Spin Control

A Facebook “friend” (not someone I actually know well) posted this link on his Facebook page with the comment, “I have one thing to say:  TACKY!”

Here’s the link.  Go ahead and read it; I’ll wait right here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/fashion/weddings/19vows.html?_r=1&ref=weddings

Tacky?  Well, yes.  I keep trying to imagine what might have possessed them to put all of this in the Times.   I can only think that maybe they’d had enough of gossip and speculation from their social circle and wished to set the record straight and proceed with everything in the open.  People won’t whisper behind their backs as much if they release the information themselves and act like it’s not a big deal.  Also, by being the ones to tell the story, they can control the spin, or at least have some counterpart to the version already in circulation, where she’s a homewrecker and he’s a cad.  Still, it seems disrespectful to the exes, who didn’t ask for the bottom to drop out of their lives.

By the way, I know the article specifies that they didn’t consummate their emotional affair by having a physical affair.  Maybe this is true; maybe not, but I don’t think it really matters.  Once you step out emotionally, it’s a betrayal, and the only difference between an emotional affair and a physical affair is a matter of its degree, not its nature.  In the end, they both left their spouses to be with someone else.  It’s the same result.

I remember when the managing partner (then married with 4 kids) of a company where I used to work had an affair with the marketing director.  Even after the other partners had all been served with subpoenas in his divorce case (watch out for holiday parties!), he still tried to go the Bill Clinton route and claim that they didn’t have an inappropriate relationship.  Everyone knew about this affair, from the top brass down to the people in the mailroom (they see EVERYTHING).  It was a ridiculous thing to deny.  About 3 years later, a former co-worker forwarded me a birth announcement for the partner’s and the marketing director’s newborn son – they had gotten married in the interim.  So I suppose that’s another option in the balls-out category:  just pretend like everything is completely normal, and that nothing about the situation is remotely improper.  Is that better?

Of course then there’s the version that DB’s ex favors, which is to be able to sue me for “alienation of affections” for stealing her husband (a cause of action now eliminated in almost all U.S. states, including the one in which I live, and rightfully so – it’s not like I entrapped DB; he made a choice).  I think if she could put me in the stocks in the town square for people to throw rotten fruit at me and require me to wear a scarlet letter every day for the rest of my life, she’d do that, too.  I guess it makes her feel vindicated.

It’s not that I have no shame.  And it’s not that I think anyone who ends up in my situation should wallow in shame forever.  I just don’t think it’s anyone’s business.  I’m not holding myself up as a paragon of virtue; I’m not a Republican politician or a televangelist.  I’m just doing the best I can.  I’m trying to raise my children and hold down a job and pay my rent and make a life and do better.  That’s mostly the sense I get from the Times article people, except for the fact that they put it in the Times, and seem to have a lot more money and status than I do.

In the end, though, I can only wish them well.  Because it’s not like I’m exactly in a position to judge anyone.

Man's Best Friend

Did you know that a 42-lb standard poodle can swallow an entire rib bone whole? Me, neither, but I saw the X-rays myself.  DB's dog from his prior marriage has adopted me and my kids as part of his "pack" (apparently I am now the alpha bitch), because I take care of him when DB travels.  Stepdog follows me around the house, guards me from other people and dogs when we go walking, lets me know when the kids are getting into something, and sleeps next to me when DB isn't here (he doesn't even do that with DB).  He is a sweetheart, and I really adore him.  I'm really more of a cat person usually, but this is a great dog.

So, a few weeks ago, DB had made ribs, and admittedly gave Stepdog one of the bones, WHICH WE WILL NEVER, EVER DO AGAIN.  As soon as we heard a crunch, DB went to retrieve the bone, but the mistake was giving Stepdog another bone.  Because Stepdog decided he was damned if someone was going to take away his second bone, so he ran off with it and swallowed it whole.  Strong work.

To our credit, we leapt into action, rushed Stepdog to the emergency vet, and he had surgery to remove the bone.  Stepdog recovered quickly and is now back to his goofy self.

