Maybell 41: The Saga Continues

[Maybell]

So a friend has been asking me why I'm still angry with Mr. Fantastic (because it bubbles up from time to time, pretty fiercely). Yesterday was his birthday and Sunday Father's Day, so all that mess has been on my mind more than usual. But in the introspection, I think I've come to a conclusion.

He's been with his Fantastic Girlfriend now for two years. She has the same name as me (first AND middle, and my name isn't that common), she's got the same hair color as me, she was the SAHM to FIVE children prior to her divorce (a whole different saga), etc. I'm two years older than Mr. Fantastic, she's six years older than him. I could go on.

So for a long time now I've been thinking, he was perfectly happy with our life, it was just ME that he wanted to be away from. And that there was something really wrong with me, that really he is a perfectly good guy who was just smothered or over-determined or felt mothered or something. And she was an upgrade from me because she's smaller than me and hotter in bed.

During the settlement negotiations Mr. Fantastic objected to how much I relied on the lawyers to sort out all the details. He phoned me and asked, couldn't we do some of this ourselves? I said NO, I DON'T TRUST YOU. He said "I know I lied about some things, but I wouldn't lie about THIS." Fortunately I stood my ground and it definitely worked out better for me than if I'd folded, because he clearly knows how to manipulate me.

I was also thinking about how his dad told him, when he called to say that he was thinking of leaving me, that it was really, really important to be very honest with someone when you ended a marriage. Mr. Fantastic was careful to tell me that he'd said this, as though he'd taken it to heart. So when he actually moved out we had a little separation agreement that said we'd leave our rings on, we wouldn't date other people, we'd go on weekly dates together, etc. I asked for those conditions and he said that it was a really great idea and that we'd definitely do that.

Well, the date nights ended after two weeks, because he was so clearly miserable around me and I was miserable trying to carry the weight of coaxing a smile out of him. It didn't take more than three weeks for me to get outside, unsolicited evidence that Mr. Fantastic had been dating women all over our (little) town, several of them single moms from our kids' elementary school. (The Fantastic Girlfriend is one of these, except that she was most definitely NOT single when they started sleeping together.) One of my friends sent me a screen shot of his Tinder profile. And so forth.

I think up until now I haven't really trusted that he is not a good person. I have been trying to reconcile the fact that I CHOSE to marry him and I CHOSE to make him the father of my children, and I had at least some information to know that he was not up to those roles. But really, although I bear the responsibility for not listening to my gut, and for rushing into marriage without a proper understanding of what it is, the truth is, he chose to be shallow, self-absorbed, deceitful, and conflict-avoidant. If he weren't all those things, he would have communicated if I was in fact being smothering or whatever. And I would have corrected because I do try to not be a jerk.

I could go on, but I think the conclusion I've come to is, it wasn't about me. He and the Fantastic Girlfriend may be their version of happy now (two years in) but he still IS a deceitful, shallow, selfish person. That won't change because that is working for him, by his standards. Thank goodness it doesn't work for me.