March 2018 – Betrayedwife.net

The mini-vacation that was anything but a vacation

This week is Spring Break for our two kiddos. While work is a bit nutty at the moment, we are lucky enough to live within about an hour’s drive from some fun, small ski resorts. I don’t ski, but Handsome and the kids took lessons in January and I thought it would be great for them to get a last shot at the slopes for the season and spend two nights away as a family. My plan was to do work while they were off skiing and then we could swim or do other activities together.

The kids were jazzed about skiing and snowboarding and I was excited to be away with them as well. On both of our last trips I was less than a month out from DDay #1 (in one case, only two days away), and I was definitely not functioning well. I did everything imaginable to ensure both that they wouldn’t see me weep and that I didn’t take my anger and sadness out on them, but I’m sure there was bleed-over. I wanted to make that up to them somehow and I really enjoy these short get-aways. Handsome, however, seemed “off” from the very start. I was wary about how the trip would go, but I was hopeful he would prove my fears to be unfounded.

We have been arguing off and on about Angel Baby and the Flame for the better part of two weeks. He sees no deeper meaning in his relationships with them, whereas I see nothing but red flags. If I’m waiting for him to fall to the floor at my feet and weep over the impropriety of those relationships, it just isn’t happening. Not yet, at least. (To be clear, he has apologized for his recent involvement with them, but sees no issue with the fact that both relationships took root when the women were older adolescents.) I was hopeful that after my conversation with the Doc, they would spend some time discussing both women in their next therapy session which occurred just before we left on our trip. That didn’t happen, so those open sores appeared to be festering as we got on the road. They did, however, apparently cover some ground initiated by the Doc about Handsome’s upbringing and the impact of having two alcoholic parents, so that was at least a step in the right direction.

Handsome was on edge throughout the entire trip. He seemed alternately angry, resentful, frustrated, and just plain miserable. My kids and I tried really hard to just ignore it – like we have always done with “Daddy’s moods” – but that only goes so far, and my kids mirror a lot of his conduct. If he’s petulant or combative, so are they. If he’s happy and joyful and appreciating a moment, so are they. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough of the latter on this trip.

In the wake of both DDays, I surmised that – especially in the last year – a lot of Handsome’s asshole-ish behavior on trips was because he was away from his drug. No sexting, no voyeurism, no calls, etc. No hits. Those cold- turkey breaks had to be tough and he just couldn’t get enough of a rush or that same high from spending time with his wife and kids. Fine, I guess, but what’s the big problem now? Why is this crappy behavior back so suddenly? He’s been sober for almost four months. For the most part he has been a consistently kinder, gentler, more thoughtful version of himself since DDay #1. Is the rubber finally hitting the road with his recovery? Is the reality that all of his acting out behaviors must be gone forever finally hitting home?

I made it through the trip and my kids had a blast in spite of their moody dad and uncooperative weather. I just wish that I could say the same. I’m tired – literally exhausted – of trying to work double time to ensure that Handsome doesn’t spoil things for our kids. I’d love a vacation, or just a day or two away, where I could actually freely relax and enjoy myself too. I haven’t had that in a very, very long time. (I had hoped that would be our long-planned trip to Europe in December, but DDay #1 absolutely destroyed that vacation.) Perhaps that’s a bit aspirational for moms in general, but it seems positively unrealistic for me at the moment unless I leave Handsome at home. Unfortunately, I don’t see how I can do that given where he is/ is not in his recovery and given that a good bit of his acting out occurred when I was traveling. We are drawing closer to summer vacation which is when I would usually take the kids to our summer home for a few weeks. The very thought of that fills me with dread this year. I used to look forward to the trip with great anticipation. I know now that Handsome did too, because he acted out the entire time I was away and started plotting his misdeeds months in advance. I don’t want him there if it’s just going to be more of his crappy, moody behavior, but I also can’t stomach worrying about what he is or is not doing by himself. Perhaps this is a year we just stay home. But how much of everyone else’s lives does he get to ruin because he can’t control himself? How many good things does he get to take away because of his addiction?

When the shrink gets trickle truth too

Handsome has been in therapy – for the first time ever – since early January… so, for three months. I know that he lied to the therapist to some degree for the majority of the first two of those months as they had their own DDay #2 shortly after Handsome’s second DDay with me. Over the last two weeks I started to feel that perhaps I was being fed more “addict-ese” than sincerity. I cannot put my finger on what triggered this feeling, but perhaps it tied to Handsome’s self-assured stance after the polygraph. Whatever it is, my spider senses are now always on alert. I trust my gut.

