Tag: reconciliation

Moving Beyond the Affairs

Like Olaf of Frozen fame, I love warm hugs. From the front, from behind… wherever. I think a good hug is like a tactile reminder of comfort and security and, in the right circumstances, of love.

I got lots of hugs this past weekend. Some great, some I’m still chuckling about. More on that later.

Handsome and I headed off to the Healing From Affairs intensive weekend put on by Anne and Brian Bercht from Beyond Affairs. I was really tense in the days leading up the intensive, and I wasn’t sleeping well at all. Handsome signed us up for the intensive back in January after DDay #1, and we had a couple of phone sessions with Brian over the last few months. In those sessions I found Brian to be a down to earth, frank, no-nonsense guy to talk to, and I wasn’t put off by his history as the betrayer in his marriage to Anne. They appear, by all public measures, to have healed both individually and as a couple. Given where I’m at right now, I laud them for that. It’s inspiring.

There were 20 couples in attendance and my only shock was that so very many of the couples were in their late 50’s and 60’s and measured their marriages in numerous decades and grandchildren. There appears to be no expiration date on infidelity. Among the betrayed spouses, the collective group faced physical and emotional affairs (some, only one such affair, others a few, and several faced many), porn addiction, use of paid sex workers, and a myriad of other horrors. Two of the betrayed spouses were men. One commonality? People can be freaking resilient. While there were spouses there all along the “stay or go” continuum, and at various points away from discovery, not a single one was operating from a position of helplessness.

This was a full weekend of activity, with each night running past 10:00PM. As with any program like this, there were parts I wasn’t crazy about (for example, sex addiction gets short shrift but is at least acknowledged and discussed). For me, the most impactful part of the weekend was a talk that Brian gave where he literally walked the group through each step of his affair, showing how it started innocently enough and then, over time, how his boundary of what was acceptable versus not acceptable moved to accommodate where he was at the moment (cognitive dissonance), and ultimately how he ended up far on the other side of his own boundary and felt “stuck” there. It was deeply personal, raw, and was a much more articulate way of explaining what Handsome has struggled to explain to me. Most importantly, Brian didn’t try to justify or to normalize how he got from one side of his boundary to the other or to make excuses for it, he just told his story.

We also did a vulnerability assessment (for the 18 months prior to the start of the affairs) and Handsome and I broke the scale apparently. On a scale of about 0-168, with 0-10 being low risk of an affair, I think our score was 125 or so. Ouch. While our current vulnerability level is quite low, based on the assessment there are definitely things we need to be mindful of over time. I think it’s something that we’ll do from time to time just to stay on course as a couple.

I left feeling really glad that we went. It was an expense we didn’t need, but it taught us several new tools we can use and it opened each of our eyes to new things and it certainly increased the level of empathy we have for one another (and I had been thinking that we were doing okay on that front, but we are doing even better now).

Now, those hugs…

I’m not a “let’s hold hands and sing Kumbaya” person. I’m just not. I can do it if I’m compelled to, but that touchy-feely thing with strangers just isn’t me. There are a number of times during the intensive when music is used to communicate a concept. On the last full night of the intensive, just before closing the day out, they played a song (it was some 80’s hair band anthem Handsome and I found terribly corny, but the lyrics were on point for the night) and the couples were encouraged, if they were comfortable doing so, to hug one another deeply. Fine. Handsome and I are enjoying the hug with my hands around his neck/ shoulders and his hands (I count them…one, two…) around my waist, and I’m enjoying the moment and then… hey, wait! One, two… three? I felt a new arm on me. Again, I count Handsome’s hands in my head and I’m thinking WTF!, but before I could start throwing elbows I quickly realize that it’s just Anne joining us in a surprise group hug. Handsome apparently had the same reaction I did, and I think Anne is likely oblivious to how close she came to getting pummeled. 🙂 We’re still chuckling about that one…

Thinking about betrayal (and driving myself nuts)

