
Letter To The Mistress

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.
This is where I am at. You must listen … and now Fia
I was talking with my therapist today. It was exhausting. Almost 60 years of life to look at…some of it not pretty but a lot of it brilliantly played and enjoyed.
After the three years of B’s affair and the “almost” demise of my marriage it has been difficult at times to believe that B has changed and that our life together is stronger too. The doubts that plague me have swirled fast and furious especially in the first six months after the storm. The calm surety I have been searching for has been more elusive and more difficult to trust when I see it. Sometimes it appears to me that my life is only an illusion and I am always checking to make sure what I see is real. That process is exhausting and life-robbing. It is not life affirming nor is it increasing my sense of stability.
As I come upon 11 months of “knowing” about the affair I do feel hope and real joy again. The anguish and pain are slowly diminishing. Parts of me have been re-born and parts re-shaped into a better part of my whole. I have grown, explored and examined parts of my life that I saved until “LATER.” Yet, conveniently, LATER never came… until the affair… when I was forced to pick up the pieces and try to rebuild myself and my marriage. And now, believe it or not, at times I am even thankful for B’s affair because it has allowed both of us to evolve and create something different within ourselves and within our relationship. We are rebuilding on something that resembles bedrock and our foundation is no longer sinking in quicksand.
Another tidbit. For years I have not dreamed. Not once. EVER. But in the last month I have had three vivid dreams about B and “the other woman.” All involved water. In the last one, right before I woke up, an image of a goddess came to me and she held her hand out and said, ” Stop looking, It will come to you if needed.” The imagine was vivid, profound and unlike anything I have ever expeirenced before.
My therapist tells me this is a good thing. That my psyche is clearing things out and washing them away.
I have also been busy creating my therapist provoked artwork. A recent picture is of a bird’s nest filled with various objects along with the words: LEARN, REST and FAITH interwoven into it. She says these are important words for me to concentrate on.
“What is faith?” she asks.
ANSWER
“It is the essence of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Can you see the wind? No? But you can see or hear the evidence of it in the sound of the wind chime or the rustling of the leaves. So REST in the hope that you have for your marriage and have FAITH in the evidence that you are seeing that things are changing for the better. Believe your goddess who is telling you to stop looking for trouble. and to believe that you can LEARN from your past, REST in the comfort of now, and have FAITH in your future.
AND THEN SHE SAYS
“What if you get the stability you have been searching for your entire life? Will you see it and embrace it or will you run from it?”
GOOD QUESTION…AND FOR NOW…I DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER.
I would like to think that I have matured suffienctly to embrace all that has come and will come my way. Yet, at other times, I am just not sure. Sometimes I still want to just slide down the rabbit hole into another time and place.
Yet, no matter what I choose I know that I am strong enough and wise enough to handle it because I have lived through the worst year of my life and not just survived but thrived!
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?
I am too tired to write
Too sad to care
Thinking that this life is unfair
But in reality
It is you
Going as far as you dare
Give an inch
Take a mile
A step beneath that smile
One lie too many
Another in the distance
Waiting for another place
And time in which to use it
I try to trust
Do my best to believe
But how can I
When you seek to deceive?
It is all in innocence
A misunderstanding at best
An erasure here
Your number there
Where it does not belong
To your sister
Who looks to betray
At every chance she gets
Like your Mother
She knows no boundaries
Like the ones you try to put on me
And the ones that she will never see
For you never insist
On a hard reality with her
The intimacy you have shared with sis
Long talks that should have been mine
And now a conversation with her
Vanished in thin air
Off you telephone
Were you talking of Viet Nam
Of the love that you found there
But cannot find here
About a woman who met all your desires
But only in your dreams
She seems so real, so true
So worth the $20,000
A bought and paid soulmate for you
That second family you wanted
One here
One there
Is she the woman for you?
Why don’t you take your sister there
And let her choose for you
It would be an easy choice
Because you know who she would pick
So fly away…
For you already have
And she is waiting to meet
The two of you
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
In the past two-weeks I have learned that our tour guide, my husband, and his sister all betrayed me; some in the most awful of ways. Could there be anything worse? Yes, there could be, as I have been so gently reminded from above.