I told Handsome that I wanted an update from his therapist. After some initial confusion over what I actually wanted, Handsome agreed and I was able to speak to his shrink yesterday. I’m really glad that we had that call. It is true that Handsome has made some great strides in terms of his anger management and in trying to be more open and communicative. It is also true, however, that he skipped over major issues with the Doc. Like, oh, for example, how he spent tons and tons of time at work plotting voyeuristic drive-bys of the Whore’s house so that he could see her flash her boobs at him. Every. Fucking. Day. For. Years. And sometimes more than once a day. Or how he didn’t just share a bed in my house with Angel Baby last July, but how he spooned with her and got an erection with this supposed “mentee” that he’s known since she was a kid. And, and, and….

You get the idea. He has told the Doc some, but by no means all, of his dirty laundry. Just like he cherry picks what he tells me, he’s cherry picking what he tells the Doc. I’m not necessarily surprised by the picking and choosing, but I am surprised that he’s leaving out some awful stuff that he has disclosed to me already. Why fess up to me and hide things from the Doc? Perhaps he wants to unburden his conscience but not actually deal with the issues. That seems cruel to me. Telling me awful secrets that I cannot ever un-hear, and then doing nothing to address them.

Fortunately, the Doc now gets that he’s only being told a partial story and he and I are in agreement about a few key issues. Like Handsome getting his act together with SA and getting a sponsor. He didn’t tell me that I’m a nut job and the cause of all of my husband’s problems (yep, I worried about that). I think Handsome’s next appointment may be a bit different than what he’s accustomed to. I believe he’s used to walking in there and blathering for 50 minutes. He might find himself challenged to dig a little deeper next time.

Polygraph details – you asked for them

A few people reached out offline to ask some polygraph-specific questions. Since the questions were mostly the same, and since they were questions that I had initially too, I thought I’d write a brief post to address them. I do this though with a caveat that some US states restrict the kids of questions that can be asked during a polygraph (Maine, I’m lookin’ at you), and in many states polygraph testing is inadmissible in court. What I spell out here is based on my experience, so do your homework in your state/ country before you pay for a test that might not satisfy you or meet your needs.

How many questions can you ask? This is a big issue. Handsome was juggling 4 women in addition to me. I could ask questions for days, but that’s a problem. A polygraph should focus on no more than four (yep, only 4) tested questions, and the questions must be answerable by yes/ no and should be on related topics. If you are using an accredited/ licensed examiner, they will not pose pages of questions. The accuracy of the test drops precipitously when more than 4 test questions are asked.

It is my belief that the exam will do you little good unless you are essentially trying to confirm that you have been told all of the major elements of the story, or if you are trying to confirm or refute a small number of very specific issues. In my case, Handsome insisted after DDay #2 that he had told me about all of the women he was involved with and broadly what transpired with each of them. Thus, I could confirm that with a test question. (“Have you disclosed all of your physical and emotional affair partners to your wife and disclosed to her all of your material affair activity with each of them?”) We spent time before the test defining “material” so he wasn’t confused and so the question was answered in a way that addressed what I actually wanted to know. To clarify, using one example, I care whether he truly only kissed the woman he took out on a date last July, but I care not whether they spoke by phone once or 40 times. I wanted to focus on the former (the scope of their sexual contact is material to me), not the latter (the frequency of their communication is immaterial to me). With that clarification, Handsome could readily answer the question.

We also covered much more specific questions like whether or not he still has his burner phone or whether he acquired a new burner phone, and we pinned down a bit more of the timeline. Those were all essential questions that I needed to have definitive answers to.

How long did it take? Start to finish for us was about two hours. I had given the examiner a list of questions which – after interviewing us together – he helped to pare down to the questions that were ultimately covered. If you use a licensed/ accredited examiner, the questions will be known to the person being tested. There are no surprises during the test, and Handsome was asked multiple times if he was okay to proceed with the test (in other words, he was given plenty of opportunity to bail if he didn’t believe he could answer the test questions truthfully).

You said something in your blog post about a written statement. What’s that about? Even after the examiner helped to combine and winnow down my questions, I had five. (I know, I know… I don’t follow instructions or I’m contrary, or whatever… .) Five questions, none of which I was willing to give up. Unfortunately, we hit a wall in terms of combining them too. To address this, the examiner had Handsome write a statement that included answers to all five questions. For example: “I do not have my burner phone any longer nor am I maintaining any other phone that my wife doesn’t know about.” Then, the examiner tested him on the veracity of the entire statement, collectively. It worked for us, but if Handsome had failed the test I wouldn’t have known which question/ statement caused him to fail without additional testing on each of the components of the statement. So the strategy had some risk involved, but the examiner assured us that he’d do the additional testing for free if it was necessary. I didn’t see a down side to handling it this way – especially because all five of my key questions were addressed.

