Sep 4, 2008 | Personal
I’ve just found out that another beautiful woman I know has been betrayed.
They’ve been married for only 8 months but I could see this becoming a reality a year before their wedding. Perhaps I’m sensitive to this kind of potential devastation only because I have lived through it and learned from it. I have the benefit of hindsight. I am able to see the signs, the flashing red lights that go off when couples behave in certain way, individually or together.
Should I have said anything? Should I have verbalized my concern? Was it any of my business?
No. I don’t think so. Couples tying the knot are deaf and blind to any warnings. They don’t want to hear that things could go pear-shaped. They don’t want to see that their future together may not be eternally easy. They are “in love” and the world is perfect. Or so they try to convince themselves.
You want with all your heart to believe that your marriage will never end, that you’ll be with this person for life. But the sad reality is that you only have a 1 in 2 shot of that happening these days. The odds aren’t good and you’d better be ready to face them. Or make damn sure you know how to beat them.
Yes, I’m cynical about marriage. I’ve just seen too many people become complacent within its “safe” confines. I’ve seen too many people (men AND women) break their vows and inflict unspeakable cruelty on their partners. I’ve seen far too many lives destroyed by this, including my own.
I detest betrayal of ANY kind.
“You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.” – Proverb
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[ Babynet has just published an interesting study regarding the possible connection between male infidelity and the AVPR1A gene here. ]
Aug 18, 2008 | Personal
Well, that was bloody awful!
I’m back from the Family Session at the clinic and surprise, surprise … I’m a complete wreck. Eish …
*Apparently* my feelings or opinions count for sweet fuckall. I sat there during the session while stuff was being said, some of it untrue, and when I was asked about how I was feeling about the session, I spoke up. And guess what? I was shot down!!
“No, no, that’s *adult* stuff, don’t raise it here.”
WTF???
People, you ASKED me!! I tell you that I’m also still trying to deal with stuff around the things we discussed, e.g. the divorce, that I’m also looking for closure on issues. I tell you that some things raised were not true and then you tell me to shut up?!
So all those feelings I’ve been carrying about feeling completely worthless, about my opinions or my feelings counting for nothing, were confirmed and affirmed for me right then and there.
I AM NOT ALLOWED TO OPEN MY MOUTH.
WHAT I SAY OR FEEL IS IRRELEVANT.
So I exploded into a silent rage of tears.
The X and Son#1 were kicked out and I was left alone with the Terrible Tag Team feeling like a complete loser. Once again, I am the emo one, the one who falls apart, the one who can’t deal with shit.
I am so fucking OVER being broken all the time!!!
I am so frustrated that I can’t get past this SHIT!!!
I am so MASSIVELY pissed off that the X had the GALL to sit there and say he didn’t have an affair. Wake up and smell the coffee! Just because you didn’t bonk her brains out DOES NOT mean you didn’t have an affair. Why can’t you GET that?
AAAAAARRRRRGGGH!
I guess that’s all I’m looking for, all I’ve ever wanted – a simple bloody acknowledgement from him that all my pain was for a REASON. I can handle the rejection, I can handle the fact that we were no longer compatible but what I can’t handle is that IT’S ALL MY FAULT and he bears NO RESPONSIBILITY.
But I guess that’ll never happen. It’s been 3 years since I found out and nothing’s changed, he still denies it.
And what then? What if it never does happen? How how HOW do learn to live with not getting any closure – and live in peace, instead of in pieces?
This is where I am stuck. This is where all the shit feelings get trapped. This is where I can’t move away from and I can’t leave it behind because it’s STILL getting paraded around in front of me … that I was to blame for it all.
*deep breaths*
Anyway … fuck … now what?
They gave me the number for a therapist. I guess I’ll make an appointment but I’m skeptical. I’ve vented enough about this, how will more talking help? She can’t “fix” anything and my experience with other therapists has been pretty dismal.
Urgh
I’m so bored with being emo and over not being able to have a life, never mind enjoy it.
This roller coaster ride is ridiculously tiring …
Aug 16, 2008 | Personal
Mmk, so we have 2 more Family Sessions coming up at the clinic – one on Monday and one on Tuesday.
