The popular press was focused on people like Eva Longoria. Do we even remember her? Swine ‘flu was front and centre of many people’s worries. Rachel Alexandra won the Preakness, the first filly in 85 years to do so. British retailers were up in arms about Manic Street Preacher’s latest album cover art. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the pressing governmental issues of the day … ohh Gawd, hey, it was a Saturday – was one of our long-term MPs, addressing a dental health conference! Hahahaha! Not doing much for the cause of us being a vibrant, and global nation ;-).
Yes, it has actually been EIGHT years since my life imploded. The OW, Leanne, a woman I once considered a friend, someone I had known since middle school years, sent me a text, at 8.57pm, whilst I was attending a 40th birthday party that she was also supposed to be attending. The text outlined that she had been sleeping with my most beloved partner, Roger. There was little in the way of detail, I didn’t keep the text, and cannot recall the exact wording.
I went back to the party, and carried on with the evening. Smiling, dancing, completely numb inside. Then drove the half-drunk Roger home in the wee, small hours. When we were about ten minutes from home, I leaned over with my phone, and showed him the text. He was completely bereft. Head in hands, he eventually looked up, as I drove into the darkness, and said, “I will pack a bag when we get home, and get out of your life. I am incredibly sorry, so, so sorry.” I think I actually floated away somewhere far, far, away. I don’t know if I have ever come back entirely.
Time.
Time does blur things, fading the edges of memory. But it has never eradicated the pain I still feel, not the “two to five years” later when I was supposed to feel a lot better, get my life back.
It is eight years. Eight pain-filled and unnecessary years. There isn’t a lot to add. I just wanted to mark the day somehow, as it passes by in every other sense.
The first ‘online’ person I ‘met’ – a woman who is different to me in so many ways, a US-Southern Baptist, 50+ year old, home-schooling SAHM, who voted for Trump – we couldn’t be politically, ideologically, etc, further apart – is still someone I ‘chat’ with regularly. Who knew? Six and a half years after her D-day, she is filing for divorce. He didn’t do the work, he is an passive aggressive, narcissistic arsehole, and she is (reluctantly) divorcing him. Finally. She has been through the mill. She messaged me today, to reiterate that cheating is a “life sentence” – her words.
I am currently seeing a lot of emotional exhaustion in the blogging community. People who are now three plus years out from D-day. The hope is fading. The magic pill of time is not making things any better for most.
I know that feeling well. I think there is a LOT of detritus bandied about – by counsellors, churches, people hawking self-help books, the general public – about being able to build a ‘new,’ ‘better’ version of marriage/partnership. That infidelity is actually an OPPORTUNITY! Lucky you!
The truth is, it sucks. And it will always suck. For the rest of your life, it will suck in some way, together, or apart.
And that, my sweets, is my take-home lesson from eight years of the pain of ‘surviving’ infidelity, together, or apart, it makes no difference.
Feeling the pull to write a little about how things are in my life right now. Nothing groundbreaking, just a brief update, to spill it outside of the containment that is me these days.
As you all know, Roger and I are on track to physically split after I hand in my thesis in late July. This does not mean that we hate each other, or that life is unpleasant. We love each other, and work our hardest to be kind to and caring of each other. But I am aware that this is a very difficult time for Rog. He struggles. And I ain’t finding it a bunch of fluffies either.