Upon reflection, I realized that (a) I was really glad I was there to support DB, that there was no place I'd rather be at that moment than by his side, even if that happened to be in an emergency vet hospital, where he was freaking out with guilt and worry and needed me to tell him what I thought he should do; and (b) I have a Stepdog.  We are becoming a family, incrementally and slowly, we are counting on each other and making decisions together.  I know it's a far cry from combining households and finances and children, but for a very long time, I never thought we would ever be able to be together even this much.  It's like a dream come true, even the suck parts.

Of course, for Stepdog, as long as he has plenty of food and affection and a warm place to sleep, it's all great.  But I look in his eyes and can tell that he's wondering whether there's any place he can put the next bone that this bitch won't come after it.

Deja vu

Last year, for Thanksgiving, my ex had the kids.  I had considered having everyone over for dinner and trying to give the kids a sense of normalcy, but we just weren't there yet.  I drank too much wine, ate pie, and watched movies.  This year, I had the kids, and I considered again inviting the ex over for dinner, and was about to do so when my ex sent me an e-mail in which he tried to make me feel guilty for the fact that he did not have Thanksgiving plans.  The irony was thick on the ground.  I decided that I didn't want to invite him.

Instead, I sent an e-mail to the entire single parent group at my synagogue with a rather light, amusing, and whimsical invitation to come over and have turkey with me and the kids, because it is kind of depressing to sit around and eat pie and drink wine by yourself.  I got 2 takers: one sent to me by the synagogue's service program who was described as an older, grandmotherly Croatian lady but who was really quite a firecracker, very stylish and opinionated and hilarious; the other a single dad from the group, whose children were with his ex for the holiday.  I had been very clear in my e-mail that I had a significant other, so I was really hoping that Single Dad wouldn't decide to hit on me.  And he didn't; he was completely appropriate, played games with my kids, kept up his end of the conversation, even brought a bottle of wine and had made some spiced sugared almonds that were quite good.  My ex doesn't know how to cook much of anything, so I was impressed by this.

Eventually I did ask him about his story, what he did for a living, whether his ex lived close, how they shared the children, etc.  And here's the spooky part.  It was like listening to a different variation of my own story, minus the affair (so far as I know).  He is in the same profession, and the same specialty within that profession, as my ex, and even knows who he is, though doesn't know him personally.  He worked for a big company, put in tons of hours, hated his job, fought with his wife because of the hours and because she was trapped at home with their small children, and the rest is history.  So I'm looking at this guy, realizing that as a reasonably attractive, smart, funny, successful person around my age, this is who my dating pool would be, if I were on the dating market.  And he's basically just a different version of my ex, with a little more culinary and social adeptness thrown in.

On the upside, I think the yenta wants to introduce him to her daughter.  Or maybe she was eyeing him for herself.  More power to her!

Thankful

On this Thanksgiving day in America, I feel truly blessed.  I have good health, two beautiful children, the love of a wonderful man, a good job in a bad economy, a warm, safe house in a stable democratic country, plenty to eat, reliable transportation, the company of a sweet dog, and an endless supply of good books.  I am a survivor, and I am learning from my mistakes.  I truly cannot ask for anything more.  I can't even summon a single sarcastic comment, but hopefully this does not mean I am losing my touch.

DB left this morning at the crack of dawn to fly out to spend the holiday with his children.  I'm cooking this morning, then picking up my kids and sharing Thanksgiving dinner at my home with some folks from the single-parent group at my synagogue, along with an older Croatian lady who doesn't have family to go to.  I love to cook for people, and I'm good at it (not to be immodest), so this is going to be a good day.

Peace and happiness to all.

Moral dilemma

I am a staff member at a university.  I don't teach.  I do, however, get to know some of the students quite well, and many of the junior staff whom I supervise are graduate students in other programs, working their way through school.  The other day, one of my former staffers mentioned to me in an offhand way that last year, she wrote a paper for another student, and it received an A, so she was determined to take the same class because she knew she would make a good grade.

