Why did I need to know?

The folks over at emotionalaffairjourney.org asked the question in their blog about why do spouses need to know details about their significant other’s affair?  Does it help or not?  For me, I wanted to know as much as possible at first – every single detail of every conversation.  I wanted to know how you go from “Hi, it’s been 22 years, how’s it going” to “we should meet up sometime”.  I pictured myself doing all the mundane tasks of raising my kids and taking care of my home, while they were on the phone talking about how they wanted to get away from it all.  I don’t think she was taking care of her kids needs when she was flirting with my husband and I don’t think his life was all that bad working out of state not having to be the one displining, feeding, transporting and parenting our kids, with hotel maid service provided and every meal eaten out.   What I was searching for was vindication. I know that the other person only wants to show your spouse their wonderful side and what I wanted was for him to realize that it was a fantasy that they created and not what real love is all about. Not sure if I succeeded in that, but marriage counseling did help at first because she made my husband realize that he needs to answer any questions I have when I have them for as long as I need to ask them, even if he’s answered them a hundred times before. She really made him realize very quickly how dysfunctional his relationship was with this woman and how dysfunctional this woman was. My spouse doesn’t always want to continue to talk about it. To him it’s over and done and in the past where he’d like to leave it because he doesn’t want to hurt me again, but for the betrayed there’s no such as “being hurt again”. The hurt is always there and will always be there, it’s how we choose to live with it that makes it better or worse.

I’ve come to the realization that I will never know all the details of their relationship. I will never know every conversation, text or email they shared, and some days that’s a hard pill to swallow. Other days I remind myself that it doesn’t matter, it’s over and done and all it really was was a fantasy that they created and something that could never compare with the love that a husband and wife share as they journey through life and raise a family together. When I see old people out and about holding hands and helping each other walk, I think that is the most beautiful thing and that is what true love is all about – not some fantasy of the perfect companion, but someone who will be there to take care of you as time takes it toll on our bodies. It’s not always pretty and fun, and sometimes you just can’t seem to agree and don’t feel fulfilled.  But, when you make a commitment to love, honor and cherish someone for life, DO IT!   I don’t know, maybe that’s just my fantasy, but that’s what I’m working towards – a lasting love, one that’s real and true. That’s something the other woman could never be.

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Therapy – the good, the bad and the ugly

Therapy is a route many of us cheated upons choose.  For me, it was eye opening at first.  The therapist truly made my husband see that this woman that he felt so sorry for was quite the manipulator and was using him.  She put it much nicer than I would have in my “bitch got what she deserved” mentality, but it helped me that someone was able to make him see how truly messed up she was.  Coming from me it was just the jealous wife who didn’t understand her situation.  Truth is I understood her situation completely.  See, no one contacts someone after twenty years unless they want something from you.  Believe me, I had felt unfulfilled and unappreciated in my marriage for years and had often thought about what if – what if I had ended up with someone else that I had dated.  And naturally I wondered what had happened to them after all these years, and had even searched Facebook to see if I could find them.  Big difference here is that I would have never contacted them, because there’s a line you just don’t cross as long as you have a ring on your finger and that line was there for me.   The excuse she used was that she just wanted to apologize for the way she treated him when they dated over 20 years ago.  Uh-huh right.  That right there tells me that she manipulated him before and wanted to see if she could do it again.  And BINGO, she could.  Didn’t take a therapist to figure that out for me, but it did take one to make him understand it.  What it did take therapy for me to understand, was that this was a horrible, awful thing that happened that was not my fault.  Granted, I was at fault for letting my marriage get to the point that neither one of us was acting as if the needs of our spouse mattered, but it was NOT MY FAULT that my husband betrayed me.  That was all him and his issues, and though I can’t force someone to face their own demons, when you get defensive every time its brought up, that tells me you have some things you should probably own up to and work on.  If you don’t want to do that, it’s all on you.  That is not to say that we don’t continue to work on our marriage, but I still feel there were some underlying issues that made my husband think it was ok to screw me over and never let on that he wanted out of our marriage.  But let’s just say that I understand how things growing up and a culture play a huge role in who you are and that might now be something that can never be changed.  Instead of pushing the issue about how I felt he needed therapy, I concentrated on working on me and my self esteem issues and insecurities.  I finally let therapy go, both couple sessions as well as my own sessions as I didn’t see any clear plan on getting me out of therapy – sometimes you have to go through several counselors until you find one that isn’t all about the money and keeping you coming back indefinitely.  Therapy should in most cases be a relatively short-term event with clear steps to get you where you want to be.   I’ve taken ahold of my own therapy and reading blogs and books is helpful, but blogs and books about affairs sometimes hold you back. I prefer positive thoughts and thinking as I think that is most helpful to get me to stop dwelling on things I cannot change and start dwelling on what makes me happy and fulfilled.  It’s amazing how much easier it is to make someone happy when you yourself feel happy, when you feel like no matter what you have to say you will say it instead of keeping it inside.   Luckily happiness for me has included continuing to be married.  I’ve learned I cannot make any promises other than to say I’ll give it my best.  I know that if an issue like this ever comes up again, I will no longer be interested in working it out – that will be his issue and something he will have to figure out alone.  I know that whatever happens, I will be happy, because that is what I choose to be.   And that is some GOOD THERAPY!

