I was up until 0300 this morning thinking and reading and thinking and I drove past her house at 0130 and she wasn't there and I see that she stopped at the liquor store earlier in the day and that tells a story different from the I'm so tired voice mail that she left. So, I went home and did some more thinking. I know a lot about what my W has been up to for the last year and when I add that to what other information I have, it tells a story.
I posted earlier that I'm in a struggle between the new me and the old me and it's true. However, that statement has larger ramifications.
It's like my one friend said about growing up with ADD. He told me it felt to him like the rest of the world got the instruction book for life and he missed out and this led him and I can related completely to not knowing what normal behavior in a given situation looks like. I've got that problem too. I've never known where to draw appropriate boundaries and the old me needed her so badly that I was willing to accept almost any behavior to avoid losing her. The old man interpreted every interaction and piece of information in a light that didn't threaten. So, when I found out about her first new male friend, I said to myself, it's platonic and just like the male friends she had when we met and when she would stay out partying until 0600 Wednesday morning, I swallowed it down because I was so afraid of being alone and of losing her. When I found out about her making out with the young guy she met at the bar just days before moving out, I was more nervous than angry or hurt. I was more probably in shock. That was the old me.
As I kept working on myself, a new me started to emerge and the first real glimmer of the new me came a couple of months ago when after our MC session and a night out drinking and dancing, W told me that she was worried about her drinking, that she had blacked out and couldn't remember parts of an evening. She didn't say that it was only one time. I sent her an e-mail and thanked her for trusting me and she replied that she was just waiting to have it thrown back in her face. A couple of weeks later, I talked to her on Saturday night and I cautioned her about not drinking and driving and she told me that she wasn't, she had already driven where she was going. Then, on Sunday when she called to talk to the kids, it sounded like she had been drinking all day and as I think back now, it's pretty obvious that she spent the night somewhere besides her house. I again cautioned her on her drinking and driving and she got very upset and I reminded her of her passing out and she got more upset and hung up on me. I felt the urge pretty strongly to start apologizing right away. However, that feeling was counterbalanced with the thought that I didn't do anything wrong and I wasn't going to apologize for nothing. I never apologized and she never mentioned it again.
That was really the first evidence of the new man. Since then, I've moved more fully into valuing myself and seeing in the mirror what other people see.
I started this DB journey because I was afraid of losing her. Along the way, I realized that I didn't want the kids to have to go through the pain and hurt and I'd be fine. Now, I'm realizing that my kids are already experiencing plenty of pain and hurt from the Mom being gone, but, also from my inability to do it all.
When I've put the evidence in front me it tells a story. Evidence like searches for information about pregnancy tests and the morning after pill and the note in her purse about how much it was going to cost in cash or certified funds, later I found a note of the day and time and to be sure and eat breakfast and abstain from alcohol, and this is the damning part, to bring inhaler. W has asthma and carries a rescue inhaler. Then since I work for the company that provides our health insurance, I checked the procedure and diagnostic codes for her last 2 OBGYN visits. One was her annual and the other to try and figure out why she bleeds so much and so irregularly. On both visits, our insurance was billed for a pregnancy test. I had a vasectomy almost 2 years ago. The second visit included a complete VD screen. I'm disease free. I suppose it's possible that was part of trying to figure out her bleeding. The old me was still twisting this and a bunch of other data like the text messages planning a weekend in the mountains and she certainly didn't pay for it into a story that didn't threaten the old me. No, W said that all the pregnancy stuff was helping out a girlfriend. Now, I might fool myself into buying that except for one small minor detail. There are no calls or text messages to her cell phone to or from a number that is a girlfriend. When I look through her call logs, it tells an interesting picture. There are basically only calls and texts from me and the kids, from Matt T, Matt C, Rick T, and Rick D. There are occasional calls here and there, but, no pattern of calls that would in any way indicate that she has a girlfriend. When I snooped last, I listened to a voicemail of a man calling her honey and sweetheart and saying "I love you so much, I just need to see you one more day." I copied all the text messages in her phone from the inbox and the sent items. Last week, I finally faced those messages and I put them into threaded order. The story I read there is that she has been intimate with almost certainly two of the men she is in regular contact with and probably all four. In my heart, there is really no doubt that she is being unfaithful.
