I'm glad you're getting out and doing something fun today. Sometimes, you just need a break from it all and rollercoasters are a good thing!
The rollercoasters were a blast!! Weather was perfect. Crowds were not bad due to it being a midweek day and late summer. One small downer, is my buddy, who is a little older than I am, doesn't seem to be handling the rides like he did when he was younger. Feel bad for him, but I did notice that there were very few people much older than us on the rides. Makes you wonder if rollercoasters are younger person thing.
The problem: during down moments all I could think about was my W. I missed her immensely. Last year, a year ago tomorrow as a matter of fact, we went as a family and one of my D's friends. Even though my W doesn't ride a lot, it was an awesome day. Just the two of us. No TV. We had our phones but spent very little time on them. And I couldn't help but think about that trip and how in-tune we were and connected. As we would pass things in the park I would remember that trip last year, and think of her. "We sat there and talked about X." "We ate lunch there." "I remember her sitting there while I rode this ride." Things like that.
One thing that kept nagging at me when I would think about her was: WHY? In her 2005 EA I could see how I allowed it to happen. (NOTE: While I understand that the LBS has some culpability in their WAS wanting to walkaway, it doesn't justify the WAS' actions. Please do not think I am excusing her EAs.) I could understand how a new person could seem so desirable considering how badly I was behaving. Absent. Surly. Disconnected. Selfish.
Then in Dec. 2017, when I caught her chatting to the guy from the singing app (she denies this was an EA by the way, says he didn't really mean anything to her. That she was just done with the marriage at that point and wasn't really interested in a new relationship.
But this time just doesn't make sense. We've been a team. We've been so connected. We've been so in-tune!! It has been the relationship we both always wanted to be. So it just didn't make sense. Since Tuesday night I've been giving her space. But when I got home last night, she was still awake, and I just had to know. So I broke DB rules and asked her: Why.
I should qualify all of this that I was not sad, mad, or anything. I remained even throughout, friendly even. It was a good talk. She claims she doesn't know what happened. That they played the game. He was flirty. That he had a similar sense of humor to hers. At some point she told him she didn't even know what he looked like. His profile had no picture. He asked her to give him her email address. She said no, I am not giving you my email address. The next time they played after chatting back and forth, she gave it him. This was about 3 weeks ago (according to her). She says that she doesn't know why, that she had several guys over the last year and a half as her for contact info and told them no. She would tell them all she was married, many said "so am I".
She didn't know why this guy was different. That he came from a troubled youth (her youth was troubled too). That he is married to a woman with lots of health problems. That he was a sex-starved husband. She said she identified him with me, because she felt she was similar to his W, minus the health problems. I think some of this was rewriting of current history. Certainly 2 years ago we had a SSM, but our sex life has been pretty good, much more frequent, and the quality of each instance was way up. But this seemed to be a point she related with him on, even if it was more with his W than him. His W didn't like him playing the game, so he would wait until she went to bed.
Many times they would just play the game. Sometimes they would message while playing. Sometimes it swerved into the flirty and inappropriate. It wasn't every night since some nights he couldn't get on. Obviously some of her answers are typical WAS stuff: she wasn't going anywhere, neither of them were interested in leaving their marriage, it wasn't as often as I think it was, most of the time it was joking and/or telling each other about their lives. She still played the game against strangers, and other friends. It hadn't consumed her life in anyway.
I still am not sure why. I made it clear this one was on her. She claimed that her personality gets in the way and it takes over and she gets overly flirty and sometimes the other person reads too much into it. She usually shuts it down but not this time. For some reason. I tried to explain I doubt it was as innocent from his perspective. She tried to poo-poo that notion, but I think most of us men know how easy it is to get caught up by infatuation for an attractive woman. I know he lives in another country, but she admitted he has an up-to-date passport. I have no doubt that a "visit" was firmly in the back of his mind. Supposedly the passport discussion was "innocent" but this is where I remember to believe nothing she says.
The conversation did turn to my "checking up on" her. She said that it upset her to know that I occasionally had done that, but she understood why. Still she said it upset her. She seems to insist no matter what I was doing or who I was doing it with, she would not snoop or spy on me. I FIRMLY do not believe this. I said "what if I was in an actual physical affair, you wouldn't want to get to the bottom of it?" She then backed down and said that a PA would be different. And while she is right, I think she deep down knows that EAs are no more justified than PAs. Though she denies that this incident and the one in Dec. 2017 were not EAs, but admits the one in 2005 was.
I reiterated that checking up on her, and how I did it, simply doesn't matter, what matters was that there was something to find. She understood that and even agreed to it. She said the snooping upsets her but she knows it shouldn't.
The conversation was very good. We even laughed and joked at a couple of points. Neither of us got upset. She insists that she wants to stay together, she is willing to do what it takes to do that, but understands if she lost that right. LH, this is why I say we aren't back to where we were. in Dec 2017/beginning of 2018 she had no desire to remain with me and was not willing to do anything to work on things. This time she is wanting to do what ever she can to fix things.
She has shared all of her passwords, she has disavowed all technology. She has put her tablet away, let the battery die. She only uses her phone text church friends, and family. Deleted all apps off of it. And she has moved to occupying her time with word searches and crossword puzzles on paper. I do not think this is sustainable long-term. We live in a digital world and I don't think she can completely unplug.
So for now we have to try to rebuild trust. She still seems to be a little quieter than normal, but it is a little better than it was Wednesday. I think she saw what she stood to lose. I talked pretty firmly on Tuesday night. Made it clear I was uninterested in ever continuing to wonder what she was up to with who. She seems intent on making sure I have nothing to wonder about. I just question the long-term viability of the current plan. At some point we need to be able to trust each other the way we did before. And that is going to take more than just sharing passwords and staying away from technology.
So I am not going to give up on the idea of IC and eventually MC again. But I am done discussing anything about this, it is time to put it behind us.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
