Sometimes when you run away from your troubles (a/k/a your cheating husband) you end up in an even hotter corner of hell. But sometimes you end up in heaven and find a little bit of joy in the midst of chaos. Wish I could stay here forever.
Marriage
Shame On Me
“Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Shame on me. Shame, shame, shame.
We are just about ready to close on our new house. We are packing boxes for the move. B is acting like the man I used to know…loving, taking my hand, looking into my eyes, telling me he loves me numerous times a day. I feel like a school girl again. Life is good. Until Tuesday.
At 7 am B walks downstairs and tells me he has not been feeling good since Friday. He needs to go to the doctor. Oh, and he feels guilty that I went for HIV test after finding out about his three year affair with our tour guide in Vietnam and he will get tested just in case. Oh and he has something on his dick.
He returns home.
“So did the doctor look at your dick?”
“NO, I didn’t show it to him, He just ordered panels.”
“Okay, that makes no sense. Why would you go and worry you have something but not show it to him?”
Let me look. I see nothing. My antenna are now a mile high in the sky. Well, actually they were when he told me he was going to the doctor in the weird way he did so. That is just not like him.
On Wednesday morning he has had night sweats for three days and is up at 2 am. He is frantic. He tells me he is feeling really ill and has been sick for days and lost 6 pounds yesterday. He needs to go to the ER now. The man is out of his mind kind of frantic. Crazy nuts kind of frantic. Weird. As he is about to leave he grabs my hand and says:
“I think I caught something. While you took our son to a specialist on Friday (he fractured a bone Thursday) I went to a massage parlor and had unprotected sex. I swear I have never done anything like that before. That is why I have been avoiding you sexually. I think I caught something and don’t want to give it to you.” (He is still waiting for those Brownie points!)
“Wow,” I say. “If you wanted a divorce all you had to do was ask.”
And off he goes.
That morning I hired an attorney. I am filing for divorce. I also asked the court to step in and oversee a large sum of money that is coming our way the last day of the month. I have to protect our family and make sure that he won’t get the money and skip town to Vietnam with all of it, leaving me unable to care for our kids. Do I think he would do that? NO. Am I sure? NO. I don’t know anything anymore. I can’t believe anything anymore. I have been living an illusion for these past many years. I also wonder if he is suffering from mental illness that runs in his family.
He, of course, is down on one knee begging for forgiveness. Trying to get me to move with him while he “works on himself.” He is currently at a Catholic church praying for God to help him. He keeps sending me articles like “Five Reasons Christians Fail to Overcome Lust.” (Maybe the problem is you are not a Christian or you are trying to act like something you are not?)
Meanwhile, I flew to New York yesterday to clear my head and be with my son. I am trying to practice compassion for myself, love myself and just be kind to myself. I have had three years of chaos and I just want the freedom to grieve, take it easy and let someone take care of me for a change.
Our children who live at home are unaware of what is going on at this point. I am:
heartbroken
beyond sad
and wondering how I will ever be able to trust again.
I am trying not to be angry or bitter as It will only hurt me in the end. BUT…
my dreams have been thrown down the rabbit hole again but this time there is no soft landing. I am bruised and broken but somehow I will survive.
Forgiveness Can Be One Of The Hardest Things You Will Ever Do
As I am going on 4 1/2 months after finding out about the REAL reason my husband put me through hell for 3 years (yes, it was our tour guide from Vietnam) I am working on forgiveness and realize that I am not there yet. And if I read the above about what forgiveness says…I know without a doubt that I have not crossed over the threshold to the F word.
I want to forgive. Truly,I want to be there. I ache to be there. I try to be there but it is for naught…I cannot get there yet. My therapist says I have to just sit with it more (damn it…how much longer, I wonder, with curse words running through my head) Haven’t I been through enough all ready? I am more than ready to be out of this pain. Why can’t I just let it go?
No, she tells me. When you are ready to forgive your life will become yours again. You will feel that shift as you claim those parts of you that you have lost. The pain will dissipate in such a way that it finally feels like a somewhat soft mist instead of like cold, wet hail bouncing off your brain and body 24 hours a day. You will no longer feel so tired in both body and soul that you will be able to awake without feeling like you never slept. You will reach a place where your soul can settle down and feel contentment again.
