After Leanne, and a suicide attempt five months after DDay, I ended up in a psychologist’s rooms for the first time. I was diagnosed with complicated grief.
About 10% of those grieving end up in this cycle. I had never had a problem with it before. I had suffered some big, sudden losses, but the grieving process had been ‘normal’ and ‘healthy,’ not like this.
“Prolonged grief, also known as complicated grief or traumatic grief. Grieving is an intense, painful, and yet altogether healthy experience. What’s unhealthy is when the symptoms of grief — such as yearning for the dead, feeling anger about the loss, or a sense of being stuck — last for six months or more.”
I was stuck. And I knew it. I fought and fought and fought to get unstuck. Going back to uni eventually was part of me trying to unstick myself, trying to rebuild my self esteem.
I’m stuck again. I know it. And am fighting again to deal with the magnitude of the grief.
Talking to a grief counsellor online has pointed out to me that I have experienced this loss as sudden traumatic loss. Which seems counter intuitive. I knew Roger was a cheater, so why would his cheating again seem like it came out of nowhere?
It’s because of how he talked about us. About me. About how he would do whatever it took, forever, to keep me. I believed him. I believed when he said he would support me and wait for me, that he meant it. And prising the reality away from those empty promises has been impossible for some reason!
I have slept for just over an hour. And the dreams were of the two of them, hand in hand, walking to a restaurant for dinner, kissing deeply, him throwing her on his bed and making love to her. It is slow torture.
I keep thinking my cognitive behaviours, deliberate mindfulness and meditation practices will eventually help unstick me. Lord, I hope so!
“For those directly impacted by the this, their lives become shattered. They are shocked and in disbelief. Their emotions are intense and unpredictable. All of a sudden nothing makes sense. Pictures of the trauma play out in their heads. Survivors will likely have difficulty eating, concentrating, sleeping and feeling safe. Some may develop physical symptoms or anxiety and panic disorders. Some may also cease to function. They may want to stay home and keep family close to them. They may become less trustful and hypervigilant.”
Yup.
All of the above.
My friend who messaged me was acutely intuitive about my grief. She immediately talked about my grieving as equivalent to death of my husband, and suggested it may be almost worse, because the man I love feels like he has been body snatched, “enjoyed by’ another woman possibly increasing my distress at the loss.
Nailed it.
“A growing body of evidence supports links between attachment style, complicated grief (CG), and coping mechanisms in bereavement. In general, adults with insecure attachment styles are at an increased risk for developing CG when faced with the death of a loved one.”
Or loss of them to someone else?
One of the frustrations is that when bringing up attachment theory, our couples counsellor clearly identified Roger’s anxious attachment style, and my secure attachment style. You would like to think that meant I had a good grounding for dealing with loss.
I wonder if I was flipped somehow here? That my firmly secure attachment was shaken loose? Am I now anxiously attached? I don’t know, all I do know is that I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of my embodied pain at the loss. And that in these periods, it feels like loss of a bizarre competition I never knew I was entered in. That Trinket held all the cards, and played the ‘winning’ hand as he compared my grief to her bright and bubbly winning hand.
It fucking sucks to be broken down, then entered into a stupid competition with someone who wasn’t broken by him. I had no fucking chance of ever ‘winning’that game. Was like a cock fight, where I was the rooster who had battled forever, the previous opponent, coming out the victor (over Leanne, lol) only to be thrown back in the ring, bleeding, exhausted and barely breathing, to face the fresh challenge of Trinket, who had just awoken from her long rest, ready to rip me to shreds. The odds were fucking impossible. And me begging her to give me three months space were laughed at.
Fuck you broken bird. Just go away and die quietly. Don’t let me see you suffer.
The level of selfishness in not giving me just that tiny bit of breathing room? Unbelievable. I mean, what did she think 30 years was? Chopped liver?
Yep. Our me me me society once again.
So, I am dealing with the resurfacing, or unresolved matter of complicated grief. From my research, it appears that this is a particularly difficuly disorder to treat, with around a 50% success rate. Those odds are tough, but, it does mean it can be done, right?
I am in one. Sweat absolutely pouring off me, my skin on fire, my heart racing.
I’m bleeding very heavily and having a very long, drawn out panic attack. Have crawled into bed to try to write it out of me, and then sleep it off.
Twenty years ago, right now, I had been in labour with our third live baby for about 20 hours. It would be another 14 before we got to meet our youngest, a daughter.
