It doesn’t work that way despite what you might believe.
Going through this divorce I am finding out a lot about the laws of this state and frankly in this case, after 31+ years of marriage I am going to get law fucked. In California, the law is regards to divorce is this: what you inherit it is yours alone if you leave a good paper trail.
So, say you inherit money as a 20 yo and you divorce at 70 (you were married 50 years) if you can show a paper trail of where your money went (we bought a house, etc) then it is all yours 50 years later. It doesn’t matter if you co-mingled funds or put both of your names on the deed to the house, you get your money back. So if you put $100,000 down on a house and 50 years later the house is still worth $100,000 you get it. If you put $100,000 down on a house and 50 years later the house is worth $200,000, you get your $100,000 back plus 1/2 of the $100,000 increase in value.
Thirteen years ago, B’s father died and left him some money. Out of the 6 sibs he was the only one who was named in the will because the other children had nothing to do with him (except for one who a few years before he died began to have contact with him.) Only B and I had a relationship with him. We talked on the phone, went to dinner, had him spend time with us, etc. When he was sick I took him groceries and made him meals. I spent more time with him than B. And after buying two houses, I find out that I am not entitled to them. Even after years of being on the deed, paying half the taxes, utilities, etc. which means in the divorce I am going to come out a loser. Big time. Worse, I think he elected to stay in Ca instead of move to WI or Tx when we had the chance for just this reason.
Really, I never thought that this would happen. Here my husband has been having an affair for four years, sent the playmate approx. $50,000 USD in cash, presents, trips, etc. I can’t get that back but he can get back what is in my name and has been for years.
To say I am upset at this situation is an understatement but at the same time my hands are tied. I can only hope that my husband realizes that the children will be watching how he treats me, that his father would be disgusted with him and that God might have a few choice words for him too.
So everyday, B tells me he wants to get back together with me because he loves me and wants to be with me. He begs and pleads and I say no.
“Go to Ihn,” I tell him.
“But I don’t want her. I want you. She is just an addiction that will end. I don’t want to let go of her until I know what is happening with us.”
I tell him that nothing is happening with us. We are getting divorced thanks to you. But he doesn’t let go because he wants us both.
And he tells me that he tells you that wants to be with you too. He wants to marry you.
But here is the thing you need to know. My kids will never accept you. They know that you broke up our family and you are responsible for all of this. So you don’t win. Neither do they. And B loses most of all because the most important thing to him, his children, know what the two of you have done and how you have plotted against me, their mother. How they have suffered the ultimate loss due to the selfishness that you both have exhibited.
And when this divorce is over B will have very little assets/money left and he will hold that against both of us. In essence he will have to start over at 58 yo. and you will be working until the day you die to support him. And if he is smart he will have sign a pre-nup so nothing will be yours anyways.
One truth I do know is this: he will never feel right about your relationship because of all the guilt he feels and will continue to feel because he knows in his heart that what he has done is wrong. He knows that how he has acted is not the man he wants to be.
Further, he will never know if you “Love” him for him or for the money that he has and the over $50,000 USD he has given you to re-do your Daddy’s house (and by the way, I want my half of that back). And he knows this. He knows he can never fully trust you and he won’t. He will hold back because he will never be completely sure what your real motives are. At least we started with nothing but love and we both know that our motive and intensions were pure for the first 28 years anyways.
We are both fools, you and I. Being pitted one against the other with all aspects our humanity ignored. Yet, he is an even bigger fool and because I have been married to him for over 30 years, because we share children, memories and we once had a full and exciting life; I don’t want to see you cheat and manipulate him any more. You have done enough damage knowing he has a family with two kids with autism who don’t do change and needed our family intact to reach their full potential.
If you really love him, like you say, then you and I will both let him go so he can find a relationship with a woman that his children will accept and that he knows is from the heart, not for his pocketbook. Let him have a chance at a real relationship not just the projected fantasy that you are. He isn’t in love with you he is in love with the idea of being in love with you. Shit, he has been with you for three days two years ago. He has no idea who you really are. He just knows what you show him to entice him and you are an expert at reading men as a “tour guide” from Vietnam needs to be in order to bag a moneybags and lift you out of poverty. As you yourself said on your FB page you and your friend are two well paid concubines.
