Somebody, Somebody Has To, You See. Then She Picked Out Two Somebodies…..Oh, Why Did It Have To Be Me?

And here we are again.  Back here in this same old place.  It is all too familiar.  Some days it feels like a revolving door.  Maybe that is just life.  I guess it is to some extent.  You are born and you cry and people feed you and change your diapers.  Then you start to grow-up and you feel like no one listens to you.  Then you hit that magical time in your life where you feel like you can have anything you want you just have to decide what direction to go.  After that you hit that point where you figure out that you will never get everything you want in life so you prioritize and work towards the things that matter most.  Some people get those, others don’t.  Then you start to get old and figure out that most of those things don’t matter.  It is the people and memories that matter, but by then no one listens to you.  You continue to get old and the door finishes revolving and you probably end up crying with people feeding you and changing your diapers.  Ahhh, the simplicity of life….

I think today I will dive into the nasty stuff again. I have been avoiding it because I am afraid to open that door again.  I will move on in my affair story and approaching DDay#2.  This is the worst part.  I know I left off after my trip to Florida and my friends wedding.  You can read about it here if you need a refresher.  Well, all of January was very difficult.  Coming home from Florida after doing what I consider the worst possible part of the affair in connection to my wife.  You see, she has always wanted to go to Florida.  She has always wanted to take the kids and go to Disney world.  She has talked and talked about this for years.  And to top it all of before I left, she asked me and asked me if the OW was going to be there.  I know I did not lie.  I did not think the OW would be there and the OW and I had no plans for her to be there, but in the end none of that mattered.  Even writing this makes me feel like I am dying inside, because now I know she will never want to do those things.  She will never want to because they will always be associated with the OW.  I have ruined one of her dreams.  I don’t know if you have ever just crushed someones dreams before but I can tell you it makes you feel like a piece of you dies with that dream, even though it is not yours.

The wedding I went to when I got back was great and having the connection with my wife that I had that night made all the difference.  I hope my friend thinks his wedding was the most magical thing in the world because I know the magic worked on me.  It opened my eyes to what I was missing and what I was giving up.  I wasn’t “trading up”.  At best I would have been downgrading to a model filled with problems.  No, I had the best thing right in front of me and I was throwing it away.

So January went on.  I had stopped seeing the OW.  Florida was the last time and I knew I could not do it again.  I was still struggling with no contact.  We were still communicating most days but as the month went on it was less and less.  We (me and the OW) both knew that we had to take a break or stop all together.  If we continued as it was I was just going to destroy myself and she knew the only chance she had of me leaving my wife was to let me go and figure it all out on my own.  So we talked less and less.  Even the times we did became more superficial and less about us or the future or how great we were together.  If anything they were day to day stuff or I was helping her with some part of her business.  The deepest we ever talked was when we would reminisce about our times together.  Even that was short lived and still a little painful.  I was able to see her more and more for who she really was and not the fantasy I made her out to be.  She was just another woman, divorced twice, who was lonely and needed attention as much as I did and the self-esteem boost that went along with it.  Even as I write this now I can see how really true it was.  There were so many times when we were together that she would say how great we were together as a couple.  Or how great she was or felt being around me.  All signs that I was helping boost herself, which is maybe what she needed at that point in her life.

I also saw the terrible situation that was awaiting her son and the disagreements that were already popping up between her and her ex-husband.  There is no way I wanted any of that for my kids.  My wife reminded me the other day about how I mentioned once about how if we got divorced that we could still have holidays together.  She could bring her new boyfriend/husband and me my girlfriend/wife and we would have holidays together for the kids.  It would not be awkward, it would be a house for of love and joy.  And yes, I for some reason, bought into that thinking.  I am sure there are people that pull it off, but probably not people who had affairs and then divorced.  I would think people would need to split on more amicable terms.  It seems all ridiculous now, but for some reason when my mind was clouded over it really seemed like a possibility.

So I was slowly trying to figure out how to move on.  I had no idea what to do with my wife or my marriage.  That was a complete mystery.  We had so many problems and I did not even know if they were fixable.  I also knew if she knew the whole truth about the affair, I was sure she would leave me in a heart beat.  I was so torn I had no idea what to do.  One of the ideas the OW and my counselor had given me was to write.  I really did not want to do it when the OW suggested it, but when my counselor suggested it I decided to give it a try.  I started journaling about the entire affair.  I started at the beginning and wrote everything.  I wrote a bunch of notes about things I wanted to write about and planned to get to when I was doing my writing.  Now, one problem I had was trying to figure out where to write and how to keep it safe.  Unfortunately, this ended up being my undoing.

