Perhaps an explanation of what this blog is about and where these early entries came from?
In 2007 I discovered my husband of 12 years was involved in a long-term physical and emotional affair with a work colleague. I had had my suspicions and "gut feeling" for quite a while and despite an attempt to talk things through with my husband he withdrew from me. I think the increased sense of awareness of an affair was actually most palpable at the point she started putting an enormous amount of pressure on my husband to leave his family to be with her. Knowing what I now know about her this will have caused him a huge amount of stress as it was probably coupled with veiled threats about telling me what was going on, or to somehow damage his career. She had trapped him and was possibly trying to blackmail him to get her own way.
Now I look back and wonder if he had had some kind of nervous breakdown or some other mental abberation, such was the shock of finding out about his deceit and betrayal. Through my own counselling I do recognise that amongst other things he is controlling and has passive-agressive issues.
Once I had discovered his betrayal he made a wholehearted and genuine commitment to our reconciliation. He had realised some time before I found out, that his involvement with the other woman had no foundation, it was about both their egos being stroked. He confessed he did not have any real feelings for her other than she "was there" and "available and willing to have sex with him when it suited him". He thought they were friends but blindly didn't see that a true and genuine friend would not encourage infidelity, rather would have advised him to work on what was troubling him and talk to his wife.
Since June 2007, we have spent a lot of time working on our reconciliation. A journey not to be encountered lightly, as I discovered. Counselling, both individual and couples has been a large part of our lives in the last 18 months, and will continue to be so for some time to come.
Another realisation is that our marriage can never go back to what it was - it can end or it can get better - something that I have come to terms with and that whatever the outcome, I will be prepared for it.
So - these posts dated January 2009 are a collection of some of my thoughts,feelings and writings from the last 18 months - some may seem jumbled (recovering from infidelity is NOT linear!!) and some may seem optimistic or defeatist (and some might seem downright odd!!). But it has been hugely cathartic to write some of this stuff down which was encouraged by one of my counsellors.
This post is a reflection of the period before the affair was discovered and hopefully sets the scene for the rest of the blog. Many reflections in my blog have also got "the benefit of hindsight".....
Did you ever get that fleeting feeling that your marriage is "missing" something? That you and your husband are not connected? That you have drifted apart somewhere along the line and it was so subtle, that you missed it? That maybe something even more unthinkable - that someone else, a potential enemy of your marriage is infiltrating the special place once reserved exclusively for the two of you.............
A crappy, two bit poem, scribbled in childish handwriting on loose paper, enclosed in a cheap Christmas Card in December 2003. In the pile of the ones from work colleagues, this one thrown in the bin by my husband without apparently a second glance, but not being unseen when I threw the wastepaper in the trash. Where it belonged. Trashy cheap words from a trashy cheap whore. How unprofessional to send your new boss such an inappropriate missive. And he knew it was a come on......................
On reflection, that was the thing that started something unconsciously brewing in my mind that felt threatening, dangerous, another faceless person lying in wait, like a predator for the crumbs from my table? Now I know it was someone who is not worthy of wholehearted, loving relationship, and certainly not deserving of the same?
My husband, the one I loved from the minute we met - as friends at first. Oh I knew he wasn't perfect - nor am I. We both had baggage, a past, history which was talked about openly - our fears, our needs, our wants and desires. We were very close in those days. Emotionally intertwined. Perhaps he blinded me with his charm? Who knows?
He was easy to like. Flattering me, a gentleman, from a large, seemingly close and loving family. 6 sisters, all older. One might think very much in touch with his feminine side. He swept me off my feet. Me, the one with all the doubts about entering another relationship.
We fell in love, or what I thought was love, in the early 90's. He told me all the time that I was the girl he had been waiting for all his life - it just took a while to find me. We were both almost 30 when we met. It felt so right.
2 beautiful children, exciting and fulfilling careers, close friends, loving families, a large fun-filled house and a mortgage later - where did it all start to go wrong?
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