The thing is, I don’t know how to trust anymore. Anyone. I haven’t been able to convince my brain to allow vulnerability. So, of course, after about five years of thinking I could trick me into trust and vulnerability with a very remorseful man who did a lot of things that ‘should’ have made it okay for me to trust again, I had to pull away. But he also, admitted later when he could see with clearer hindsight, did a couple of things that maybe made things a lot harder than they needed to be. I am speaking of his refusal to change his phone number (their affair was entirely enabled by text and phone calls alone, he was not on social media, and he never gave her his or our email address(es).) So, he was still getting texts, and occasionally replying, for two years after D-day. He admits that was stupid, and that I was right in pretty much begging him to change his number, as that would starve the maggot of oxygen. Huge regret of his. He also, as many of you know, fucked her again at the two year mark. We were separated, but yeah, if you read waay back, you know my feelings about that. He was single, and could. And whilst I understand that he was trying to figure out why he had thrown away his good life for a person he was pretty sure he didn’t even really like, it probably wasn’t helpful. To anyone. Even her. Yep. I loathe that woman, but even I don’t think fucking her again was a nice thing for him to do to her. But I do, nevertheless, understand his thought process. I know he went to her to ‘discuss’ the whys and wherefores, the sex, to me, was just his … patheticness … I guess. I now know how ruled he is by sex. I never really got it before all of this. We had a busy and fulfilling sex life together, so I never got the message that he feels incomplete without sex in his life. I think that is just sad. That you would prostrate yourself for bad sex – his words. He now understands this about himself, too. That he is needy, and it doesn’t make him feel very good about himself. But, in all of this, I have become sexless. And he says it’s better that being sexually needy. I beg to differ. I don’t think there is a winner here. I don’t think, in this sexualised world, that ANYONE ever feels good about themselves if they have become sexless. I wouldn’t admit this in real life, I would be judged, and made to feel a prude/boring/stuffy. I am none of those things, and I miss sex like crazy. But I just don’t feel sexy. In any way. Even self love, and I used to be good at that shit, lol! Bah, enough about my embarrassing ‘problem’ with sex.
Well, the latest thing that created some more distance between us is this. Roger used to like to come and sleep in my bed. I said this was fine, but that I am not a sexual being anymore, so that wasn’t to be the reason. He seemed to be coping with that. We would cuddle and talk, and that was that. One of the things we have discussed ad nauseum, is that I know he ‘needs’ emotional and sexual closeness, and that I can’t really provide that anymore. I hate it. It isn’t who I think I am at my core. But, I have worked damn hard to survive this, to be as intact as I can be after he blew the old me up, used and abused. I had to build some walls, as the old me had none, and it nearly fucking killed me that he treated me the way he did, and made me physically and mentally ill. I don’t know how to dismantle these walls. I am torn. To let them down might mean I can feel something good again, but I was 100% vulnerable and loving and where did it get me? I don’t think I can survive this again. So, yeah, it sounds stupid, but I can’t let them down, or not for long.
I thought we had communication nailed now. That we are open and honest. We talk. Still a lot. About life, about the future, about us, about not us. And I made it clear that I understand he has needs, and that living in the same house makes that a difficult thing, in many ways, but that if he wants to date, or get laid, that he just has to be honest, and let me know. I don’t think that is abnormal, and I also don’t think it is a lot to ask, to discuss these things. It’s not like I am asking him to ask my permission. I just want to know if we need to change the living arrangements earlier that we plan to (and have worked out is the most financially viable for both of us.) So, I was doing a tax return the other day, and noted that he had a couple of credit card charges to a dating site. He had told me about a year ago that he had joined this site, and chatted with a couple of women. But that he decided it wasn’t for him (he had never done this kind of thing before) and so he had resigned from the site. Okay, I got that. We had another conversation about this, if he was feeling this lonely, that we needed to find another way of being. He said it was fine, that he was coping again, but that sometimes the sadness of losing me was just overwhelming. Promises were made to ensure communication was maintained. I don’t wanna know any details, unlike when I found out about his affair, and I thought we had a relationship to save. I just don’t wanna be piggy in the middle. I also don’t think it is fair to another woman, if she finds she likes him, to see me still living in this house! Back to the new credit card charges. I was angry. Not furious and filled with fire. Just sadly angry. He hadn’t talked to me, he had just paid twice, this dating site. Of course I approached him and said we needed to talk. The charges were from three and two months ago, and he said he had forgotten about them, and I could see he was a bit embarrassed. He hates being this pathetic, he sees the dating apps as a bit sad, too. I just calmly said that I thought it was really disrespectful, mostly of me, that he would sleep in my bed, and in all honesty, he still tries sometimes to see if I would be responsive to sex, when he was talking to any other women. I felt revolted and used, and I calmly expressed this. He seemed very sad and to understand.