In light of the fact that I really struggle to talk at these things and because I’ve failed to open my mouth when I’ve heard some bullshit being spoken, I have decided to go back into my email archives and dig out the truth.
Yes, I have kept EVERYTHING …
So when I hear the X speak on my behalf, saying “we did everything we could” with regard to addressing Son#1’s “problems” as he was encountering them, starting a few years ago, and he tells everyone how he has always supported me in disciplining the kids, I can haul this out. It’s an email I sent to him in April 2005:
He (Son#1) does not feel secure about himself because of current home circumstances … As I’ve always said, the only way he’s going to “grow up” is to experience our love in a way that he understands and relates to so that he starts to feel emotionally safe. Then he’ll start learning to make better choices because he’s getting what he needs from home and doesn’t need to look outside for his emotional fulfillment. He’ll then be more open to our guidance, which he desperately needs.
I know you don’t agree with me on this and that you feel the permissive route is better, but as an emotionally retarded teenager in a hostile, careless, fast-paced society that bombards youngsters with violence and amoral behaviour and almost completely desensitizes them, loving guidance is not optional, it is critical. Hence the need for us to work TOGETHER and support each other in making sure he understands that there are limits to what he can and can’t do, how to distinguish between right and wrong.
I believe that as his emotional maturity develops, the rest of his life will start falling into place – and this includes academic achievement. I also believe that once he does start achieving in areas he clearly doesn’t at the moment, he will feel better and better about himself too. So it’s a cycle that needs to start. And it starts with us.
And when I hear the X saying things like I was the cold one, I was the one who lost interest in the marriage and that I hurt him, I will have evidence to the contrary:
It breaks my heart that our communication has been reduced to occasional short emails and sms messages and I am not able to tell you this in person anymore. Nor am I able to kiss or hug you as you have closed yourself off from me completely.
You should also know that I am still 100% committed to reconciling and renewing our marriage and I will continue to do everything I can to demonstrate my love and dedication to you, no matter what.
I miss you,
Me
Xxx
And then, when I found out about HER:
I am devastated by this – the pain is unbearable and my hurt is unspeakable. As I uncover the evidence of the double life you have been leading and follow the trail of deception and destruction, my heart is shattered.
But I want you to know that more than anything, my greatest desire is to reconcile with you, and for you to give me the chance to be the wife you deserve and to create the loving home and family we all want.
I want you to be completely open and honest with me – about everything. We are both responsible for our relationship deteriorating and we both need to own up to and work on areas that create problems for each other.
I love you and I WILL do whatever it takes to restore our marriage.
Me
And when he tells people that he “tried everything” he could, I’ll be able to CONFIDENTLY say: “hang on a sec … I don’t believe that’s quite true – here is an email I sent you” …
I don’t know whether you have started divorce proceedings or not and I don’t know when your summons will arrive.
Before that happens, I would like to put something on the table so that I know that I have done absolutely everything I possibly can in order to save this marriage.
As angry as I am right now, I am still convinced that divorce is not the answer and that it will not solve anything for either of us. Apart from just deferring personal issues we both have to other relationships, it will also bring about a whole new set of problems to deal with.
I would like for us to go for counseling. I know you are afraid, so am I, and I know you want to just get away from all this, but for both our sakes I would really like to meet with you in the safety of a therapist’s room to talk about us and see if there is any way we can learn what we need to know from and about each other.
I love you and I do not want a divorce.
Please will you think about this?
Me
He never responded to that email.
His next communication with me was a one-liner, telling me that he was “expediting the divorce.”
You see, I’ve sat in the corner for years now, biting my lip about what really happened, afraid that the truth would hurt my children. But now, all this has cropped up again and I can see that it needs to be dealt with once and for all, for my sake AND theirs.
No longer will I swallow his lies, keep my mouth shut and allow everyone else to be deceived at the expense of my own freedom. I thought I was protecting my kids but it’s backfired and created an obstacle between my boys and I that now HAS to be shattered and blown out the way.
I am going in on Monday armed with the necessary evidence to counter the CRAP that comes out of his mouth!
The truth WILL set me free.
