Ok, so here's the other stuff. I was thinking the other day, as I was ironing my clothes to go meet with the lawyer for the first time to discuss the malpractice case against me. I thougt about my dad telling me that my mom has lost 10 pounds - he told me this to say that she's gotten more sessions for a therapy group she's been going to for years, which is a good thing because she's made so much progress the therapist is having trouble justifying to the insurance company that she should have more sessions. Anyway, she has been worried about me, and this may be why she has lost weight. Dad made sure to tell me he wasn't trying to make me feel guilty, etc. etc. Which was fine.
But I was thinking "f-u for worrying about me NOW. I stewed and worried and felt guilty about the decision to have the As BY MYSELF. I didn't feel I could come to you for guidance (mostly because she would be so anxious about it she wouldn't be able to help me - story of my life), so I suffered and made poor decisions and now I'm paying the consequences. F-u for thinking you're such a big part of this NOW. Leave me alone. I was alone when I got into it, I'll get through it alone now. I don't need you to make me feel guilty for 'putting you through' this!"
NEVER would say any such thing to her!!! But then I realized that is the same feeling I was having when SBH first found out about the As. Like, f-u for being hurt now - this is about ME, not about you. I love you, I didn't leave you, I was about to decide not to leave you anyway, and f-u for all of a sudden being so worried about what I'm doing when before you just left me alone and didn't even know how lonely I was, even though I told you over and over again. Now I have turned myself in to thepsych board, and I'm facing my infidelity in front of a PUBLIC VENUE, BY MYSELF! You can't help me through this, you can't do it for me. I am facing my transgressions BY MYSELF! I am losing my career, and being publicly humiliated. You left me alone before all this happened, leave me alone now, don't try to make me feel guilty for 'putting you through' this!
I realized that was an irrational way to look at it, because OF COURSE it involved him and OF COURSE he had a right to be angry with me. But I told him about it, because it made me feel so much better to understand that angry feeling I had during those beginning weeks of him finding out. I really knew it was irrational but didn't know where it was coming from.
SO. I told SBH about that, and he suggested I read some of the things he wrote about the incident that really started all this. It was January 2002, we'd been together for almost 8 years (married for 5 1/2 years), and we made love one night and I started crying b/c I felt so close to him, but it was painful b/c I'd only ever felt that close to one other person, and I'd never really gotten over the grief/pain of him 'using' me our senior year of college and then dumping me just before graduation. SBH got MAD. He was jealous, and made me feel like I'd done something wrong, when all I was doing was trying to get some support from him. I had trusted him with information about my pain that I had NEVER told anyone, even therapists over the 14 years I'd been in therapy!
Anyway, between that incident and the suicide of my client the summer before that, I was feeling really lonely and incompetent. So, I re-read his journal entries from that time. MAN. He was SO MEAN to me! His anger was so strong, and reading those entries I felt that anger, and it was NO DIFFERENT from the anger he expressed when he found out about the As.
He said, "we no longer have a perfect marriage." He said, "she should have told me she was still carrying a torch for this guy before she took her marriage vows." I remember telling him I felt like he was calling me an adulterer. He said no, but he obviously did not treat me that way.
We had a big long discussion about this the other night. It took me HOURS to convince him that he had treated me as if I were an adulterer, and had never forgiven me for it. I told him I felt like a whore after that, and he said I'd never told him that. But he did remember me telling him I felt like an adulterer and he assured me that I was not. Well, then he said I had been "unfaithful" and he says that's different from adultery. I don not make that distinction.
He was saying I lied when I took my wedding vows. I told him I was just not over the pain of that break up, but it didn't mean I lied during my wedding vows. It took me hours to convince him, and I'm still not sure he gets it. I told him, he doesn't mind that I'm not over being molested (which happened 3 years before this painful breakup), but he can't handle the idea that I'm not over the pain of being used. He said they were different because in one case the guy had power over me and he abused it, and in the other case I was a "willing participant." I said that's like saying "you broke your leg playing football in the front yard, and you got whiplash from being hit from behind while you were stopped at a red light. I can understand why you still have pain from the car accident because that was someone else's fault and you didn't do anything wrong, but you were out there playing football with your friends. You shouldn't have any pain from that." I think that's when he finally got a glimmer of his warped thinking.
Anyway, he did finally apologize sincerely for treating me so badly about the ex-boyfriend thing. And I have a MUCH BETTER understanding of where I was before the 1st affair - feeling lost and alone and humiliated and like an adulterer! And angry about it, but I didn't even know why. He showed me a letter I wrote to him a couple of months after (he demanded a letter of explanation), and when I read it I just said, "that's me taking responsibility for the whole thing, saying you were %100 percent right and I was %100 wrong." He was angry with me for saying that. Now I realize just how accurate that description was - I didn't even think to stick up for myself!
Well, now I DO! And it ended up much better. I felt closer to him yesterday than I have in years. But I still feel wounded about being called an adulterer, and all that has happened since. It is going to take me awhile to trust HIM again. Fine mess to be in, when I did so many things to betray his trust AFTER that...
But we will get through it. He is a good man and he loves me dearly, and he is the one who saved our marriage. He is the one who did the 180 and increased his PMA and held all the hope when I had none.
Anyway, good epiphany for me and for us. Hope others can get something out of it, too...
