Tag: Infidelity

The Important Becomes the Necessary.

We go along and live life. Seems like nearly everyone I know never has enough time to….to….we each can fill in that blank with the things we never have enough time to…as we juggle all that we have to do.

juggling

Meanwhile, we spend our days doing the Necessary while wishing we could spend our days doing the Important. We do work and do carpool and do grocery shopping and do meals and do homework and do and do and do. We convince ourselves that tomorrow, TOMORROW, we will have a special conversation with our friend, or make the phone call to our family member, curl up – no agenda – with our child, read a book just to read a book, or set aside time to really work out touchy issues with our spouse rather than just gloss over them with unfinished sentences or frustrated actions.

Yet the darkness falls on the day and we finish up all those Necessary things and before we know it, another day has passed without demanding the space in our lives for the Important…but…tomorrow…

sleepless

Yet in One Moment, sometimes life changes that.

The One Moment when the phone rings and the voice on the other end is speaking words that you hear but don’t really understand yet you move into action as you grab your phone and your purse and your car keys and holler at those around you that your child has been in an accident and you’re leaving (work/home/church/friend/family member) right then and you’re not sure when you will be back, leaving WHATEVER Necessary behind undone for however long – hours. Days. Weeks.

The One Moment when the hospice nurse says the time is imminent for your beloved parent to die and suddenly there is nowhere and nothing else that can pry you away from the bedside even though the imminence turns into one day and a second day and a third day and a fourth day and Necessary somehow gets forgotten.

The One Moment when I found a letter from HUSBAND’s lover that revealed my life was not really my life and that there was a whole different life being lived alongside the life I thought I was living, right there, in my home, in my bed. The world stopped and suddenly I couldn’t even remember Necessary.

I stopped right then. Right there.

That One Moment, without me even seeing it or figuring it out or making plans, the Important became the Necessary. I have no idea how, but in that One Moment, taking care of me and my precious children and dealing with the shattered life and HUSBAND were all that mattered, and all that I saw or did. Those things that I would always get to tomorrow became the ONLY THING that I would get to today.

I had no idea prior to that One Moment that the next days and weeks and months of my life would be filled with counseling sessions and intensives and Marriage Weekends. I never imagined the days would include long sessions of holding children and sharing newfound truths and putting pieces together. I had no idea that the rest of my life would include support groups and daily readings and coaching sessions.

In One Moment, everything I knew about my life past and life future changed including how I measured Necessary and Important.

I would have told you no way. NO WAY did I have any interest, or even if I did, the TIME to make the Important the Necessary. Honestly, I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you some of the Important that WAS Important because I had so convinced myself that I could NOT pay attention to it so I buried it under the Necessary. But I did. I DID.

I like that the Important has become the Necessary, now. I like that the heart of those I love is more essential in my world than the dust bunnies in my living room. I like that the soul of my family is more prioritized than the meeting that I actually can skip since I realize there are other voices that can carry a message – sometimes better than I had perceived my message was to be. I like that HUSBAND and his spirit take precedence over being on another committee or heading up another project – even if it is a good political move for my business. And somehow, now that it has all switched around, the Necessary usually gets done anyway, although I could never see the way before. It’s a puzzle, but one I am okay not fully understanding.

For me, life determining the Important was really now the Necessary…it was shocking and painful and blindsiding…but perhaps it ultimately created a better path for the future I wanted.

Path

The Squirrel. God. Me.

Ten years ago, my youngest son was playing outside in our back yard. Suddenly he was at my side excitedly working to get my attention. Follow me, mama…you need to see something…

We went out back, and he held my hand, pulling me to a corner where our off-grade house foundation came together. There was a tiny squirrel, squawking and pressing his little body into the structure as best he could, obviously terribly disturbed by the presence of looming and large humans.

Mom…we need to save him…can we, mom?

I went inside and got sturdy leather gloves and a shoe box with a lid…and we got the poor, scared little critter. Immediately I went to my trusty source of all information, google, and quickly read about the likelihood of the age of the little squirrel, how/what to feed him, how/what to put in his enclosure to help him feel safe and secure, how/what to help him potty…

My precious boy didn’t leave my side…helped to scald the milk…said soothing and comforting things to the scared little squirrel…found all the items we needed and put them in a big box…filled the syringe with the milk…and quickly calmed the squirrel to the point that he could hold him and feed him.