I try mightily to be fair(ish) to Handsome when I write here. Yes, I often vent, but I aim for rigorous honesty and if it looks bad for him, that’s on him. I don’t need to portray his actions in a negative light because they were horrific enough all on their own. When good things happen, I try to recognize that too. For example, Handsome finally got a sponsor. He’ll have six months of sexual sobriety and three months of sobriety from alcohol this week. This coming weekend we are going to the couples intensive he arranged for us a few months ago and he’s doing the pre-session homework. He’s keeping up with the after-care from his intensive with Dr. M including journaling every day (which I never thought he’d do, but he actually says he likes it).  All good things.

Occasionally though, things come up that I just have no idea how to process. Perhaps they are too overwhelming, or create too much confusion, or are too triggering. Or maybe they just make me ask myself, “What the actual fuck am I dealing with?” One example: during his intensive with Dr. M, Handsome was incredibly raw and overwhelmed. We were talking one night about his cheating in broad terms and I asked him out of the blue whether he had ever cheated on me during the 27 months I lived and worked on the other side of our state, when we were commuting back and forth to see each other. I had never had occasion to ask him that before, because it never occurred to me (before DDay #2) that he would have cheated all the way back then. Keep in mind, we were either married or engaged for 21 of those 27 months.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone asks me if I’ve done something awful and I haven’t, I answer immediately, emphatically, and without hesitation. When Handsome’s answer was “Welllllllll… (crickets chirping during long pause)… not exactly.” I knew the answer was just “yes.” His story is that we had a big fight, he didn’t think we could recover, we didn’t talk for “weeks” and he went to a local bar and he met a girl and he later took her out to dinner. During dinner he says he realized it was just absurd and not what he wanted, so he finished dinner, took her home, and that was the end of it.  I didn’t want to sound like Ross and Rachel, but I grilled him on whether he was under the impression we were on a break or that we had broken up. No, he wasn’t. He acknowledged we had never broken up.

What do I make of this revelation now, years of marriage and two kids later? His story simply isn’t plausible for a variety of reasons. First, we have never, ever gone weeks without speaking. In fact, we’ve never gone more than 48 hours without speaking. Memories can be faulty, so I actually went back and reviewed my cell phone records from back then (I swear I’m not a hoarder…I have them only because at the time the phone was a plausible work expense, so they’re in my tax files). There are only a handful of times we didn’t speak each and every day. Next, I simply have zero recollection of this allegedly big fight. I went back through my calendars to see when this might have happened, and over the 6 months I lived there before we got engaged we saw each other regularly every two weeks if not weekly. We talked daily, sometimes several times a day. We took trips and vacations together. It just doesn’t add up. Plus, this was not a hook up. By his own admission, he chatted her up at the bar, got the girl’s number, called her, set up a date, and then took her on that date. That takes a few days, and we’d have been in touch in that time. In short, my conclusion is simply that he cheated. We hadn’t broken up and he took someone else out on a date. That’s cheating.

By my best guess, this occurred sometime in late January 2004. We had seen each other over the New Year holiday and then again over the long holiday weekend mid-month. Then we didn’t see each other again for three weeks (we spoke daily) until we took a long-planned vacation together to Punta Cana the week of Valentine’s Day. Why do I suspect that window? When we got to Punta Cana, Handsome was an asshole. I mean a miserable jerk face. He snapped at me so badly before we checked in that I thought about turning around and flying home alone. The vacation improved greatly over the week, but those initial few days were incredibly difficult. At the time, I attributed it to a dozen things: his hatred of flying, exhaustion from work, maybe I really was a bitch? Now, post DDay, it’s the same behavior I saw throughout his acting out… picking fights and blaming me to “justify” to himself whatever crap he was up to.

