Forging on

Tools employed to scramble out of emotional pits?

Humour.

Humour is one I try to grasp hold of.

I had a lovely dinner with a group of recently divorced/separated professional women and mums last night. Every one of us had cheating partners in our past. And we could be a bunch of bitter bunnies, but actually, this was an incredibly strong, funny, beautiful group of women assembled at the new home of my vet friend whose husband cheated and left with his secretary, who moved into her new home at the weekend. She’s bought a property just a few kilometres from me.

I met a total babe friend of hers late last year as she joined one of our tables at the Boxing Day races.

This sweetheart – a landscape designer – who I really connected with that day, but hadn’t seen or spoken to since, turned up with this gorgeous orchid for me, as a birthday present! How lovely is that? So kind. I was terribly touched.

And, as a group, we really did have a giggle.

The below meme was one of my favourite things the internet delivered to me early this morning…

(I actually wasn’t looking, so no rushing, but man, did Roger love bomb me into moving in with him, the “love of my life” after knowing him just five weeks….Two weeks after he fucked his ex girlfriend, Leanne, again. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️)

Yeah. I must have grabbed the wrong one.

And it does make you doubt yourself.

Badly.

BG messaged me after I told him I had booked my flights to meet him after his conference in Australia in a few weeks.

I did realise how vulnerable and insecure I have become.

And am desperately trying to hide that fact.

His message to me was this…

I panicked mildly. My thought was, okay, he’s had enough. He wants to pull out of this.

So, I started planning what I would do on a weekend in Brisbane on my own.

He didn’t call back as promised.

Turns out he had fallen asleep, and all he was trying to do was coordinate his flights from Sydney to meet me, coming from New Zealand, and who was booking accommodation where, etc.

My, not good enough shit had taken over. Like anyone who has been long term, and multiply cheated on. I assumed the worst, and started planning what to do without him.

There has never, at any stage, been any indication he is anything but incredibly into me. After all, he came back around very eagerly after I ghosted him for six months after two tentative dates…

This was my shit. My not good enough. My everyone who loves me leaves me.

He followed it up with a VERY intense, deliciously sweaty lovemaking session, a huge amount of gratitude, and an invitation to come to his old town to meet his friends and the stepdaughter who lives there, and is about to move overseas, and he still has a lovely relationship with, this weekend. He’s gonna take the day off and come over on Friday, I’ll try and leave work early, and we can get away together.

It’s hard, believing in yourself when you’ve been smashed to pieces. When your heart is broken.

But, you draw on all the tools you have, to stay away from the sharp objects at night, to give and receive love from friends. From a kind man. To try to be open while protecting yourself from being fucked over again.

Being dumped for another woman has changed so very much of me, and so many of my friendships. Coupled friends are scared of me. Whether it is that it might be contagious, or they think I might be some kind of threat? I really have no idea. I am now running with a bizarre crowd of mostly younger, loving, fun, diligent, hard working, strong AF single women, trying to find their mojo again after, in some cases, decades of giving to a cheating man and their children.

This is endemic. Men who discard amazing women. Honestly, on looks alone last night, I thought shit, these are hot bitches who loved. And not one of their exes was terribly good looking. WTF universe?

Failed

Stupidly sitting in my car in floods of tears.

D, my youngest, a final year Geography and Anthropology major just Snapchatted me with her Anthropology kinship diagram outlining all the failed relationships in her family. With the caption, “nothing like a kinship diagram to see all the failures of relationships in your family.”

Once upon a time I thought I was the family success story. Decades of love and commitment. Divorced parents. The only one of four kids with a loving, successful, intact relationship (the only first marriage to survive, at the time.)

Now I am just another fucking failure like the rest. And did nothing wrong.

Bastard.

Fuck.

I just needed to purge here so she doesn’t know how much she hurt me sending that.

Wisdom

My daughter is wise.

I used to think I was wise too.

I knew the rules about love.