Babysquirreleating3

Meanwhile I went back to google where I learned tons about wild, abandoned squirrels in no time at all. I found squirrel rescue sites and read their advice and information, and learned about the potential of re-releasing this little guy back in the wild after he was old enough. My son was completely captivated, and the squirrel seemed content to curl up in a nook or cranny of his body and sleep.

It was really sweet.

This went on for four days, with all of the family enjoying the antics of the baby squirrel and regularly talking about how and when we would release him. We each enjoyed holding him and feeding him, but it was the youngest son who adopted him for his own.

Until day four.

Day four, the baby squirrel was obviously not feeling as perky. He barely ate, he just wanted to stay curled up, and my mama heart knew we were in trouble. I went back to google, and frantically searched for some answer, some resource. I emailed several of the rescuers and tried calling a few more, leaving messages. Meanwhile, the baby squirrel was failing fast, and I held him, frantically willing him to continue living. I ended up in my living room where I have four large windows, two which look out into our back yard. Tears began to stream down my face…and I began to pray…no…PRAY…God…please God…please save this baby…I know, I know you have thousands of squirrels out there, and I know, squirrels don’t live that long anyway…but I am asking you to save this squirrel…God please save this squirrel…

Before I knew it, I was sobbing, and from deep within came this.

God…You are supposed to love us, not just “us” but me…God, please…please let me know that you hear ME…that you love ME…please God…save this squirrel…please let me know that you care at all about ME…

DesperateWoman

The squirrel died.

HUSBAND had come into the living room midway through my begging. He had stood by me, put his arms on my shoulder. I begged him to pray, too, and have a vague memory of him doing so in some stilted fashion. But even with him there, I was alone. I was alone with him, and I was alone with God. We were there, the three of us, but we were there.                    And there.                     And there.

Alone-RobinWilliams

A little of me died that day too. As the story of my life unfolds, however, it ended up not being the end of the story. In a very odd way, it was the start.

 

 

Better Plans

When I was a young teen, my father was a professor at the University of Colorado for a couple of years. We lived in the amazing, green-belt-wrapped town/city of Boulder, tucked neatly into the valley with the beautiful Rockies looming to the west, and foothills part of the landscape.

There were strong winds that swept down over Boulder off this eastern slope of the mountains. Winds that were called the chinook – after the Pacific Native Americans – and, according to the Earth Systems Research Laboratory, are some of the highest peak winds in the entire country. The winds were sometimes strong enough to blow roofs off, down trees and melt a foot of snow in less than an hour. But for the most part, the chinook was something brief and interesting and part of the lore of living in Boulder.

boulderco2

So for Christmas one year, my parents had rented a condo at a ski resort for a week. Believe it or not, the day before we were leaving, it was in the mid-70s in Boulder – a perfect day to lay out in the backyard in my bikini and get a tan. Dad was at work, and mom was running around getting last minute items for the trip, and our house was filled with a crew of 4-5 men painting the living room and dining room. I was on my lounge chair, soaking up the sun and the phone rang…and this was prior to cell phones that are perched by our sides…so I jumped up and ran to the door…a sliding glass door…and grabbed the handle to slide it open with my right hand touching the glass with my left hand…and

CRASH

The entire 72 x 80 inch door shattered with a deafening sound. Shards of glass were there – inside the door and outside the door and sticking out of various places on my body.

slidingdoor

I was stunned, shocked, completely confused how this could have happened. I did not fly into the door with my body weight, or press hard on the door with my left hand. I opened it the same way I always opened it, lightly touching the door with my left finger tips to stabilize the opening procedure while pulling on the handle with my right, yet this time the door lay in little pieces all around me. Then I realized that numerous places on my hands and legs and feet were bleeding…some small spots of blood, but a couple quite vigorously.

I ran into the kitchen (to this day have no idea who was on the phone), turned on the sink, threw my heavily-bleeding-hand under the sink while telling the very-shocked-painters to hand me some paper towels that I pressed onto my worst-bleeding-foot wound with the other foot. They began to sort-of-panic (isn’t that just like men? Sorry, didn’t mean to be sexist, but I guess I really did) and I took the role of calming them down.

So why this story? There was no man involved, no relationship, no HUSBAND or cheating or loving or even family-of-origin stories here.

Right after the door crashed down, everyone (mostly my parents) blamed me. It was surely my teen-crazed desire to answer the phone…I had crashed into the door…I had wrenched the door open with force. I replayed the incident over and over and over in my head while nurturing the physical wounds, and knew this was not so. Eventually, we learned that it was very likely the glass had been weakened and bore cracks and fissures due to the winds…cracks we couldn’t see…cracks that were actually the cause of the shattering which could have happened to anyone.

