. Looking ahead, it doesn’t even vaguely resemble the future that I had hoped and worked for every day since we got married. My life – even if we manage to stay together through this which is far from certain – will never, ever be what I thought it was before. And I liked most of my life before. I didn’t step forward and volunteer for a new life, but now I’m damned if I do (a future of 12 step meetings and therapy and triggers and the fear of relapses), and damned if I don’t (breaking up my family, moving my kids, closing the door on a future with the man I adore and had planned to spend the rest of my life with).

How did I feel as I looked at him these last few days? I pity him. That’s a terrible feeling when you are looking at your life partner and someone you love and had respected. I am angry, furious even. How dare he? How dare he do this to our family? When did he get so phenomenally fucked up, and why?  And, of course, I am hurt. I have been hurt by the person I love most in this world to the point that it is difficult to feel pain. I am not certain whether Handsome has hit rock bottom. I thought he had been there before. (Wrong again!) I know for certain that I’m there now. I feel like I am at the absolute bottom of a deep, dark pit, staring up, not into light, but infinite darkness.

 

The Big Talk – A cheating husband tells (some of) his story

Several weeks ago, after another fairly frustrating conversation about the “who, what, where, when, why, how” details of his affair, I was nearing the end of my rope with Handsome. Simply stated, he just wasn’t telling me much of anything.  Upon reflection, I realized that almost everything I knew about the affair, save for a few small details, came from either the Whore’s burner phone or from Fire Dude or my own digging. While Handsome is great under pressure at his job, he positively wilts under scrutiny at home. I thought that in order to put an end to trickle truth and to have any chance at getting coherent information from him, he needed to take some time to pull his story together. I asked him to take a few weeks, talk to his therapist, and prepare to tell me the “story” of the affair, from start to finish. He agreed.

As days passed I’d occasionally check in and say “hey, how is that coming?” or “when do you think we might be able to talk through your story?” and while I believe he was trying, he wasn’t making much headway. He had about five lines written down, four of which were about what a stupid fool he was. Agreed, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise.

I asked him if it would help for me to outline for him the questions that I had so that he would have a framework on which to base his story. (Truth be told, I was pissed that I had to do that, but between staying pissed or getting answers I desperately wanted and needed, I opted to deal with being pissed.) He eagerly agreed, so I set to work. I had five major areas I wanted him to cover: addressing some lingering issues from before the affair (outreach to the old girlfriend and the porn); the beginning of the affair; the hotel through the end of the physical affair; the sexting and voyeurism phase; and the aftermath.  By the time I was done laying out my questions across that timeline, it was twelve pages long. I can only imagine what Handsome thought when I handed it to him and he felt the heft of the document in his hand.

A week and two therapy sessions passed. On Monday we sat down at 10:00pm and talked till about 3:00am. No breaks. It was painful for both of us, but clearly gut wrenching for him. It was obvious and evident to me that he is as horrified by his behavior as I am. Of all the facts I gathered from the answers to my questions, perhaps that was the most important one of all: Handsome is remorseful and deeply ashamed. (A not-so-small voice inside my head follows that with “Good. He should be.”)

He had made an effort to answer every single question. While much of the information was not new, hearing his perspective  – his own version of events – was helpful. It gave me some insight into exactly what he was thinking or not thinking throughout the various phases of the affair. There are still open issues, with a clearer sense of the timeline being the biggest one and, of course, a better sense of the “why.” I think we’ll make progress on that the longer Handsome continues his therapy.

Do I think I got the whole truth?  No.  Not at all. I’m no longer that naive. I do believe that other things – most likely some additional awful, painful things – will come to light.  It seems inevitable; however, I think he told me as much of his truth as he is presently able to handle. I hope that as he feels more secure in himself and in our affair recovery that he’ll grow comfortable (or at least be able to handle) disclosing things instead of waiting for me to dig them up. If he ever manages to do that it will be a monumental step forward.

