Today was my first Christmas eve without the kids and W. I went to church tonight with my dad. The house is quiet. I am just sitting back, drinking a beer and doing some reflecting on the last year. What a year.
Last year at this time I was dealing with the bomb. I was frantically trying to save my marriage. I was reading DR and just trying to understand what had happened to my marriage. I was filled with anxiety about the future. I couldn't understand why my W was doing what she was doing, or what she thought the outcome of all of this would be.
I was unable to work. I remember sitting at my desk going through the motions, but no work was actually getting done. I would have to re-read emails 4-5 times because my mind would start wondering. I would frantically search phone records, or facebook posts trying to decipher the tea leaves to figure out what was going on in my W's secret life.
Slowly, over the course of the year, the reality of my situation set in. My w’s affair was both an EA and PA. The draw to this man was much deeper than I could ever imagine. I remember giving her an ultimatum about this time last year. It was either him or me. She chose him. I think her exact quote was something like “He is my best friend, I will never leave him”. She had known him for 4 months. I didn’t get it. Our 17 yrs together, 3 children, shared bed/home/finances/family meant nothing. Our kids wouldn’t be hurt.
But, she was unwilling to give up her life. She wanted me there to watch the kids and pay the bills. She didn’t want a divorce. She wanted to keep our life exactly as it had been before, with the exception that she would show me no real affection and she would be able to go out whenever she wanted. She would continue to see the man in Haiti and take 2-3 trips a year to see him. But, trust her, they are just friends. She saw nothing wrong with this and told me that “People do it all the time”.
In March she opened a match.com account. By the summer she was seeing 5-6 men. Several of these were PA’s. We were still married. I was humiliated, angry, frustrated. Every word or action of hers brought out a world of emotions in me. I wanted to detach so desperately, but I had no peace. Neither of us would move out. Her cell phone would beep with a new message every 5-6 minutes. Every beep was like a dagger in my heart. This summer was without question the worst period in my entire life.
In July, I couldn’t take it anymore and filed for divorce. I moved out in September. We worked through the details of the divorce, formalized things, met with a judge and our divorce will be final Jan. 9th. I now know what the unraveling of a marriage looks like.
In the end, all the little melodramas meant nothing. Our marriage ended long ago, and I just didn’t know it. The whole thing was a cliché. You read the posts on this sight, read the articles on infidelity, hear people talk about scripts, but you never really get it until you live it. You keep thinking “My relationship is different”.
To my amazement, the truth is that this year’s Christmas is much better than last year’s. There is some closure in my relationship with my W. The anxiety is gone. I have hope. We are physically separated and I don’t have to deal with the emotional abuse of “in your face” infidelity. But mostly, I am free.
I am free to raise my children how I want to raise them, free to spend my money as I see fit (minus what she gets), free to build a life of my own. I have started playing soccer again, dancing again, and am thinking about buying another motorcycle. Somewhere in my M, I lost myself. I started dancing to my W’s drumbeat. It was never my favorite rhythm. I submitted to her wishes, her hobbies, her ideas about how life should be lived. I became a bit player in my own life.
She lost respect for me. She told me that she was not happy; neither was I. I just had different ideas about how to fix things. Now, neither of us has anyone to blame. We can chart our own course. I am very optimistic about the future. 2014 is going to be a good year.
