The Statement

"I don't think he knew just how much you loved him until he left.  And then, once he realized it...it was too late."  

That is what my therapist told me at my last and final meeting with her.  I didn't show him how much I loved him.  I didn't think I needed to.  I thought everything else I did and all the sticking around I did through the crap in our marriage was enough for him to know how deeply and unconditionally I loved him. 

Grief

I went into the main bathroom yesterday to wipe down counters and do my usual OCD cleaning of everything and I happened to open the medicine cabinet which I don't think I have opened since we lived in this house.  Inside I found a variety of men's travel size products.  There were little deodorants, body wash, shaving cream, tooth paste.  Why I never thought to look in that cabinet before for clues to his affair I have no idea, but there it was in plain sight.  Even when he was still living here, he was going there to see her.  He needed to have the travel size items for the airplane.  How did I miss that?

I always thought that I'd never be stupid enough to let my husband get away with an affair.  But, when you trust someone and they have always been good to you a person doesn't think that they would cheat on them.  At least I never did.  But, it happened and I live daily with the questions as to why me.  Why us? Why our family?

This weekend I went out with my friend Blue.  I drank too much and (bless his heart) he was exposed to just how heavily a person can cry and the depths of hurt, depression and anger I feel toward this situation.  Sometimes when I cry I am conscious of just how big my tears are and while sitting on the couch with Blue I had my head down and I felt these huge gigantic tears not slip down my cheeks, but just fall from my eyes. 

I cry a lot.  Most days, in fact.  I just kind of allow myself to get it out and sometimes it's in the presence of someone and sometimes I am alone.  Usually I just find myself crying alone.  But, I'm lucky that I have Blue and Mrs. Blue down here to be physically present almost every day to occupy my time, to talk to me about this situation or to just listen.  I feel like I am a burden on my friends though.  I feel like I am too much to handle sometimes.  I wonder if my friend was in this situation and sad for as long as I have been sad, would I have the patience to continue to be there for them?

I wouldn't blame anyone if they stopped talking to me right now.  I am still a pathetic mess even almost five months after he admitted to his affair and left our family.  But, things keep happening that set me back.  Now, this skank is living down here with him.  She ravaged my family and stole my husband away and now has moved down to the place where we were supposed to be living out our dream.  For five years we worked hard to have what we have.  We left our families and it was just the five of us:  a team!  We figured it out together.  Now, he has her living down here.  He wants our Marble's go to there and play family with him, the skank and her bastard children.  He wasn't strong enough to resist it.  And now my life and my Marble's life have been flipped upside down.

Am I going to be ok?  I don't know.  People keep telling me I'm strong but I don't see it right now.  I just look to my friend who has been down this road and I listen to her and try to take her advice because she is strong.  I want to be happy again.  Really truly happy.  Like I was last year at this time.  I just want to be at peace.

Possibilities

I guess at some point it is possible to think I will be able to go longer than a day without crying.  I didn't cry today.  That's not to say that I didn't feel like I was going to but it seems like I have talked about this divorce enough that emotions don't come rushing through me like they might have just a few months ago.

It's not getting any easier.  In fact, it's pretty much still the same.  He is moving his girlfriend down here this weekend and I can't for the life of me understand why.  I still reflect back on the 14 years that I spent with him and nothing would have ever indicted to me that he would go and do this.  Nothing ever.  I feel like he drove this huge machete into my heart and is constantly twisting it over and over with each fucked up action that he does.

But, I am trying to find my peace.  I am trying to be ok with being home alone and doing absolutely nothing.  There are things that I found that I am good at and things that require me to call on one of my male friends to help me with.  My heart is a gaping wound right now and the first hint of someone being nice to me I want to jump into their arms and beg them to hug me.

I returned back to Florida from a trip up to Michigan.  Being up there made me miss everything.  My family.  My friends.  The scenery.  But, the memories are everywhere.  It didn't matter where I went each city, highway, store, restaurant had a memory. 

I drove by the store where he met me on our first date.  He thought that it would be too confusing for me to navigate my way to his house so he met me at a little liquor store and drove up on his Harley and had me follow him back to his house.  I got choked up passing that store.  Then there was the street where we got married.  The place where we had our reception.  I remember taking my hoop skirt off and giving it to him at the end of the night on our wedding night and he was so drunk he threw it in the dumpster.  There was the hospital where I had the Marble's and the restaurant in Waterford where we'd get nacho's that were gigantic.  It was hard going back and being there among all the memories knowing there will never be an us anymore.  And, what is left of us is filled with hurt, anger and hostility. 

I haven't moved on.  Maybe I have but if so, I don't know what that feels like.  I still feel as sad and heart broken as I did when he walked out in February.  I have so many questions and no answers.  I probably will never have the answers to my questions.

Ever.

Change

I don't feel the suns comin' out today
its staying in, its gonna find another way.
As I sit here in this misery, I don't
think I'll ever see the sun from here.

And oh as I fade away,
they'll all look at me and say, and they'll say,
Hey look at him! I'll never live that way.
But that's okay
they're just afraid to change.

When you feel your life ain't worth living
you've got to stand up and
take a look around you then a look way up to the sky.
And when your deepest thoughts are broken,
keep on dreaming boy, cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die.

And as we all play parts of tomorrow,
some ways will work and other ways we'll play.
But I know we all can't stay here forever,
so I want to write my words on the face of today.
and then they'll paint it

And oh as I fade away,
they'll all look at me and they'll say,
Hey look at him and where he is these days.
When life is hard, you have to change.