 

Trickle truth returns with a vengeance

If you’ve read through my posts thus far you know that until now the general timeline of Handsome’s affair was that it all started by texting in very early 2016, that sometime in the late Spring of 2016 he and the Whore had their one and only hotel tryst (although he struggled with remembering exactly when the hotel occurred, but insisted the affair didn’t start in 2015), and that from June 2016 through late November 2017, it was purely sexting and voyeurism. We worked hard together to pin down those broad dates over numerous conversations. Call it a 2-year affair, start to finish, 17 months of which was not physical. I was slowly coming to grips with that. It sucked and it was wretchedly painful, but I was getting by, willing my damaged self through each day. Wait… not so fast.

A few posts ago I made reference to our finances. We do not share credit cards. My bills are an open book (often laying on the kitchen counter), but his seemed to disappear from the house immediately after arrival. After DDay he agreed to be more open and transparent about them – and everything else – and insisted that he had nothing to hide. I realized a few days ago that I was still not seeing those bills. I know he didn’t use online accounts for any of the cards, so I set them up myself for him last week.  In doing so, I accessed his statements from 1/2015 to the present. Amidst the gasoline charges and medical co-pays and the amusement park trips with the kids, there it was… the charge for the no-tell-motel… on July 1st of 2015. I found that four days ago and I don’t think that I’ve caught my breath since.

What real difference does it make? It matters to me in two ways. First, it means that the affair started pretty close to a year (a YEAR) before he said it did. It didn’t start with the hotel.  It started months before then.  In turn that means it was well underway at the time of our 10th wedding anniversary, and was ongoing throughout another year of milestones and vacations and experiences, all of which are now tainted too. Second, he previously admitted to being at the Whore’s house as late as May 2016. That means that the physical portion of their affair was probably more like 12-16 months, not six months. To me, both of those are real and material differences.

Handsome’s reaction to this newfound information? “Well, I told you that I really couldn’t remember when that was.”

How does an otherwise intelligent man not remember what YEAR he started an affair? Is that a legitimate subject for confusion? How does he not remember screwing his whore in a fleabag motel just days before his  summer vacation with his family? If he felt as guilty as he says he did, why wasn’t that on his mind throughout the entire trip (thus burning it into his brain)?  How can someone “forget” that?

Thinking this mess went on for two years is bad enough, but another year on top of that? Our youngest was in preschool then, which seems like a lifetime ago when I look at him now. He was still enough of a baby to sleep with his butt up in the air back then, and now – three years later – he’s my super cool surfer dude/ Minecraft expert. His growth is a painful, heartrending illustration of how very, very long the lies and deceit went on. I feel suffocated by the duration of this deceit.

Which wife will I be today?

Before DDay I’d have described myself as stable, grounded, even unflappable. I juggled pressure and stress like a circus star. On those days when I was in the midst of the tornado that is life with a crazy full time job, two kids, an elderly mom, and a law enforcement husband, if my fuse got short I was more likely to become forgetful than to snap in anger. (It’s a weird coping mechanism, and not really helpful at home or at work, but for me it beats flipping out.) These days, I’m on a much less even keel, and it’s scary and unsettling.

Say, for example, that Handsome and I manage a decent day together. Maybe we make some progress in our discussions with one another, or we have a legitimately good day.  At night, we get into bed, kiss each other goodnight, and I fall asleep thinking that we’re surely going to get through this. Perhaps I even managed a decent night’s sleep for once. Then, the next morning as the sun peeks from behind the horizon, I find that I can’t bear to look at him or hear the sound of his voice.  What happened in the middle of the night? Nothing. Did I learn some trickle truth or have a flurry of intrusive thoughts? Nope. And yet the disgust, rage, and hostility that I feel is real and palpable. I feel it in my chest and down through the soles of my feet. Sometimes these feelings last throughout the day, and occasionally they bleed over to the next day as well.

These mood swings (is that what they are?) are frightening for me and I’m sure they’re confusing and scary for Handsome. He doesn’t ask for much these days (so he’s not completely dim), and he is trying. I make a point to acknowledge that with some kind words of recognition when I can, and he appears to really want and need that. So he goes to bed with a hurt but reasonable person, and he wakes up with a Tazmanian devil. That has to screw with his mind. I know it’s screwing with mine because I feel like I have zero control over my emotions.

Does this sound familiar to anyone further out from DDay than I am? Do these waves dissipate over time? Or at least become more predictable? Do you just ride them out and roll with it?

Why did he cheat?