I was never going to be cheated on, because I chose well, I loved hard, worked really, really hard at being a good partner, and I communicated what my needs and expectations were. (Hint, not to be cheated on was right up there…)

S and I were talking, and she was horrified to realise how small I made my needs over the decades with her father, a stubborn, selfish man, whose needs, and need to always be in charge and “right” almost always trumped any of my needs.

I used to frame my small needs as “picking my battles.” I really only fought for very few things really.

I was reading CJ Hauser, and this totally reverberated about how my needs got smaller and smaller, how my upset at the big affair with “our” friend, Leanne – which was just a blip on the radar, a bit of a “mistake” (18 months of repeated, regular “mistake”… whoops, I was mistakenly texting her 600 times a week, and fell into her vagina AGAIN! Oh dear, how does this keep HAPPENING???) – was unfair. How dare I be upset? Why was I questioning whether he had EVER loved me?

I often wonder how he would have been if it was me fucking his mate in our homes, in his workshop, in his maimai, who he had regular beers with, for 18 months? I’m sure he would have forgiven and forgotten, unlike unreasonable little old me!

What I learned to do, in my relationship with my fiancé, was to survive on less. At what should have been the breaking point but wasn’t, I learned that he had cheated on me. The woman he’d been sleeping with was a friend of his I’d initially wanted to be friends with, too, but who did not seem to like me, and who he’d gaslit me into being jealous of, and then gaslit me into feeling crazy for being jealous of.

The full course of the gaslighting took a year, so by the time I truly found out what had happened, the infidelity was already a year in the past.

It was new news to me but old news to my fiancé.

Logically, he said, it doesn’t matter anymore.

It had happened a year ago. Why was I getting worked up over ancient history?

I did the mental gymnastics required.

I convinced myself that I was a logical woman who could consider this information about having been cheated on, about his not wearing a condom, and I could separate it from the current reality of our life together.

Why did I need to know that we’d been monogamous? Why did I need to have and discuss inconvenient feelings about this ancient history?

I would not be a woman who needed these things, I decided.

I would need less. And less.

I got very good at this.

Yeah. All of that.

I did make my bottom line go even lower.

I did put up with being excluded from important decisions.

I did put up with him having what I really did consider was an inappropriately close relationship with his ex.

Because I was the “cool” chick who didn’t do jealousy.

No. I was the dumb chick who believed his fucking lies.

Because I loved him with everything I had.

And if these women who cheat with partnered men, who take these known cheaters on knew what agony they cause? I just will NEVER understand how a betrayed wife could POSSIBLY believe a proven cheater over his loyal partner. How is she cool with being branded the other woman forever when she hated the other women in her own marriage???

As I have stated before. She is more special than me, right? Despite Roger telling me (what he thought I wanted to hear…) that he could never have with her what he’d had with me.

Riiiiiight. Good one. That is why you’re leaving me then. To have a lesser relationship. Makes perfect sense…🤦‍♀️

Lots and lots of aches

Spending time with our eldest was just fantastic this weekend. The film festival movies were lit.

But, I admit, I am triggered by being with our children. Made with such intense love. The struggles of babyhood and being new young parents, but the way that forges you even closer than before. My heart aches so hard remembering how truly fantastic we were. How much love there APPEARED to be.

The film we saw at lunchtime was hard. A Vietnamese one called The Third Wife. During it a very young first time mother, labouring, when she was struggling to birth her child, a make shift episiotomy was performed. And later, she was struggling with a very unsettled, constantly crying baby.

Triggered! I had an enormous episiotomy when our eldest was born. And through my tearing fears, and the subsequent stitches over tight old scars from the rape repair, was a major physical difficulty I struggled with for around tbe first year of her life. We still had a lot of amazing sex, first tenderly making love despite those stitches just the day after she was born. But I had to be VERY careful with certain positions for quite a long time, and it did concern me a lot. That maybe I was never going to have the full range of my previous sexual capabilities.

It was genuinely scary.

I was chatting with my daughter, S about life today. She’s a good egg. And she asked me if my new life is mostly good now. She knows about my heartbreak, and we visited the site where my new apartment is to be built. She said she’s proud of me pushing forward despite my pain. Cute. I really appreciated hearing that. She’s at a career crossroads and is seeing a careers coach and has applied for a couple of jobs that are not using her trade. We talked about one in particular that she would be fantastic for, but it isn’t fulltime. I approached the idea of part time study, and she isn’t opposed to it.