This past week I have been putting the Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness to the test. What I like about it is that it doesn’t insist that you have to forgive. You only have to be willing to sometime in the future. The prayer goes like this:
The Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness
If I have harmed any one in any way,
either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions,
I ask their forgiveness.If anyone has harmed me in any way,
either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions,
I forgive them.And if there is a situation
I am not yet ready to forgive,
I forgive myself for that.For all the ways that I harm myself,
negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself,
through my own confusions,
I forgive myself. AmenUsing this prayer has helped me with a little perspective on the subject. But most of all by forgiving myself for not yet being ready to forgive, I am treating myself with the same love and kindest I would show a friend and I am practicing patience in the nicest way possible…being gentle with myself. Because after three years of judging myself based on my husband’s own warped perceptions, I am ready to do no more harm to myself or other. Forgiveness, while desired, can wait. Right now taking care of myself is my priority.
How Long Did You Ask Questions After Your Spouse’s Affair
Today I was painting my woodwork when a thought about B and his mistress came into my head. The question was this: Why was he insisting that I get a job and said it would be “easier for me” (meaning him) if I did? I wondered, was it because he was supporting her and he needed the money or because he was planning to divorce me and if I had a job it would be better for him in court?
So I asked and although he answered the question he made it very apparent that he was not happy that once again I brought her up. Further talking revealed that he feels I talk about it several times a week. Sometimes he is right. As an example he said that earlier this week I brought her up when we pulled up into our driveway. And I had…there was a woman who looked like her standing on the street by our house and it just freaked me out and I said something about it.
So my question to you, dear reader, is how long did it take you to stop asking questions regarding your spouses affair. How long did it take for you not to think about it? A week, a month, a year? So far I am 14 weeks into knowing and sometimes as I am busy doing something (like painting, mopping the floor, etc.) something about the affair just hits me and so I ask the question that has come up in my mind. While I think this is part of the PISD, I would like to know that there is an end in sight at some point. After all, this three- year affair of his has been exhausting and I would like to be over it…I am sure he would like that too but frankly it is my discomfort I am worried about…not his! Yet, I wonder with all these questions how do I ever grant grace and leave it alone so I leave behind the chaos? Any suggestions?
30 + YEARS ANNIVERSARY
It has been a long while since I have blogged. I just couldn’t do it. The pain of B’s infidelity stung… morning, noon, and night. I felt stupid, angry and flogged myself way too often for my contributions to where we had gotten. Mostly, I just felt numb. Numb, not depressed numb, but numb to the point where love slips away and its existence becomes a distant memory. You know the kind. It’s like when you sit the wrong way and you try to stand up and almost fall down because your foot is all tingly and numb. The tingle hurts and the numb hurts worse…that is how I felt the first month of knowing.
The second month has gotten better. More tingle and less numb. B finally confessed all to his therapist and we have been seeing our joint one often. In addition, I see my therapist at least once a week…she helps keep my head above water when I feel like I have no more energy to keep kicking.
One of our son’s mental health has deteriorated after the discovery. It has been a very fine tightrope we have been walking keeping him on track and it has become obvious that just one of us alone could not cope with all the facets that unstable mental health brings to a family. I weep for this child of mine and hope that we can get him stable again because as a couple we are strong and steady against the storm that mental illness inflicts on all involved.
B has been trying hard. Very hard. He is doing all the things he should have been doing for the past three years that he was cultivating his relationship with her. He has also come to see what that relationship for what it was…a woman who obtained a lot of money from a guy who had created the perfect woman in a delusional and illusional affair that was mostly conducted in his head. To me she remains a very expensive blow-up doll with a face painted on in whatever way it needed to be in order to convince B that she was his soul mate.
We have had our ups and downs. I have finally come to a place where I don’t ask a question or ask for clarification numerous times a day. One of these days I hope to be able to find a container to put all this painful crap in but I am not sure there is one that is big enough to hold it all. Or for that matter, find a container that is strong enough to hold all the toxins that have been leaching out of marriage. It feels dangerous… like nuclear waste seeping from those old storage barrels buried deep underground.
A little over two months ago I took off my wedding rings and returned the “committment” ring to B. It has been strange looking down and not seeing what I has been on my finder for the past 30+ years especially while his remains attached to him. This void remains a constant reminder of all that has been lost for so long. Trying to “repair” it has been like searching for buried treasure and getting suffocated by sand which keeps falling back into the hole.
ONE MONTH LATER
Well, things are getting better with a lot of hard work and hard listening. It’s painful but necessary if we are going to be able to keep this marriage going for both our sakes and our children. Can we climb this mountain and reach the top? I am not 100% sure but the odds are improving slowly but surely.