A commenter recently asked – in relation to a different post – why, from my perspective, Handsome cheated. I thought it might be helpful to post my answer here. I  am certain my answer to this question will evolve, but two+ months out from DDay, this is what I think as I stated in my reply (edited slightly):

We are working on the “why” and trying to figure out how we got to a place where the affair happened. He says it’s because he was a selfish, narcissistic asshole, which is certainly true but not the root of the issue. Handsome has been in individual counseling for a month. (At 55, for the first time ever talking to someone about his innermost feelings.) I have my own theories though on what led him to seek attention elsewhere. I cannot, however, explain how he picked this wretched person to seek that attention from or why he wasn’t repulsed by her (which would be his normal reaction).

Handsome comes from a very patriarchal family. His dad is king. His mom had a good professional job at a time when many women didn’t, but his dad still dictated everything. I earn about 3x as much as Handsome. His job pays for utilities and, thankfully, provides our very necessary health insurance, and he pays for his car and his credit cards. He also makes a modest monthly payment on my student loan. I pay for everything else (two mortgages, everything related to the kids, all groceries, my car and my credit cards, vacations, dining out, entertainment, and all of the expenses for our second house). While I think he likes the trappings of our lifestyle, I know the shifted power dynamic gets to him. (I say “power” but I don’t control his finances or anything…. it’s more the lack of control he has over me or mine.) I think perhaps he wanted to feel more needed, more in charge.

I also think the dynamics of our intimate life played a role. Several years ago he developed E.D. issues. I never got upset in front of him or did anything other than try to reassure him I loved him and it would be okay. But a cycle started. We’d try to have sex, it wouldn’t work, and so rather than trying and failing he just about quit trying. In retrospect, I thought I was handling that okay by stepping back and giving him some space to work through that frustration. I didn’t think I should try to force the issue (he already had a Viagra prescription that barely helped). I was actually proud of how understanding I thought I was being. Whereas I saw “helpful, supportive space” I think he saw “disinterest” and “she must not care.”

To me, there are still a bunch of steps between “she must not care” and “seems like a good idea to have an affair.” I’m haunted by how many fairly simple conversations we could have had that might have made a big difference in where we are today. If he had ever asked “Are you still in love with me” I would have moved heaven and Earth to assure him I was. I was certain he loved me, but I didn’t realize that might not be enough.

My post DDay frantic internet searches were the first time I stumbled upon the phrase “cognitive dissonance.” I do think it played role for us. It helped him justify or come to terms with his otherwise deplorable conduct. He firmly believed that cheating was bad, but yet he skewed his perceptions of our marriage to make it okay (“she doesn’t care” “she doesn’t want me”). He doesn’t admit this yet, but I do think it’s coming. It would also tie to the porn and masturbation in lieu of actual intimacy. His belief being both that he could quit any time – I don’t think he could – and that it wasn’t hurting our marriage because I didn’t want him (utterly untrue). It’s as if he compartmentalized his life and created an alternate reality where he convinced himself he had an unattentive wife and was justified in his conduct. Outside of that compartment he still acted as if our marriage was great, save for the small issues everyone experiences.

I remembered today that we had an argument about a year and a half ago. Truth is, while we occasionally bickered we rarely out-and-out fought. In this particular instance, I don’t recall what it was about, but I remember that I said something to Handsome about him “checking out” of the marriage. I vividly recall him looking at me as if I had slapped him. He appeared sincerely hurt, confused.  He said he didn’t feel that way about the marriage and that he thought we were in a good place and he was happy. Even today, as doubtful as I am about almost everything, I’m convinced he was sincere. I felt so badly at the time that I think I backtracked on my comment and apologized. Here’s my point – on that very day he was in the midst of the affair  and likely in the 6+ months where it was physical. How could he say – and apparently believe – that our marriage was good, while he was cheating? I cannot get my head around that.

I don’t think I’m alone in my confusion on this issue either.  Handsome tells me that it has been the subject of many discussions in therapy.  The “why” someone cheats is generally understood in a bad marriage. When it happens in a “good” marriage, it’s difficult to reconcile how the cheater could truly love the betrayed spouse and yet do something so clearly bound to gravely injure them. When we get to the bottom of that “why” – or even part way down that rabbit hole – I’ll feel like we’re making progress.