Yet, the real truth is that you cannot win at this “love” affair with him. You will only end up losing in the long run. He deserves better. He deserves to find real happiness with a real woman who will love him and who will love his children and who will love her back. He deserves to be happy and frankly he will never find that with you because your relationship has been created in the chaos of lies, manipulation and cheating…that is what he will remember and that is what he will see no matter what you do. He does know what you are capable of and he has seen it on your Facebook.
I hope you do the right thing so that my husband can have a good life. With you it will not be possible. With me it will also not be possible. He needs a fresh start with someone new. I hope that you will be kind enough to step out of the way for him to find it. He deserves some measure of peace at this point in his life and with you he will never find it.
No one said it would be easy letting go of a 30+ year marriage. It isn’t. It is fucking hard. The most difficult thing I have ever done.
B was my best friend. We had a fabulous history for most of our marriage. He was the father of my children. A talented lover (I WILL take credit for training him well in that department)
I miss the closeness we once shared. Not hearing his voice is a painful reminder of all that has gone wrong over the past several years. Not hearing his soft breath at night and and meditating with him in the morning are things that I hate about the rabbit hole that my life has slid down into.
Yet, I am trying to find the good in life and since this weekend was my birthday, coupled with the fact there was no where for him to go; I came to my sacred spot while he stayed in my home with the kids.. (Seriously, there is no place for him to go…remember the huge fire in November it left 40,000 people displaced…there is nothing to rent and housing prices have increased 40% since the fire in our area)
So for the past few days I have spent walking the cliffs to the tune of 3-5 miles every morning. It has been a great way to clear the mind and see the beauty that life has to offer once again. And as I walk I work on letting go of this marriage of mine.
One of the things I have been doing is to say a prayer or affirmation. It goes like this and is from Angela Montano’s course, 21 Days of Prayer To Change Your Life, found on the Daily OM.
“I am willing, to be willing, to let go. And so it is. Amen.”
When I first started walking this is what I began with. After six days it has morphed into this:
“I am willing to let go of B and any illusions that I can control the outcome of this situation. And so it is. Amen.”
I must have said this 500 times and I can feel it making a change for the good in my brain. Letting Go doesn’t feel so scary or painful now. It feels empowering and gives me a sense of hope and relief.
Another thing I have been doing is leaving pieces of my relationship behind as I walk which looks like this:
It helps to leave a tangible reminder of my grief and at the same time know that I am giving that past life/love and that grief away.
I have also been working on my art. Frankly, I am a terrible artist but my therapist says it doesn’t matter…just get the images out…so I have. It is amazing how putting the images to paper helps to reduce the intensity of the emotions.
So this is what I have been up to and it has calmed my soul while taking me slowly to a place of acceptance. I want to leave this marriage as I came to it: optimistic, excited … full of compassion and love. While it was not my choice to end the marriage it is my choice how I choose to act as it enters its final lap. Above all, I am trying to choose love. I am working on forgiveness and finding meaning in what I had and what I am left with . I don’t always succeed but I am trying. Thinking bitter thoughts will only poison my own well and when this ends I want to be able to drink clear, refreshing, life-giving water not something stagnant and polluted with negativity.
So, from you my dear reader, I could use a few positive thoughts sent my way in order help me feel the good vibes when the going gets rough. And thanks for hanging there in with me as my life as I have known it changes into something not yet revealed.
For the wonderful people who have followed my blog for so long….I apologize. After I moved and had the SECOND NEW START I decided not to blog because I wanted to only put positive vibes out and go into my marriage (AGAIN) whole hearted. I was afraid that if I blogged it would in a sense be returning to possible doubt that what I was doing was right for me.
So here is the thing. Yes, I have wasted precious moments on a marriage that was essentially over the day B started communicating with our Vietnamese tour guide in April 2015 unbeknownst to me. And all those years he tried to make me small so he could make her big in his mind, where he made me feel less than, when I couldn’t figure out what was wrong; well they were not totally a waste, because I learned more about me and who I wanted to become. Yes, this was damaging to my self esteem, but with my therapists help, I have overcome what he tried to make me believe about myself so he could feel better about himself. But now, nakedly exposed, he doesn’t feel better about who he is for now he is forced to examine himself/ his actions and he is puzzled and embarrassed and in general feels like the shit he has been. He has to live with himself and it will be a struggle.