Roger read the newspaper as I battled to birth her those last few hours in the birthing pool, tearing through my old episiotomy scar.
I think he was bored.
Hmmm.
So. Because I can’t tell him, or anyone IRL, I am going to write here how much I miss him tonight.
Yes. After all he has put me through, after all I know. I am gonna write to the man he either used to be, or pretended to be, the Roger I love.
Still.
Not the cruel man he is to me today, who stole my peace and happiness, all the love I poured into him, and transferred it all to a petite redhead who lives where he moved to.
I miss you, my love. Tonight, as I lie here, cramping, tired and suicidal, trying to get through another night without you, to be there tomorrow for our baby, I miss you. I wish I could hold you, be kissed by you. Melt into your skin.
And, I ponder this grief. The inconsolable periods, where the pain creates bodily heat, and I wonder if I can outlast this wave, this time.
Why?
Why am I still so grief stricken? He did bad things. He hurt me physically, sexually, emotionally. And yet, I crave the comfort of him. For him to hold me. To love me again (if he really ever did???) The Battered Wife Syndrome is strong with this one! Stupid bitch that I am.
My friends have just left. What a manic weekend! So good.
We had a beautiful degustation dinner at a local restaurant, with gorgeous wine matches. I put my first guest up in the barn loft, and she survived the night! Putting the first (untainted) things in my new house is always fun. This is very temporary. There is a lot to do!
Then, today, meandered about on our tour. Such fabulous women. We laughed so much.
Now they have departed, I got the fire surround out and gave it a paint.
Inside. Chilling now. And I have been thinking about Dolly’s thoughts regarding what if he left. It made me open my dusty copy of my thesis, and look at the dedication again.
I really thought we had made it. Walked through the fire. Weathered the storm. Insert inspiring, relieved truism here. FFS. Unbelievably heartbreaking.
As I was in the loft, planning paint colours and furnishings, I recalled my research participant, Steve. Steve articulated the way his wife felt about materialities of home, and how they and the space had been soaked in awful meanings for his wife, due to the sex he had with his affair partner in their home, and on their furniture.
Cheaters who bring the skanks they are fucking into your home. Ugh. Next level pain. I hated our old couch, or walking into the kitchen and ‘seeing’ him plunged deep inside my ‘friend’ over the kitchen bench.
He never fully got that. He brought Trinket into my home overnight. So disgusting. And we all know what he did to me when I confronted him about it! It was in a legal letter, that she was not to come on my property. They just did it anyway. No care whatsoever for me. Roger KNEW how affected I had been for years about him fucking Leanne in my homes. Trinket SHOULD HAVE known it is seriously uncool for an affair partner to fuck someone else’s partner … especially in her house!
Then I paid the price for challenging him by getting tipped on my head, knocked out, held down, covered in bruises, etc.
Old news.
I was shopping yesterday, and the assistant at my favourite local interiors shop, and she looked at me and said, “you look so familiar.” I looked at her and nothing really came to mind. Then she said the name of my hometown. And that she worked for my sister-in-law.
Bingo! I realised who it was. The daughter of some polo friends of hers. Brilliant. We made plans to catch up for drinks later this week. She said she had heard that Roger left me for some chick he met online, and was very sorry, that was so hideous. Ick. I do hate that. I hate being pitied.
So. Lying on the couch, feeling tired. Kiddo has turned up, so will get us some dinner.
Don’t think the pain will ever really leave. But you just keep going.
I get told all the time by friends that Rog and Trinket cannot possibly be really happy and as romantically in love as he and I were.
I think they are just trying to help me heal from this shattered heart. Hey, they live in a gorgeous region, surrounded by vineyards and foodie heaven, gaze longingly into one another’s eyes, neither work fulltime, so lots of sexy time, and no doubt take romantic bike rides, etc around the area.
As we head into the weekend, and I have some fun things planned, with two good girlfriends coming down to stay tomorrow, a degustation dinner at a top restaurant, and some fun tours the day after, I am planning the loft – I have not yet done it up as an accommodation space, work has been too busy to supervise the building work – and have popped the new bed up there and started to think about how to style it once finished. The luxurious linen was so blissful up there the other night. I lay there looking out the window at some of my land, and just wanted to stay there.
Bliss.