I just don’t get it. Why would he even put me in that position when he knows the damage he has done? I know it is desperation. He does get very desperate about our situation, it isn’t a healthy one, I get it. But why, after all he has learned these past few years, would he not talk to me? Tell me we needed to find alternative accommodation? Sigh, it just felt like I was on a treadmill, and that we were back to teaching him about boundaries and other people’s feelings being just as important as his. Affair Lessons 101 stuff. Do some people, even those who seem to get it, seem to understand the damage, seem to want to change, never fully get it? All this stuff that is so innate to me? I mean, we have a quote pinned up in his maimai, one that he chose, about twenty-something years ago. One of the things in it is to be careful with other people’s hearts.
And yeah, the sleeping in my bed has been stopped. It isn’t fair to either of us. And yeah, we both miss it like hell. But you’ve gotta be realistic. He just can’t cope with the contact that is never enough. And I miss the old him, the one I adored, that lovely guy I had created in my head for those first decades, the one who obviously never existed.
FML.
I’m okay, much better than if I had let him back into my heart fully, but I just feel stupid again. That I somehow almost believed that he had learnt all he needed to about how to treat other people. This is not an inherently stupid, or callous man. I honestly felt he was the most emotionally intelligent man I had ever met, once upon a time. And in many ways he is. But there seems to be an override button, and he STILL has trouble not pressing it when under pressure.
I know, I know. I think I might actually be moving forward, nearly eight years after D-day. No posts for well over a month.
Jesus. Is that some kind of record? The eight year thing.
But anyhoo. I’m back. Just popped in to say hey, and spread my joy ;-).
Update: I have had a pretty intense month, I guess. Firstly, my blogging friend, and maybe yours, CrazyKat, came Down Under with her husband, BE. They’re still here actually, but cruising around our isles at the moment. I had the pleasure of their company for four whole days. How lucky am I? Just before they arrived, my sister-in-law (ex) was driving my nieces to school one morning, and tragically had a head-on with a truck, and sadly she did not survive, but was taken to the nearest large city and kept on life support for 36 hours, as she was an organ donor. My two little nieces are relatively unscathed, but their father, my brother (the one I don’t get on with) flew from the other side of the world, where he lives with his new wife, immediately. He has promised the girls’ grandparents that he will not take the girls out of the country. This means he has effectively ended his marriage, as his wife refuses to move here. (We’ll see. Her bottom line constantly shifts!) So, he is at my father’s house, on the job hunt at present.
The week after that sadness, another niece was getting married, in a neighbouring country. My eldest, S, and I flew over, and stayed at my lovely sister, E’s house. So did my Dad.
Now. About my Dad. He’s is a bit special. To say the least. He is depressing and depressed, revels in playing the pathetic old man lately (even though he is a perfectly healthy and capable 73 year old) and loves to speak without engaging his brain. Ugh. Mostly it was okay, but S and I escaped a few times without him, as sometimes I just wanna punch him!
I will illustrate with a couple of gems from the four days we had together – three of which we mostly escaped his special kind of … stupid.
We were at the wedding, and in Australia, gay marriage is still not legal. So, they went through the traditional vows, about the legal status of marriage as between a man and a woman, and then my niece and her new husband added that they couldn’t wait until marriage was a right for all. Love is love. So, at the reception, the table seating goes – sister, me, daughter, two friends of E’s, uncle (my mother’s brother), and his lovely wife, then Dad. My GAY Dad pipes up with, “I don’t agree with gay marriage anyway.” FML. I just stared at him, full in the eye, mine about rolling back in my damn head, and said, “well, don’t worry, no one anywhere in the world has made it compulsory, yet, Dad.” My aunt about pissed her pants, and said, “what about people who have been committed to each other for maybe 30 or 40 years, and their significant other is not allowed in a hospital room, to make health/funeral decisions/say goodbye, etc, and their parents, who may have not spoken to their son or daughter all those years can do that, and cut the most important person in that person’s life off? What about those cases, for a start?” Dad: “Oh, I hadn’t really thought about that.”
SHIIIIIIIIT!!! Special.