She mentioned that our old friends probably don’t get me and my new way of having to be now…

She is very intuitive.

And the reason for that is because I have no fucking choice but to reinvent, and start over. He just stopped loving me.

If he ever really did.

It just keeps hurting. And I know there is absolutely NOTHING I can, or could do. You just have to absorb and accept the pain will probably never go away. All those babies, all those miscarriages, all that deep, profound love. Pouff! Gone.

My kids are fantastic. S always books us into the BEST restaurants. We ate at a fantastic Japanese inspired place last night. We ate well. And I need a month to detox from eating and drinking far too well!

The left was my tamarillo sorbet on a Brie de Meaux thingie. Right was sesame tuile and something delicious. I forget, 🤣 it was all insanely good!

I’m so damn privileged to have these great people I made, to spend time with them, to laugh with them. To help them, as they help me.

I wish I could have spent the past two weekends with my two eldest, without the past two years happening. In other words, with the man I love. Their father.

The one who disappeared, and no longer exists. My love, my heart, before he was body snatched by aliens and now lives with a stranger, a widow and her kids.

That is the weirdest part of it all. Thirty years of love, just wiped from existence. He just transplanted himself elsewhere, with a stranger. Carry on…

Consent

I often wonder why my rape has caused such a lot of trauma decades later.

I mean, we all kind of understand that rape is a terrible thing that can mess you up, psychologically. But it didn’t really mess me up a whole lot at the time.

Or so I thought.

But maybe that was why I was vulnerable to Roger’s love bombing just five months later?

I dunno. I do know that I am now, over 30 years later, realising how women are affected. How we live our lives in fear.

This recent analogy, written by a man, to try to explain the cultural embeddedness of gendered lived geographies around sex, sexuality and rape, really illustrates for me how I have lived my life. Especially since my friend’s flatmate brutally raped me in my own home. The tearing he caused my body still totally terrifies me today. I see my genitalia as paper thin, ready to be torn apart at the slightest pressure. At least until I learn to trust a sexual partner…

We teach girls that they have to protect themselves against these almost uncontrollable urges of men. So disgusting to have this theme.

It was underscored yesterday for me when I watched my first film in this year’s NZ International Film Festival. Ask Dr Ruth.

It was a very good movie, better than I expected. What an incredible woman she is. Her strength and spirit to overcome huge trauma aside, her staunch answers to those who ‘assume’ male sexual aggression, and ‘needs,’ versus supposed female passivity and lack of desire, but also her challenge to such rape culture thinking, is outstanding.

I wasn’t raped because I had two drinks, wore a short skirt and invited the guy who walked me home from a party (ironically to keep me safe in the dark, ugh) into my flat. He was not some beast with uncontrollable urges. He chose to violently rape me even as I fought and screamed. I tried to choose to heal from his selfish and criminal choices. I thought I had a handle on it all.

Until the only man I ever trusted, Roger, let me down so badly. His cheating, long term, with our “friend,” in our homes, around our children, while I cooked and child minded for his affair partner, making me feel like nothing was going on as he openly texted her in front of me and talked with me about what she was up to, and doing so without wearing condoms completely mind fucked me. The health consequences I have suffered since, both physically and mentally, I never saw coming.

Yesterday, one of my very first betrayed wife friends I met after Roger cheated, who is now divorced, messaged me to say a married man from her church grabbed her and passionately kissed her at the church. She was completely mortified, and the shock was very real. She rebuked him saying, stop that crap you’re a married man! Her friend told her it was sexual assault. She is just starting to understand the non-consensual nature of what he did, and how revolted she feels.

Consent. We talk about it surrounding sex, a lot.

But what about affairs? Affairs are a sexual act your supposedly monogamous partner never consented to. I have heard it called soul rape.

