I know my first post didn’t have a lot of background and that I need to add some. After reading so many threads on here, I realize there is nothing unique or different about my situation. In the beginning when the nuclear bomb is detonated it does feel like you are the only one in the world to ever experience this much pain, this much betrayal. And there is also the fact that H says things like “There is no self-help book for our situation.” or “Our situation is not like anyone else’s.” Yeah, actually it is. We aren’t unique. His identity crisis is not unique. So much so that he could do a dramatic re-enactment of the “script” MWD writes about.
Eight or nine months ago he started acting very odd. The one thing I have always been able to count on with him is consistency. Predictable, secure, safe, trustworthy, steady… creature of habit, some might say rigid. Those are the words anyone would use to describe him. He doesn’t deviate from routine. He doesn’t like change. He throws a tantrum if anything in his schedule gets shifted. Other words I might use to describe this person I’ve loved for a quarter of a century: soft spoken, kind, gentle, passive. Anyway, he started acting very odd. Moody, surly, like an impetuous teenager. Spouting off things like he’s always been the responsible one. He’s tired of being responsible. He’s always put everyone else first. He’s sacrificed who he is and what he wants. And then things like “I don’t know that this is the life I want.” “I don’t know if I ever wanted this life.” “I don’t know what I want.” “I don’t know if I love you anymore.” “I am not happy. I’m not even sure I’ve ever been happy in our marriage.” So much re-writing of our history together! He took up new hobbies. Ditched his age appropriate friends and started spending all his time with new, much younger, not married friends. (He is 47. His current group of friends are all in their 20s.) This alien version of him alternated with stretches of not totally normal him but more normal. Statements like “I don’t love you anymore” might be replaced a few days later with “Of course I love you. I don’t know why I said that. I’m just so confused.”
I did not go looking for information on the internet. I did not try to diagnose it or tease it apart. I guess if I had, I might have come to the conclusion that he is having a MLC. I am sure I should have done a lot of things differently. I could clearly see he was going through something and I felt like some of it was/ is understandable and so I tried to manage my own feelings of “WTF is happening here? Fear, terror, bewilderment… “ I tried as much as possible to be supportive of whatever process or journey he was on. If I had found this group way back then, I probably would have done a better job because I sure as heck wasn’t practicing DB back then. But I did try to give space. I didn’t ask a lot of questions.
Back to the point of feeling like some of the things he was saying being understandable to me. We were young when we met. In college. My parents died a couple of months before I met him and my whole life was shattered in that instant. So from the very start of our life and at an age that most people aren’t dealing with those sorts of things, he was very much the strong one, the one I leaned on, the protector. He liked feeling like he was taking care of me and being my rock. His family became my family because I had no family anymore. And all these years later, here we are. I do think he took on a lot of responsibility at an age that maybe one shouldn’t have to take on that responsibility. And though he spouted a lot of crazy things I could sympathize (right word?) with him waking up and feeling like he’s always done the right thing, the thing he should do, always been responsible and dependable etc. etc. (My heart hurt for him when he told me he’s spent our whole life worried that he would disappoint me. He told me I’ve always had him on a pedestal and saw him as this perfect creature. And that it was a mighty burden to try to live up to that. I didn’t know he felt that way and I think we are beautiful as much for our failures as our successes. I hate that he ever worried about disappointing me or letting me down. I get why he felt that way.)
And yet some of the arguments were kind of absurd. Here’s an example: ME: “We’re going to Joe’s Pizza Friday after S1’s little league game. So and so will be there too.” HIM: “I don’t want pizza. You make all the decisions about meals. What I want is never considered. I have no choices in this life. You decide everything.” ME: “For years H, I said things like <hey, what do you want for dinner? Or what do you want to do Friday night?> and you always said <I don’t care. I don’t want to decide. Whatever you want is fine.> But wait… because it continues…. HIM: “You know I am really passive. You know I don’t have a strong opinion about things. And you do. You have a preference about everything. So I just went along with whatever.” Of course I can stand back and see the core feeling even if having pizza on Friday night is not really the thing to blow up about.
And then sometimes they were so crazy I had no idea how to respond. Like the “I’m not happy. Maybe I was never happy. I don’t know if I love you. Maybe I never loved you.” and me handing him a box of every card, every letter from 25 years. Me reading aloud from some of them about how much he loves me, our life, our family, everything we’ve built together, how proud he is of the life and marriage we have. And I KID YOU NOT he ACTUALLY RESPONDED to that box of 25 years and said “Maybe I was just telling you what I thought you wanted to hear. What I was supposed to say. I couldn’t tell you the truth.” ???????? At the time, I didn’t believe this because I thought the evidence in the box was pretty overwhelming. I just thought “Okay, you- H- gotta figure this out yourself.”
A few times over the past eight or nine months, I have asked, almost as an aside “You seem all over the place. Is there someone else?” and got the (now I know typical scripted) response: “NO. NO. How could you even think that? How could you possibly think I could do that? You are crazy to even ask.” And given that in all these years he HAS always been an honorable man with integrity… or maybe just my own DENIAL… I believed his answers and just went back to my effort to give space and time and let him try new things.
Of course now it turns out that his bizarre behavior started more or less exactly when the affair started. That MLC or not, the affair and his total questioning of everything were inextricably intertwined.
I don’t know what finally clicked for me. I did not have “proof” just a gut feeling. And so about a month ago I confronted him on a long car ride. And he denied and denied and denied. And then started to trickle out some truth and then blamed me and then alternated between crying and apologizing and justifying and blaming… It was not a day I would ever want to re-live.
So that is the back story.
One other parenthetical, tangential something something… I guess I mention it just because it stings like a whole hive of hornets. During one of the "alien light stretches" he took me to meet all of his new friends. He said “they all think I am making you up because they’ve never met you.” So I went to some bbq party with him. I thought to myself that these are all sweet kids. It is possible some of them had him as professor. Does he really not think it is weird and kind of creepy to be hanging out in a group where he is so much older than every other person? Where he is the ONLY one with a wife, kids, a mortgage, a job that comes with health insurance? Anyway, at the party, I met HER. I didn’t KNOW who I was meeting of course because I didn’t know there was an affair. But it was already happening then. (What was HE thinking taking me there and introducing me to her?) I thought she was a sweet bubbly girl. She reminded me of me at that age. Very outgoing, charismatic, charming… I didn’t suspect a thing.
Post script to that parenthetical: in the wake of the nuclear bomb I remembered that day. And I asked him what the F*C% he was thinking when he introduced me to the 20 something girl he was having an affair with. His response (s)-- plural. 1. I don’t know what I was thinking. OH MY GOD. What was I thinking? Why did I do that? 2. You know how I compartmentalize. 3. We were just friends so it didn’t occur to me that it was weird. (!!!!! Friends !!!!! He will still say they were just friends like somehow the physical part doesn’t make them more than friends.)