I had decided to write on my laptop.  I hid the file in a hidden folder and made sure to clear the history in Word each time I wrote so it would never show up if she happened to get on my laptop.  I am very meticulous about things like this.  I am very good with computers and so I was very confident that all my writing was safe.  I wrote for a few weeks and it did make me feel a little better.  It helped me organize my thoughts and feelings into something that I could recognize.  I could put order to the chaos of my life by putting it on paper (or computer screen).  It helped me see how much I needed to get away from the OW but I really did not know how to do it.  I still did not know how to try with my wife but I was starting to go out with her and her coworkers.  We were more active in the bedroom and she was trying to be very different.   This scared me a little but I was not going to tell her how to live her life and how to change.  I just told her to do what makes her happy.

We had started going over to her bosses house a couple of weekends in a row to play cards.  So the last weekend in January we were invited to play again.  It was a Saturday and I had to work a little and had left my laptop at home.  I got home around 5 to get ready to go out with my wife to her bosses house.  As I got ready she seemed a little off, but I really could not tell because we were both “off” a lot lately.  When we go to her bosses house there are always drinks there and sometimes he makes his own moonshine.  Well, we stopped and got a couple of drinks of our own to bring with us and as we got there she immediately went to another room.  I followed her asked her if she wanted a drink and she said yes so I brought her one.  We were placed at different tables in different rooms (there were a number of people playing each weekend).  I don’t even remember if she was even playing that night as she often does not.  I do know that whatever room I got moved to she left.  After a while and between games I asked her if she wanted another drink and she said too late she drank everything we brought.  I just looked at her because I had just finished my first drink.

She then began doing shots with some of the other guys there.  Normally when we go to these events I am the one who drinks.  She knows I am not real comfortable with all the people there because I know almost no one.  But I guess tonight she decided to drink, and drink heavily.  She did not stop drinking as the night went along and by the time it was time to go I believe that she had already thrown up once and was definitely extremely intoxicated.  Stupidly so.  We got in the car and I asked if she was okay and she told me “Just wonderful!” in a very sarcastic tone.  I decided to leave it alone and we drove in silence.  As we got closer and closer to home she asked me if the OW went to Florida.  This caught me off guard as she did not ask me this all month and now she was asking me.  I lied.  Of course I did.  I was still living partially in fantasy land and I figured by lying I was protecting her from all the hurt she would get by knowing.

She then asked me another question.  I don’t even remember what it was, but I am sure I lied to the answer of that one as well.  She then was crying and asked me why I let the OW come to Florida.  I was not sure what to say to that because something was obviously not right here.  She then told me she found my journal on my computer and read it.  She knew everything.  At this point she was crying and yelling at me, but I don’t even know what she was saying.  I was in complete shock.  Finally, after what seemed like years I spoke and said yes, she came to Florida.  I tried to explain that it was not planned and I did not know she was going to be there but it did not matter.  I tried to explain that I had not seen her since and I was hardly talking to her but I could have told her I was going to die in the next 20 min and it would not have mattered.   I also do not blame her.  I just shattered her world for a second time.  Before I believe she justified the affair in her head as me just needing sex and her not giving it to me.  We had always had this problem and she had told me on multiple occasions that I should just find someone else to satisfy my needs.  But now, now it was something much different.  This was a full affair, a full relationship.  This was both a physical and emotional affair which I can only imagine tore any piece of self-esteem, self-worth, feelings of value and love completely apart.  I had just dropped a nuclear bomb on her heart and soul.

I tried to explain and she just kept telling me to let her out of the car.  She was dressed in jeans and a light sweatshirt, but it was January and probably 10 degrees outside.  I tried to keep her in the car because we were still a bit from our house but she jumped out.  I was so worried because she did not have the clothes to be outside and she was extremely intoxicated.  I tried to get her back in the car, but she just took off into a park so I could not follow her.  All I could do is go home and hope she would get there soon.

I went home and decided if she was not home in 15 minutes then I would go out and find her.  As well as being terrified for her safety, I was still in complete shock about it all.  I have no idea how she found it.  I never leave it up or even accessible or visible.  I did not even remember what all I wrote in it.  I was all over the place in my head and I was pacing around the house trying to find warm clothes to take her, but just as I was about to go out I saw her coming up the drive.  I sat down and as she came in she did not even look at me.  She went straight to our room.  I could hear her changing and did not know what to do.  I could not decide if I should talk to her or leave her alone or just pack up and leave.  By this point, I was shaking so bad I would never be able to do up a coat or pack a bag, let alone drive.  So I slowly made my way back to our room where she was sitting on the bed crying.

And then it began…..

Somebody, somebody has to, you see.  Then she picked out two somebodies. – Dr. Seuss