As a violent rape survivor, I could not agree more. I am struggling, fighting so hard, to regain who I am. To not let the selfish cheating cunts win. To not let them destroy me, my empathy, my faith in humanity. To stay kind and loving.

Roger and Leanne. Roger and Trinket. These things were emotional rape for me. I did not consent. I did not have any way of protecting myself from the emotional pain and suffering, or from the diseases I have had to deal with because the only man I ever trusted stuck his dick in disease, then stuck it in me.

Vulnerable

During the only couples counselling I eventually managed to drag Roger to, four years after DDay, our therapist, Nic (the one who diagnosed love addiction), tried to get us to watch Brene Brown’s original TedTalk on vulnerability.

Rog watched a few minutes and turned to me with, “see, you have to learn to let go and be vulnerable with me again.”

I quietly seethed.

I wasn’t ready, he had been blaming me, telling me I abandoned him, and he had no choice but to cheat.

I wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable with him again, yet. He had done little to make me feel safe.

But I needed to be more vulnerable. To absolve him of the terrible guilt he felt about what he chose.

Fuck. That. Shit.

I needed time, to see him lead the way in our healing just a little bit (hint, that never happened.) All the research, all the counselling, all the trying to find answers, looking at myself about what I must have done wrong – ALL done by me. The only time he did anything was after my first suicide attempt, where he found me a psychologist, and dropped me off at her office… never read a book. Never thought to seek counselling. Never looked online for help – except at dating sites!

I was aware that Brene’s words were so very true. You do have to find at least a certain amount of vulnerability. To avoid bitterness and being closed off from the joy of the world. I also knew I needed to work hard to get to a place where being vulnerable was “safe” again.

I was a lover of life. Grabbed it with both hands and shook the hell out of it. Take every opportunity you can. Until Leanne. When I began to withdraw. And fear. Roger described me as sparkly. He said he crushed the sparkle out of me.

Yeah.

He did.

I’m trying to find my sparkle again. Travel. Risk. Fun. Sparkly isn’t a word I utter, or use IRL.

But weirdly, BG used it the other day. “Look at you, you funny, sparkly thing!”

And no, there wasn’t a sequin in sight.

Apparently my green eyes have regained their sparkle. He isn’t the first to say it. My two best girlfriends guessed there was something up, saying, your beautiful eyes have started sparkling again. Your skin is glowing. Like a gorgeous young pregnant woman.

Ugh.

My two and a half week cold sore finally healed, and I was perfectly kissable. Thank God. It’s hell not being able to use your lips on the person you are making love with.

But yesterday, he messaged me to say, guess what? I have a side serving of … coleslaw.

Shit! I felt absolutely terrible. Gutted. Devastated that I somehow shared the virus. Dirty, actually.

He laughed. Said he thought he’d had one before. It was fine.

I didn’t feel any better.

I get them.

Rog never did.

Anyway, I rang the pharmacy down the road from BG’s work, and asked a huge favour. Could I ask someone to please pop down to his work and deliver some Zovirax and lysine?

Yep. No problem. We’ll do that for you!

How cool are they???

I got a message a few hours later…

I was vulnerable. Took a small risk with him. I don’t wanna be his mother, or hover about. But I thought, I gave him a yucky virus, I can try to help him heal. I was worried he might think I was micro-managing a perfectly capable, single, grown man who is perfectly capable of dealing with his own health. Has managed to do so quite decently for 53 years…

But, I knew he had a late board meeting he would be preparing for, and was unlikely to have time to get to a pharmacy.

I tried to be kind, and let go of my fears.

To the point where I booked a flight to Australia to go meet him after a conference he has in a few weeks. He said he’d love it if I met him there for the weekend.

I felt the fear, and did it anyway.

Much like the properties I am buying. Terrifying.

But then, so is sitting still.

Anyway. Enough of that. Time to go see a couple of documentaries to warm up before my daughter finishes work!

Better for her. Revisited

Possibly the very worst aspect of having loved someone for over thirty years, even throughout them cheating long term, and the difficult work of finding your feet again somehow, is when they do it again, and leave for the “better option” of another affair partner.

He’s better for her.