Earlier, I was coming home from work, and stopped to refuel, with three large semen tanks in my car, my little dog, who comes to work with me most days, and two other parcels to drop at the courier in the morning. The service station attendant insisted on filling my car for me. I am usually quite paranoid, as I drive two diesel vehicles, and I like to make sure they don’t put petrol in. I asked him to fill it up with diesel.
When I went to pay, the bill was huge, and I said, “holy hell, what has the price of diesel gone up to?” The attendant’s face went into shock. “Diesel? Oh shiiiiiiit!”
It has an AdBlue nozzle right beside the diesel one, it has two large diesel only labels on the flap and the cap. I KNOW I reiterated it was a diesel vehicle. I was PISSED!
But, he was a young guy who had made a mistake, I remained outwardly calm, and reasonable while they rang the boss. He took an age to turn up. But, he was helpful, booked it for draining the next day, drove me home, offered a loan car (I have another smaller car, so it was not needed) and organised for the courier parcels to be dropped at the agent first thing in the morning. He drove me in his late model Mustang, and was quite chatty. They sorted it the next day, and delivered the car home to my place, with a free full tank (with the correct fuel!) And told me I have free fuel for my next tank fill.
So, finally getting home at 7.30pm, I raced over to the barn, and lazed on the bed for a few minutes before feeding the chooks and check on my flock as the dogs raced about the place.
A lazy shot out the window after making up the bed at 7.45pm.
I will pop one of the girls up there, I can’t wait until it is all glammed up! I am repainting, doing a new, funky staircase, and redoing the bathroom to 5 star standard. My darling friend, L, is an interior designer, and she is helping with plan the space, and choose the decor.
I have a gig to go to tonight, one of my workmates plays in a band, and is playing locally.
I keep myself busy and nurture my needs as much as possible.
But.
Oh yeah, there’s always the but, right?
I am still incredibly heartbroken and confused as to why a man who told me he would wait for me forever after HE FUCKED AROUND ON ME, jumped ship right at the time we had agreed was the time to reassess my healing.
Well, I’m kinda confused, in my heart, but my head knows it’s actually just shit timing, as no one else took his fancy until the suburban widow showed up, ready to swallow all his lies. He was looking for my replacement appliance online (online shopping, as my friend Violet calls it, lol) for over a year before Trinket took the bait.
He couldn’t get any of the others to stick. Unfortunately for me (well, fortunately, I do understand, Trinket got the booby prize of a cheater…) she does not know the real story of us, she only hears his complete bullshit story about how the relationship was over, and we never slept together anymore – it’s such a fucking cheater’s script! The ONLY reason WE struggled is because HE cheated and never did anywhere near enough to make ME feel I could trust him 100% again. FFS, he even fucked his affair partner again TWO YEARS after it was apparently all over red rover.
Made me feel really safe, I can tell you.
So, I continue to try to get the message through to my heart, with so many people telling me they are in the honeymoon phase, that it isn’t real, he is just replacing his mummy figure who does all the admin in life with a new useful person, with the bonus of plenty of knob polishing as well. A la, many stories I read, including from the earlier linked article;
“I get so many emails from women (and men) whose spouse left them for someone else, and they paint this picture in their head that everything is blissful with their ex and his new spouse. NOT THE CASE my friends.
Here is a woman who willingly began an affair with a married man, stole him from the wife, and is now suspecting that he is cheating on her. That doesn’t sound very blissful to me.
I am of the opinion that any relationship which starts with lies and cheating has a huge chance of failure, long term. Why? Because eventually, the burden of the guilt associated with what you did catches up with you and it damages the relationship. The person ends up with such self-hatred that they either take it out on the new person (like it was his or her fault for participating in the cheating) or they cheat again.
That’s just my theory. I don’t want to generalize, and I am sure there are countless men and women who technically cheated, but whose marriages were totally over. In other words, they hadn’t slept with their spouse in years, were disconnected, etc. Not saying that cheating in any case is acceptable/excusable—maybe those people should have left first. But, I’m not judging them. It’s the ones who decided to cheat, who were still sleeping with the spouse–who didn’t even know there was a problem. That’s where I have issues.
I hadn’t heard the song, so I looked it up and listened to it, and the message I got from it is something I think will help men and women whose spouse left them feel incredibly good! Here are some of the lyrics:
“It’s just too bad you already had the best days, The best days of your life,”
“Ain’t it a shame, A shame that every time you hear my name brought up in a casual conversation you can’t think straight?”
“And ain’t it sad, you can’t forget about what we had? Take a look at her and do you like what you see Or do you wish it was me?”