As I have pondered things these past weeks I have catastrophized, neuroticised, fantasized, and hypothesized. I have cried a fifth of tears and singlehandedly kept the Kleenex company in business.
Finally, I could do nothing else but pray. So I did. In between sobs, hiccups, and the sorrowful sniffing of snot back into my sinus cavities; I asked for some help. Now, I am not much of a religious person but I have had my share of miracles when I have asked. This time all it appeared was that I received was a big bunch of nothing.
No, “I’M THINKING ON IT” or “YOU’VE RUN OUT OF MIRACLES FOR THIS LIFE.” The only thing I obtained was this fleeting phrase:
“Fuck,” I thought. “Where is the compassion, dude?”
“Come on, I know you’ve got better than that! Heck, you have parted seas and rained hot coals down on the wicked. The least you could do is a repeat performance.”
But IT COULD BE WORSE was all that was sent down from on high to me.
And then it occurred to me those worst-case scenarios might just be what was needed to lead me to find a slight bit of gratitude and happiness in my off-the-rails-life. So I pondered a bit and these came to me:
There. Indeed, it could have been worse. Way worse.
So for now, I am counting my blessings as I head into the third week of The Day My Life Went Straight To Hell a/k/a No More Tour Guides For Me.
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.
This morning I had a long overdue coffee date with a wonderful woman. We are about the same age and are both on the road of discovery about ourselves while deciding what we want the second half of our lives to look like. We have a lot in common in many regards and I hope she is on the way to becoming a good friend.
After coffee was over it occurred to me how much I miss having close female friends. Sometimes I miss it so much it feels like a piece of me has been ripped away and left abandoned out on an isolated road. Alone.
Don’t get me wrong I have some wonderful friends. But due to our constant moving or their moving; these women that I cherish and love are scattered throughout the United States. There is N… my been with me forever friend who has seen me through my youthful indiscretions and has nursed me through the past year. There is C who knew me as a teen and with whom I share a birthday. There is L who makes life something to laugh at and enjoy to the fullest even when I am whining like a baby. And there are several other special ladies who I know would be there for me if I picked up the phone. But what I need at this juncture of my life, and what I miss most, are a couple of good girlfriends to go to coffee with every Thursday to catch up on each others lives.
It is hard making friends at my age. It’s an art really. The type of art I have really never possessed in sufficient quantities… because I don’t do acquaintances. I do… “I’ll save your life if you’re in a raging river”… types of friends. I would do anything for them and they would do just about anything for me. These are the plunging off a cliff, Thelma and Louise, kinds of friends. Frankly, there are not a lot of people I want to risk my life for or go down with at my age. But I am still willing to try to find those kinds of inspiring and fun people and offer them all that I have to give… which is quite a lot.
There are other reasons I find making friends difficult. Sometimes when you have special needs children with challenges it makes it difficult to make friends. Most people have no clue of all the things you have to do to make your life work. They don’t understand when you have to cancel at the last-minute because of a major meltdown that is occurring ten minutes before you are supposed to meet. And being around others whose children also have challenges can be draining for both people because it seems as if too often you are both drowning at once and just holding on by the thinnest of branches. While things have improved in my household sometimes I feel like past behaviors hold me back because I am unsure when those issues will rear their ugly heads again. It makes me afraid to risk “those” looks and “those” whispers from someone I thought was special only to find that they really aren’t. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t how my sons with autism feel.
There is also the issue that most women’s lives are so full that they barely have time for the friends they currently have much less making time for someone new in their lives. With old friends you know what you have and how to relate. Most people just don’t have the energy to figure out the quirks of a stranger. And I get all of this. I truly do. But damn, it just means that so many of us are missing out on something that is so good.
But really, I don’t want a lot of friends. I just want a small group of coffee klatching Thursday morning women to hang with. Some 40-60 something gals who won’t try to convert me. Won’t try to change me. And will love me despite all my idiosyncracies.
With all the lonely people out there you would think it wouldn’t be that hard to find but it is. Which makes me thankful for all that I do have in my life. Yet, I am greedy and I want more. Much, much more.