And I earned that. I worked my butt off for the life she walked into.

The anguish is nearly unbearable, and the dreams last night were of their loved up life in a sunny climate, while I battle the demons every which way. Fucking PTSD. Struggling not to hurt this little body more.

I wonder what changed in him? Why does he think she deserves the best of him, when I gave more than any partner I have ever met?

Then you do try to soothe yourself with platitudes and things people believe about the lack of reform.

I actually think he at least believes he is reformed. Will love her more, better. That Trinket somehow deserves better than I got.

What has changed in this person so that the next time a crisis occurs or they aren’t feeling loved and special they don’t opt to go fuck another person?

SpaghettiSam

I borrowed this from the artist, formerly known as a reformed cad.

Who really knows?

I used to believe we were so incredibly in tune with each other. Truly bonded. That we complemented each other in ways no one else did.

We were kinda somehow special.

Yeah right.

Leanne tore that to shreds.

I believed him every time I asked if he was doing something damaging to us by having her in his life.

Every time.

Blind faith that if he did something to hurt me he would immediately confess and try to make it right.

I was such a goddamn fool.

I was a superb partner who loved him as much as it’s humanly possible to love.

And I was never enough…

For those who don’t understand

The utter devastation.

Of finding out your beloved, whom you are supposed to trust to always be honest and open with you.

Then find out they lied to you about how much they love you and desperately want to be with you, whilst having at least three online dating profiles for nearly two years, which state he’s single? Effectively lying to anyone who tries to hook up with him?

Yeah, okay.

A friend sent me this link to an article about a Canadian lawyer who lied to his wife, AND his AP. Telling his AP he was legally divorced, then marrying her.

The wife is totally devastated and traumatised.

Yes.

Traumatised.

It is not a thing I made up. Being lied to by your most beloved partner of over three decades is ACTUALLY traumatising. I have the physical and mental scars to prove it.

This lawyer did just what Rog did. Told me we were together. That I was the love of his life and we were meant to be together. Even on actually driving out of my life, kissing me hard, that one day we would find our way back to each other.

Told Trinket we were separated (despite the fact we still lived and slept together!) I made him move to a separate room after I spoke with her in person! But yeah, we were still doing the wild thing the whole way through. He snuggled into me, rubbed my feet…etc.

I just seriously believed he had a moment and would wake the fuck up and realise he was selling up his whole life all my thirty years of devotion, love, our history, for someone he had known for just a few weeks.

Love addicts do this. They fall hard and fast, and make the target of their affection feel the same way. Roger was desperate for Trinket to be his exit plan.

I know, because he did the same thing to me 31 years ago. Love bombed the shit out of me.

I fell for it.

But I was a 20 year old virgin. Thought I was so worldly, lol.

Trinket did know.

As the widow of a serial cheat, she knew cheaters lie.

But bought his story over mine.

Because hormones. 🤣

A. Roger told her I was not to know about her to start with. RED FLAG!

B. I told her in clear terms that I had no idea he thought he was single! COULD IT BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS?

Anyway, not my circus. I won’t ever take on a man who is clearly not single.

Even if he says he is.

The article triggered me. I got the shakes reading about the poor wife, a JP (so, an educated woman, not some fawning little, simple, needy housewife at home, waiting for her big, stwong man to rescue her…) and her traumatised reaction to her husband’s actions. This stuff seriously messes up even relatively sane people. It has me.

I had a conversation with my friend, L, this morning, who is still with her cheating husband.

We both realise we have not had a single full night’s sleep since our respective Ddays.

I slept not at all at BG’s house the other night. It’s like fight or flight can’t be disengaged.

A Me day

I had to take the big dog, Q, back to the vet yesterday. A scheduled visit because she was diagnosed with asthma, and has been on prednisone for a month. Yesterday, we picked up her spacer, Flixitide, and another month’s worth of half doses of prednisone as we wean off that and onto the preventer inhaler alone.

It’s hilarious. And she’s so much happier now we have stopped her awful, constant, hacking cough. But giving her the Flixitide twice a day, she sure gives you the side eye!