What does this all cost? Depending on where you live, and whether you have the exam at the examiner’s office or if you want them to travel to you, likely between $400 and $700. We are in a small Mid-Atlantic city and there is some competition between examiners, so Handsome’s test was $450 at the examiner’s office. In my research I saw a number of examiners well over $600, and also a large number of unlicensed or unaccredited examiners. You really have to do your homework.

Was it worth it? For me, yes, but I can also see how it might not turn out so well. I am relieved that the information that I was told appears to be truthful. I have confirmation of the scope of Handsome’s wrongdoing. That is helpful to me. If Handsome’s test had indicated deception, however, what would I have done? Would it have just deepened the wounds? Was I ready to walk away if he had lied or what was I prepared to do? I’m not sure of the answers, but I think those questions should be considered before testing takes place.

I hope this is helpful. I will add this: in the days following the test Handsome told several people (his therapist, Dr. M, his best friend, and likely his 12 step buddies) that he took and passed the test. He seemed proud of that fact. I am truly grateful that he took the test and greatly relieved that he passed, but at the end of the day it confirmed that my husband had indeed had physical or emotional affairs with four other women during our marriage and that I have been actively lied to and deceived since March of 2015, with his first physical affair starting roughly two months later. I am glad I know the truth, but the truth.still.hurts.

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.

She’s like gum on my shoe

The Flame. Recently my world seems to revolve around the Flame. (read about her here: https://betrayedwife.net/2018/02/05/dday-deceit-as-a-lifestyle-choice/ ) I thought that I was done with her in 2012, only to find out that after Handsome bought his burner phone – allegedly in the Spring of 2015 – he immediately looked her up and reconnected with her. Again. They talked “often,” texted, met in person for lunch and, based on 2012, likely commiserated with one another about their spouses. Handsome admitted this during DDay #2. Like gum on my shoe, she just keeps sticking around. A problematic annoyance and disrupter in our marriage.

Handsome acted out with (at least) three other women since 2015, but each of those individuals was/ is deeply broken and unsavory. They are the dregs of society. They are not women he normally would give the time of day to, and he cast them off without a second thought once his actions and deceit were brought to light.

The Flame, however, is a different story. Knowing what I know now, I believe that Handsome was about a decade into his addiction at the time he met her in roughly 1988. He was a 27 year old divorcee, she was a 17 year old high school student. Evidently neither of them had any guidance from a responsible adult, and there was no one to put a foot down and say “no” to such an inappropriate relationship. I am sure that she was the very embodiment of an addictive hit for him. Young, tall, not entirely unattractive, and – most importantly – willing and available. He loved her. She may have loved him as well, but ultimately she dumped him.

Fast forward to 2012. Handsome reaches out to her and rekindles their contact. It starts platonically enough, until it turned flirty and I called them out on it. Contact ceases, but not before Handsome calls her to apologize for my behavior (for “over-reacting” to the emotional affair); a fact that eats at me for years.

When he disclosed that she was back, yet again and this time in touch with him for years in total secrecy, the pain was searing. Unlike the other three acting out partners, this one is different. She matters to him. I’m well aware that affair recovery cannot occur if the affair continues (even if it is just emotional). I cannot move on with the marriage, and Handsome cannot address his addiction, if this woman is waiting in the wings to reappear in a later act. No way. I told him very plainly that one of the things I need him to do to advance our recovery is to decisively and unequivocally end things with the Flame. Seeing her in person or speaking to her by phone are not viable options. I asked that he write her a letter, which I will mail, ending it once and for all. He agreed.

Today is his regular therapy day which is always fraught with anxiety for me. Having lied to his therapist for months, and disclosing things to the therapist long before he told me, I’m gun shy. I want therapy to work, but I’m not convinced that Handsome isn’t aping what an obedient addict would tell his doctor. He occasionally asks me what I think they should talk about in the session. Today I asked him how the letter was coming and suggested that perhaps the therapist could offer some guidance with that. Handsome proceeded to tell me that he hadn’t worked through the “amends” portion of the letter yet. Wait, what???? My reaction -after an initial in-person blow up – was captured in a text message later in the morning:

The lame apology to me, and my angry but honest response.