Some have suggested that for me to go back and examine my marriage may cause more pain, stunt healing or lead to self-blame. For me, on DDAY, I was the glass door. I looked healthy and clear and shiny with no cracks or hints of instability. But it wasn’t true. And as much as I am me, and I am separate from HUSBAND, WHICH I FULLY BELIEVE, because we were married we were also inextricably woven into one in a mystery I cannot fully understand, so any brokenness in him really was brokenness in me. Those crazy chinook winds had blown over and in my life and over and in his life and over and in our life, and left microscopic cracks and fissures and schisms that I glossed over or thought would be better tomorrow or could not see because they were just so small…but then

CRASH

The entire 27 year marriage of HUSBAND and me came crashing down. Shards of my life were strewn across the years and the dreams and the reality of all that I was.

That gaping hole where the door once stood, where the marriage once stood, has to be rebuilt. It could be a single-hung glass, or perhaps a double-pane, but either way if it is going to stand the chinook bearing down again and again as life does, I want to understand how the original construction allowed those cracks and fissures to form. I want to change the plans, to be able to withstand the winds and not be in danger of shattering again, and to do so, I am willing to take apart every bit of the process and rebuild step-by-step with stronger, smarter, better parts. In my case, HUSBAND also wants that for himself, which is what is allowing us to consider remaining married, to work toward a whole marriage which I can see now, we never had before. If he wasn’t willing to invest and to dedicate his heart and mind and being to both going back with brutal honesty, and moving forward with humble bareness, I would be on this journey alone. Because that is what I am doing, and now, we are doing – going back with brutal honesty, and moving forward with humble bareness.

Looking back, for me, is the only way to build forward.

foundation

 

Early Fractures

I married my dream man and couldn’t wait to live the rest of my life with him. And he with me. Our pictures of that night are still magical…with so many friends and neighbors and family gathered around to care for us, to cheer for us, to love us and support us.

What fractures were there in those early days that I was unable to see or to detect? Were there any?

Through digging and digging and digging, HUSBAND and I have found many things now that were little fissures in the outward cover of perfection we wrapped ourselves in.

fissuresandfractures

Things like the reality that HUSBAND invited a woman with whom he had had an indiscriminate sexual relationship with a couple times some years prior…to our wedding. A woman that I did not know, and had asked who she was and why she was on our invitation list. He’d answered me only a partial truth…telling me that she was always present in the mundane as a member of his home-room all years of high school (true) and part of his group of high school friends (true-ish) and of course, no one that he had ever considered dating (okay…he never dated her, but does fucking count)?

Looking back…maybe that was a little crack?

Or possibly it was a fissure that he had given me a pretty PG rated version of his actually XXX rated growing up years, all the way to the weeks immediately prior to our beginning to date, that I accepted fully? It wasn’t until 27 years later and the revealing of his double life that I finally found out he’d always had a double life when it came to me…that the man I thought I’d married was really a shined up version of the man I’d married – regarding his drug past and his sexual past. A fracture?

Then…there was our wedding night. I’m not sure what I expected, but romance definitely figured in there somewhere. After our large wedding in which we spent lots of time shaking hands and hugging necks and dancing and laughing and toasting and drinking ended with us darting out to jump in the back of the limousine, I pictured being wrapped in intimacy, entering our hotel room – the bridal suite of course – scattered with rose petals and candles glowing, perhaps. I anticipated my new husband drinking of the beauty of the moment, and making me feel like I was his perfection in the way he looked and touched and tasted me. Instead, we came into a regular room (why spend money for one night on anything else?) and had rather perfunctory sex and a brief cuddle that resulted in HUSBAND sleeping quickly. I got up, went to the bathroom and filled the tub…got in…and wept. A story I never told anyone until after I discovered HUSBAND betrayed me time and again.

weddingnighttub

Could that have been an early fracture?

 

Another Kind of Weary

The last three weeks have just done me in.

My head is bursting from the devastation of infidelity. Of betrayal and abandonment.

A phone call, a desperate request from a cheating husband to my cheating husband begging me to reach out to his wife. A series of texts from just-recently-married-Daughter, confused about the abandonment of a husband by the wife of dear friends who she esteemed. A different phone call, asking for support for the daughter of a friend who has discovered betrayal by her spouse.