I was horrified.  I have never cheated on an academic project, test, or paper in my life.  I would never do that.  If I couldn't get a good grade on my own, I didn't want it.  And I certainly wasn't going to do all the work and let someone else take the credit for it.  Probably she wrote the paper for money, and I know her family is poor and struggles financially, and she attends an expensive private school.  I actually asked her to stop talking and not say anything else about it, because I didn't want to know.  I liked and respected this person and had a very high opinion of her integrity until now.  I have no idea what to do with this information.

It strikes me that I have very little room to judge her.  I cheated on my husband.  That's a much more sacred trust than academic integrity.  Actual human beings were personally hurt.  Yes, my ex broke his vows to me, too (that whole love and honor thing), but I am responsible for my own choices, and I took the dishonorable path.  I have remorse (holy crap, do I have remorse), and I am trying to make it right from here on out, but I was dishonest.  I can't undo that.  It's really just a twist of fate that hardly anyone knows what I did.  I could rent a billboard and confess, or something, but I hardly see how that would help anyone.

There are people who would not be friends with me, if they knew what I had done.  There are people who would believe I should have been put to public shame.  I have no desire to ruin this student's life (which I would do, if I dimed her out for an honor code violation), but it really bugs me that she mentioned the whole thing so flippantly, and without any remorse.  And I am having a hard time looking her in the eye now.

Have I abdicated the moral high ground?  I'm really at a loss here.

Quick Update

Please don't think I've dropped off the planet.  I had a family wedding to go to, with my small children, in another state, and it involved a side trip to Disney World.  So it was a bit like being on another planet.  I will write more soon, after they finish detaching the mouse ears.

Everyday People

DB and I have lived in the same town for about 10 months now.  It has been really ... for lack of a better word, nice.  We shop for groceries, go on dates, walk the dog.  He has a great rapport with my children, and they adore him.  When I don't have the kids and he's not traveling, he stays over.  He has a drawer at my house.  I have girl shampoo and conditioner at his.  It's all very normal.  It's everything I used to fantasize about.

But the adjustment to normalcy, while wonderful in many ways, isn't that simple.  Each of us has gone through a lot to get here.  He is divorced; mine is still in progress.  My family and friends know I'm seeing someone, but I'd rather they didn't know the circumstances.  Some of his friends and colleagues know what happened; his family doesn't.  He'd understandably like to avoid living the rest of his life, and spending our relationship, under a cloud of scandal.  So there is still some degree of hiding as we phase in this relationship for public consumption.  And we are discovering that we have to work to avoid making the same mistakes with each other that led us to be where we are.


I'm not talking about cheating; I'm talking about communication.  And that's hard when he is traveling for work or to see his kids, or I have my kids, and the only communication we get is in snippets.  We have a lot to talk about.  We want to get this right.  I honestly don't know how we ever lived before, only seeing each other for a few hours every few weeks, talking in bits and pieces, e-mailing, g-chatting, never getting that stream-of-consciousness conversation that comes with the luxury of having hours and hours to spend together with no fear of discovery, no needing to get back to where we're expected to be.  I never got into that thrill-of-forbidden-love thing.  I want to be for real.


Each of us spent more than a decade with someone who didn't really care what we thought.  He at least spoke his mind, for all it mattered.  I didn't even do that; I just took whatever was dished out.  We both learned bad habits.  We want to un-learn them, to be honest even when the truth isn't pretty, to have the difficult conversations, to disagree and work it out.  We are trying, and I believe in us.


But, if you're involved in an affair and think you will have a blissful and uncomplicated relationship with your lover once you are able to be together, give it up.  You can't escape yourselves.

Here's how it was for me

Usually when a person is caught cheating, it’s assumed that the cheater was out sniffing around town for something to rub up against, while the faithful loving spouse was home ironing the cheater’s shirts. Sometimes it’s like that. It wasn’t for me.