My goal heading into my last MC session was to get W to agree to come to MC again and to wait on filing for D for 6 months. I felt that if I made the deep identity level change in how I relate to the children, then she couldn't look at me and say that I haven't changed. She agreed to those things. I felt encouraged. The old me was still part of the conversation.
Last Friday, I was snooping again and read an e-mail to Rick D who she has been dodging for a while, not returning his calls or texts until days later. She told him that she was busy and needed to step things up as she discovered that the kids haven't been well cared for, without boundaries or guidance and that the house is a disaster. I can only imagine that her concept of stepping things up is how she got the kids registered for school, got their physicals, and how she takes them to school. I hardly call that stepping things up. The house is still a wreck and in fact is worse now than it was then and yes, I'm failing at the standard I desire to set for myself as a Dad.
Since Friday, since facing this information again, having the new me look at the story it tells, after spending a bunch of time reading over in infidelity, after a quick run past her house in the wee hours that basically confirmed it for me, I'm feeling fine. I'm a wee bit unsettled, but, otherwise, I'm OK. Does this mean that I'm over my W? No. No, we've been together for 18 years and I've never been in another relationship. I have baggage. What I don't have is an irrational need to try and keep this R. I love my W. She has given me 18 years of a semblance of life, three great kids, good sex, a certain amount of support and encouragement. She's an attractive woman that I would love to grow old with. She is also a lying and untrustworthy person that seems to not notice the pain she is causing to those around her. I love her, but, I can't continue forward with that person. Like I said at the top. If she were being faithful, I wouldn't even consider quitting.
I respect myself now. I love myself now. There is a self to respect and to love now that there wasn't before.
Julia, the need to have evidence is driven by her unwillingness to admit what she is doing. I do have to show her that I'm not the clingy needy co-dependent man that she has been with these last 18 years. I do need to show her that I'm a great Dad and that she is missing out.
The trouble is that she is approaching this problem from two different reference points. One persona if you will looks at my performance as a Dad and finds fault. The other persona looks at my performance as a Husband and finds fault. I can't compete with a man who has no kids and has plenty of disposable income to lavish on her. I can't compete with the man who is already divorced and has his one child only occasionally. I have the kids all the time, the extra money is going to pay the lawyer to deal with her DUI, to pay for the medical bills from her broken collar bone that she broke while out walking someone's dog while drunk at 0300 one morning. The extra money goes to pay for her to be out of the house and to pay for other people to care for the children since she isn't. I can't compete with them and until now, she has always been able to count on my love and support. It's time that she felt the weight of the consequences of her decision.
The 180 will be when the kids are happy as clams to have Dad in the house for a week and when we switch off, the house is clean and neat and the kids have stories to tell of their adventures, and Dad has stories to tell of his adventures during the off weeks and yes, it will be to rub her face in it. There was quite a little bit of jealous behavior on her part after my night out getting molested by drunken bar chicks. She doesn't value me and she can't see that other people specifically other women do. My friend has been divorced 2 years and the times his ex-wife was sweetest and when things seemed like that the possibility existed that they could get back together were when he was seeing someone and getting on just fine without her and their daughter was happy to go spend time with Daddy.
I guess that I kind of feel like Redsawks. I'm not going to go out next week and start screwing around. I still haven't decided whether to hire an investigator to get more concrete evidence of her infidelity. I will probably talk to a lawyer. I have a DB counseling session next Wednesday. I've always avoided mentioning this in the past, but, our MC is one of the counselors working out of MWD's office in Boulder, CO. Our MC is also going to be my DB coach or at least an IC that I can trust who knows a lot of our situation. To tell how screwy this is, I was so afraid of losing her, I never brought up in counseling that she was making out with the bus driver back in April and how much it pissed me off that she still texted and talked to him daily for another month and a later e-mail that leaves far too many questions. I didn't bring it up in MC because I didn't want to piss off W. I was afraid that she would leave. That is so sad.
So, I'm not quite sure where I'm going from here. I'm not hurting today, I don't feel numb. I feel settled. I feel the way I often do after I've been wrestling with a decision for a while and then finally there is a resolution. That's how I feel, like I've reached a decision and found a resolution and for me, I think that the resolution is going to be to file for D from my W and continue working on me and continue to be open to a new R with her, but, probably not until I've had a chance to be without her.
For all of you that get here, I love you all dearly. You are all a great help during this time, especially you (((((Julia))))).