“And does she know Know about the times you used to hold me, Wrapped me in your arms and how you told me I’d be the only one?”
“Someone told me once when you were out She went a little crazy, ran her mouth about me Ain’t jealousy funny?”
“Life with me was a fairytale love, I was head over heals ’til you threw away us”
“I heard you’re gonna get married, have a nice little family Live out my dreams with someone new But I’ve been told that a cheater is always a cheater So I’ve got my pride and she’s got you.”
The bottom line is, if you are the first wife (or husband), your ex’s new spouse will always feel just a little bit second class. That’s my opinion, right or wrong.
They will also always know in the back of their mind that they hurt an innocent person. They keep that guilt and shame locked away in a remote part of their core, thinking it will eventually stop bugging them, but it never does.
Even if they tell everyone things like, “From what I heard, she was a bitch, she was mean to him, he never really felt understood by her, she’s psycho and can’t understand that he just doesn’t love her anymore,” etc. etc. , In the back of their mind, they know what they did was morally wrong. So, wouldn’t you rather be YOU than her or him? Because, when YOU meet someone and fall in love again, your relationship will have started off without dishonesty, and without having hurt anyone. It’s a beautiful beginning, not a tainted, scummy one.”
Yeah. Okay.
The thing is, I KNOW all of this has a ring of truth. But, I was love bombed by Roger, and it feels AMAZING, and I can’t get the pictures out of my head.
And, I sit here, about to send to my youngest, the Student Allowance One Parent application form, filled out and witnessed by my (our?) friend who did the same for her last year, to apply for another year’s funding because she does not have a relationship with her father, and he does not contribute to her financially. It makes my stomach spasm with the utter agony of it all.
A friend of Roger’s ran into me the other day. He asked me how I was getting on. (The usual, you look great – I say thanks, but internally go, no, I look slim, lol.) I did my usual, and said, yeah, okay thanks, love my new home. He and his wife have often talked about moving to this town, and it was great to catch up. He’s a deep guy, and usually plays his cards pretty close to his chest.
At the end of the encounter, he just quietly said to me, “what happened? He used to tell me you two were working on staying together, were a work in progress, that he was grateful you didn’t just pack up and leave, that he had fucked up and hurt you really badly, so why do you think he did it again? His advice to me was to never do anything as stupid and selfish as he had.” I just replied, “those are all the questions I wish I had answers to. I think he just found an easy out. He ran. And he doesn’t have to deal with the fallout, he just moves to a new town, with a new love, some new kids, and starts over.
A few days ago, Spouse of a Sex Addict posted about her first time crying over her husband’s addiction and affairs. She mentioned that she was not a crier.
Neither was I. Or I didn’t think I was. I am emotional – yep, I was that girl who might cry after an orgasm, tears of joy, of that emotional release – but, in everyday life, I thought I was strong. Tough. Resilient.
Nope.
Hell, I have cried oceans of tears since Leanne. I seem to go a while without. Then, BAM! And it seems to set off a wave of tears appearing at odd moments. It’s scary.
I was driving to work yesterday, when this old standard came on the radio.
Oh fuuuuuuuuuck.
Us.
So much us.
And they came. Hard. Rivers of tears. In fact, I kinda lost it. My face screwed up in pain. Me screaming the lyrics between sobs. I had to sit in my car and try to compose myself for a few minutes.
I honestly thought we were inseparable. Destined. Inalienable. I thought our six months apart, while I was in the UK proved that. That we were like a magnetic force, we could not resist each other. We would never be able to be apart really. That we would weather anything. That our love was not actually able to be dismantled.
Deluded bitch that I am.
I still completely sob my poor broken heart out at inopportune times.
He was my very best friend in the world. My confidante, the person I never had a filter with, the person I could tell everything to. When I was feeling amazing, sad, joyous, excited, proud, gutted, I would go to him. He was my everything, and I thought I was so independent, lol. For my entire adult life, I always had someone I could talk to. In some ways – but certainly not the same – this blog has become the place I can talk. Thankfully, in the years before I knew about his affairs, I was not like this, I did not have to talk about such a fuckload of dark and painful shit! Mostly it was about happier things, things that brought us joy together, maybe humorous moments, hard stuff about parenting, funny anecdotes, we share a quirky sense of humour. He told me over and over, and made me feel he would always be there for me.