So, then I start to wonder… now that I know, what exactly do I do with the information?  To me, this ties to my post a few weeks ago on betrayal and whether our choices would have been different if we, the betrayed, had the whole truth (click here for that). Would I have kept dating him if I knew he did this? Hard to say. Maybe not. Yes, I was in love with him, but I was also living hours away and had plenty of other non-cheating, educated, employed, single guy options at hand. I’m not entirely sure what I would have done. Would I have agreed to marry him? Even more doubtful, and certainly not so soon afterwards. I most definitely would have wanted him to do some serious work on himself first.

Just like now, he had choices then. He could have actually had the balls to break up with me before dipping his toe (or anything else) back into the dating pool. He could have admitted what he did at the time he did it. Or, better yet, he could have chosen to work through whatever disagreement he claims we had and stay faithful to his devoted girlfriend of three years that he kept talking to about marriage.

Many of my decisions that have flowed forth since then have been based on my ignorance. I used to confidently tell people that I actually thought our long-distance romance was helpful to us early on because we had to learn to communicate really well with each other. Unbeknownst to me, it also seems to have been when Handsome started honing his compartmentalization and deception skills. I had no idea.

So, what am I going to do? Likely nothing, other than ruminate on how long he has actually been betraying me. That’s the sad fact of it. I don’t see a point in driving myself more nuts over something that happened 14 years ago. I can dissociate myself from that. Compare and contrast that though with driving myself nuts over whether he’s been keeping secrets throughout our entire marriage, as opposed to just the last five years. (I say “just” now as if that number of years is de minimus, but it isn’t. It’s a hair  under 40% of our marriage, to be precise.)

Does it matter?  I don’t believe the answer makes his cheating better or worse depending on the answer.  It’s all bad either way. Nonetheless, the more time passes the more I reconsider previous events that I thought I had processed and moved beyond. I’m not suggesting that Handsome is still overtly lying (of course, he very well might be). He is, however, a master at lies of omission. I am left to wonder what secrets he may still be holding on to for dear life… the tightly held mysteries of our marriage and the vestiges of his addiction.

Our weekly check-in follows a format from his intensive program, and one of the  questions is “What is a lie or secret that you are keeping?” No matter how much thought or effort Handsome puts into the rest of the check-in, and it’s usually considerable, he inevitably glosses over this question. He has, on occasion, tried to skip it entirely. When he does address it, either the “secret” will be something hardly secret or the lie will be something along the lines of a white lie. (“Daughter asked if I liked her haircut and I said yes, but I really don’t care for it.”) It’s maddening. I’ve started to call him out on it, to hold him somewhat accountable for half-assing that part of the exercise. You would think that 5+ years of acting out would give him fodder to come up with legitimate, meaningful answers to that question, but he can’t (or won’t) as of yet.

I know he’s an addict. I know that secret keeping is as much a part of his addiction as what those secrets are about. There is probably very little more he could disclose that would shock me. We’ve been through a polygraph that he passed with flying colors. Certainly, what I can imagine in my head is likely worse than anything else that may have happened. (As I commented on another blog, I’ve told Handsome in all seriousness that if someone called me tomorrow and said “Hey, BW, I just saw Handsome fucking a monkey,” I would politely thank them for calling, hang up, and then start Googling intensive treatment programs for monkey fuckers.) That’s the tragic part here. I just want to know the totality of what I’m dealing with, process it, forgive, and move on. He wants to keep his secrets to save his pride and to protect himself from further shame. The two are fairly mutually exclusive, and so I continue to drive myself a little nuts over things that are totally outside my control.

 

Today is our 13th wedding anniversary

Yep… today is lucky #13.  On my work calendar – which I must have filled out late last Fall but before DDay #1 – the date has pink and yellow highlighter all over it and “Our Anniversary!!!” scrawled across it as if it belongs to a love struck teenager rather than an actual, gainfully employed, responsible adult. (If, of course, said teenager still used a paper calendar…) It makes me sad. Then versus now.

