Tag: emotional affair

Who needs friends like this?

When Handsome returned from Sierra Tucson he initially maintained contact with about 10 people he met in the program. As of today, almost a year later, that number has been pared to 3 or 4 guys and the contact is much less frequent than it was six months ago. I predict that a year from now it will be down to one or two contacts, if he’s lucky.

There were and are some good folks in that mix. I’ve met two in person. There was one man, however, that Handsome seemed to put a lot of stock in. I’ll call him the Dude. He was (by his account) a very successful business person with a string of ex wives and a laundry list of homes and companies. The Dude went to ST to address his alcohol abuse and other process addictions. He seemed, post rehab, to be really good at dishing out questionable advice while – from what I could glean – his own life was spiraling out of control again.

Handsome shared his anxiety about the full disclosure with this guy. I think he was actually looking for support. What the Dude said to him was, “Why don’t you just draw her a map to divorce court? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. You’re an idiot if you go through with it.” With those words, the Dude ended any possibility of Handsome doing a disclosure and triggered what would turn into a months-long stand off in our already strained marriage.

Shortly after that conversation the Dude’s life blew up quite spectacularly. He and Handsome haven’t spoken since then, but the damage was already done. The Dude planted the seeds of paranoia that the CSAT and I were teaming up against Handsome, that Handsome’s Doc #2 didn’t know what he was doing, and that I was using Handsome’s guilt to try to gain a strategic advantage in the marriage for an inevitable divorce.

It was all crap, of course. As of today, 8 months later, Handsome sees that. He also sees that the Dude wasn’t someone who he should have listened to on marital or recovery advice. Lesson learned for him. He has thoughts about why he gave this guy so much credence, but in the moment he went all in on the Dude’s advice.

It’s a lesson learned for me too. Handsome is an adult with free will, but he’s also more vulnerable to the influence of other people than almost anyone else I know. He is not a “pleaser” per se but I do see that he forum shops. If Doc #2 or the CSAT tell him something he doesn’t really like he’ll float it past his somatic experiencing therapist to see if she agrees or disagrees. Fortunately, she’s onto him about that so she can and does nip it in the bud.

This forum shopping occurred all the time during the three+ years where he was acting out with affair partners during our marriage. For example, he and I agreed on getting our daughter a cell phone on her birthday. We were in full agreement and started shopping. Days later, he came back with a laundry list of reasons why we shouldn’t get her a phone and how we’d be awful parents if we did. At the time, it was just mentally exhausting. I couldn’t figure out why he kept flip flopping his positions. I didn’t know about the third person in our marriage. I now see the tremendous influence the Flame had on him and, perhaps, how she used that influence to stir the pot in our marriage.

Handsome does recognize a lot of this. It’s challenging for him though to really acknowledge how much influence others have had on him, let alone how harmful some of that influence has been on our marriage. It’s challenging for him to see that he was often given awful advice and that occasionally the people advising him had ulterior motives. Handsome is well liked but has few close friends. With friends like the Dude and the Flame though, who needs enemies?

The Gum on my Shoe Returns

Yep. She’s baaaaaack! (No thanks to Handsome.)

It seems like ages ago that I last wrote about the Flame and the havoc this woman created in my marriage. Twice. After our DDay #1, when I learned that Handsome had been communicating with her again by text for nearly 3 years, it was crushing. It was actually worse than his physical affair (the one I knew about at the time) because I knew that she actually mattered to him. He had pined away for her for almost 30 years. He admitted that he thought she was “the one who got away” for him and said that a part of him would always love her. I was squarely in my angry stage, so I think I told him to take that part of himself, stick it up his ass, and move to a hotel. That didn’t happen, but he did eventually send her a short and to the point no contact letter – in his own unique handwriting so she would know it came from him. He sent it to her at work. I sent a copy to her husband (sorry, not sorry).

Time flashes forward to the present. Our son, who is outwardly pretty chill, started to develop some odd habits in the late Spring (not wanting to touch door knobs or share certain items, coupled with a big increase in hand washing). We scheduled him with a therapist to evaluate him and see if it’s just a phase or an issue of concern.  The week before Labor Day I was away at my happy place, so Handsome took him. He walked into the waiting room and BOOM, there sits the Flame with her son.