Then another day, we are discussing whether the little girls who just lost their mother had gone back to school yet? It was two weeks since their Mum had died. Um, Dad: ” Oh, I has, but H, not yet, she has a large gash on her forehead which is quite deep and unsightly, and you know, she’s a girl.” SMH! S and I looked at each other, and I said, “um, what? WTF does that matter? The kid is 11 years old, and who cares if she’s girl, boy, trans, horned, or whatever-the-fuck-else?” He replied with, “oh you know, girls, they care what they look like.” I looked directly at him and said, “hmmm, so no one else does? And that is what being a girl means? Looks? Get in the real world, Dad. It only matters to the people who think that way, and those like you that perpetuate her value as being equated with her looks, FFS.” He looked mildly offended and I don’t think he got it. See, special!
Exhibit number three: Dad is discussing (inappropriately) the state of my brother’s marriage, when he casually mentions that my (newer) sister-in-law currently weighs over 100kgs. (She was a gorgeous, slightly curvaceous, but I would estimate no more than 60-65ish kg girl when I last saw her a couple of years ago.) I turned to him and said, “ah, what? How do you know that? And, more importantly, why are you mentioning it? That is not something that your son should be discussing with you, and it is certainly not something you should be sharing with me. Besides which, why are you sharing that? Why is it important to you both?” Fucking special. Especially since my sister’s younger daughter is anorexic, and has been dangerously ill for the past few years, was refused treatment from every centre in her state as she was “too thin” – it is a scary condition, really scary. (She is a slightly healthier weight, and I mean only slightly, at the moment, she has done a lot of work, knows she is very ill, but was still talking about how she needed to lose weight for the wedding, as she was a bridesmaid – you would lose her if she turned sideways. Seriously, and dangerously thin.) What. The. Actual. FUUUUUUUUUUCK?!
Just like the kind of crap that is normalised, like the lyrics to so many songs, I refuse to post the song itself, but how internalised are lyrics like these? John Mayer’s Daughters:
I know a girl
She puts the colour inside of my world
But she’s just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change
And I’ve done all I can
To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands
Now I’m starting to see
Maybe it’s got nothing to do with me
Fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too
Oh, you see that skin?
It’s the same she’s been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away
Now she’s left
Cleaning up the mess he made
So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too
Boys, you can break
You find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong
And boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without the warmth from
A woman’s good, good heart
On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world
So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too [3x]
There were also discussions about racism, my brothers had recently pulled Dad up about some language he was using. So, the whole visit with my Aussie family (who were not involved in these exchanges) – with my bigoted gay Dad, lol – was full of these clangers, I mostly bit my tongue, for the sake of calm, but I was bloody glad to be heading home. My take home message was this. I had a fucking fantastic Mum. I never saw how fucked up and gendered my upbringing was. I mostly felt I was treated on an equal basis to my two younger brothers, and I didn’t even know that Dad was quite such a fucktard really!
Good job, Mum xxx
It still leaves me completely gobsmacked that these attitudes are so prevalent, but yeah, what do we see, hear, experience? Lily said it well a few years back with these observations:
I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find themAnd I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
‘Cause everyone knows that’s how you get famous.
[Pre-chorus:]
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track, yeah I’m on to a winner.
[Chorus:]
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cause I’m being taken over by the fear
Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function
[Pre-chorus]
[Chorus]
Forget about guns and forget ammunition
‘Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner
Today I found out that my youngest daughter, just 18, about to head off to uni in a couple of weeks has done something that I am immensely proud of. This all happened, very quietly (ie, no social media BS, no crying to Mummy, etc) in the past week.
It isn’t a hard thing. It isn’t a heroic thing. It is a human thing.
Or at least I think it is.
She has had this friend, since primary school, who has become more and more entitled, more and more selfish, as the years have slid by. She deliberately distanced herself from her a few years ago, did not ‘break up with her’ as a friend, just ensured she wasn’t in her closest circle. But this last year at school, she was back in the inner circle. And last weekend, my daughter, D, caught this manky ‘friend’ kissing (etc) another of their friend’s boyfriends. D told her in no uncertain terms that it was not on. The ‘friend’ expressed no remorse, and was a completely entitled, “oh well, if they were so happy, why did he do that with me,” frame of mind. D told her she was done. Then she rang the friend, and told her what her boyfriend did. She found it hard to do, nobody wants to be the messenger. But the friend, who was very upset, didn’t take too long to pull herself together and broke up with the cheating little shit. She said, “well, better I know now, and I am off to beauty school in a nearby city, so I have a clean slate to work with now. Thank you D for letting me know what was going on behind my back, you’re an fantastic friend. That must have been hard to tell me.”
