This is our week of family vacation, sandwiched between three other weeks of my working remotely each day from our summer home in New England. Handsome has been here for a week already. Things are going pretty well. It is very much Trigger City here, but I’m trying to take back the places and things that were tainted by his acting out and we’re making new memories together and with our kids.
I put my big-girl pants on yesterday and went with my family to the church that Handsome and I married in over a decade ago. Despite never attending services there, I have loved this historic church since childhood when I attended puppet shows there with my dad on summer vacation. When Handsome and I were here in February, two months post DDay #1, it was literally physically painful to look at the building. I had to turn my head when we drove past, deep pangs of pain shot through my body, and my eyes repeatedly filled with tears. Yesterday, well, I lived. I made a happy new memory with my family, but I can’t shake the feeling of sadness as I think back to how absolutely hopeful, joyful, and happy I was on my wedding day… and for years thereafter.
It’s not that I’m unhappy now. I don’t believe that I am. At least not every day. Maybe not even most days…? I feel like I’ve hit the point where I generally have more good days than bad. If I think too much though, I still feel like a naive fool. Perhaps not so much on our wedding day, but certainly the last several years. It’s hard to shake that. Today, for example, we were at the beach and Handsome told me what an amazing vacation he’s having. Great. I thought the last 3+ years of vacations were amazing too, but now I know that within minutes of getting home from each of those trips Handsome was on his burner phone texting or sexting other women, often bad mouthing our vacation while lamenting the fact that the recipient of his attention wasn’t on the trip with him. He’s extremely apologetic about all of that now. He has 8 months of sexual sobriety under his belt. That’s great, to be sure, but it does not change the fact that these things happened and that I know about them now, nor does it change the fact that I was an oblivious fool for a long time. (Yes, I was actively and intentionally deceived, but I feel like I should have been smart enough to see through the BS or to put 2+2 together… I wasn’t/ didn’t and that makes me feel stupid. And feeling like you were stupid for years is absurdly painful and humiliating.)
I continue to tell myself every morning that I’m going to have a great day, and that I’m going to enjoy my family. Then I set out to try to do just that. At the moment, aside from fending off the waves of sadness, my biggest issue is that I find myself getting preemptively defensive or upset based on the way Handsome would have responded to something in the past, like a meltdown from one of our kids. I just assume that he’s going to start screaming and fly off the handle, and then I get defensive and protective. I’m not giving him a chance to respond based on the tools he now has at hand. I need to stop doing that, provided that he responds in a healthy way using those tools. That’s a goal of mine for our remaining time together. I want my hurt to stop, but I also need to be sure that I’m not currently hurting Handsome.
As we spend the next few days here in this place of natural and man-made beauty, I’m going to continue to seek out wonder every day with deliberateness and intention. Whether it is to be found in the panes of a church window that were handmade in another century, or in the rocks and shells carried by the tides to the beach, or in the laughter of my children as they play and dance in the sunshine, I will find it, and I want very much for my husband and kids to share it with me.
HUGS
Beautiful. Good for you for regaining this ground – for yourself and your children. The church, the beach, all of it. Hugs
Thanks! Trying to take all those things back… one at a time. ❤️
“At the moment ……. my biggest issue is that I find myself getting preemptively defensive or upset based on the way Handsome would have responded to something in the past. ” This is so insightful! And as I read those words, it helped me understand some of the weirdness and tension that has been in my heart and home the last few weeks. Our sexual intimacy has been lacking (once this summer) due to my own physical issues and even though we could have been sexual in the last week we weren’t because, honestly, I was being grumpy (I wouldn’t have wanted to have sex with me either). It is just too soon for me to believe that my sexless marriage isn’t returning. Grumpy or not, my husband avoided me which feeds my distrust of his sexual desire for me. My health issues are messing with my mind and I am certainly transferring my husband’s past sexual rejection of me to the present. I’m leaving on the weekend to visit my family on my own for a week. Not sure what to expect when I return home.
I hope your last few days of vacation bring you everything your heart needs and desires. xo
It’s just so incredibly easy to fall backwards… back there… in our minds, isn’t it? It seems like I am now predisposed to assume the worst will happen rather than waiting it out. Or maybe I’m just not quite comfortable hoping for/ believing in the best yet? That might be it too. I know though that transferring the past to our present is just incredibly unhelpful. While my husband understands why it happens, it’s blaming him for something he didn’t do in the present based on his past behavior. While it’s not completely illogical, it is unfair.
Fortunately for both you and for me we can try to be mindful of this tendency and actively work on it. I need to count to 10 and see how Handsome actually responds before I get defensive. I think you’ll find that your husband missed you madly while you were away and that he’ll be extremely receptive to intimacy when you return.
Enjoy your trip to visit your family, and remember that you have someone great to go home to at the end of the week! ❤️
Omg, the burner phone! My ex narcopath had one I had never knew of its existence until his “confessions.” He said all good philanderers have one, a tool of the trade. Powered off and usually stored off site away from the primary residence. Once I learned this, I wondered how I could ever trust again? It effed with my sense of right and wrong on such a core level for me. Truth is, I never have been able to trust again. 🙁
Yep, the burner phone was, and to a degree continues to be, a thorny issue for me. It is evidence of deceit as a lifestyle choice, not just happenstance. It was additional money out the door on the addiction and the skanks. And aside from a polygraph it’s impossible to know whether or not there’s a new one.
I do believe that my husband has been sexually sober since last December, but if I’m being honest, the fact that he could just walk into a gas station or 7-11 and buy another burner phone keeps me awake at night occasionally. He kept it hidden in his vehicle originally (powered off) but there are dozens of viable hiding spots.
Trust is a constant challenge, but one thing I’ve learned to trust implicitly is my gut. If something seems off, it most likely is.
❤️
Amen rock trusting the gut. GUT= guaranteed undeniably true. I haven’t always trusted my gut feeling in the face of a lacking “smoking gun” as it were and paid a dear price. Never again will I ignore my gut feelings. ❤️