How are we celebrating the day? We aren’t. I cannot cheer for under six months of sexual sobriety. I won’t buy a card for honoring your wedding vows recently. I do not yet wear my wedding rings. (He does.  I’ve never seen him without it. Go figure…)

I’m not trying to be an asshole about the day or wallow in self-pity. Hey, I’m still here, trying very hard each day to work through things. That is, I suppose, my way of honoring our marriage. He’s still my person, despite the horror he brought to me and our kids (literally, to our home). I can’t, however, pretend for a day that the world hasn’t shifted off its axis and that we’re all good.

Instead, my son turns 9 in two days. I’m going to focus all of my energy on him and put out of my mind how his dad’s deceit traces all the way back to before he turned 3. I’ll ignore the previous anniversaries where I thought I had something to celebrate, or the kids’ birthdays where I’m smiling in the photos because I’m oblivious to my husband’s acting out. Don’t get me wrong. I’m truly grateful that we are both committed to healing and making our marriage work. I appreciate all the work Handsome has done and is doing in that regard. I’m happy we can celebrate our son’s birthday as a united tribe, together in our home, and I’m sure it will be lovely.

It just doesn’t mean that I’m not sad too.

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

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.

Loss of Privacy

In spite of the fact that I blog about my husband’s infidelity and sex addiction, I am actually a reasonably private person. I have maintained some degree of anonymity here, other than for those who have reached out to me privately with questions or those who I have reached out to on my own. I was taught early on in life that you don’t air your dirty laundry in public and that there are things you keep within your family circle. I was taught that this is true for both possibly good things (money, for example) or bad things (illness or scandal). I was taught that generally nobody cares to know your business and that those people who do generally have ulterior motives.

Handsome and I sat down today for our weekly check-in. I understand that there are schools of thought that the spouse shouldn’t ask much during these check-ins, but my personal opinion is that failing to do so defeats the purpose.  My husband should not be talking at me, he should be talking with me about his addiction, its effect on me and on our family, and his recovery. I let him go through his check-in list, and then I ask a few questions.

Lying – more specifically, not lying (overtly or by omission) – is something that Handsome has to work on each day. He has spent the last several years lying to me daily. I have read that sex addicts are “relentless liars” and that was certainly true of Handsome. In the present, however, if Handsome is doing his recovery work properly he needs to (1) not lie, and (2) acknowledge any lies that are told. This means that some of our conversations are now more substantive than they were in the past. The “I don’t know/ remember” spiels are slowly getting replaced by answers.

Today, for example, in response to a question about what precisely he communicated with the Flame about every day for 3+ years, instead of feeding me the usual “nothing big, just day-to-day stuff” response, he said “Everything. Everything in our lives.” It turns out that he did indeed share every blasted detail with her. That includes everything our kids were doing, each of their illnesses, attitudes and academic highs and lows, as well as his health, my health, his job, my job (mostly how it impacted him), our travel planning and intimate details of that travel, and – of course – all about our married life. Mind you, he conveniently forgot to mention the Whore, Angel Baby, the woman he tried to date last summer, the porn, masturbation, Seeking Arrangements, or anything that might make him look bad to her, but everything else was fair game.

In sum, for the last 3+ years, my kids and I have had absolutely ZERO privacy. We didn’t know that we might as well have lived our lives on the front lawn of our house because every single thing we did or felt or experienced was being communicated to at least one person outside our family. I did not consent to giving up my privacy. It was taken from me and it was taken from each of my two children.

Things that should have never left the confines of our house were fodder for conversation with someone who is a stranger to me and a threat to my marriage. Arguments that I had with Handsome – if not prompted by her – were shaped, in part, from feedback he got from her. I wasn’t just dealing with his criticisms, I was unknowingly fending off hers as well. Our vacation plans weren’t just filtered through me for suitability, they were always run by her too, as were the kids’ extracurricular activities and decisions about their upbringing. Mind you, I have never met this woman. She has never met my kids (thank heavens) and she has never seen us together as a family. According to Handsome, he has only seen her in person three times in the last 30 years. In spite of that, she was apparently allowed and encouraged by Handsome to have opinions about us all, and he gave those opinions credence and sought her counsel…  every.single.day. In the betrayal recovery world there is much discussion of walls and windows. The Flame did not only have windows into our life, there simply were no walls.

