Dammit!!! I'm staying in this lonely apartment, can't sleep, all kinds of negative thoughts running through my mind, and I know she's in our comfortable home, in a comfortable bed, probably fantasizing about the fireman.
Why am I tying my self-worth to this person? Why even TRY to make it work with this person, when I believe she really wants the other guy? I get no real sense of regret from her for what she did. She told me yesterday that she was being selfish with her life, but she said it in sort of a proud way, like *I'm doing something for me, for once*. That's how it sounded and how it felt. It is almost 8am here, and I wish she would call me to see how I'm doing. I'm the one reaching out to her. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Should I be creating boundaries that I'm not? I just want her so badly, yet now I'm starting to feel deep anger at her. At first, I was sympathetic, telling her that what she did was perfectly human, and that we can make this work if we wanted to. I was so damn understanding and NICE!! Now, I am so f#@king angry. I want to tell her that she can have the fireman, that I will throw my chances with another. I told her last night that I believe she was grooming my replacement, that after the holidays, I would have been tossed to the side of the road like a dead dog. She just needed a little time to find enough of a relationship with Mr. Fireman to make the jump a safe one. This is what I still believe. Should I just let him have her, and all her problems? I wonder if Mr. Hunky Fireman would put up with sex every couple months when SHE felt like it? Kinda doubt it.
Just now, that last question was burning in my mind so much that I called my wife at home as she's getting ready for work, and asked her. She said that she'll never know the answer to that question, but then we got into other things, some of which I mentioned above. I found myself crying, something I never do. She said that her guard is up right now, her defenses are up. She said that every feeling I express about her encounter is what she has felt for so long about mine earlier in our marriage. I then asked why she never DID anything about it?! Why live in this pain for so long? She tossed it up to emotional immaturity and fear. She said that she's reading SSM again, and writing down stuff that she loves about me, and what she wants out of a relationship. She says that I fit into that picture for her. She reiterated her happiness about our dinner last night, that I was my old self, the one she fell in love with: smart, funny, handsome.....attractive.
We have plans to meet with our younger daughter at a playground today, then have dinner. I plan to be on my game, regardless of my feelings going in. You can act your way into good feelings, if you want to. It's what I did last night, and what I can do today. It's my job to show her the man she fell in love with, so she can fall in love with him all over again. Gonna be a long day until then though.