Today is our 30+ Wedding Anniversary. We are alone (daughter Nicole has the kids…thanks sweetheart!) on an island off the coast of Honduras. It is fun discovering ourselves as a couple again and I am enjoying B more than I have in a long time. I think he feels that same about me too. Laughing together so much is akin to a knitting needle stitching together those frayed ends of our marriage but this time we are using bright colors that match in order to shake up what remains of the threads of our lives. With my permission, tonight at dinner B put my wedding ring back on my finger as the sun sank below the horizon.I think it will serve as a good reminder to me to keep putting into place those things we are practicing in order to strengthen our relationship. It was a lovely evening sitting at our own private table about two-feet away from the water’s edge. It defininately was A Once In A Lifetime kind of evening.
Of course, an island getaway does not guarantee a future together but with the changes we are both trying to incorporate into our lives there is once again hope, which is so badly needed, if any sort of permanent repair is to be made. I am just hoping that we can bring back with us some of the playfulness and admiration that we have found for one another over the past month.
Since this all began almost three years ago I have been in more pain than I ever thought I could endure. Forget global warming…I have personally made the water level of our oceans rise with all the tears I have shed. But, I have also come a long way working on myself and those parts which have needed my attention. I have learned that I am stronger than I ever knew I was and braver than Braveheart himself. I am proud of who I have become,who I am yet to discover, and I am finally learning to sit with my emotions rather than let them control me. The only consistent thing that has happened is that I have loved B throughout all of this; even when I didn’t like him very much. In my mind the tenacity to keep putting one foot in front of the other when I could have thrown in the towel is something to be admired. While I know many will not agree I have to say that, for me, I know I have no regrets because I have taken the time to hang on rather than turn and run prematurely as I had done in my first marriage. Now I know that no matter what, I will have no regrets because it isn’t about B so much anymore…it’s mostly about me!
So hello from Honduras. May the remainder of my days resemble this one and may my love for myself stay strong!
I Wonder If…A 10-Minute Poem Challange
At night I hear
Your ragged breath
And wonder if…
It was soft and peaceful
With her
I wonder if…
You touched her
In that soft and gentle way
That you used to stroke me
When we made love
I wonder if…
Her lips tasted sweeter
Than mine
Her moans were
More urgent
Than mine
And if…
She reached for you
With a desperate ferocity
That I once had for you
I wonder if…
Her “LOVE” for you
Was conditional
On ALL the money
That you sent to her
Or if it was true
That she loved
That middle-aged man
That I once thought
I would grow old with
But now am not so sure
I wonder if…
You should go
To her
With Our Children
Introduce them to their
“NEW” mommy
And see just what she is made of
See if she still dresses
As if on a red carpet
When the only thing admiring
Are teens with worn out
Attitudes
And autism controlling
Every aspect of her life
I wonder if…
She would still greet you
Half-dressed
A woman with no cares
Pleasing you sexually
As you lay back
Watching as she went down on you
Expecting nothing but your
Total devotion to her family
And your money in return
Or would she turn into me
Right before your eyes?
Old and overweight
Using a “STRONG” voice
And having expectations
Of things besides
A big dick
And gifts and your time for everyone
But her
I wonder if…
Your dream of the perfect
Submissive youthful woman
Would suddenly be
Popped like a giant balloon
Air bursting out
Like flab over her bikini
And if…
She would stay
Calm, peaceful and serene
Peppy and pleasing
On this merry-go-round
That we call our lives
Betrayal III- Liar, Liar-Your Dick Has Created A Quagmire (And It’s Still On Fire)
So this week we have been:
Him: His therapist once, marriage therapy marathon 2 hour session
Her: Her therapist for three hours, marriage therapy marathon 2 hour session
He was instructed by his therapist that he had to tell me the truth and answer any question I might have even if it is six months from now. And this is what I have learned.
- She has a much better wardrobe than me. My daughter noticed this phenomena when she said, ” Hey mom, look at her pictures when you met her. Her clothes were awful but the longer she was in this affair with Dad she got nicer clothes, better haircuts and fashion forward glasses. Yes, the mistress has matchy, matchy shoes, dress and purses to accessorize to the max when she is walking the red carpet. I have NEVER had matching anything except boobs that have slid downhill as I have aged. Anytime I would buy a $15.99 TJMAX shirt B would say, “When did you get that?” Anyway, seems he sent over $20,000 to her and her family in Vietnam. Of course, it was to provide baby vitamins for her sister’s child and for her to buy food for the children at the orphanages. It is just coincidental that her wardrobe could rival a rock stars because “she is not that type of woman. She never wanted anything from me.”