When I found out about the affair in January 2018, after he was fired for his job as president of his company, in part, I suspect, for sending naked pictures of him and his “true love” over company computers; I decided to continue to try to work things out because that was what I needed to do for me. For our family. We still have three children at home, two with autism, so ours is a challenging household at times. I also found out that he had sent her approx. $30,000 and that during his two years in therapy he never told his therapist about his affair. But I decided that it was best for all involved to give our relationship another shot.
And then when we were getting ready to move for his new job in July, at the end of June, I found out, due to his hysterics at 2 am in the morning, that he had unprotected sex with a hooker three days prior and HAD TO GO to the hospital right then to be sure he didn’t have AIDS. Yet, I still stayed; although I protected myself by putting the new house in my name only and by having 1/2 of the partnership distribution put in my own private account. I did this because he had talked in January about moving to Vietnam to be with IT and I wanted to be sure that I was in the position that I could take care of myself and the kids. (He also talked about having considered having two families one knowing nothing about the other…fortunately… I am not sister wife material.) WTF
So everything seemed to be going well. Every day he looked me in the eyes and told me he loved me…acted like it too. We had a ritual of sitting on the sofa together every morning while holding hands and he would thank God out loud for me and our wonderful relationship together. Our marriage felt new, on track and very loving. And all this worked until April 9 (Last month) when I went into his office and he started acting crazy. Off his rocker. Totally Nuts. He insisted we leave the office due to “thin walls” and took me to the conference room where he told me he wanted to quit his job. How would I feel about that and how would we manage? he asked. I told him we would figure it out and that “I would rather have you alive than dead due to stress.”
And then I went back into his office where I discovered why he was acting so crazy. This :
“What is this?”
“We got it when we were in Vietnam”
“No we didn’t. First of all I wouldn’t buy something like that and secondly every refrigerator magnet we have ever bought is on our refrigerator.”
“No, we got it in Vietnam.”
And all of a sudden my heart knew without a doubt and I said:
“I think it we are done. You need to move out.”
And there is was. Done. The door closed. Forever. That line had been crossed and there was no going back. EVER.
In the weeks that have followed, I have since discovered he has sent IT and her sister even more money. More gifts. And that he started to communicate with her when he went went to work at his new job in July. Which means that his relationship with her was never really over but the one with me was.
Later the day that I found all of this out, a friend sent me the following shots from her Facebook. Funny thing is I had not looked at her Facebook since May of last year because I truly believed in my heart his affair with her was done. Had I looked I would have realized that it was not.
Here she is holding the leprechan we bought for our grandchildren in Ireland on our 25th Anniversary celebration.
Talking about “the groom” (my husband) on Facebook with others
And celebrating her birthday with flowers, presents and a cake with a picture of my husband and her gracing the top of the cake in frosting with the words THANK YOU lovingly written across the top for him to see.
He has moved out at my insistence. Our kids are doing the best that they can. We are trying to split assets without it getting ugly. Everyday, he tells me he loves me and wants to stay married. That this time he will go into it 100% committed to me and our relationship. (Excuse me….isn’t that what you promised before.)
I have a good lawyer and papers are being filed today. I should be divorced in about 6 months.
Yes… to many I have wasted time considering the inevitable happened. But my truth is this:
Too many people give up too quickly and then always wonder:
Was I too impulsive? Should I have keep trying?
And they have regrets. Unfinished business. And they can’t move on.
But I don’t. I know in my heart I gave it all I had. I tried my best. I grew from the experience. I became a better me. Further, we started with nothing and came together because we truly loved one another and my saving grace is that he will always have to wonder if his 20+ years younger girlfriend truly loves him or if it is his money she is really after. Karma is a bitch and I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.
So now as I step away from this 31+ year marriage I have no doubts. Time has given me perspective and the ability to step away somewhat gracefully. I know that this is the right thing for me and I am in a place of acceptance with little bitterness. I believe that had I stepped away sooner, I would not have been in this place of acceptance that I find myself in now. And now I have regained my sense of self… myself…I have…and I like what I have found… during this “maybe divorce” of the past four years. I feel complete, satisfied, and most days I am ready to move on. And I welcome with wonder and an open heart all that awaits me in the future. Because anything is better than living lies spoken with such sincerity by a master liar.
Well it has been 3 1/2 and I just couldn’t fix it. I tried. I really did.c Harder than I tried anything before. But it didn’t matter. Because in order to stay married your partner has to love you. And mine just didn’t….more tomorrow.
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.
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.
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. Amen
Using 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.
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?