The thing is – is it really that fucking hard to be a decent human being? To not fuck your friends’ loves? To tell them the truth when you discover something bad going on in their lives? D says that this group of friends has now rallied around her, praising her for her actions, and loyalty to the ‘nice’ girl, but they all said they would have been too scared to call the cheating maggot out. (She can make life a bit unbearable if you disagree with her about anything, don’t get me started on why she was even a friend of my daughter’s!) Or that they would have told the betrayed girl. I was gobsmacked. WTF? What is friendship? I just never associated with these kinds of Mean Girls. I didn’t understand what made them so happy, so superior, so inse-fucking-cure.
This incident comes just a few weeks after D sat her friend group on their arses when she spoke up loudly when one of them – another very ‘nice’ girl, but very sheltered, very conservative family, etc – retorted to a comment that one of them made about someone they knew having recently having something very painful and sad happen to them. The ‘nice girl’ said, “oh well, you never know, maybe she did some bad things, and this is what she got.” (Hey, this is high school here, they are kids trying to negotiate a pretty fucked up world right now, cough, Trump and all his fucking cronies!) D immediately replied to that, “WTF? So, something awful happens to a really nice person, and you immediately think to victim shame them? That is exactly like saying ‘that girl deserved to be raped, after all, that dress WAS very short.’ This is a sad and bad thing, and bad things happen to good people. Karma is not real. I wish it was, but life just deals some shit hands sometimes.” The girls all looked at D like she had just said something they had NEVER thought of! Then they discussed their views on this, that they were just repeating discourses that they heard over and over, to soothe their own worries about ‘bad stuff happening’ – if I behave, it won’t happen to me. I was already quietly thinking, “hey, I raised a critical thinker, a decent human, go me!”
She had told me that she was just trying to eek out the last few weeks of being in the same small town as the ENTITLED ONE, without rocking the boat, but that this was the final blow to their friendship – she can’t be around people who have a black hole where their character should sit.
So, just putting it out there, I think, despite being a little concerned at times about some of her choices, that my youngest is a good human. I can add a third to the collection of good humans I raised. Phew!
At this time of the year, it is inevitable that those of us who are still pretty unsettled about their lives battle those swirling thoughts. I am (dripping with sarcasm) SO surprised that I fit into this demographic.
So, in order to try to put them down for a bit, and get on with my transcription work for both my own thesis, and my supervisor’s research, I thought I might try to dump some stuff here, this darling little receptacle for such annoyances.
I am constantly told that I am doing everything wrong. Constantly. And the thing that really pisses me off about it is that although I am a pretty strong person, a lifetime-feminist, latterly-scholar, and know my own mind, it gets to me. Being told you are doing life wrong is shit. The worst offender is Roger. He always tells me, not in an overtly unkind way, that I am continuing to make poor choices. Yep. He actually says that. Because he’s such a great decision maker, right?
You see, that’s the fucking point. He has been, historically. He makes good decisions, a lot. And me, not so much, quite often. So, yeah, self doubt occurs. And it pisses me off, because I am so aware of the power shit going on here. I know that unconsciously, he is using all he has always known, all our past, to try to convince me that I am wrong. That my brain is wrong. To listen to my heart. We had words the other night. Over our eldest daughter and something she was messaging me about. It was a mechanical issue with her car, and she was about to drive up here for the Christmas/New Year break. She did not message her father, who admittedly has more mechanical knowledge than I do. However, I did my best (I am a farmer, and a practical kind of person) to guide her, to advise her, and he let loose on me afterwards, telling me how wrong I was/am. I tried to point out to him that there was a parenting style difference here, I was trying to guide her, and provide her with information to make her own decisions, and he was trying to dictate what she should do. Maybe, in this case, he might have been right, it was an urgent problem. But hey, at least try to see what I was doing, and note that although we may be ‘mere females,’ we can problem solve, and at least let us try! He thinks I am ‘using’ gender as a trope. But he has never lived a female life. He doesn’t understand that we need to show our independence, that our learned shit from societal attitudes needs to be mindfully overcome. And yeah, in doing so, sometimes, horror of horrors, we make mistakes! He. Just. Shut. Me Down.