On a side note, I made it through Valentine’s Day relatively unscathed and just focused on my kids. Our trip to New England was okay 98% of the time. We actually had some fun together. Best of all, our first affair recovery session with Brian from Beyond Affairs went well. Handsome was practically doing jumping jacks trying to reduce his stress level throughout that session, and I found myself largely unable to look at him during much of it, but we managed it and have good, helpful homework to do over the next few weeks before our second session.

Agitation or fear (or both)?

Things are happening this week that have me on edge.

First, Valentine’s Day. Screw that this year. Handsome will get lovely cards from the kids, but not from me. I’ve told him not to get me anything (and assured him it wasn’t a test… that I truly want nothing). Maybe next year or down the road things will be different.

Next, later in the week we are heading to our summer home in New England. We had some pipes freeze there and need to attend to that damage. It will be my first time in the house since learning that he spent a yard-work weekend alone there last May sexting the Whore the entire time. Hundreds of texts and a bunch of photos and videos. That house has always been my happy place and my safe haven – since before I got together with Handsome – and I’m scared I won’t be able to see it in that light any longer. Part of me may actually be glad some of it needs to be torn apart, rebuilt, and redone as it might get rid of the taint from what he did there. (As I write that it sounds crazy to me and yet it makes perfect sense at the same time.) The church where we got married is nearby too. I’m not sure how I’ll deal with seeing that.

Finally, on Friday we have our first affair recovery session with Brian from Beyond Affairs.  I’ve been anxiously awaiting this for a few weeks, but now that it’s upon us, I’m nervous. I don’t want to blow it out of proportion, but I do want it to go well. I want Handsome and I both to feel like it will be helpful. I have no reason to believe that anything other than that will happen, but I’m unsettled about it nonetheless. In short, it’s something new added to the “new normal” of our life, and at this point new=scary.

I expect it will be that way for many months.

Two months post DDay – a long, strange trip

Some days, I truly wonder if I’m losing my mind. If I manage to sleep, which is no sure thing, I might actually awake and have a brief, fleeting moment where I forget. I forget for a nanosecond what Handsome did. In that moment my life is like it was pre-DDay, and it feels safe and comforting. Then reality flashes in and I wonder if I had a bad dream. A split second later I realize it’s all too real and the feeling of profound loss washes over me and consumes me in an instant.

Two months ago, I was a certifiable wreck. I have no idea how I made it through a two week family vacation or Christmas. Sadly, the good times with my mom and kids among those days are such a blur they are lost to me…one more casualty of Handsome’s infidelity.

I’d love to write here that I’m getting better. Some days I feel as if I am. Not every day has been 100% awful. The affair is clearly over. Handsome started individual counseling, is working hard at it and has dialed back his drinking significantly. He is doing a good job controlling his angry outbursts. He tries in his own somewhat clumsy way to talk to me about what happened. We start marriage counseling next week. He tells me multiple times a day that he loves me. (I mostly believe he thinks he loves me, but I am very uncertain whether he is actually in love with me. How could he be if he did this awful thing?) We have had days where we laughed, had fun, had great sex (hysterical bonding!), and/ or talked about our future as if it was a certainty.

And yet on other days there is no light in the world and the very sight of him, or the sound of his voice, is both repulsive and hurtful to me. I spend days with tears dripping out of my eyes at work (it’s not exactly crying… tears just flow forth for hours on end… WTF?), and the waves of grief that wash over me seem never ending. I think of the deliberate deception (the burner phone), the duration of  his involvement with the Whore (years), how he made believe he was being a good husband and a good dad, and generally how he flitted around our home acting like nothing was going on when he was actively destroying our marriage and our family. It sickens me.

I’m tired of the emotional seesaw. I want to get off. I didn’t get on willingly or of my own volition. I was dragged onto it by the narcissism and selfishness of the person I love (loved?) most in the world. That realization alone is devastating. While I have good days and bad, every single day I’m aware of what Handsome did. It is in my head permanently. The mantra running through my mind is “He did this to me. To us.” It was intentional, disrespectful, disgusting, and dishonest. Two months in, I’m still not certain how to come to terms with that.