The swath of pain ripples out from the epicenter of the couple…hurting children and families and friends and co-workers.

Many of us keep our truths silent and those around us create their own stories about why our marriages end, or we suddenly lose mass amounts of weight, or appear as if we cannot quite connect because we really cannot quite connect.  And in our silence, our betrayer can, and often does, continue to look like the great person we believed him to be and that he sells himself to be to the world at large.

We carry on…we continue to move through our lives and take our children to school and show up for doctor’s appointments and go to the grocery store. We are literally shattered into millions of pieces but somehow kept together by our skin and as we walk around we wonder how other people don’t look at us and scream and run from our bloody wounds. But they don’t. They don’t see. They don’t know. And our pain goes deeper and deeper and deeper inside.

I cannot believe that less than two years ago, I had no idea this world existed other than rarely and amongst “those people,” not people like me. I’m not sure who “those people” were, but they were not people I knew or walked with or worked with or lived with. Now I know that I am “those people,” and that I was sitting next to them on the school bus headed to a field trip, or in the waiting room at the doctor’s office or in line at the grocery check-out. “Those people” are me and you and them and us and everywhere. They are young and old, newly married and long-time-married. They are faithless and faithfilled and overweight and underweight.

The few people we share with think they get it, and try to help.

They tell us what they would do and how they would respond and how to get better. But it doesn’t help because they don’t know. We didn’t know. We still don’t know. We just keep going to bed and trying to sleep and then waking up and getting out of bed. Each moment we try to figure out if we are doing what we should do but then we realize we don’t know the rules of this game.

So when I get the call and need to support someone else, I am so confused. I am confused by the rush of emotions it quickly brings up in my soul, and by the reality that there is no advice I can give. Only care. Only support. Only faith in that person to be brave and be able to wake up each day and to discover the strength they never knew they had.

The support to the family members who are trying to make sense of it all…this is a new role…and one that I don’t know how to move in. It is heavy for me, and hard for me, and I hope to help them see that there are no rules or must-do’s or have-to-be’s. That they need to give care. And support. And have faith that the person can be brave and able to wake up each day and find strength they never knew they had. They need to keep their advice off the table, and refrain from telling anyone involved in the situation what to do…and just love. Just comfort. Just share themselves and no one else.

I am weary now, not just for my story and recovery, but for so many around. Can we just stop the madness…

Reflecting on Deception

I am awake in the wee hours thinking about a large community event tonight. It is the third year my non-profit is hosting this event…the third year that we have the privilege of engaging with an amazing group of young talent to spread our message…the third year that I will be on stage to thank the leadership and to encourage thousands of youth to choose health & opportunity & freedom.

YOUTHcrowds

Through the years, HUSBAND and my children have always played an important part in events like this, assisting my small staff through volunteering to set up, shoot video & photos and any other way they can help. Three years ago, HUSBAND was fully engaged at this event despite the reality that he was also fully engaged with SW and contemplating ending our marriage and going off into the sunset with her.

That’s what woke me…thinking about the reality that he had so easily deceived me by remaining my helpful partner and doing anything he could to help us pull off a-really-big-event with a really-small-staff. He never showed me a crack in the façade, never let me see that he wished to be anywhere but there with me, doing anything else but helping me, wishing he could be with someone else besides me. He played the role so smoothly of supportive and proud HUSBAND, interacting with friends new and old, acting as if he was excited about the work my non-profit was doing, and honored to be by my side. All an act…all a deception.

I was thinking about him taking pictures that night…being on his phone to post some things to our instagram and then to send some chats to SW. That while I assumed his phone time was all about us it was really a lot about him-about them-when there was a them that wasn’t us.

SecretTexts

It is painful, and hard to remember. It just crops up inside my soul and travels up to my brain sometimes…triggers…thoughts…memories. Memories that looked one way then, but look very different now.

I remember HUSBAND telling me that during his affair with SW, he had attended another event and taken a picture of me while I was speaking. He sent it to her, and she replied back DID YOU JUST SEND ME A PICTURE OF YOUR WIFE? HUSBAND discovered then that the little whore was sensitive – she put him on silence for a few days – to punish him? Nipping at the bubble of the fantasy world she had created in which I didn’t exist appears to have really pissed her off.