It’s been a while. Quite a long while actually. I haven’t been able to do the things I normally do as I concentrate on ridding myself of the negative thoughts and images that have floated through my mind since I found out about B’s affair. There has been a lot of canceling going on.
“He is a jerk”
“Cancel, cancel, cancel” (don’t say cancel out loud or the guys in the white coats might come for you) Just say “cancel” in your head and then look around and take in what you see:
“Oh the clouds look big a fluffy today”
“Look at that beautiful orange tomcat”
Anything that take your mind off the negativity and onto something different.
Anyway, last week I had an extreme reaction to something B said in the marriage counselors office which cause me to stand up and say that I needed to leave. NOW. We were discussing a possible move when B said, “I can move and get used to the job while you stay back at home with the kids!”
End of discussion on the part of B even though we have had this gone over this scenario before and I had said that this solution was unacceptable to me.
And so:
My heart started pounding.
My blood pressure and anxiety soared.
I felt like that walls were closing in on me and tried to flee the therapists office.
I flashed back to the time when B would not take me to China with him and I “knew” something was up when suddenly he was taking a side trip to Singapore (which I later found out was to rendezvous with our Vietnamese tour guide) I didn’t understand what was going on at that time but I knew that I felt intense confusion and pain about why B was so adamant that I could not go with him and why a discussion was not “forthcoming.”
I broke out in a sweat.
I began to itch.
The therapist looked at me as I kind of said something like:
“WHAT THE F***!!!! OH,HELL NO! YOU MADE THIS MESS AND YOU ARE NOT LEAVING ME TO CLEAN IT UP WHILE YOU GET TO TAKE IT EASY!”
I explained to both B and the therapist that this scenario was unacceptable to me. That I didn’t want to clean up B’s mess and have to deal with angry kids who would be afraid we were divorcing and couldn’t understand why we were not together as a family. I would not be alone with a child whose rage would be intense if he felt abandoned and I didn’t understand why someone who swears he wants to be with me would even consider that an option and if that was the way it was going to be then we might as well not be together.
I heard something about B thinking of the logistics in a “practical” manner while I was looking at them from the heart. And then I left.
The next week I was at my therapists office and I mentioned to her that I thought I might have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and began to relate what happened to me at the marriage counselors office.
“Of course, you have post traumatic stress disorder after what you have been through with B for the past three years. But in your case it is referred to as Post-Infidelity Stress Disorder (PISD) and there is a set of recognized symptoms that are brought on by the trauma of infidelity, ” she said.
WHO KNEW? A big sigh of relief escaped my lips…so I wasn’t going crazy after all.
According to her, often the offended partner has extreme reactions to circumstances because they are now operating from a hyper-vigilant state where nothing feels safe or real. And while it may not be as traumatizing as prolonged war or physical abuse, the experiences of the cheated on spouse often echoes the symptoms of PTSD. Symptoms of PISD include:
Exposure to a perceived life-threatening event (end of marriage, constant lies, betrayal of trust, etc)
Emotional numbing
Inability to stop seeking more information about the affair or what your spouse is currently up to
Increased anxiety
Intense feelings of fear or helplessness
Feelings of irritability and rage
A re-experiencing of the event or events
Avoiding things that remind us of the affair
Repeated intrusive thoughts
Anger or blaming of ones self (“If only”)
Obviously, I am no expert on the subject but since I have discovered that I have symptoms of PISD, I am learning what I can about it and how to heal from it. The one thing I do know is this it will take time.
For those of you interested in the subject you can find a good article that discusses PISD it here:
I have also started reading a book on the subject on the advice of my therapist. The title is Transcending Post-Infidelity Stress Disorder by Dennis Ortman, PhD which is available on Amazon. It has been extremely helpful so far.
So I continue on this journey. It is a trip I didn’t ask for and one I didn’t plan. Sometimes it angers me that I have been forced down this rabbit hole by the person I trusted most in the world. A husband who selfishly who pushed me into this land of self-discovery. Yes, many of the things I have learned or done have been helpful but I still wish I had been the one to decide if and when I wanted to confront the issues that I have been working on. But for now I try not to dwell on the “what if’s” and instead I attempt to embrace this new post-affair life of mine. Some days I succeed and some days I don’t but if nothing else I am teaching my children that if life throws you curve balls you keep swinging that bat until you connect even if that connection is only with one’s self.
Gardy Loo Pismire 