Now, if I had the ability to write the script of how this played out, my sex addict partner would have taken a seat in the furthest corner of the large waiting room, ignored her, read his Kindle and kept his damn mouth shut. Alternately, if overwhelmed, he would have grabbed our son and fled. (I would have gladly paid the therapist’s late cancel/ no show fee.) Or he could have called his sponsor. Or called me. Or something. Just crossing paths with her – although surprising because she lives far from the therapist’s office – isn’t a problem because in his circle plan that’s just unintentional contact with an affair partner. He didn’t do anything to cause that contact.

Handsome, however, didn’t follow my script. For that matter, he didn’t follow the script he previously agreed to numerous times and that we actually role played with our CSAT, knowing that he’d likely encounter some of his APs at work. (If approached he’s supposed to say “I have nothing to say to you. Stay away from me,” and walk away.) Nope. And he ignored his circle plan and shifted the incident from unintentional contact with an affair partner to intentional contact. Handsome admitted that he approached her and asked her to go out in the hall with him AND THEN HE APOLOGIZED TO HER.

Recall that the first time he allegedly cut off contact with her, he called her to apologize for MY behavior for calling her out for her three months of highly inappropriate messages with him. He left that door open to future contact by parting on good-guy terms. He knew full well how incredibly disloyal, disrespectful, and flat-out wrong and hurtful I found that to be then. And I wasn’t wrong. That “I’m so sorry my wife is such a nut” apology set the stage for a 3-year emotional affair. Imagine how I feel about him doing it again?

Did he disclose this to me that day? No. The next day? No. The day after that, during which we had a long conversation about transparency and honesty? Nope. He told me the day after that – four days after the incident. In the first iteration of the story he said he spoke to her because he knew he needed to lay the groundwork for doing his Step 9 amends. When I blew my gasket about that (talking to her for the purpose of continuing to communicate with her??? wtf?) he walked that back and said that no, he was actually trying to do his amends with her right then.

Folks, he’s still on Step 4. He’s nowhere near Step 9, hasn’t discussed Step 9 with his sponsor, and WHY ON EARTH DOES THIS WOMAN GET AN AMENDS???

I think the women my husband cheated with deserve the miserable lives they lead, but I can dig up a sprinkle of empathy for most of them because he lied about everything to them and they bought it. They got suckered. (They suckered him too, but that’s because he was an absolute fool.) This woman, however, knew better. She knew he had a wife and kids who loved him. She knew we weren’t living apart or getting divorced or anything else. She still became his affair partner, cheating on her own husband in the process.

While it is true that there is room in Step 9 for amends to affair partners, the amends are subject to the important exception “when [doing] so would injure them or others.” I am the embodiment of the injured “other.”

I went all kinds of bananas. I moved out of our bedroom and when he asked me after a few days when I was moving back in I calmly replied that I’d move back in once he found a new place to live. He cried. It must have terrified him because he reached out to our CSAT and she saw us for an emergency session on Labor Day.

He has no good explanation for what he did. He claims he panicked and didn’t think though any consequences. His new therapist read him the riot act for that (hurray! the Doc would have spent weeks convincing him he shouldn’t feel bad for making “a stupid mistake”). I think he understands – as much as he is capable of doing so – that he deeply hurt me again.

As a basic condition of him remaining in the house (because in my mind his bags were packed) he has to have daily contact with a recovery resource. So far, he’s been diligent about it, but let’s be honest… that’s no big thing. Our CSAT and the new therapist are putting their heads together which feels much more reasonable to me than the Doc who was so intent on going it alone that he had to be begged to even talk to Dr. Minwalla after Handsome’s intensive with him. I am fine. My head is in a decent place. Our marriage is very strained, but we are talking normally and doing normal things – just with zero romance, affection, or sex – and he’s trying to figure out why his recovery plummeted. (There was no slow descent out of a healthy place. It’s like he fell off a cliff.) I’m dealing with my own betrayal trauma. He can deal with the circus of his recovery. Or not. He didn’t initiate seeing her (the reason our CSAT implored me not to toss him out) but he did initiate the communication with her to try to manage her image of him, yet again, which is frightening to me. It’s imperative to him that she thinks highly of him, even if it destroys me in the process. He denies this, but I think his actions prove otherwise.