This is one of the most wearying parts of affairs and recovery…and I imagine it is hard for the betrayed whether they reconcile or don’t. These moments of remembering the lies, the deception that we were so blissfully unaware of at the time, that now distort the beauty of memories…kind of like a photo that has gotten burned and the image is still there, but the edges are curled up, and a dingy layer covers it all dimming the colors and distorting the original image. That is what memories are like for me from during HUSBAND’s affairs. I want to unfurl the photo…to wipe away the tarnish…but I can’t. It remains ragged and damaged.

So tonight, I will press on. I will press on with my taped-together-heart and my very-sorry-HUSBAND and we will work on making memories that don’t need any revising. One step…forward.

OneStep10

Road to Reality

inlovewithpotentialvreality

Girl met Boy. Fell in love. They bared their souls, dreamed dreams.  Had the wedding, made babies. Did the good and bad of life. Thought they were on a road to grow old together.

And mixed in and out and up and down and through and through were others. Others who caressed Boy’s body and distorted his mind and twisted his thoughts. But Girl didn’t know.

One day…the truth came out and Girl looked at Boy. Who was this Boy that had shared her life but hadn’t really?

This is the short story of a long marriage…nearly 30 years now…

So when I look at our lives together, and I look at his life apart, and I consider the profound healing that has happened in a little less than two years, what I realize is I was in love. I was in love, and stayed the course of love even when the in-love part waned but it was with the potential man, not the real man, because the real man was deeply hidden. He was hidden under piles of lies and shame and hurt-turned-nasty. I never was in love with his reality, because there was no way he was going to let me, or anyone else, see that reality. It was too awful, too flawed, too unlovable. The real man was not willing to be known – even by the man himself – much less his wife, or even his whores.

The shattering of his carefully created self…and my understanding of life for 27 years…was the beginning of going to a place that I never knew existed. I couldn’t know, it had been hidden.

But the place we are now is more than anything I could have written in a fairy tale. Have you ever noticed that all the love stories in print and on screen end with the “and they lived happily ever after…” Our imaginations create beautiful lives of bliss, no-work-or-conflict-and-everything-is-amazing-and-lovely-and-perfect…He always remembers to call, and bring flowers, and write love notes, and tell us we are beautiful, and senses our every need, and treats us with kindness even when we are not-so-kind…

My marriage now? Well…it is reality. Two real, broken people who have become safe for each other in our wretchedness. Two real, broken people who used to take care to never touch in the bed at night, and now never break contact, ever, all night long. Two real, broken people who have no subjects that are off limit, no words that are not allowed, no thoughts that are shunned. Two real, broken people who have learned to dream together, and don’t have to know the end of the story to be determined to write the story. Together.

As painful as it has been, I choose reality.

 

To be loved.

So when you find out you have been betrayed, you are pierced and shattered and devastated. And you know that you know that you aren’t loved, at least in a way that makes any sense.

People that love you couldn’t do this.

People that love you couldn’t have conversations with others that are intimate. They couldn’t share details about you, your life, your children. They couldn’t complain to outsiders…to a lover…about your idiosyncrasies and how often you have sex and how well you received their various moods.

They couldn’t have conditional love that depended on what you did or didn’t do well…a love that was all about meeting responsibilities and obligations.

linebetweenlove

That’s not love.

Right?

So what is love?

I started down a journey in the quest of recovering my soul after discovering the marriage betrayals. I had to find love, and try to figure out if there had been love within my marriage once, where it went, and whether it could be again. HUSBAND was adamant that he had loved me then and now, but if that was love…

I started with my earliest memories. I was loved by my family, by my parents. So what was that love…how did I know I was loved? I began to consider the evidence, try to unwrap what made me know that I’d been loved. First…I was always TOLD I was loved. I thought back, I tried to hear the words…and some of them were difficult:

“NO! YOU CAN’T (GO THERE, HAVE THAT, DO THAT, THINK THAT) BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU, THAT’S WHY.” I remembered those moments, woven in through early childhood all the way to young adult-hood.

I got the proverbial “hmmm…4 As and 1 B…why did you get the B?” I received the “don’t embarrass me” and “I would NEVER…” along with the “take that look off your face” and “I should knock your bloody-block off” (I was not physically abused, ever). I heard the stern words “We do so much for you…you should be GRATEFUL…” I heard my dad, sitting in his recliner after dinner watching tv, saying to me with a true snarl, “How…HOW can you sit in here while your MOTHER cleans up the kitchen?”

But, I was loved. Right?