First off, no one was ironing my shirts. Well, sometimes the nice lady at the dry cleaner’s was, but (a) I wasn’t married to her, so I don’t think she can legitimately complain, and (b) I’m mostly a wash & wear kind of girl anyway. But more to the point, I wasn’t looking for an affair. I was minding my own business, going to work (after a long stint as a stay-home mom before that), taking care of my children, spending most of my free time with or in service of my family. I was not trawling through bars; I was not on dating websites; I was not going on business trips and trying to pick people up. Still, I found trouble without looking for it.

Obviously, I made choices, each of which incrementally added up to what ultimately transpired. I chose to friend DB on Facebook; I chose to have a regular e-mail correspondence with him; I didn’t stop that correspondence when I realized I was checking my e-mail frequently, with a certain breathless anticipation that could not be chalked up to catching up with an old friend. I shared emotions with him that I couldn’t discuss with anyone, I realized how desperately I desired him physically, and still I didn’t put the brakes on. I think this is what people often mean when they say an affair “just happened.” But of course it doesn’t “just happen.” People choose, maybe not all at once, but by degrees.

I didn’t see it that way at the time. At the time, I felt like I was getting hit by a tidal wave. The emotions were so intense, the highs and lows so conflicting. It wasn’t that I didn’t have control over my actions; I did. But I was drawn to this man in a way that I’d never been drawn to anyone. Yes, I desired him, but it was beyond lust. It didn’t matter whether I could actually be with him or not. My heart was his, and I couldn’t help loving him. I was willing to wait for him as long as it took. If that turned out to be never, I wasn’t going to stop loving him. I still love him that way. I can’t help it.

I know how I sound. I know that at the time, I was high on neurotransmitters and adrenaline, and I did not see clearly the pain that I was going to rain down on myself and others as a result of my actions. I thought I did, but I had no idea. I have lost so much sleep, cried so many tears, agonized about what to do, writhed in guilt and shame. It has hurt more than I can describe.

Here’s the thing. After all of this pain, after everything we have both been through, he is still holding my hand, and I am still holding his. If this was only a booty call, or an attempt to relieve boredom and get an emotional high, I would have bailed on him long ago, and he would have bailed on me. It would not have been worth it.

Most of the time it probably isn’t worth it. Most of the time I think people are looking for something by having an affair that they’re not actually going to get from the affair: a sense of completion and wholeness and safety they can only find within themselves. And I know I am not immune from that, nor is DB. We are flawed and broken people, and neither of us can heal the other. We are trying to rebuild ourselves, and it is not an easy process, nor one that will ever be truly completed. The affair was not a fix for all our existing problems. We simply took those problems with us.

I’ve struggled with how to end this post, because I don’t endorse what I did, but I love this man. I’m not naïve or stupid. I don’t believe in happily ever after; I believe you have to work at relationships. If it were easy, we would not have such a high divorce rate. But I would never have believed that I could love a man the way I love DB. The only other people I love with such fierce devotion are my children, who are obviously in a different category, but it’s that kind of intensity. I wasn’t looking for this relationship because I didn’t even know such a thing could exist. And once I knew, I couldn’t turn away from it.

People who haven’t stood in my shoes can judge me all they want, but if it happened to them, if they truly felt this way about someone else, I question whether they would be able to walk away, and what they might find themselves willing to do to be with that person.

Here’s how it was for me:

from Pablo Neruda’s Cien Sonetos de Amor (100 Love Sonnets)

XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Glass Houses

I never thought I would have an affair. I truly believed I was a better person than that. I didn’t realize that I was a setup for an affair long before I had the opportunity. I think that many betrayed spouses assume that the source of an affair lies solely with the person who cheated. They believe that the cheater is defective, either that s/he is a heartless traitor or weak and deluded. It’s difficult to admit how warped the structure of a marriage has to be in the first place for one partner to consider having an affair, and the extent to which both parties are responsible for that structure.