The Other Woman

“What’s she like?” That was the question my best friend asked me today. How do I answer that?  I’ve only seen her in pictures and heard her cigarette-weathered voice on my voicemail. I do not believe that he could have found someone more different from me (from both of us, frankly) if he actively tried.

While we were on our vacation Fire Dude included a picture of the Whore in the texts he sent me.  He was sincerely lamenting the loss of his “angel” at the hands of my husband. To him, she was his world. To me, she looked like a cross between a Russian hooker and a clown. Heavy blue eye shadow. Lots and lots of mascara. Pancake make-up with rouge.  (Seriously… rouge.) Hair she clearly dyed and highlighted herself, and poorly. Clothing two sizes too small. She was my age, roughly, but in fairness thinner and more petite. I’m going to date myself here, but she truly looks like a thinner version of Mimi Bobeck from The Drew Carey Show. (Google it)

I do not smoke. Handsome absolutely detests cigarette smoke. It repulses him. He hates it with the fire of 1,000 suns… and yet the Whore smokes.

I am educated. Handsome reads voraciously, and is big on proper English (we both are even if that may not be evident from this blog), and yet many of her texts seemed to be written by an illiterate dunce (“was you just up here?” by way of example). Her voicemails were equally lacking. Fire Dude says she barely completed high school.

I have worked constantly since I was 16. I work full time now to help support my family. The Whore lays on her couch all day and drinks. She hasn’t had a job of any kind in over 7 years despite pleas from Fire Dude to get even a part time position.

I have never used drugs and drink only occasionally.  According to Fire Dude, the Whore is an alcoholic who also uses and occasionally sells opiates.

I have never been in trouble with the law in any way shape or form. The Whore claims that everything started with Handsome when she asked a question about a warrant for her arrest. Separately, during the affair, she was arrested for punching her 11-year old son in the face. Handsome was not the arresting officer, but he apparently had to fingerprint her. There are texts from her regretting how bad she looked in lock-up (not for beating her child) and replies from him that she looked “YUMMY and delicious…like always.” I really struggle with how he could possibly have continued the affair after that particular incident, but he did.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I’m not saying that any of this would be easier if he cheated with someone from our neighborhood or our country club, but the fact that he chose to imperil our family, his job, and everything about our life for such a complete piece of trash is inexplicable to me. If she appeared on our doorstep applying for a job to clean our toilets, either one of us would have shooed her away in an instant. And yet he slept with her.

How does that even happen?

“I don’t remember.”

At this point it’s likely helpful to know a bit more about Handsome and our marriage. Handsome is in law enforcement, and he’s funny and outgoing at home, but can be shy and awkward in certain social settings or around new people. He has learned to schmooze with my clients at a hockey game, but if I take him to a cocktail party he’s likely to take refuge in a corner near the bar. I would say that he is confident at work, and at least somewhat insecure elsewhere. He has a quick temper, but a deep heart.

For as long as I’ve known him, Handsome’s preferred beverage has been a fancy, cold beer. We have mandatory recycling where we live so I thought I knew how much he was drinking. He loved a beer or two with dinner (rarely more) and one before bed. I thought that was a lot, but he was never intoxicated. So I stayed silent. Since DDay he has disclosed that he  concealed the extent of his drinking from me. Six to ten beers a day was apparently not unusual, most of which were consumed when I was out of the house or after I went to bed. The excess empties were apparently tossed elsewhere or hidden in the trash. One more thing I didn’t know. (Since we returned from our family vacation he is down to one beer or less a day, and not at my insistence. I’m pleasantly surprised and proud of him for that. It’s a bright spot in the otherwise dark depths of these days.)

Handsome works rotating shifts which means that we are often at complete opposite schedules. My job is a steady but long lawyer schedule, and he can work daylights, nights, or overnights.  It changes every week. So, some weeks we see each other a lot, other times we have to make the most out of seeing each other in passing. But that has always been true. I think (thought? believed? should it be past tense now?) it’s why we love to travel… we know we’ll be together and it gives us something to look forward to together. Whenever we’d have a stretch where he was on daylights – so we’d have all evening and night together – it was my favorite shift of his because we got to spend time together after we both finished work. I only learned recently that it was also his favorite shift with the Whore because they could text/ sext with impunity during the day since her husband was also at work.