And there was always love. Always physicality. Always him holding me, breathing in my scent. Me enveloping my senses in who he is, the rough farmer hands, his soft, soft cheeks and lips, kind eyes, musky scent, the taste of him, I loved to softly lick his skin, snuggle into the crook of his arm, bury myself in his chest hair, listening to his steady, comforting heartbeat.
He always seemed so calm, even when I was riding a sea of emotions.
Two nights ago, I woke up, so wet, on the edge of an orgasm. He was bringing me right there in an intensely erotic dream.
Yup.
Still having them.
Of course, he gets the real thing. A real live woman he can have erotic and intense sex with. Who he is now convinced he is madly in love with, probably his latest ‘love of his life,’ who he has waited his whole life for. Ugh, He certainly won’t be feeling this…
And last night, it was more about ending the pain. I slept fitfully, woke drenched in sweat and tangled in the sheets. Usually I sleep on one edge of the bed, barely disturbing the bedding. Well trained after 30 years of Roger following my body, him taking up 7/8 of the bed so he could get closer to me. Always wrapped around my body, spooning, or somehow clinging to me. Often falling asleep inside me.
The vivid images of how to end things played out. I accept I may have these dreams forever now. It’s been many many years.
I found this article which I think articulates many of the feelings both myself and Roger have felt in the aftermath of his big, long affair with Leanne. I know he did struggle with these feelings also for a short while. Parts lept out at me. They weren’t all about my feelings. I know Rog felt a lot of pain, too. I was also triggered by these words, “He said, ‘I think I still smell like you.'” Roger used to say to me often, that he loved morning sex, so he could smell me on him all day – one of the beauties of working alone on a farm – you don’t have to shower! I bet he says that to all the girls, right? It wasn’t ME he wanted to smell, it was just women’s bodily fluids…
And then there is this. The allure of the secret. The forbidden. You just cannot compete with that. I still feel intensely passionate about who we were. But, if he was off getting his fix from the illicit, how the hell do you trump that???
“What is it about affairs? What is it about passion–defined literally as “suffering”? Why do people risk everything for that stolen kiss, sweaty palms, rapid heart rate? Why do writers dramatize the suffering in popular mythology? Remember “Bridges of Madison County,” “The English Patient,” “Gone With the Wind,” and the this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture, “Shakespeare In Love.”
“It’s a drug,” says Shafer of Oklahoma. “It’s a fix. You can’t wait until the next time. It’s very addicting. You feel you can’t live without it.”
Florida researcher Layton-Tholl focuses specifically on the allure of secret relationships. People who keep them report far greater arousal, passion and obsession than with nonsecret relationships. (Not unlike the very early days of perfectly legitimate relationships, before you tell your friends and family that you are “in love.”)
The signs and symptoms are familiar. People “in love” fantasize, pine, obsess. They lose sleep and weight. “I’ve talked to men who 15 years after the affair still wonder what she’s doing,” says Layton-Tholl.
How interesting that they reach such romantic heights only out of context from their daily lives. But is it love?”
Who else read all the usual literature in those months and early years after Dday? Abrahms Spring, Shirley Glass, Peggy Vaughan, et al?
“In “After the Affair,” Abrahms Spring draws distinctions between romantic love and mature love. “Romantic love is an intense but unwarranted attachment that you, the unfaithful partner, may feel toward your lover,” she explains. You think the love must be real because the chemistry between you is so explosive. You are willing to sacrifice so much for this passion. “The blind spot behind this feeling–what you fail to see,” she writes, “is that your so-called grand passion may have more to do with your unmet childhood needs than with who this other person really is.”
Love also experiences changes on a physiological level. In the throes of romantic love, people experience a high from natural amphetamine-like chemicals such as dopamine and norepinephrine. “In the next stage of love,” she writes, “the brain releases endorphines–natural painkillers that soothe and create a sense of security and calm.”
On the cognitive side, a perceptual distortion takes place. “You idealize the other person, assigning him or her more positive attributes than any one person could actually possess,” continues Abrahms Spring. “At the same time, you’re likely to paint your partner in equally distorted, but negative terms, as a foil for your lover.” “
Why else did he give it all up, run? He was escaping his pain too. He just thought I could handle him leaving, that my pain was worth him feeling better, I was easily able to be sacrificed. If he ran to another part of the country, and worked on building something with a different woman, he would feel better, and he wouldn’t have to see the pain and devastation he created. We have all noted his tendency to self soothe at the cost of my wellbeing. He lost faith in me. He did not believe I could heal enough to still love him the way he needs to feel loved. He cut and run before the healing was completed, and I understand that, I just wish he had done what he promised me, and waited until the end of the Masters to make those decisions together.