2. Yes, there were times that he was messaging her from our home and I would ask who he was talking with and he would accuse me of being paranoid and make me feel bad about the kind of “suspicious” person that I was.
3. He was the one who suggested that they meet in Singapore. When I asked why he was there for four days without doing business he said he needed some down time. I guess that means down flat on his back while he was ridden like a stallion. What I am most pissed off about is where is the THANK YOU card from her for teaching him how to please and pleasure a woman. All that work over the years, from minute man to rocket man, and I don’t even get kudos from the recipient of my vast sexual knowledge.
4. He, as a rich middle-aged man white man, convinced her sister, a single impoverished very young woman in a third world country, to keep the baby she was going to abort. I suspect that one of the reasons she did not was that she was convinced he was going to marry her sister. Does he have any obligations to this child since he participated in a family decision to keep this baby boy? (and no it is not his)
5. This story is not unique in B’s family. His brother went looking for Russian brides spending all his money (and he had lots) on these women until he married one who would not sign a pre-nup and after their marriage would not move to the USA. B saw how his brother was soaked but “this is not the same. She is not that way.”
6. He looked into fiance visas.
7. Of course, he gave her up for me about two weeks ago after giving me a commitment ring on Christmas but continued to talk with her. BLAH!
8. With 10 minutes of knowing that I knew about them she put up pictures of her and B in Singapore along with a heart in which their hands are intertwined.
So as a wrap up. B has conducted this affair for almost three years while I was sending money to her (our tour guide in DaNang Vietnam) and books for her father. I ate lunch at her family’s home and met her parents and sister. He sent her thousands of dollars over the years and his sister was friends with his mistress on Facebook. She has at least four different Facebook pages with four different names. B told me he was going to Singapore on business, when in fact, it was slutty cum dumpster business. All of this while I was working hard in individual and marital counseling to improve our marriage while he was working on his relationship with her and making me feel like crap so that he could live with his guilt. Meanwhile, our children are falling apart, autism rearing its oh-so-destructive head and I have aged 10 years in two days. Oh, and the house we were selling…the guy backed out on the day he was suppose to sign.
And he LOVES (cough) me and wants to make it work.
While we were working on our marriage he used to say “I am not sure I love you. I hope to get it back but it might take 6 months or a year or that love might not ever return. Are you willing to wait?”
To this I say…to be continued tomorrow.
Betrayed OR Liar Lair Pants On Fire
So Thursday B walked in the door ashen and with tears in his eyes. After 14 years of being the president of his company he was sacked. I said and did all the right things, loved on him and told him everything would be okay. I was the perfect wife.
After several hours of being at home he decided to download all the family pictures from his phone onto my computer since he was afraid his company would turn off his phone. Since then my computer has been running slow because he added over 2,000 pictures to it so today I decided to delete some after moving them to The Cloud. As I was going through them…SURPRISE!!!! …..I found a naked picture of a woman. Long story short, it was our tour guide from Viet Nam. The woman I had been sending money to occasionally to help her family….guess she decided to go after a bigger fish…B!
B confessed that he has been communicating with her for 1 1/2 years. That he has thought of going to see her….wonder if that is why he was so adamant that I could not go to China with him? I asked him if he has communicated with her since he gave me the commitment ring…he has…yep, that is commitment for you! I told him I wondered if that was one of the reasons he got fired because IT saw numerous naked pictures on his electronic devices.
Frankly, I feel good. Glad to know that my suspicions were not unfounded. Glad to know that these past two years have really been about him and not me. Glad to find out that he is a sex addict according to him. Yes, I am glad to know all of it. Glad to know he gave me the commitment ring on Christmas and talked to her after. Glad to know that when he sent the text from Boy Scout Camp that he wasn’t sure he had the passion or love to sustain our relationship, that he had just received naked pictures from her. I am glad to know all of this because now I know that I need to believe and trust in myself and I know without a doubt that he had one foot out of the door and was not giving me his all. And now I know what I need to do.
P.S. And to all of you who have told me so…I am sorry I didn’t believe you or kinda didn’t believe you. I was a fool.
Drama- 10 Minute Poem Challenge
The fog is so dense today.
It blocks your vision as if you wearing a scarf over your eyes.
So that you are blindfolded to all that is around you
So that you stay unknowing/unaware your entire life
Often times I think that most people live their lives this way
Seeing…but not
Hearing..but not
Everything muddied and jumbled
Unsure of what is real
Or just an illusion
Is this me? I wonder
Am I blind too?
