Fog. Clouds. That's all I could see around me.
It's 4 days since D-Day. It's Thursday. He just told me the night before that he was, "done." That it had been over for years. He felt no connection with me. He can't talk to me. He doesn't know what to say. He swears on everything holy that they are no longer talking. He thinks he did a good thing by taking off his ring when he went to see her.
I can't help but not only play back the timeline of the past 11 days of their affair, but when he continues to tell me how the marriage has been over for him for years? I play that timeline too...
I think about family trips, the hobbies we have all gotten into. I think about all the milestones the kids hit that we celebrated as a family. I think about hiking together, geocaching, mountain climbing, the million miles of cycling him and I have done together. I think about getting home from a long cycling trip with him, stripping off our cycling clothes, and just diving into the pool to cool off... and how each of those times we would end up fucking. All those memories, happy I thought, crash in on me when he tells me he has been done for years. The memories we made with each other, the memories we made as a family of five. I am not registering or comprehending at all that he has been done 'for years.'
But he and his whore? I'm digging hard by now. I want all details. I want to know when, where, why. At this point, I've dug into her as much as I can. I have looked her up on facebook, I've googled her name. I think I know as much as I need to.
She is already The Whore to me. I will not say her name, and I'm when talking to him, she is referred to only as that.
I know by this time that he went to her place of business out of the blue for lunch on the 10th of September. "Did you call her before showing up?" "No." he says. "So, you decide to just go visit her, take off your ring, go in, eat lunch?" "Pretty much, I think we went to a place nearby her work to eat that first day." I flipped out a little over that. "YOU BOUGHT THE WHORE LUNCH?" "No, I bought mine, she bought hers."
Then he goes again the next day, Friday, and he takes off his ring, takes in his lunch and they eat in her whore office. He plays in a band, and that night they had a gig. I asked if she went. He said, "No. She's never seen us play." Good. That's my man... I've been watching and listening to him play for 25 years. Fuck her.
Then comes the Tuesday that I know he went to her house. The Tuesday that I could see on her facebook page how excited she was to be going home early. I wonder why she needed to go home early... fix herself up for a married man?
I remembered that night very well. I remember that Tuesday now, 9 months later... I remember he showered, shaved. I remember his clothes looked very nice. I remember he smelled amazing walking through the living room. I remember him putting his guitar down by the door, and going upstairs into the bedroom for something. I remember when he came down, picked up his guitar, he stood there holding it for a second looking at me. I told him "Bye. See you when you get home." I reminded him that he had to pick up our son at his girlfriends house at 9. It was 6pm when he walked out the door. He did go to band practice, but not for long. He left after only about 30 minutes and went to the whores house.
I remember making a mental note at the time, when he was leaving, about how he was dressed, showered and shaved to go band practice. It wasn't usual behavior. But I brushed it off, and just smiled at my crazy thoughts, and just enjoyed the scent of him still lingering in the living room, and the fact that I enjoyed looking at him looking so good.
Now here we are, just barely over a week later, and my world will never be the same. Now here I am, 9 months later, and I've discovered the word, "trigger". Band practice is a trigger to this day. It pisses me off. I would never tell him he had to stop the band, that's not where I'm going with this, it's just one of the many triggers that send me backwards. I hate triggers, they make me feel weak, and they piss me off. I love his band. I love the guys, I love their music, and the pride I have for all of them, my husband most of all, is huge. But... it's a trigger. Getting easier, but still there all the same.
I asked him again, "Did you fuck her that night?" "No, I swear." "Did you kiss her??" His face changed a little, and I knew the answer. But he said, "No, I swear." The conversation begins to change and switch to us. We start heading to how I'm the worst wife on the planet. The lack of sex. The lost connection. The lost feeling of being in love. The lost this, the lost that. And how I'm the one that caused all the loss. I look at him, and say, "But the kids? My lost connection with you is a result of our children. My whole world is wrapped up in them and all their activities, and all their lives. I can see how we have lost each other, but what would you have me do?" We really tear this particular issue down to bare bones over the next few months. We both realize how much our lives revolved around their schedules.
We both came from difficult childhoods. I think, I KNOW, we are over compensating that with our children.
But I refuse to be put down because I made them first in my life. I'm their mother, I don't think I'm the first woman in the history of the human race to put her kids first.
But he does. He tears me to pieces. He rips off a piece, shows me how horrible I was, and throws it to the ground. He doesn't care. He is tearing me apart on what a bad wife I am to him. He says I don't support him, I don't have enough sex with him, I don't do this, I don't do that. Just to put it out there... this same conversation goes on for months, almost daily. About how bad I was in this relationship. I had to take it. I took it a lot. I listened, I let him rant on about me. I took it. If I tried to defend anything I did, or give a reason to something he tore me apart about, he would throw his hands up and say, "See, you don't listen. You never let me talk." I would say, "But you are upset with something I did, I get the right to explain to you.." He would just snap back with, "Whatever."
The lack of sex issue is big. He throws that one at me constantly, and I throw it back in defense. At this point, it's been about 7 months since it took a dive. As I wrote in the days after D-Day, there were a lot of factors that led to the decline of our life in bed. His depression over the foreclosure, the working on the farmhouse, the heart attack of his brother, and the biggest one... the fact that he would not put that fucking iPhone game down, and I went to bed every single night alone.
He would blame me for not connecting with him. I would ask him, "What did YOU do to connect with ME?" and he would tear me apart with answers like, "Nothing. Because I was not inspired to do so."
I would say, "But remember the time I wanted to go away for the weekend, but I couldn't get you to say yes or no about it?" he would reply, "Because if I didn't plan it, it wouldn't happen. You never do anything."
He would throw that one at me a lot. I was pretty dumbfounded at that, and still am. Because I did not know he felt like that. I would try to explain why I always went to him with ideas, or suggestions instead of just planning it and doing it.
To me, it's rejection. I have an issue with it, it stems from my own fucked up childhood. So when I would go to him, and ask if he wanted to go here, or there... I was in a state of mind of, "What if he doesn't want to go there, I want him to be happy when we go there, and if he hates my idea, he won't be happy, what if he becomes resentful that we are in a place he doesn't want to be, and starts being an ass because he hates where I picked..." THIS is my fucked up train of thought, it's ridiculous, and it's always been the way I am, I'm not really sure how to fix it.
I just want the people around me to be happy. No matter what we are doing, I look at it like THEY are the one that picked what we are doing, so therefore, they are happy, and now so am I. I guess that makes me a people pleaser? I don't know.. all I know is, I have this need to make sure people are happy around me. I guess I screwed up by not making sure he was one of the people around me that should have been happy.
I try to explain this to him, and he just says, "You're fucked up and crazy."
He calls me crazy a lot. He will spend the next 7 or so months from this point on saying I'm crazy, I'm psycho. I'm a horrible wife. He even puts my parenting down. He puts down how I am with family friends...He puts down just about every single thing about me.
Somehow, through this tearing of me down, I'm still standing. On some level, under that shock and pain of this whole fucking thing, I'm understanding that this man is tearing me to pieces to justify what he did. He's justifying why he went to another woman. He's putting the blame on me, because that makes what he did sit a little better in his own soul.
Somewhere, I know this. But it's hard to reach and hold onto under the barrage of blaming ME for HIS actions. I just know it's there.
At this point, and for the months ahead, I'm standing.. but barely. I look forward, never down. To look down is to see the shattered pieces of myself all around my feet.
He's completely torn me apart.
I do not know him. I do not know this man who is hurting me, who is destroying me. He is cruel, mean and not the man I have known for the past 25 years.