Then, he made me feel terrible for not agreeing to go to his sister’s for Christmas. One of his sisters who has never given a crap about me, with his parents, who have also never given a crap about me, and play nice, for the kids. I talked to the kids, didn’t make any big deal about it, just said that I was pleased they were being able to reconnect with their cousins and family – we used to be very close – or so I thought! But, that I wasn’t a part of that family anymore. I did not go into the facts, for example, that they tried to sue us, engaging one of the top barristers in our country. Or that they tried to get us to pay for their children’s private educations (whilst we could only afford to send our own kids to the local, very average state school, when their state options were of a very high standard, ugh.) Or any of the other degrading and vindictive things that they did out of spite and jealousy, back when we were really happy. I am no longer prepared to push my own feelings down to make other people comfortable. But I was ‘wrong’ there, too. I was being petty. And not helping myself heal, and … well, you get the picture. Besides, WE ARE NOT A COUPLE ANYMORE!!! I don’t have to compromise my life for his feelings anymore.
But the problem is, I don’t feel any better living this way. I feel sad, and quite bloody lost. Quite a fucking lot. So, his words – and those of so many others around me -telling me I am doing everything wrong do sting. I see images of happy people and wonder why I can’t get there? Should I have just sucked it all up and carried on with the remorseful man? I feel I tried that, but felt resentful and weak, at the end of the day. I could manage for periods, but then would drop into the depths of despair, that I had let this arsehole treat me like shit, infect me with lifelong diseases, and he was getting a ‘better’ version of me than ever, in some respects. It pissed me off.
Maybe I should just re-title this post, Life Pisses Me Off!
And all this thinking just ties me in knots. I can’t seem to put it all down and get on with life. It sends me down rabbit holes like this one:
Was I wrong, all along? Should I have agreed to marry him, to show public love? I thought it was a private thing, something special, and sacred for us to cherish and protect. But was I wrong? Did he need to put it in writing, to have a big party, to see people see us being quite intimate? I didn’t need that, and he SAID he didn’t either. But Leanne bought a fucking wedding dress for God’s sake! I mean, WTF??? He says that shocked him, that he told her he didn’t love her, and that even if he did, he wasn’t going to marry her. But what the fuck do I know? Nothing. I only hear what he tells me, so who knows what the truth in life really is?
And yeah, maybe I need to get off Facebook, too. I thought I was able to dismiss the bullshit, etc. However, this one got to me this week. There is a couple we know, the wife of whom had a long and deep affair with a client of her own business mentoring company a few years ago now. She left her husband and two young sons, and he left his wife and four young children (including a baby) and they galloped off, so-in-love, into the sunset. Only to have his parents reject her entirely when he tried to introduce her to them. She ran back to hubby and two very confused and hurt little boys that she had said she didn’t want anything to do with. Yeah, he took her back. They then built a huge new house, he bought her a flash new car, they have overseas holidays constantly. They are “super happy and in love.” And my former BFF tells me that she tried to talk to the wife – a good friend of hers – and suggested some counselling to help them both (but mostly the husband, who BFF and her husband were supporting for the two months she was gone) to come to terms with WTF had happened, and to learn to grow their love and be kind to each other. Wife answered, “we don’t need that, we are really in love.” Oh God. Face palm. They are currently holidaying in the States (again, they were also there earlier in the year) for three months, and posting “loved up” photos. With their friends commenting about ‘young love at its best’ – they’re late 40s and early 50s now – and how loved up they are, and how proud everyone is of them. Instead of feeling pleased for them, I just feel absolutely sick. I mean, how high does this guy have to jump now??? This marriage itself came out of a cheating episode (which EVERYONE has conveniently forgotten, as marriage somehow legitimises their selfish crap!) He had a long-term (seven years living together) partner, and she ‘stole’ him off her – yeah, some prize, I know. And she is a selfish bitch (was going to use the word I prefer, which starts with ‘c’ – but know my American friends would be super offended! I have developed an even filthier mouth since cheating marred my life!) Always has been, a real gold digger/social climber, with no real empathy – hell, she was happy to walk away from her two little boys, because they were an inconvenience to her happiness!