Unable to see what is directly in front of me?
Do I try to push aside the fog
As if parting a heavy velvet curtain
Used to keep performers and audience
Away from one another
And which hides what is backstage…
Those things that are meant to be unseen
If I were to peer past your costume
If I were to see you as you really are
What would be there to greet me?
Would there be those things I am comfortable with
Or would there be things that would surprise me
Maybe even make me uncomfortable
Is yours a Magic Show?
Or the tale of Othello?
And what is my role?
Am I a major character in your drama
Or a bit player who has
But a walk on part in your life?
And more importantly
Does this story have a long run?
Or have the critics pronounced it
Dead.
Saying YES To The Ring
I have been pondering for the past couple of days how to write this post. I have started it, deleted it and started it again many times. For at this point, what I am about to write is embarrassing, very confusing, and probably tiring to all who read my blog. Frankly, I know that if this on-and-off again relationship was happening to a friend or my daughters I would say, “Get the fuck out! You deserve a man who wants all of you all of the time!”
Yet, sometimes life is not that cut-and-dried no matter how hard we try to make it so. Over thirty years of marriage is a long time together. It is doubly hard when you have two boys with autism and who do not do well with change. Add to that three children who have already lost their original families and splitting up becomes fraught with minefields that just are not present in most families.
Now to tell you this particular story I have to take you back to October. It was then that B asked me what I wanted for Christmas. At that time I flippantly told him a commitment ring but frankly I thought that the possibility of receiving one was nil. Winning the lottery had better odds. And anyway, who doesn’t like a ring, right, so what was the harm in asking?
Fast forward to Christmas night. As we were winding down from the days festivities I told B I thought we should tell the kids tomorrow that we were separating. Tears came to B’s eyes and all of a sudden he called the kids down to do THE board. You see, every year on Christmas day and July 4th, we measure our kids to see how much they have grown (seems we will need a longer board for Andre next July.) Then, just as the kids were about to go upstairs B told them to wait and proceeded to say. “Hey, guys, there is one more present here and it is for your mom.”
With that, he walked over to his briefcase and pulled out a jewelry box and in it sat a woven silver and gold ring. Nothing elaborate (that is not who I am) and nothing too expensive (not me either). As I looked at the ring in shock he said something to me and the kids along the order of:
“The silver in this ring represents our Silver Anniversary (25th) while the gold represents striving toward our Gold Anniversary (50th). In this ring there are little breaks and holes that represent life and how during our lives we have to navigate through them, around them, and out of them; to get back on the path we have chosen. So I am giving your Mom this ring to show her that I am committed and will continue to try working together to reach our Golden Anniversary.”
My first thought: Maybe he really does love me…and tears
My second thought: I am not sure I want this. Maybe it really is time to be out on my own.
My third thought: Why did he say this in front of the kids?
Luckily, the next day was Tuesday, the day I see my therapist. She said:
“I’m confused.”
That made two of us.
So we talked about the conflicting feelings this brought up. About how for the last week every time we talked about leaving and splitting up our family we both cried. How our guts were both twisted in knots and how discussing dividing children, assets and animals was devastating. And that in this heartache we had gotten closer at least for the past few weeks but that it should be viewed as temporary.
In the end, I decided to accept the ring…for now. Instead of deluding myself into thinking this ring is a piece of jewelry that signifies B’s commitment to me for life; I have decided to view it as a day-to-day pledge until I decide otherwise.
Last night we went to our joint therapist and I asked for clarification regarding the ring, the commitment and why he said what he did in front of the kids.I will say that I received some very well thought through answers to my questions and that we both acknowledged that we have a long way to go to save this marriage if it is even possible.
At this point I have no real answers about life or the status of my marriage. What I do know is that every day we manage to make it is one more day our children have had a chance to grow older and more mature. It is one more day that we have successfully re-committed to working hard and to trying our best to listen to what is in the others heart and act accordingly. And it is one more day that we have attempted to let love win, move towards acceptance of both ourselves and the other, and its one more time that we have had the chance to try to find peace in a relationship that once had little.
Sometimes life is hard.
Sometimes life is isn’t.
And maybe, just maybe, given a little more time, the hard times will decrease and the good times will grow more frequent and blossom. And maybe someday I will realize good times and bad are just part of life and that is just the way it is and I won’t take it personally. And maybe, just maybe when the good times are abundant I will be able to rejoice in them knowing that I have done everything humanly possible to make them happen….with or without him.
Gardy Loo Pismire 