Part 2 of Online Article

It doesn't matter who leaves the marriage, the wife or the husband, the person left behind to deal with the betrayal experiences a hellish nightmare


Being demonized will produce feelings of shock and dismay. They will question their own sanity and replay their marriage in their mind trying to find some hint of all the unhappiness they are told of. They will question how their spouse, someone they have loved and trusted could betray them in such a way. First to have an affair and then to rewrite the history of their marriage in such a way as to try and lay blame at their feet.

They will wonder how their spouse could not only blame them for having to have an affair but also how they could defame their character after many years of being given love, respect and trust. They will wonder how their spouse cannot see how their words and blaming does damage to the children by depicting their mother in a bad light.

Someone needs to give him this article.

The faithful spouse will question her own memories of what they thought were years and years of a happy marriage. He/She will wonder if the marriage was never anything but a sham and a figment of their imagination. They will wonder why the unfaithful spouse never complained if they were really that unhappy or why they never made a request for changes in the relationship. Being punished for your spouse's misery is a mind-boggling state to find yourself in.

It's absolute hell!!!!

 

If all this isn't bad enough the unfaithful spouse now demands that their partner accept this other man or other woman and rejoice in their well-deserved happiness. They also expect their spouse to encourage the children to embrace and love this new person and welcome her into the fold…so to speak.

Just reading such a scenario is painful, imagine actually living it? If you are reading this article you may be living it yourself at this moment. It is a crazy making time isn't it? Such severe distortions of what the marriage was actually like can cause the left behind spouse to question their sanity and every action they take. Recovery from such a profound emotional trauma is slow.

What can a left behind spouse do under circumstances like these?

Most importantly they can realize that all the distortions have nothing to do with them and everything to do with the leaving spouse and their need to justify their actions.

Understand that these distortions and negative behaviors are your partner's way of dealing with their guilt. It's his/her perceptions that are wrong and not yours.

Surround yourself with a support group that can affirm your view of what your marriage was and that the distortions you are being fed are for your partner's self-exoneration. Surround yourself daily with people who love and care for you.

Remember that every parent earns his or her separate relationship with the children of the marriage. Children will ultimately process these events appropriately and make their own choices and come to their own conclusions based on their memories and moral beliefs.

This nightmare will end!! With time, healing does come and you will laugh again and love again and the sun will shine again; All you have to do to survive is trust your memories and never forget that, this insanity is not of your making.

Was This Article Written About My Divorce?

I found an article online that pretty much touched on exactly what I am going through.

When a third party enters a marriage and a spouse in that marriage becomes romantically involved with this person certain psychological things start to happen in the mind of the unfaithful spouse in order to justify their actions.

At first they lavish in the attention and feel energized by the adoration of someone new. In time they begin to compare their feelings for their spouse with those they have for this new person. If a decision is made the break up the marriage and move onto a life with this new person several psychological stages will be gone through which only exacerbate the pain of this type of divorce.

A third party entered our marriage and I was compared to her in ways from how I act socially to that I don't like to do outdoor activities or drink beer.

It makes me feel like for the 14 years we were together I was useless.

  Normally a spouse who falls prey to infidelity is a decent person that is aware of their behavior and how it is frowned upon by society. 

 so basically this means he knew what he was doing when he started the affair.

Even though they are aware of the immorality of their actions they continue with the relationship, which means dealing with feelings of guilt. These feelings of guilt motivate to demonize the faithful spouse in an attempt to justify their behavior. They will attribute many negative and unforgivable traits and behaviors. The faithful spouse may be portrayed as an inadequate wife and mother and even accused of being evil.

Wow.  This is like a daily thing for me.  If he isn't saying what a shitty wife I was then he is running his mouth about me being a shitty mom.  He is always telling me how everything was my fault and that I pretty much pushed him into the arms of this other woman who lives in Michigan.

 Not only will the faithful spouse be demonized, history will be rewritten to make it appear that he/she has been faulty for the entire duration of the marriage. The unfaithful spouse will recreate the marriage and what happened during the marriage to make it appear that they have suffered much pain and unhappiness throughout the entire marriage. They may say things such as, "I was forced into marrying you" or, "You've never loved me the way I needed to be loved" or, "I have lived in hell for 20 years." He/She will say anything as long as it will enable him/her to appear to have been the victim of the marriage and fully justified in abandoning the family.

Yup.  That's him.  I love the line that he hasn't been happy for six months.  No wait!  One year.  No, no... last week it was two years.  It keeps getting longer.

 

The unfaithful spouse will tell their story often and to anyone who will listen, to the point that they will finally begin to truly believe that the left behind spouse deserves to be punished. The faithful spouse is the offender and the persecutor and needs to be dealt with harshly. Punishment will come in the way of financial withholding or, even worse, fighting over custody for any children of the marriage. They may begin to believe that the faithful, demonized spouse is not entitled to receive any future benefits from them, sometimes not even those allowed by law. In many cases the children will be used as tools to punish the faithful spouse, which leads to bitterness and emotional detriment to the children.

Wow.  He's doing that too!

The unfaithful spouse will expect the left behind spouse to accept their new life and to even be happy for them. They want the faithful spouse to take full blame for their need to escape an "unhappy marriage." In their mind, for this to be done properly the left behind spouse should also accept the other man or woman and make peace with them. Since the left behind spouse does not share any of these views with the unfaithful spouse, he/she is often unwilling to embrace and bestow their well wishes on this new life. If you have been a party to this type of divorce or know someone who has you are well aware of the emotional turmoil that takes place.

It's true.  Such bullshit but it's happening to me!!!!

The second part of the article deals more with what the faithful spouse goes through ....... that will be in part 2.