To be fair, I have a few friends and acquaintances, and I occasionally talk to those people about different aspects of my life, but never about anything that would be construed as a violation of trust if discovered and nothing that would cause embarrassment. The only person who has ever had that level of comprehensive detail about me or Handsome or our family is Handsome himself. Maybe the odd reason my marriage feels somehow more full and rich these days, in spite of the shit storm that has transpired, is that for the first time in forever it’s just the two of us. No interlopers, ghosts in the room, or extra people in the marriage. Together with our kids, we are a tribe, just trying to make it through the storm. We are a small tribe, for sure, but perhaps we can work together to build our family’s walls back up and regain our precious privacy.

Small steps

This coming week, Handsome will have 5 months of sexual sobriety under his belt. He will also pass two months of sobriety from alcohol. (He never relapsed with alcohol.  He just stopped drinking completely a few months after he started his sexual sobriety.)

He has regularly attended SA meetings since the day after DDay #2 (when the addiction became obvious), and he attends weekly counseling without fail. He also flew completely across the country to attend an 8-day intensive program and he’s faithfully doing the after-care work required by that program. He started couples SA trauma therapy with me this past week, and he signed us up for an affair recovery couples weekend next month.

He sold the car that was the site of some of his misdeeds, and got rid of the mattress/ box spring that he slept on in my house with Angel Baby. He is making an effort to learn my triggers and to avoid them. He works daily to stay out of the “Man Box” and be a better husband and father.

He is not perfect. We still fight occasionally over the awful things he has done. He still procrastinates in his reading of recovery literature and in discussing some of his more problematic acting out. I know he wishes this would all just go away. (So do I, so we are aligned on that point.) I have lingering questions. He sometimes, but not always, has answers. He is still challenged to have emotional intimacy with others, including me.

Yet I struggle to think of a single thing that I have asked from him in our collective recovery that he has not done or tried to do. He is making effort. He is putting in the work.

We are not in the clear by any means, but I complain about him so much here that I feel I owe a bit of space to the small steps forward.

Was Any of it Real?

 This is my mom.  She is 85 beautiful years old, and she enjoys a good pomegranate martini from time to time. I loved this picture of her from July of 2015. We had a fantastic day together that included lunch at the restaurant where Handsome and I had our wedding reception. The sky was clear and blue, and the martinis were delicious. We shared our memories of my wedding day and we both had fun.

Unbeknownst to me, several hundred miles away, also on that day at the exact time this photograph was taken, Handsome was screwing the Whore in a no-tell motel.

To say the least, it is now difficult to view the picture quite the same way. The experience, the memory itself, feels tainted.

Just a few short days later, Handsome joined the rest of us for our family vacation with nary a word about his indiscretions and misdeeds.

Here we are on a kid-friendly fishing trip. We look happy, don’t we? (Handsome is, I assure you, smiling under that heart.) The kids are happy for sure, but what about Handsome? What about me? Was it “real” if only one person in the picture had the whole story?

Was Handsome actually enjoying himself with his family? He says he was, but can that really be true? His betrayals continued for two and a half more years. They continued through children’s birthdays, wedding anniversaries, trips to Europe, vacations in New England and Florida, attending the Kentucky Derby each year,  school plays and concerts, and during child-free couple’s weekends away. In short, he acted out through everything in our lives during those years, both the important and the mundane. Was he ever actually happy with me? With us?

I was happy on that day  – really happy in fact – based on the information I had at hand. I thought I had the greatest family in the world. If I had known what Handsome was doing with some other woman’s skanky vajeen a week earlier I wouldn’t have been happy or smiling. If I had known that he was lusting for the Whore and the Flame, I would have been in tears, my heart broken to pieces. So was my experience that day authentic or not?