I thought about several devastating issues through my youth and adolescence and realized I had not gone to my parents, but had sought solutions on my own. I did not trust them to still love me, or love those I loved, if they knew…and I did not dare tell them anything was off as it may cost me their affection. I remembered knowing I had to shape my message to one or both of my parents and time the “ask” of whatever it was I was seeking so I didn’t rock the boat, or irritate them, or flat out make them mad. I remembered asking my father once if he minded if ‘I don’t refer to you as my dad any more’ because I was so hurt by his reaction and response to whatever was going on.

I remembered being told that of all the things I could do wrong, lying was THE WORST, but that I had to keep a family lie and the logic was that it was another family member’s lie and it wasn’t our story to tell.

But I was loved, right?

So what was the evidence, because after those thoughts I couldn’t see the love.

There was always a well-kept home. There was always a well-balanced dinner. My clothes were always washed, dried and folded. I was driven to school and extracurricular activities. I was taken to church and given presents at birthdays and Christmas.

But what I couldn’t remember was either of my parents digging deep to understand my thoughts and feelings. Or asking me what I thought about things of the heart. Or if I had dreams, or fears, or hopes.

So I was loved, right?

Wow. I took my perception and belief that I had been loved as a child and realized that I had been cared for, well. But I hadn’t been loved…L O V E D…because I’d never really even been known. Not me, not the real me with angst and excitement and joy and anxiety and confusion. That little girl, that teen, that young woman had been hidden away neatly.

distortedlove

I realized that I’d not been loved, not in a way that makes any sense.

Kind of like my marriage.

Now with my guts spilled out all over the floor of my life, and this man sitting in front of me saying he loved me, desperately wanting me to believe it, even though he was the one who had done the gutting, I realized I had no idea what love was. All I knew was that for the first time, I was bare…my soul exposed…all of me was there. My fears and hurts and distress and pain were known by the very person who had pierced me.

I could run, I could cover back up and patch up the wounds and make sure they were healed up and never exposed again. Or, I could leave them unwrapped, allow them to possibly heal but possibly fester and possibly get infected and possibly leave ugly, jagged scars.

Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was denial, or lack of being able to vision any options. But in that critical moment, with all of me uncovered for perhaps the first time ever, I decided I would stay, at least for a little while. I would stay…I would see if there was love somehow, someway. Love that made sense.

The Weight Transfer.

As you know, HUSBAND revealed a little. Then a little later, he revealed a little more. And a little later, a little more and a little more and a little more until finally all of his revealing was done. All the lies that he had carried and buried and stowed away so carefully for 25 years were out. He felt light and free like he’d never felt before.

But as they left his lips, they hit my ears and wriggled their way in. They traveled through my ears and down my throat and fanned out in my system…some entering my brain and finding nooks and crannies to live and taunt and distort…some piercing my heart and ripping it up into thousands of pieces…some stopping along the way in my esophagus emitting masses of acidity creating a burning so intense…some filtering into my stomach that tried to work hard to get rid of the invader by cramping and growling…some into my intestines where they expanded and my body screamed for release…and the rest traveling down into my lower spine and legs and all the way to my toes that ached and tingled…

He had transferred the filth, and was clean, but I was DIRTY.

When a cheater finally comes clean to his spouse, this is what happens.

Much of the betrayer’s life has been pulled inward to carry out the deception, and even if the affair stops without or before revelation, they are always on guard, fearing that a misspoken word will trip them up. This is how HUSBAND describes it. The freedom he was experiencing was literally euphoric, but I bore the heaviness for him to get to lightness.

A necessary part of the process, and one that I wish I could change for all of us betrayeds. It SUCKS, and the burden is so great, and so present. No relief in sleep as, at first, dreams swirl around and taunt with images and thoughts and alternate endings. No relief as we work and can’t concentrate and fail to meet deadlines and suffer in silence or experience out-of-bound emotions and coworkers think we have lost it (which we have). No relief as we parent our children and look at the image of our betrayer and want to scream out YOUR FATHER IS A FUCKING CHEATER when they receive the love and affection so readily from a man who betrayed not only us but them.

Oh those days – weeks – months were horrific. I nearly broke in two carrying the weight.

Womancarrying2

Nearly, but not quite. And as my body began to get heal, and to expel the poison and I started standing straighter I found I was taller. And stronger. And I began to see – even though it was the little space right in front of me, that moment – I began to see, and to step into…

Life.

Unexpected Response.