I arrived home earlier than my flatmate, who was flying out to her family in South Africa early Thursday morning. She asked me to leave the dogs inside, she would feed them and pop them out in kennels when she left as I was off to the beach, BarGuy was taking me out for dinner for my birthday.

Anyway, Q being a former farm dog, who now gets to come inside, got wind of my Moroccan lamb in the slow cooker on the bench.

And decided to help herself before J got home…

J sent me this pic.

I needed a smaller slow cooker anyway. This one was a free one from over 20 years ago, when had a hungry, farming partner and farming me and three kids to feed. I’ve been doing similar sized meals just to fill the large cooker to cook the food properly, and you get sick of eating the same food too many nights in a row, and freezer meals. I used to take portions of my large meals over to my elderly father in law when I was getting my hair done more regularly in his town, but have halved my visits lately, and the freezer is full!

So, got to BarGuy’s and he gave me the full inspection as he pulled me in for a kiss. Yep. Cold sore finally healed. We could kiss again properly. He made a real show of having a good look. Being a totally OTT dick for comic effect. Apparently I passed muster. Because the kissing went on and on and on….yay! I do love the passion of a good kissing session.

He took me out for dinner. Again, said I needed taking out and showing off.

I was in my business attire! But yeah, I did look good. Sexy secretary has nothing on me, lol. (As an aside, BarGuy’s totally awesome PA, who I have spoken with on the phone, is physically a very large, very plain looking Polynesian woman, former legal secretary to a high powered city QC. She is amazing, capable, and takes no shit. I about peed my pants when I heard them call each other darling! Just after I nearly had a wee meltdown when BG called ME darling in front of his friends, then in private. It just ain’t that big a deal, lol.)

We had a beautiful meal. I had the hapuka on smashed spuds with a delicate beurre blanc. His was tender pork belly with Asian slaw. Insisted on dessert, and we waddled back home to polish off a bottle of port!

I’m gonna get fat again at this rate, lol.

Luckily we worked it off later! 😉😉😉 OMG, did we ever. Bloody hell! Fuck I missed athletic sex! I’m walking a tad weirdly today 😱. Big. Boy.

BarGuy fancies himself a bit of a card at times. I shared the day before that I had been too tired to cook a proper dinner, so had Vegemite on Vogels for dinner. That I hadn’t eaten Vegemite in years, so good!

His reply? “Weird cravings we’re having, missy? Should I be worried?”

Righto dude with no kids versus woman who has been pregnant seven times, and never experienced a pregnancy craving.

It’s so weird. This thing. This midlife interruption to normal programming. It’s good. But it hurts like fuck, too. This should be my time with my love. Not this awkward teenage stuff, having bizarre are you pregnant conversations with a new person who I don’t share a lifetime of memories and love with.

Today, my day off, I did things I NEVER used to do. Mani/pedi, eyelash lift, bought some clothes, ate out with family.

The gratitude for my good life is huge tonight.

But, as I’ve said before, it never makes up for the utterly broken heart.💔

Can you die of a broken heart?

Since my takotsubo cardiomyopathy diagnosis, I have followed Dr Nikki Stamp, an Australian heart and lung surgeon, on Instagram.

I bought her book. Can You Die of a Broken Heart.

It’s really interesting. And there is some new research she highlights about the links between this condition and cancer.

Yeah, ask me how I know. I had abnormal smears and precancerous cells several times since contracting HPV from Leanne. But all managed quite well with some minor day surgical procedures.

Until he said I’ve Met Someone Else, and completely broke my already seriously bruised heart.

Then I was diagnosed with early stage cervical cancer. Despite being on six monthly smears.

A lymphectomy and radiotherapy later, I seem to be beating this thing. Yay!

Not long after my treatment ended, my heart condition happened, with me being admitted to hospital overnight to diagnose and manage a new health issue I had never shown any sign of prior to this personal catastrophe. I was only discharged a day early at my insistence that I had dogs to tend to, no one was home to let them out!

Broken hearts are real.

And reading this comment on Nikki’s Instagram post broke my heart.