At the moment, this debate is my biggest hurdle to overcome on my path to healing.  I am stuck on the issue. It is incredibly difficult for me to stop feeling like the last several years of my life have all been a lie. I feel like each incredible memory is false – because they were created under false pretenses – and thus inauthentic or a sham. Everything seems damaged by the stain of Handsome’s infidelity. I feel the loss of that time, those experiences, that happiness “in the moment,” and those memories very profoundly. I am a deeply sentimental person by nature and those losses are gutting me.

A well-intentioned gentleman told me that I just have to change my mindset and “get over” this struggle and accept that my experiences were indeed wonderful and authentic in each moment and that they are thus untainted now. I want nothing, nothing in this world, more than for this awfulness to be erased from my mind. If I could make believe that what Handsome did never occurred, I would, in a heartbeat. But it did happen and I know about it and here we are.

If anyone out there has some words of wisdom on this point, I  welcome your thoughts. I think it’s going to take a village to get me unstuck on this. I’m sure that I do indeed need to change my outlook or viewpoint, but I’m not sure how to do that in a way that doesn’t scream “denial.” I’m doing really well in a lot of areas of my recovery, but this is a killer for me. I liked my life pre DDay. Writing off years of that time seems like a fatal blow.

A shout out for raising the authenticity issue few weeks ago, and finally compelling me to write this down (it’s been lingering in my mind for months), to both Cad Confessional and The Queen Is In

Pic collecting and eye stalking – what next?

(Apologies if this has posted twice… somehow it reverted to draft form…)

I’ve been gone from the blog for a bit as Handsome spent a chunk of the last two weeks in an intensive program in LA and I took the opportunity to try to have a few days where his SA was not the focus of my world. He’s back home now and I had my debriefing with the doctor who ran the intensive.

On the bright side, he said that Handsome was fully engaged in the intensive, put a lot of thought and effort into the homework, showed up every day on time and ready to participate, and he feels like Handsome’s prognosis is good if he continues to do his recovery work. Terrific, right? That’s what I had hoped to hear. No complaints there. I’m truly proud of Handsome for that because I know it was incredibly difficult for him and yet he went “all in” with the program.

The doctor ran me through a lot of information that Handsome had shared during the intensive and although there were a few childhood things I wasn’t aware of, the acting out and affair activity was essentially exactly as Handsome had disclosed to me… with two exceptions.  The doctor was running through the list of Handsome’s acting out behaviors and I was almost tuning out because the list is long and hurtful, and then I heard “…pic collecting, blah blah blah, eye stalking, blah blah blah… .” Wait, what? I had to ask him to go back and read those two to me again. And then, because I am apparently the world’s most ill-informed spouse of a sex addict, I had to ask him to explain to me what those two things are.

Per Urban Dictionary:

Pic collector – A leery anonymous person who replies to your personal ad for the sole purpose of collecting your pics to inflate his or her poor ego. An encounter with a pic collector is always short and obnoxiously one-sided.

Eye stalking – The act of stalking with one’s eyes. [duh]

The eye stalking was not particularly surprising and, in the scheme of things, kind of low down on Handsome’s acting out totem pole. Troubling (and sad and pathetic) for sure, but I didn’t consider the omission of it from prior disclosures to be a crisis.

The “pic collecting” though is a bit of another story. Whose pics?  Where were they from? Was he talking about the pics from the Whore? Those I knew about for sure, but were there others? I learned that this is one of those situations where Handsome didn’t overtly lie to me, but rather he left out a part of the story that makes him look bad.