Jul 27, 2008 | Personal
*yet another emo warning*
Mmk, so this is a follow up to recent comments I made in this post, in reply to my Dad and B, wherein I mention the realization and acknowledgment of certain issues that I still need to work through and my need to start sharing more of those things with people in order to help me release some of the pain that I’ve been swallowing, avoiding and numbing out to.
I recently discovered that a friend was facing a situation in her marriage so similar to what I went through that it pierced my heart and prompted me to write her a letter. Not that I ever sent it to her, I didn’t want to interfere or offer unsolicited advice, it was just me putting pen to paper, so to speak, in an attempt to try and make more sense of all the craziness that came rushing back into my head when I heard about what she was going through.
I’ve not shared this with anyone, apart from Sir G. And I now want to share it with you. I want to give you an insight into a dimension of my past that still haunts me and sometimes shades my world with an unwelcome presence of fear and cynicism.
In unleashing this very private pain, I hope to bring it to the surface so that it can be dealt with properly. I know that’s going to take time though. Trust me; I have no illusions about a single post being entirely cathartic. But I have learned that ignoring or disregarding or even minimalising the very real trauma that I’ve allowed to warp my life and cause me such enormous distress is not the answer anymore. It’s not the way to fix what’s broken. My emotions, both negative and positive, have a right to be acknowledged and handled appropriately. I don’t have to hide from them or think that I am weak for experiencing emotion. My current lesson is deal with them effectively and now that I am able to be more rational, I think I can.
I also need a visual reminder to myself of how far I’ve come. Writing this letter was a huge step for me, one that showed me that I am indeed on the right track to rediscovering my essence and that I am not going to allow myself to submit to a victim mentality. I have made some choices that were not in my own best interests and this letter serves as my cue to pull my own strings, to take responsibility for my own life and happiness.
So here goes …
[Start]
To the beautiful woman whose husband vowed to love you forever, to honour you, keep you and cherish you until death parts you, to the devoted wife whose husband has now decided that you are not good enough for him, and that he would rather be with another. To that woman who is now suffering the most excruciating pain, the most sickening agony … I am right there with you.
Not too long ago, the same thing happened to me – the devastating blow of betrayal hit me with such a force that I am still reeling from the shock and pain and anger. Hearing of your story brings that insane time to a fresh place in my mind and forces me to process those horrid events all over again. It’s taken a while for me to get to this point, where I can contemplate the destruction of my marriage without breaking down and I need to write this to help me process things a little more and bring me a few steps closer to total acceptance and forgiveness. My son would tell me this is so emo, and yes, it is. But these words may also be of help to you, so it’s worth every second for me to put pen to paper and get this “out there”.
Apart from death, there is no greater form of rejection. That your husband can willingly destroy your life in order to give his heart to another woman is insanely cruel. That he can do it with cold precision and then lay the blame entirely at your feet adds unbearable insult to injury. In his own mind, he can only justify his behaviour by completely denying all wrong doing and portraying you to the world as a “cold bitch”. He simply cannot take responsibility for his actions and he cannot own anything he does. He does not have the strength of character required to do that at the moment. He won’t consider that he may have had a large part to play in the development of your ice queen persona. Doing so would expose a weakness on his part and potentially shut down his exit strategy.
Yes, his exit strategy. You see, he’s been planning this for a long time. Actually, he’s slowly but surely been setting you up, strengthening his way out of this marriage. It’s taken many years to wear you down from the strong independent woman you once were to the controlled, emotionally and mentally abused victim you have become. He has quite deliberately changed the very essence of who you are by controlling every aspect of your life – your finances, your friends, your body, your clothes, your time, hell, even the food you eat. Without you even realizing, you have lost yourself in his domain. Your life now revolves around him, to the point where you are entirely dependent on him and so afraid to lose him you would do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Perhaps you have become withdrawn, submissive, or even lost a lot of weight recently. It seems like you’ve done all you can to make him happy, sacrificed so much so that he could realize his dreams while your dreams and happiness take a back seat. You’ve become miserable without even knowing why exactly. Things just don’t seem right and you started feeling resentful. He’s neglected you, pursued his own interests, it seems like he’s deliberately ignored you and excluded you from things that are important to him. (I remember tearfully saying goodbye as he went on yet another camping trip without me, wondering why he never wanted me to come along, and didn’t ask if I wanted to.) Sometimes it feels like he goes out of his way to keep you low, doubting yourself, stripping you of all self esteem. This has all been quite intentional on his part – he’s been building his case against you, strengthening his exit strategy, arming himself with a defence that would make his future (cowardly) actions acceptable in other’s eyes.