And, if I can’t be happy (at least sometimes) in this ‘new life,’ the one I am trying, labouring, to build, then WTF is all this struggle for? Maybe I should just try to ‘settle’ with a remorseful cheater, who promises it was a breakdown, and he has learned so much, feels so awful, and would never make me feel less again. Yeah, right. Because I feel less every fucking day, either way.
I look at that image above, and it looks like us. It looks like how I danced with him under the fairy-lit trees in our garden, hand-made fire blazing, barefoot and blissed out, in a summery dress, to the band who stayed all night, until milking time the next morning – when I went and milked alone for him, so he could get some sleep – on the night of his 40th birthday. It looks like how I always felt when I looked at him, when he would look across a crowded room, and everyone would just blur into the background, it was just me and him, and he might wink, or not. But, we would be instantly melded together, and he would later tell me I was beautiful and that I made him so happy. What a total crock of shit! Why did I believe his lying, whore-flavoured lips?! Argh!
There, there is some of it. The honest thoughts. The thoughts I struggle to push away every minute of every day, in order to try to live authentically with myself. And, honestly? The way that Roger is so adept at twisting the story to suit his purposes, to make me feel like an uncompromising bitch! I know he doesn’t mean to, that he is trying to get the best outcome for all of us, but he is good at this, he has been doing it to/for/with me for 29 years.
And yeah, there are huge doubts. All. The. Time. I just don’t think I can be truly at peace, or joyful-even-a-little, since he cheated and made me sick. The struggle is exhausting, and disabling. I just want a whole new fucking brain!
I have been quietly sitting here for the last few weeks, in the knowledge that I will be all alone on Christmas Day. And that is mostly okay. Sorta. Kinda. Well, it just is what it is.
I haven’t been too pissed off about it, because the reason for this is that Roger and his next sister up in age have been burying the hatchet, learning to move on from the awful family rift that occurred on the sale of our farm almost ten years ago (4 January 2007 we moved here.) He wanted me to come too. Nope. I can’t do that. I am pleased he is mending fences, building bridges, offering olive branches, all that shit, but I am not a part of that family anymore, they made sure that I was made very aware that I probably never really was, they didn’t give two flying fucks about me when they tried to sue us, cut my kids off from their cousins (they were close) and later when he cheated on me, not one of them ever enquired after my wellbeing. I am not going to play nice with a bunch of people who don’t care about me, on a day that used to hold a lot of love and goodwill for me. The kids are driving south with their Dad. And I am okay about that, too. This is their family, and although the grandparents are clueless about emotional health and safety, they do love those kids of mine. And it will be nice for them to re-connect with two of their cousins, close in age to my two eldest, one of whom has a 15 month old son now.
Thing is, I was thinking how many Christmases it has been now? First up, I was thinking, shit, this will be the NINTH since he cheated – not that I knew for another eighteen months, after he ‘first’ cheated on me. The next – while he was balls deep in the affair – was spent at the lake, with me struggling to find a ‘new normal’ – having been cast aside from what I was used to, a large extended family Christmas, that I loved – and finding myself cooking up a storm, for about 60, in my tiny single oven and on the BBQ at the lake, when in reality it was us five, and my depressive Dad! I wondered why Roger was so disconnected, and put it down to losing his family. Nope, he was busy texting Leanne (her birthday is Christmas Eve) and letting her know what everyone was doing, yep, she was ‘my friend too.’ Then I realised, no, it’s not nine! He fucked a prostitute on a stag night when we had been living together about oh, a couple of years – at most! And lied about that for about 26 or so years – “I got a stupid, drunken hand job at the brothell when the other guys were there, so stupid, I’m so sorry.” Yeah, right.
I realised that all my memories of Christmas, where I was extra cheerful to make up for the fact that he hates Christmas, are bullshit. To a fair degree.