Knowing that he had signed up for Seeking Arrangements and failed at that endeavor, I grilled him about his use of Craigslist and Backpage. He admitted to visiting both intermittently but insisted that it was for work (prostitution stings and the like). He and his colleagues would reply to ads from women and try to determine if they were hooking out of houses in town and, if so, they’d try to shut them down. That may be true – or not, time will tell – but what he failed to mention is that he would keep the pictures that he was sent in communicating with those women. I can guess what he did with them.

So, I went there… against my better judgment, I asked why he did this. His reply, which I think was honest, was “Because I wanted to look at real women.” That crushed me. Forced the air from my lungs. He said what he said, but what I hear in my head is “Because I wanted to look at real women other than you.” It’s not as if I was absent, gone away, missing. Nope. I was there in our house virtually every single day of our marriage, including the times when Handsome was indulging his addiction while I was struggling with a full-time job, two kids, an aging parent suffering from complex grief, and a checked out husband. Clothed, naked, whatever… he could have looked at me, but he made repeated decisions to look elsewhere.

Would I have been more real if I posted titty photos online? If I had time to troll for men on sites like Craigslist and Backpage? If anonymous sex was my thing? I don’t think so. I certainly feel pretty real each day when my alarm clock goes off and I get the kids clothed and fed and off to school and I head for my job, to return home ten or eleven hours later to wrap up the day and return the kids to bed, ensure our bills are paid, and check that my mom is okay. To me, that’s the definition of reality.

Therein lies the rub… as I’m discovering more and more, my sex addict husband’s reality is very different from what I consider to be actual reality. I don’t (or didn’t) exist in any real way in his land of pornography, masturbation, physical affairs, emotional affairs, voyeurism, sexting, pic collecting, eye stalking, etc. etc. There, I’m not his Wife who loves him and finds him handsome and sexy and who supports him no matter what and is just waiting for him to get through his midlife crisis, or get his head out of his ass, and be a good husband and father again. No. In that land, I’m simply the “Boss Lady”  or the uncaring wife who denies him sex that he’s entitled to gosh darn it. (Because he’s such a great catch, of course… once you ignore the drinking, screaming, and cheating… whose panties wouldn’t just fall to the floor?) Forget that he was never, ever denied sex… that fact doesn’t fit his story.

I would love a break from reality. It would be glorious to stick my head in the sand or put on my noise cancelling headphones and drown out all the SA chatter around me with white noise. I can’t do that, however, and neither can Handsome if this marriage is going to work. He’s had at least a five-year break from reality. It’s time for him to join me in this delightful mess we call married life, both in the highs and lows of it, the fun and the sad, exciting and boring, but above all things, real. Hopefully he can gain (or re-gain) an interest in collecting pictures from our family’s happy life instead of those of random sad, broken strangers online.

Wednesday musings

A few brief thoughts for the week:

* Farewell Backpage! So long Craigslist personals! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.

* No sponsor yet for Handsome at SA. (sigh) I don’t think he’s stalling exactly, but maybe the unicorn he is after just doesn’t exist.

* Handsome is going to be off soon to attend a long intensive program in LA with Dr. Omar Minwalla, who may just be my new hero. Google Dr. Minwalla if you aren’t yet familiar with him. Given that I do not identify as either a co-addict or co-dependent, I’m squarely in the trauma survivor (I hate to refer to myself as a victim) category when it comes to Handsome’s affairs and sex addiction. I really hope that this program proves to be incredibly helpful to Handsome in kick-starting his recovery. He’s not exactly excited about it – as he says “no, I’m not looking to have all of the awful and disgusting things I’ve done be the topic of conversation for an entire week” – but he does seem eager to get it underway and to see what he can learn from it. If it helps him to better handle the damage and pain he caused to me, all the better.

* Handsome says his therapy took a turn for the much harder and more challenging this week. Amen. Perhaps my talk with the Doc is bearing fruit.

* Oh, and I just saw that the woman that Handsome “dated” last summer got herself arrested AGAIN recently for harassment. I don’t think he could have scraped the bottom of the barrel for his acting out partners any more if he actively tried. Yuck. How ironic is it that in those moments of chasing the dragon of his addiction when he felt most wanted and desired he was engaging in behavior that is a complete and total turn off to the person who loves him most in the world?