So by mid-June, HUSBAND had disclosed all…multiple affairs beginning 2 years into our marriage. One night stand with a hooker. An on-again, off-again and more-on-than-off-over-the-last-five-years-of-our-marriage relationship with porn and self-satisfaction. A sex addict.

Life. Life was going on, and there was no way I could stop it. I tried at first. I stayed home from work, holed in my room, vacillating between denial and tears and rage. I searched every possible record I could find, frantically gathered every evidence of the life I thought I’d lived for 27 years, laying pictures and letters and notes out and begging HUSBAND to tell me what was real and what wasn’t. And how could he do this? And how could I be so stupid? And how could these sluts, all of whom I KNEW, fuck married men? I read blogs and forums and asked question after question after question. And asked them again. And HUSBAND answered, never getting impatient, never getting angry.

I cringed at the thought and the site and the touch of the man who’d betrayed me, my children, everything I was. Yet, yet…he held some of the answers I so urgently sought…and I craved his answers, his insight, his truth. Cringe, crave. Cringe, crave.

The cause of my pain, yet the source of my healing. Wickedly cruel twist of reality.

mendinghearttakestwo

But I had to begin to step back into life as much as I had no idea how to. We signed up for orientation at our son’s upcoming college campus and booked a hotel. Son was staying on campus for the two-day process, and we dropped him off then headed to check-in. We parked. We walked through the doors. HUSBAND walked over to the clerk – and I froze. I could not move. I literally sat down on something, my suitcase at my feet, and thoughts and visions and memories flooded into my brain at such a pace there was no processing. I saw pictures of hundreds of times we’d come to hotels alone and with various or all of our children and flashes of laughter and pools and breakfasts in the dining rooms and room service and then I heard HUSBAND saying, “come on honey…are you ready…are you okay?”

I mumbled something and got up and followed him, still in some sort of haze and then we were at the room and he put the key in and opened the door and went through. I could not go in the room. I stood there, with some kind of look of terror on my face. “i…I…I just can’t go in there,” stumbled out of my mouth.

HUSBAND came back outside the door, and asked what was wrong, and what could he do, how could he help.

I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure, but I just couldn’t go through the door.

After a few moments, I put one foot in front, and the next and then I walked in. The door shut behind me, and I stood, frozen again, looking around at the predictable mid-price lodging: two beds. A dresser sporting a coffee maker. TV. Desk, chair, mirror. One single reading chair. A bathroom.

I went to the single chair, sat down and stared in front of me. And quietly began to speak and to ask the things that were now running through my mind, tears falling the whole time. Women, these whores throughout our marriage, they came to hotels with you. They walked through doors of hotels. Did they stand by you at check in? Did they have the audacity to pretend like they belonged there? Was there a moment, a hint, of shame for either of you?

woman in a hotel

Where did they put their suitcase? Did they unpack things and put them on the sink in the bathroom? What about their clothes…put them in the dresser? Hang anything up? Did they walk around naked? In bra and panties? Did they wear lovely negligees? They acted like they belonged here with you. They took my place. They had no right, they had no authority, but they did it. How could they? How could you? How could you pull down the covers and let them get in the sheets? Was there ever, even just a brief moment of shame, of some inner voice crying out NO! STOP! Did you have to quiet a voice?

HUSBAND sat at my feet by the chair. He listened, he answered, he cried. Some of the answers stung…especially the ones that told me I wasn’t even considered in those moments. By either of them. There was no shame then. By either of them.

But then he told me there was shame now. Overwhelming and horrific shame that confronts him constantly. That sitting at the feet of his broken wife was a picture of the damage he’d caused and he was so sorry and he was willing to do whatever it took to help me find peace and healing.

Everything and anything, even telling me things he didn’t think I would want to know or hear.

I sat in that chair for a long time. He sat at my feet for a long time. Eventually, I said I would get in bed, the same bed in the hotel room with the man who I thought had kept sacred vows and with whom I had kept sacred vows. I got into that bed, and laid there. And after a bit, I moved closer to HUSBAND, who wrapped his arms around me. The irony of receiving comfort from the one who had shattered me was huge for both of us. I laid in HUSBAND’S arms, and we both wept, and somehow, one more piece of brokenness with a jagged edge was put into my box – my new box – of memories. The box labeled The Other Real Life Box. One day, I hope it is filled and after I go through it a time or two or ten, I will be able to put it up on a shelf where it can gather dust.

One day.