Just found out that OW has a kid!!

[Ophelia]

Yes, that does sound like you've been dark for quite a while..... Did your husband date a lot of women before he met you? What do you think first attracted him to you? Do you have any idea of what might be attracting him to OW?

Well, we got together when we were 18, so there hadn't been much time for dating around, really. A couple of months before he met me, he'd broken up with a GF he'd been with for several months. It had been mostly long distance, and mostly unhappy since the beginning apparently. It's actually kind of interesting that he got with me after having been single for only a couple of months, and he got with OW after only having moved out of the house a couple of months (at most, I don't know exact dates) earlier. Yet one of his gripes about me was that I wasn't independent enough. Well look which one of us has been on their own for a whole year, compared to the one who can't be on their own for more than a couple of months at a time. I'd be laughing if it weren't so depressing.

As for what attracted him to me, I was fun and lighthearted and joking around and stuff. We had a lot in common. So that's how I've tried to be in my recent emails to him. Trying to push the image of the sad and desperate, abandoned wife out of his head, and remind him of the fun girl he fell in love with and always had something to chat about with.

As for what attracted him to OW, she was in the right place, at the right time, saying all the right things. She'd been through a D already, so I guess she kind of became his own personal D coach, validating everything he was thinking. So when he had me trying to convince him he was WRONG, and her comforting him and telling him he was RIGHT, it's really not much of a surprise that he ended up in her bed I suppose.

From my experience, it does make it easier. It made it easier for me to say...it's your life and you're the one that is going to have to live it. I did everything that I could it just wasn't enough. I'm walking away from this with my head held high and without regrets because I gave you all I had and that's the best anyone can do. You ruined my life with you, but you are not going to ruin my life.

Hopefully I'll have the strength to feel and say the same things if my sitch ever comes to that.

So, last Saturday was our 6th wedding anniversary. Needless to say, it wasn't a day I'd been looking forward to. I had to go get some stuff from the hardware store, and there's one within walking distance, so I decided to go to that one. I figured the walk might do me good. Get some fresh air instead of moping around the house and all that.

On the way back, I was (of course) thinking of H. Wondering where in Africa he was at that point in time. Wondering if he'd realised what date it was. Wondering if I'd even briefly crossed his mind on that day of all days. Wishing I could feel some kind of hope.

Then I saw the most odd thing lying in the gutter....a wedding photo! I guess someone had accidentally dropped it there. It was kinda crumpled up, and had obviously been driven over. I picked it up, and placed it just inside the property of the house I was outside, in case it belonged to whoever lived there.

Isn't that totally bizarre?! I mean, random wedding photos aren't the kind of thing you find in the gutter every day of the week, let alone on your wedding anniversary when you're lamenting the loss of your spouse!

I've been checking the forum with the thread about H's progress in Africa every couple of days, just to see how he's been doing. He had some altitude sickness, but made it all the way to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro! There were all these people posting messages of congratulations in the thread, and I was sad that I couldn't join in.

I'd been tossing up for several days whether or not I should txt him to ask how the mountain climb went, (because he doesn't know I read the forum, of course), but always ended up coming to the conclusion that he probably didn't want to hear from me, and that it might just irritate him if I didn't leave him alone, in a "Geez, I can't even get away from her when I'm on another frigging continent" kinda way. I decided I'd just txt him the day he's due back and say that I hope it all went well and that he'd had a great time.

For whatever reason, I was feeling particularly crappy last night. Cry myself to sleep kinda crappy, and I didn't even do that on our anniversary, so I dunno what brought it on. Perhaps it's because I didn't do it on our anniversary, so it had been building up and just came spilling out.

Anyway, after I finally got to sleep, I was awoken at 4:15am by a txt from H!
"Made it to the summit if u were wondering."

I refrained from writing back that yes, I had been wanting to txt him, but wasn't sure if he'd want to hear from me, and instead just sent back a simple message congratulating him, saying I knew he'd do it, and that I couldn't wait to hear about it after he gets back.

I didn't get a reply to that, and just lay there for a few minutes.

I was wondering where he was and what he was doing and thinking when he sent the txt. 4:15am is an odd time to be getting txts, and he would have known the time difference because he's no doubt been keeping in touch with OW, his friends, and his parents while he's been over there. So why is he txting me at 4am? I looked it up today, and it probably would have been about 9pm where he was when he sent it. As far as I know, he's in the middle of his safari, so I was wondering where he's staying. I don't know if it's a "pitch a tent" kind of safari or a "permanent structure accommodation" kind of safari. All I know is that he's somewhere out there in the middle of Africa, txting me in the middle of the night, which was completely unexpected.

Then I got to thinking about the wording of his message: "if u were wondering". Has he actually been expecting me to txt him to ask how it went? Should I have? Was he disappointed that I hadn't?

Then I got thinking that perhaps I should have said something cheeky in my reply. Tell him off for having woken me up, and ask how was he gonna make it up to me with a on the end. I mean, how often am I gonna have a time when I know he's nowhere near OW, and I can flirt with him? Kinda feel like I let a prime opportunity slip by and have spent the whole day coming up with better ideas of what I could have said, (isn't that always the way...thinking of the perfect comeback way after the moment has passed?).

How I managed to get back to sleep with all that running through my head, I'll never know!

Sorry for the super long post and thanks to whoever actually read the whole thing.