Have a great week everyone!

Four months of sobriety for him – eye opening for me

Handsome and I are almost four months past DDay #1, but since that disclosure only revealed a portion of the story, it is more relevant to say that Handsome has been sexually sober for four months and he has been actively participating in SA for a little over a month. He has struggled to find a sponsor, but is hopeful that he’ll have one after his next meeting. I admit to some frustration at how long Handsome is taking to find a sponsor, but I recognize that – given the extraordinary difficulty he has opening up to people – he wants to find someone he feels comfortable with, who will challenge him when he needs it, who remains married, and who has similar views about his spouse. Those things are important to him and thus they are important to me, because I think Handsome can really do well in recovery with the right people on his team.

It is also true that Handsome has not had a drop of alcohol to drink in a month. He and I agree to disagree for now about the significance of this. He admits that he drank way too much, but insists he was not an alcoholic. To me, there’s a lot of denial in that belief, but I admit that he did quit drinking cold turkey without much of a glance back at it.  At worst, I get some grumbling when he’s having a meal that would have historically been accompanied by a beer (or four).  Yet alcohol played a role in almost every single physical encounter he had with his affair partners, whether it was “pre-gaming” to drown out his conscience ahead of time, or pounding beers afterwards to dull the guilt and shame. Alcohol certainly didn’t help his mood swings or anger issues either, and his health had suffered as well. I also find it to be no coincidence that there have been zero (nada! zilch!) issues with ED since he stopped drinking. (Hallelujah!!) I feel entitled to this version of my husband. We had agreed to reevaluate his abstinence from alcohol in June, but at this point I’m sticking to my guns on the “no drinking” thing for the foreseeable future. The thought of adding alcohol back into the picture seems incredibly premature, and fills me with dread. Could he have a (singular) craft beer with a burger or pizza in 6 months? A year? Maybe.  But he has a lot of damage to repair first before I’d even be willing to consider it.

I know that I’m still a newbie in this process – both as a betrayed spouse and as the wife of a sex addict.  Nonetheless, most days I feel like I’m making progress addressing both of these new, painful, and unwanted aspects of my life. There are days when I absolutely resent and abhor what Handsome has wrought upon me and our kids. Strike that – I  resent and abhor what Handsome has wrought upon me and our kids EVERY day, but some days I’m much better at dealing with it than others.  And there are issues that plague me. Those are fodder for other posts, but I can now function throughout an entire day at work, actually be productive, and not collapse at home afterwards.  I still cry often, but it’s less than it used to be. I’m gaining my sense of peace back at home. (Physically disposing of the bed that Handsome slept on with Angel Baby did wonders for that.) My appetite is returning as is my sense of humor. These are small things, and they aren’t exactly all consistent yet, but it’s a big improvement after where I was following DDay #1.

I’m learning… both things I never thought I’d need to know, and things I never wanted to know. I can articulate the difference between the co-addict model and the trauma model in a few sentences. I’ve explored with Handsome what it means to lust and what exactly he lusts after. I’ve familiarized myself with the 12 steps and have read more betrayal recovery and SA literature than I would have thought imaginable. My detective skills are honed to near Sherlock Holmes-like perfection and my spider senses are on high alert. As my young son would say, my game is tight.

Most importantly, my eyes are open. I do not think that Handsome and I have an easy road ahead of us. To the contrary, I know it’s going to be a bumpy ride. I want him to be honest with me, but honesty can hurt. I want him to change, but even change for the better can be difficult, especially if I am changing too. That said, four months in I can see some hope and sunlight in our future and that alone seemed too much to hope for immediately after DDay #1.  I booked a Thanksgiving trip today for our family. I’m planning ahead – months out. My eyes are open, but I have hope.

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?

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 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.