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Depression hurts

Norman Vincent Peale wrote, “The secret of life isn’t what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.”  I tend to talk alot about the power of positive thinking on this blog, mostly because that’s what I struggle with the most.  I constantly search out positive thinking inspiration and read as many powerful quotes on the subject as I can, yet almost daily the voices in my head try to let the memories of what has happened overcome me – and some days the sadness that anything like this could happen in my marriage and the anger that some woman thought she could come into our lives and wreck havoc and that my husband gave her the green flag and invited her in, well, it just brings back the hurt all over again.  They say that the side effects of going through an affair, emotional or otherwise, are anger, depression, and low self-esteem.  Check, check and check.  Got’em all.  But how do I get rid of them?  Can I take a pill to make me a stronger person that isn’t constantly dwelling on the past?  I hide it well, no one knows what I think and what I feel, just me and the sobbing person inside me know the truth.  And I guess that’s why I try to seek out as much positive information as I can.  Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.  Sometimes I realize what an emotional basketcase this whole thing has turned me into and I hardly recognize the needy, scared little girl in the mirror.  Other times I become very determined that I will survive (insert Gloria Gaynor song here) and become a stronger, more confident version of myself.  That’s my vision board, my goal.  So, I’m going to pick myself up and be that person for some portion of my day today, until finally it becomes my reality.

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Weekend Report

Our weekend together with my family went well.  It ended abruptly as we decided to drive up and visit our son in college since his game had been cancelled and he wouldn’t be coming to the same city to play after all.  I didn’t really want to leave as I hadn’t seen my family in awhile but I knew that my husband wanted to see our son and since he would be going back to his out of state job in a few days, he wouldn’t get an opportunity to see him until summer.  So I sucked it up and said I would do whatever he wanted to do.  His visit this time ended well, he showed the utmost respect and kindness for me and I really felt appreciated.  There were times that I could not stop thinking about how this man in front of me was so deceitful to me just a few months ago.  It still seems so unreal.  I still find myself wanting to verbally bash the bitch in front of him, but I refrain.  Sorry if I use this blog for that too much, but it is a constant struggle to not let her invade my thoughts.  It’s easier I think for guys to move on.  They don’t want to have to deal with the pain so they put it behind them and move on.  Women are made different I think and although I don’t want to become a stereotypical jilted wife, there are times when I give in to reliving the pain, but I’m working on it.  I know that my thoughts are powerful and when I think about the great relationship with my husband now, it is possible to block HER out of the equation, and that is exactly where she belongs.

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Moral compass

We, the cheated upon, do not usually have any kind thoughts about the other person – and rightfully so.  They were willing to destroy a family and were willing to betray those that love them too.  As for me, I will never see this person is any light other than that of a manipulator.  And I think that is important to understand.  Many of the “other people” are very dysfunctional and used our spouse to fulfill the plan they have devised in their minds.  The other woman in my case was going around to all of her friends telling them that she was involved with my husband and that she was “helping” him with his marital problems, which is funny because I had no clue that we had any marital problems.  I truly believe she thought she was doing him a favor because that was what her mind wanted it to be.  And to her friends, what kind of friend accepts that kind of behavior?  If my friend came to me telling me that she was sneaking around with a married man because he had marital problems too and there might be a future there, I would have said “shame on you”.  Leave him alone.  Let him decide what is best for him and not be influenced by your advice and input. I guess we all just have our own moral standard, some higher than others.

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One size fits all?

I don’t think that there’s any one answer on how to deal with finding out about a spouse turning to another person for comfort and companionship.  It hurts like hell and every person has to make their own choice on whether or not it is in their best interest to remain in the relationship and whether or not the relationship could even be salvaged.  My story is different than most, because in my case the other woman is no longer living, and I don’t have to deal with her ever coming back into our lives – and just in case you’re wondering, it had nothing to do with me or my spouse.  She and her spouse had a very dysfunctional relationship that tragically ended in a murder/suicide.  Another reason that I don’t think my husband truly saw her for the person that she was.  She was a master manipulator and she placed people in her life for her own purposes.  I don’t know what purpose my husband fulfilled, though I assume she saw in him what she did not have in own husband and chose to use him to make him jealous and/or to torture him.  I don’t know but my therapist has certainly made me see how dangerous their relationship was and she even feels that if it had continued it would have caused serious psychological damage to my husband and quite possibly could have caused him his life. While her death was tragic, I would be lying if I said that I am not glad that she is not in our lives; she was an evil, sinister person and was able to hide that very well from her family and friends.  It almost killed me to read what people wrote about her after her death, they were truly deceived.    Anyway, my point is that we all have are own stories.  They are all different, but what they all share is that a person made a choice that will forever have consequences.  The choice is yours in how you plan on dealing with these consequences.  I know for me it was a matter of tearing down walls I had built for years.  By no means do I accept sole responsibility for why this happened, but I see the changes I need to make in me FOR ME.  In doing that, I am becoming a stronger, confident person.  I realize that the choice is mine in whether or not I stay in this marriage and I realize that I can only expect to get out of it what I am willing to put into it.  Sometimes its scary because you don’t want to take the chance of being hurt again.  But other times it feels so completely freeing to be able to leap off the cliff and realize that whatever happens, I will find a way to deal with it.  Putting positive thoughts out there really does help bring those positive feelings back to you.  Doing things that make me feel good and that better me have really helped too.  I accept that I will still have days that I will wallow in self-pity, but those days are becoming farther apart.  Time will not heal this wound, there will always be a scar.  But, like wrinkles, I’ve earned this scar  and it has made me who I am today.  I hope you all find what works for YOU!

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