If there is a silver lining here, it’s that apparently her home and marriage are in a sorry state. I had to ask the receptionist to move our standing appointment with our son’s therapist to avoid seeing the Flame each week and she let slip that the Flame already switched days to avoid Handsome. She apparently claimed that he “devastated her life” thus necessitating her son’s therapy. (Um, more likely her son needs therapy because he has a traitorous ho for a mom, but… whatever.) If Handsome did destroy her life somehow?  Good. Karma sucks.

Derby Week 2019

Here in the US we are about to start the biggest week in horse racing in the lead up days to the Kentucky Derby. The Derby itself is called the most thrilling two minutes in sports for a reason, and the event is pure spectacle.

I have loved thoroughbred horse racing since I was a little girl, often watching the races on TV with my dad. We would place imaginary bets and cheer on our favorites.  I don’t have a clear memory of Affirmed winning the Triple Crown in 1978 – but in 1979, Spectacular Bid was the first of many horses I’d watch capture the Derby and Preakness, only to fall short of the Triple Crown at Belmont. Attending the Derby was on my bucket list for a long, long time.

Back in late 2011 things were going well for our family. We had moved into our new home. I had switched firms earlier in the year and, in doing so, I managed to nearly double my salary and exponentially increase my daily flexibility. Life was so good that it felt almost surreal. As a bit of a splurge, I bought a box of seats for the 2012 Kentucky Oaks (the Friday before the Derby when the fillies race) and the Derby itself. I found a hotel room reasonably near Churchill Downs, and got our nanny to agree to watch the kids for a few days. The race itself was about 8 months away, but I was incredibly excited.

Of course, if I was going, I was going all-in. Dresses, hats, boxed lunches… you name it. I spent months getting my sartorial game on, and Handsome did too. We found him the most beautiful Ralph Lauren spearmint colored sport coat (classy and a bit over the top… perfect) for Derby day and got him a new classic navy blue sport coat, dashing pink shirt, and a beautiful pair of linen pants for the Oaks.

We secured great dinner reservations in Louisville and made arrangements to connect with friends. We turned the two days of racing into a long weekend get-away and spent countless hours preparing and looking forward to the first weekend in May.

That weekend was not without rain, but it was spectacular nonetheless. I hit the trifecta on the Oaks and the exacta on the Derby. We laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. When I think back on that trip, the first image that comes to mind is Handsome in that green jacket, and the resulting smile that brings me reminds me how much I was in love with him then. I felt like that whole period was the beginning of the wonderful rest of our lives, with stability, happiness, and financial security.

We shared our box with some young newlyweds and the wife told me repeatedly how she thought we were amazing as a couple. I thought so too.

I now know that Handsome was a few months into his first emotional affair with the Flame at that point. He was apparently texting or emailing her throughout the weekend, including when he went to the betting windows to place our bets between races. I would later learn that every sartorial choice I thought we enjoyed making together had also been run by the Flame for her approval. (Since her social media highlights photos of her full-figured frame in threadbare leggings decorated with pumpkins I’m not certain what expertise she has, but evidently he felt it was greater than mine.) Our travel arrangements were apparently also fodder for discussion with her. I had no idea.

I was so incredibly happy to be there WITH HIM, but apparently being there with me wasn’t enough to keep him from feeling a need for her. That’s an ongoing theme with Handsome: actually being loved by me or our kids has not been enough to make him feel loved. He looks elsewhere for validation and affirmation of his self-worth. I wrote down a quote once that seems to capture this phenomenon: “The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.” That was (is?) Handsome. That particular Derby weekend he seemed to have everything a man could want, a truly enviable life, and yet he still had a void inside him that led him to look for “more” elsewhere. Handsome is working on that, but I wish he realized back then what already had before he went and ruined it.

I’ll watch the Oaks and the Derby this year from home. I’ll hit the OTB parlor ahead of time and I’ll bet on my picks and cheer them on with my kids. I’ll sing along to “My Old Kentucky Home” when it’s played before the Derby. At the same time, in the pit of my gut I’ll be trying to fend off a mass of melancholy feelings as I’m reminded of that very first Derby trip. Maybe Handsome feels the same?