This is just so, so heartbreaking. And relatable. I never thought of a revenge affair, but I know a lot do. A couple recovering after his affair:
“A few years later, the wife had a short affair with someone she met on the Internet, then another. Eventually she left him.
“I cried for hours on the couch. I couldn’t move,” he says. “My wife never recovered from my affair. Years would go by and I wouldn’t hear anything about it, then suddenly all this anger would come out.”
Affairs rock your world. Life is never the same again. All parties involved experience a profound sense of loss and pain. The old status quo is gone. The future is uncertain.
“After finding out, the hurt partner experiences the most basic loss of self,” says Abrahms Spring. “You feel alien in your own skin. Your most basic assumptions about the order of the universe have been turned upside down. It’s devastating.”
The person confessing to an infidelity experiences the full gamut: guilt, self-loathing. Often there is also relief. Leading a double life can become increasingly difficult for people engaged in affairs. Getting the truth out relieves them of carrying the burden of betrayal alone. To some therapists, honesty is essential, too, if the couple is to stay married and lay down a new framework for their relationship. Some people are glad that the affair is over and want to reestablish their marriage. “They’re just so thankful to be with one person again in one place,” explains Abrahms Spring. “They want to forgive and move forward.”
The betrayed spouse may also find relief. Even if the affair seems to come out of the blue, the underlying causes of infidelity have probably been present for some time. Vaughan says she experienced relief when her husband told her the truth about his numerous affairs. “It was like a storm that flattens everything and allows fresh air to come through,” she says. “The years of knowing subconsciously that something was wrong was much more painful that the two or so years it took us to recover.”
Still the aftermath was hard. Vaughan has described how it took her almost a decade to rebuild her sense of self even though she and her husband had successfully reestablished their marriage in a couple of years. All in all, they’ve been married 43 years.”
See! Even Peggy Vaughan admits it took nearly a decade. I was just on nine years when I realised I had healed, I had done things for me that rebuilt my self esteem. Gotta start all over again now. Fuckers.
So damn close! I am totally convinced that had he not met Trinket – or if she had at least granted us that grace period I begged her for (how hard would it have been to back away for a few months, she barely knew him then, to allow a thirty year love story a little healing, breathing room?) – right at the very end of that designated period, we would now be together, rebuilt through my fire. He would be proud of me, and I would be of him. Instead, he loathes me, and I pine for what could have been had they given me the time I actually-out-loud asked for. Of course, I know that he really was just waiting for me, he really did not address his neediness, or his first tendency to seek out other women and lie to try to soothe his pains.
So, I carry on through the rekindled flames of loss, grief and devastation, just as I thought I had nearly put them out. Yes, me. Not us. I was the one who did all the investigating, the research, the healing. He stood around, gathering a few spectators, watching the thing we built, that he put the match to, burn to the ground while I desperately fought the fire.
So, when you have been cheated on, why the hell would you do it to another person, knowing the hell it creates, the trauma, the self doubt, and how it cuts off the most confident person at the knees, some of the rest of us at the neck?
That has been my biggest puzzle. We know that cheaters lie. We know they downplay how many times they cheat, how it was “just a phase” or that the BS was somehow lacking. Us BS’s, we are so powerful, we MAKE cheaters cheat, super power! Yasss!
They discount the trauma they caused to a loving partner. They need to do this out loud to attract a new target. Look at me, I am just horribly misunderstood, and my ex partner was SUCH a bitch.
I was chatting with a good friend about this today, she has just found some unopened messages in her husband’s phone from an ex AP. She is really triggered and angry that the stupid bitch, who was contacted BY HIM and told to fuck off, he is married, and committed to reconciliation with his wife of many decades, to never contact him again, and three years later, this? (Hmmm, I get that, I mean, two years after D-Day, Roger went and fucked Leanne again…) I mean, WTF is wrong with these women who keep trying to poach taken men? I know, I know, we are not supposed to blame the OW, it is our partners who are cheating on us, not them, yada, yada, yada. But really? Why would you ever want a taken man, why would you want to be forever the woman who broke up a family??? Are these women so fucking stupid that they believe proven liars, who want nothing more than to get in your pants, and hold your hand, to stop being alone for a second, over a faithful partner, who just did everything right, and was completely traumatised by the cheating. I mean, I had no idea. I believed him when I questioned him about Leanne.