In mid-January, Fire Dude called and asked to meet me. I told Handsome that I was going and while I think he was sad about it, he did not try to stop me. In short, Fire Dude handed me the Whore’s burner phone. He asked if I could somehow get the phone mirrored or copied for him and, if so, he was willing to lend it to me for that purpose and so I could read through it. (On DDay Handsome told me that when he found out Fire Dude had the Whore’s phone, he broke his burner phone into pieces and threw the pieces away in multiple places.)

I’d read all the blog posts and websites about the destructiveness of intrusive thoughts and knowing too many details, but my personality is such that I need to acknowledge and then move on.  My imagination is likely much worse than reality. Plus, Handsome had told me that he never took the burner phone on vacation with us, either on long or short trips. It was important to me to confirm that. So, over the course of a few evenings I read through all 12,000 plus text messages, and compared dates with our calendars. Handsome had told me the truth. He never took the phone when he traveled with us. He did, however, often start texting her the very minute he was alone outside our house after we got home. He also texted her hundreds of times during two weekends he traveled alone, including one weekend from our home in New England… a home where I had gotten dressed for our wedding and where our son was likely conceived. He sent the Whore dick pics from our bedroom there. And there were texts on my birthday and my kids’ birthdays and our anniversary. And Mother’s Day.

I tried really, really hard to be calm and rational. Or at least not completely irrational. But I had a lot of venom in my system after I was done reading the phone. So I started to ask more questions. We would sit at our kitchen table and I’d ask anything and everything I felt I needed to know. I didn’t want to know the color of her skanky panties or who was on top, but I did want to know exactly when it started and how long the physical affair lasted (it does not appear from the texts that they were together alone or physical from roughly August of 2016 forward… just rampant sexting). The answer: “I don’t remember.” There are not three more frustrating words in our language. If he doesn’t remember, how am I to know and get closure?

There are things that he can and did answer: how many times they had intercourse (once); where (a cheap hotel); how many times they had oral sex (likely 8+ – far more than the one time he admitted to on DDay); where (her house); was she ever in our house (no); did she ever meet me or the kids (no); did he love her (hell no). Those answers are helpful, but I’m haunted by what I do not know.

I do not know, as I write this, with any degree of specificity when the affair started or how long the physical affair lasted. I continually ask “How is the very day, or even the month if not the day, that you decided your marriage vows no longer applied not burned into your brain for eternity?” He has no answer.

Handsome does not respond well to ultimatums. He’s likely to do the opposite and take pictures just to prove it. But I need an end to the trickle truth and an end to my wondering.  I cannot spend the rest of my life with doubts about what occurred and when. So, I asked him to take some time – a few weeks if necessary – to put together his story, from beginning to end, what exactly happened and when (as near as he can recall). I told him to use all of the resources he has available, his calendar, his work schedules and overtime records, and anything else he can gather to help him tell me everything. I don’t want him to make things up just because he feels he has to… that’s not what I’m after.  He can talk through things with his therapist or with our cat, for all I care, but when he is done talking I want nothing to be left unsaid.  No other shoe to drop. No more trickle truth. I do not want to hear anything from Fire Dude or the Whore or anyone else that he could not have told me himself. I hope he takes this seriously, because I feel like my whole world is hanging on what he has to say.

Surviving Christmas

We returned home from our big trip late on Christmas Eve.  With two kids, ages 8 and 12, it was important not to delay Santa any longer than necessary so we slogged ahead with the celebration the following day.  I occasionally had to step away to cry. I was looking at my family around the tree and wondering if it could be the last holiday we’ll all be together.I wondered if my kids would have to shuttle between homes on holidays and weekends.

Do I want to make my marriage work?  Yes. Am I sure it will happen? Not at all. I wasn’t sure then, and these weeks later I am still not sure.

I know that I don’t need to decide right now. (And I don’t think that I could make a good decision if I had to.) If I need or want to leave, I can leave later, when I am ready. I don’t need to rush to do anything now.

For me, there’s normally a trailing off to post-vacation and holiday cheer. Not this year. December 26th I was back to work and trying to deal with my new reality – the wife of a cheater. The betrayed spouse.  What was he doing while I was at work? Was the affair that he assured me was over truly over? Was I paranoid? It was the first time he’d been out of my sight since DDay, and I was utterly unable to function. That was the first time I fully realized how every single day moving forward would be just a little bit harder for me, and how his disclosure had changed me by stripping away my trust.