And that feels like a bit of a metaphor for my life at the moment. Bah humbug!
Although I didn’t experience trickle truth to the same degree that many other betrayeds did, there is certainly a parallel with how time uncovers or changes perspectives. Roger was very aware that any further lies would mean I would lace up my marching boots and get the fuck outta there. I also think the relief he felt at discovery was palpable. He no longer had to lie and be deceitful. He could once again be who he used to be, and tell me the truth, tell me everything about his world, his day, his feelings.
That said, I didn’t/couldn’t know the whole truth on D-night. There are nuanced things that pop up from time to time, yes, even now! I told him about my recent bout of recurring dreams – I still have them most nights – about the first night he fucked her, and my mind movie of how it panned out. He was horrified, and said, “it wasn’t anything like as sexy, or romantic, or hot, as that. No way, this is what I remember happening, and my memory of it is not great, I thought I had told you this,” as he then described what he could remember of him entering the dangerous and slippery slope to where we are today.
I was very conscious my ignorance of the truth, and that I would never really know it, even as my head swam and I felt the earth shift on its axis on the night I was told of their affair, by the OW. I didn’t have a clue about the length, or the scope of the affair that night, but I did know that it (as I later discovered, 15 months of sexual affair, the period leading into that and the two months since he had ended it) meant I had (over 18 months of) a completely different reality to his. I knew it would take quite some time to align the two to any real degree. How could I know the nuances of their conversations, the looks they exchanged post-coitally, the way his skin reacted as she stroked him, whether she liked it when he revelled in the scent(s) of her body, like he did mine …? And so, over the next few months, he started to tell their story. To me. It began to deconstruct the pretty little picture they had painted for themselves. The rot started to invade their castle.
And he knew it. He was helpful, disclosing things as I asked. Uncomfortable, of course, but also told me ‘private’ things about her/them when he recalled them, without prompting. It was an act of goodwill. To try to let me know that he wanted me to stay, that he loved me. That he wanted to try to right his agonising wrongs. That he hated how he had behaved. That he was embarrassed and humiliated. That he was grateful that I even considered staying with such a hurtful scumbag. He hated telling me, but instinctively knew he had to. He even understood that every ‘secret’ he shared with me, handed me more power, and eroded hers. It was – and still can be – utterly and agonisingly beautiful.
I have noted a real shift in the last year or so. Yes, once I decided it needed to end, things changed a little again. Not a large earthquake shift like D-day, more aftershocks, tremors as things settled down to a large degree. Albeit that I would never trust the earth to be still ever again.
We still have a fair bit of contact. And he is still my best friend and greatest advocate. He is softer still. Occasionally, we talk. About IT. But not really about IT. We talk about our feelings, and our journey to here. To today. I note a real recognition of his ‘shit’ – more than ever. And I also note that he is even more open to the reality that this really was one of the most damaging things a person can experience. That I will not ‘just get over it’ eventually with time, love, work and mindfulness. This is a scar he carved in and on me. And himself. He, like me, thought we would do the work, and with the passage of time, we would be completely healed. He admits he thought a year or two would have us sorted – hey, me too! Over seven and a half years later, he sits with the permanence of the wound, and I think he is far more accepting of it, not fighting it, not wishing/hoping/willing that I would just get better. I always felt he thought I was wallowing in it, because it felt good. He denies this, saying, “why would anyone do that? Make themselves sick, sad and tortured? That makes no sense whatsoever. I know you want to get better. I know you want a better life. I know how hard you have worked to overcome this agony I wrought on you.”
We have connected nicely over the last week. Probably catalysed by a visit to ‘our’ lawyer. Who explained how we could conceivably unpack the intricate legal wrapping we had constructed around our joint assets, rendering us unable to split them, as they were no longer under our own ‘control’ which had made me (and him) feel like I would never be able to properly break free. It was liberating, but of course, not an immediate cure.
I like him. I like being his friend. I like listening to him talk. I like sitting quietly in silence with him. I like being near him. I like his calm. I like the way he smells. Despite what others tell me is ‘healthy’ – we have a real and deep friendship and bond that I doubt will ever be fully severed.