He lied and lied, and lied. No, nothing going on here – only fucked her all over our homes, and snuck out for secret rendezvous with her in our hunting lodge when he told me he was meeting mates at the pub. While I was home, cooking, cleaning, looking after our children.
Gross.
I just find it bizarre that the betrayed partner is made to be the bad guy. Why don’t the women involved get to know us? Find out that we are really nice people?
Because, that ruins the narrative, doesn’t it? Men don’t leave lovely, kind, sexy, clever, kind mothers of their children.
They only leave fat, ugly, grumpy, stupid bitches, right? Don’t ever question the myth…
And, just for Ash… a picture this morning of my old goat, to cheer you all up! Here’s Chimble, she kept following me, so terrible photo!
I meant to post this yesterday, but it will work for many of you, who are still in ‘yesterday!’
It was another long day at work, and I had to dance off the pain last night. But, I remember to both be kind, and try to accept kindness in my everyday life. Kindness makes life worthwhile. Gives it purpose, it’s where the joy lives. I remember joy!
My boss is my age, working about 18-20 hour days at present, and has a just turned 9 year old son who is all of a sudden overflowing with more attitude than ever. To the point of starting to be a bit rude and entitled. Teachers were striking, and he was at work. I sat him down after hearing him loudly and rudely make demands. I said, “it’s World Kindness Day, T. You need to practice that. Not just today. But every day. Do not speak to your mother like that. Ever.” His reply was, “she’s used to it.” I looked him in the eye, and said, if you want to be spoken to and treated the way I just heard you speak to your mother, go ahead. The staff are really disappointed in you, hearing that disrespect. ALWAYS think about how you would feel if someone did it to you. Or if someone ELSE did it to your Mum. Would you like it if you saw how it made your Mum feel?” He looked at me, and said he was sorry. I replied, don’t be sorry, be kind. Take care of other people’s feelings. Always.
The wee small hours were spent Googling how to stop loving someone.
When all I have to do really, is ask Roger, lol. He said he loved me forever, but no. He switched that off, redirected it at his shiny new trinket.
Wish I could do that. Just switch off thirty years of deep love.
This morning, I was getting ready for work, doing my hair, and I looked down and realised that although my hair loss has slowed, there is still a lot in my comb every time. I was fascinated, and took a shot of this morning’s harvest, after just two strokes of the comb…ewwwwww
I had an after work waxing appointment, and I have learned to love the pain. Physical pain is welcome. For about a year, I started to cut. Not often, and not too badly. It was during the period I became sexually numb. I just wanted to feel something. And, I started razoring small incisions on my inner thigh, groin, and even closer… near the parts of me that I felt had stopped feeling anything. Places no one could see. Tonight, my waxer asked me about the faint scars. She has previously seen the lymphectomy one, and the subsequent cover up tattoo, she’s laughed with me about my stretchmarks from big pregnancies, but she had never asked about the fine lines where the razor neatly sliced into my skin. I just said it was from another life.
I never went extra deep. Just enough to feel the delicious cold-warm ooze of blood. I only did it a handful of times, when I just could not bear the emotional pain a second longer.
I have been dancing around my lounge room tonight, moving to try to stop the pain.
Go to bed now I can tell
Pain is on the way out now
Look at the way the domino falls away
I know it’s hard looking in
Knowing that tomorrow you’ll be back again
Hang your head and let me in, I’m waiting
So long
I was staring into the light
When I saw you in the distance, I knew that you’d be mine
Am I moving back in time?
Just standing still?
I met a man with a broken back
He had a fear in his eyes that I could understand
I can’t even shake the hand
Without breaking it
I’ve been pulling on a wire, but it just won’t break
I’ve been turning up the dial, but I hear no sound
I resist what I cannot change
And I wanna find what can’t be found
I’m aware of the time we lost
Like a demon in the doorway, waiting to be born
But I’m here all alone, just begging
Pull me close and let me hold you in
Give me the deeper understanding of who I am
Yeah, I’m moving back again, I’m waiting, yeah
I’m just pulling on a wire, but it just won’t break
I’ve been turning up the dial, but I hear no sound
I resist what I cannot change, own it in your own way
Yeah, I wanna find what can’t be found.
I usually listen to more uplifting dance music when I am here, but tonight, my shuffle came up with two War on Drugs songs, and I did have to kind of laugh!