As your relationship declines, he’ll tell everyone that you are cold and irrational, that you have issues, and that he can’t live like that anymore, he’s “tried so hard” to make it work. You suggest counseling and perhaps he agrees, but his heart won’t be in it at all. You wonder what’s happening, if you’re losing your mind. You feel so lost and lonely. By now, you have no close friends and there’s no-one you can talk to. You carry intense pain every day, never quite knowing what will happen next.
The signs are there, they always are – the signs that he’s met someone who appeals to him more than you. But you don’t see them, you’ve given this man absolute power over you and has manipulated your world so that the signs are covered. If you see something amiss and confront him about it, he’ll deny it (“she’s just a friend”) or he’ll rub your face in it (“you deserved it/you asked for it”). You probably never saw the moment of truth coming and you were unprepared for the instant that it was revealed. Your entire world was rocked and your life, as you knew it, was over. Forever.
Now you feel robbed. The future you planned together belongs to him and another. You feel so foolish – all this time (and god knows how long it’s actually been) he’s been in love with someone else but living as your husband. You trusted him with your life and he stabbed you in the heart. He chose to love another, to turn his back on all the promises he made you.
He feels no remorse. He is focused only on being with her. He’s made up his mind and that’s that. Right now, he is 100% determined to be with her, and nothing and no-one is going to persuade him otherwise. She is his fantasy; the one he thinks can make him happy. He is convinced that his peace and joy depends on not being with you, but being with this other person. He really believes this, he hasn’t thought about his happiness as being his responsibility, his choice.
It’s pointless trying to make him see reason at this time; he’ll distort the truth and hand the responsibility heavily over to you. He will never admit to hurting you because in his mind he’s done nothing wrong (you’re a cold bitch, remember?).
Just know this: it’s not about you! He is the weak one, not you. Of course, it takes 2 people to make a marriage work, but it only takes 1 person to destroy it. That someone can do it with such calculated intention is insanely cruel. As bizarre as things seem right now, you are not losing your mind! You are in deep shock – your world has been turned upside down and it seems totally crazy, but it’s the situation that’s crazy, not you!
In the days ahead, there will be so many lies and accusations hurled around, it’s going to be an agonizing and confusing ride. You may seem completely alone in your suffering, but I want you to know that you are not alone, and that you are not to blame for his actions (he chose his own path) and you certainly didn’t deserve it. No-one does.
It will be a while until you reach the point of acceptance, and even longer until the day where forgiveness becomes an option you can consider, until you can wake up every day and choose to forgive both of them. I don’t know what the outcome will be for you but try to hold on to 2 things while you grieve the loss of your best friend and your marriage:
1) Everything happens for a reason, and
2) What goes around, comes around …
[End]
Jul 3, 2008 | Personal
Today has been pretty crap for me and to top it off, I’ve just had a nasty, surreal experience.
I linked through to something from a Twitter post and arrived at a site that looked interesting. It had a members’ area, so I went to go have a peak at who was involved in their community and there, staring me in the face was “HER” name on her very own page on the site.
I wasn’t ready for that. I’m still shaking a bit, all sorts of horrible memories have just come flooding back into my head and I’m not handling it very well.
I know I shouldn’t let it get to me – reason and logic tells me there’s no point, that it’s a fruitless waste of energy. In my head I know this. My marriage has officially been over for more than a year now and I have to move on.
I’m surprised by this speed wobble. I really thought I’d be beyond reacting in this emo way. But even just seeing her name and her bio has shaken me up badly. It’s a ghastly reminder of everything.
Thankfully there wasn’t a picture though, I may just have punched my monitor.
It’s been a long time since I cried about what happened. Perhaps this is all because I’m a bit low today anyway. I wonder if I’ll ever truly be over it? God, I hope so …