While I have great relationships with a lot of colleagues and acquaintances, I have few close friends. Very few. Handsome was my best friend. Why “was”?  I’m still trying to fathom how one person in a supposedly loving, caring relationship can intentionally act in a way that will certainly, knowingly result in the complete devastation of the other person. I understand that I was never supposed to know, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t damaged while it was going on. Eight weeks post DDay I will tell you that my best friend isn’t who I thought he was. Maybe, hopefully, he’s still in there somewhere – the Handsome that I fell head over heels in love with those years ago – but the version that existed these last few years can screw himself. He is not my friend.

Taking a family vacation when your family is falling apart

The morning Handsome, our two kids, my 84 year old mother and I were to leave for our long awaited two week holiday trip to Europe, I logged into my work email from home.  There, in my in box, was the message from my secretary: “A gentleman named Fire Dude called for you. He asked for your voicemail.”  He had left a polite but agitated message stating that Handsome had been sleeping with his wife and that they had been sexting each other since at least some time in August of 2016.  He said there were over 10,000 texts between them, including photos and videos, in the 17 months of data on her burner phone.  Sexting? over 10,000? WTF? What happened to “keeping in touch?” Trickle truth.

I called Fire Dude back.  He was kind to me. He believed that some of the contact between Handsome and the Whore occurred while Handsome was working, so he told me that he had shown the phone to Handsome’s boss. Then I gave up any remaining dignity and I begged him, literally, to please not get Handsome fired as we would likely lose our home and we would certainly lose the health insurance we need so desperately for our kids. He agreed to stop pressing the issue with Handsome’s boss. I told him that we could speak again when I returned from the trip. I was physically ill when I hung up with him.

I do not think that I looked at Handsome throughout any of the flights to Europe.  I tried very hard to be excited, enthusiastic, and attentive to my kids and my mom.  Meanwhile, I felt like I was dying on the inside. As if at any moment I would stop breathing or fall over dead.  I’ve lost people in my life that I dearly, dearly loved.  I’ve experienced profound grief.  This was worse. Correction, it IS worse. As I write this I am 8 weeks removed from DDay and the damage has not diminished.

A day or two into the trip I had a small epiphany. Most betrayed spouses likely have to go on with business as usual after DDay. Work, kids, school, etc.  I made the choice to try to make the most of my extraordinarily crappy situation.  I did not have to worry about work. I did not have to do laundry or cook or clean. And, most importantly, Handsome didn’t either.  He was, literally, stuck with me. For two weeks. I decided that we would take the time after the kids went to bed each night and talk to each other… try to work through as much as we possibly could before we got home. And we did.

It was brutal and I was averaging 3 hours of restless dozing a night and barely eating. I swear like a sailor and there were f-bombs dropped all over 4 countries. I yelled occasionally and assailed him. I was often snarky and mean. He kept saying he was sorry. He kept saying all the things he’s supposed to say. That it was the biggest regret of his life.  That he’d go to individual counseling. That he’d go to marriage counseling. That he’d do anything to keep his family together (the fact that this did not include remaining faithful in the first place is not lost on me…). I cried. And cried. And cried.

While we were gone Fire Dude forwarded me about two dozen screen shots from the Whore’s burner phone. The texts were explicit. Handsome said many of the same things to her that he said to me routinely. He called her by my nickname. There were dick pics taken in our basement, masturbation videos from our master bath, and he told her she had the most beautiful pussy in the world and that no one excited him like she did. She reciprocated in every way imaginable. I was crushed. One night I made him sit and listen to me read those texts to him. He wept.

Much of our trip is a blur. I look at my photos and they’re very scattered and disorganized from my usual.  There are lots of pictures of my kids and my mom- and we posed together for them – but I have only one or two pictures from the entire trip of us in the same frame.

By the time we started our long journey home on Christmas Eve, I knew a few things that I didn’t two weeks earlier: that my inclination was to see if the marriage could be saved, that he was honestly remorseful, and that Handsome was not who I thought he was for a very long time.