Let me add, if the intent of the apology was to say something like “I am sorry that I misused my authority as an adult all those years ago to take advantage of you when you were just 17,” or some such thing, that would be understandable. But no, that wasn’t it. He was going to apologize to her for their mutual, multiple year affair. What is it about this woman? He didn’t say anything about apologizing to her husband or to her kids, the innocent bystanders and collateral damage to the affairs. Why is she somehow blameless and deserving of an apology for carrying on a lengthy emotional affair with him?

Perhaps I am wrong to think this way, but I do believe that she is different than the other three women. The others were sold a story of an unhappy marriage and an unloving wife and, as wrong as they were to do so, I’m sure they justified their actions on the basis of the lies they were told. This woman, however, knew differently. She knew he had a loving wife and a great family and a full and rich life, and she knew – because I told her so myself – that she jeopardized all of that for him before. She didn’t care. What about that is worthy of an apology?

And how did the task – to write her a letter breaking it off and ending all contact – shift to an apology in the first place? How are the two remotely related? He just started SA two weeks ago. He isn’t on Step 9… he hasn’t even found a sponsor yet. He’s barely on Step 1!

Trying to explain my anger and frustration to Handsome was akin to explaining it to a toddler. He wasn’t getting it. I drew upon an imperfect analogy: I asked him if she shot me with a gun to get me out of the picture, would he still apologize to her for the affair? His response was an immediate and adamant “No, of course not.” But, I explained, she knowingly and actively participated in the reduction of my marriage to ruins and emotionally destroyed me. She harmed me knowing full well what she was doing and what the result would be. A small, night-light-sized light bulb went off in Handsome’s selfish head. “Oh. I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t think of your side of it.”

Therein lies the problem. All too often he still doesn’t think of me at all.

What comes next?

The harbor near our Summer home (aka. my Happy Place)

DDay #2 was one week ago today. I cannot begin to articulate the feeling of finding out that my husband was juggling as many as four other women at once. In addition to me, of course… the ever present, always faithful, committed and supportive wife. Where else would I be, right? I honored my vows even as they were being torn apart.

There were a few severe comments to my last post that I did not – just could not – approve. More than one suggested that I “must have known.” I did not. I had absolutely no idea prior to DDay#1 that Handsome was in the midst of a three-year affair, let alone that there were multiple other women. He carried on the vast majority of his deceit away from me, our house, and our kids (thank heavens for the latter). His other life and my life intersected in only two ways that I know of over the last few years: he brought Angel Baby to our home last Summer when I was away, and he used his work weekends at our Summer home in Massachusetts to call, text, and sext these other women, defiling it in the process. Of course, I recognize all too well that time and money spent on the skanks means less for me and the kids. But I only know of those things now. We got the leftovers after he satisfied himself. I did not know that at the time.

Addicts are world class liars, and Handsome is no different. For the most part, I was on the receiving end of lies of omission. He didn’t tell me that he had a second phone or that Angel Baby was in our house or that he was in touch with the Flame, among other things. Those are material omissions, to be sure. But he also convinced himself that I wasn’t really in love with him and that he was isolated from the kids and from me. Even when he was with us, he has said he felt terribly alone and without worth. My previous three years were lived in relative bliss, whereas he lived in torment, even when he was surrounded by people who really loved him. Every day was a crisis that was soothed and released through this inappropriate contact with these worthless women. He shut us out, and told himself Oscar-worthy lies to justify his wrongdoing.

Handsome’s self-professed sobriety date for SA is December 7, 2017. He passed three months of sobriety a few days ago. I am glad for him and relieved that he is taking affirmative steps to fix his brokenness. He is attending 12 step meetings and going to therapy. Dr. Minwalla’s 8 day intensive for men is next on the horizon if we can get it scheduled. Handsome agreed to a polygraph which will take place in about a week. He is supposed to write a letter to the Flame and officially, formally end that contact. All steps forward, all on the horizon.

And yet as I stand in the background cheering on Team Handsome, being the ever dutiful wife, I’m wondering when it’s my turn to heal. I’m wondering when attention will be paid to the harm caused to me. Handsome texted me earlier and said “I have no idea how to apologize sufficiently.” That’s for sure, but it’s because words cannot undo actions. They just can’t. I’m tired of hearing “I’m sorry” because the words mean little to nothing in comparison to the gravity of Handsome’s conduct and the devastation wrought. I appreciate that he’s sorry and that he is willing to try to say so. It just seems rather pointless at the moment, just one week after DDay #2.

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:

several charges of not insignificant amounts at a very nice restaurant I have never been to;
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);
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.