Happy spouses don’t cheat. If a spouse is not happy in a marriage, there is a reason for it. That’s not to say cheaters are justified in cheating if they’re not happy – of course not. But if your spouse cheats, and you’re surprised because you thought everything was great until that point, you have probably been ignoring some pretty key problems that pre-date the affair, often by years, and those problems are partially your responsibility.

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s (of Eat Pray Love fame - I know, you either love her or you hate her) book Committed, she summarizes Shirley Glass’ research on fidelity and affairs, which I now totally need to read (her book is called Not "Just Friends": Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity). Glass posits that marriages are made up of windows and walls. Communication between spouses should flow freely (windows); the intimate parts of yourself and your relationship should be closed to the outside world (walls). It’s only natural to be attracted to people other than our spouses sometimes, but when it happens, we open a window on those feelings with our spouse, at the same time setting a boundary with the outsider and refusing to become emotionally or physically intimate with that person. This has the practical effect of avoiding temptation, but instead of pretending the attraction doesn’t exist, which is unrealistic, you use it to build intimacy in your marriage by talking about unmet needs and finding a way to meet them within the marriage. It makes sense.

I think the corollary, and maybe Glass talks about this, is that if you try to open a window during these times, and your spouse shuts you out, then you have still done a good thing by exposing some key problems in the marriage. Then you can figure out whether you can resolve them or not. If not, at least you know why the marriage dissolved, without the confusion and chaos of involving someone else.

In my own situation, the windows and walls were all wrong, and had been for a very long time. My ex made it clear what he wanted my role to be. I was there to perpetuate a lifestyle, a paradigm of what he wanted his life to be. My needs were dismissed, in large ways and small. I tried to talk about it, perhaps not in ideal ways, but I did try. I tried nicely, I tried passive-aggressively, I tried outright aggressively, I tried in bitchy ways, I tried while sobbing my guts out and begging him to consider me, I tried by asking him to go to counseling with me. It didn’t work. I was walled off. He implied that I was crazy and unreasonable, that I had no right to want anything he didn’t want. After running into those walls for years, I lost all desire for any kind of intimacy with him. I was marking time, getting through the days, serving my sentence.

And then DB came along, and suddenly there was a window, and I didn’t want to close it. Now, Glass’ theory is that when I realized how attracted I still was to DB (and always had been – I thought about him over the years far more often than was entirely healthy), I should have cut off all contact with DB, then spoken to my ex and told him I was feeling this attraction to someone else and it had made me realize that I had a number of unmet needs that we needed to discuss. Realistically, I know that would not have flown. My ex would have raged and/or convinced me I was nuts. I don’t believe for one second that we would have been able to save our marriage. But at least I would have tried. And then I would have realized what instead it took having an affair to realize: that my marriage never was what I thought it was. And I could have gotten out of it with a clean conscience. And if it was meant to be with DB, we would have eventually been free to be together.

I have no defense. She’s right. But that’s not how it happened. Admittedly, one key reason for this was that I was not willing to cut off contact with DB. I couldn’t stand to lose him. Like many people, I aspire to high-mindedness that I do not always actually possess.

For DB, one of the most galling things about all of this has been that his ex truly believes their marriage ended simply because DB cheated. But while that was the match that set the house on fire, the house was already doused in gasoline and full of frayed, sparking electrical wires. Still, I know he wishes he had gotten out cleanly, and it certainly would make our lives now much easier if he had. His ex would still be bitter and self-righteous, but she wouldn’t have such strong justification for it.

It is really easy to slip into an affair if your marriage is unhappy and you’re subconsciously looking for a way out of it. It happens to good people, all the time. People are complex. I think we are kinder, stronger people when we remember that.

Rethinking - and Fish!

First of all, if you've been to the site before, you'll see that I went a bit nuts with the template designer. I wanted something less serene. It would have been lower-key until I found out you can add fish - FISH! - as a decorative item. Honestly, the ability to add fish kind of made my day. So hopefully the changed look and feel makes the place warmer.

Second, I have wondered whether the things I'm saying are useful in the context of discussing an affair or not. A lot of it would apply to the emotional landscape of any divorce, any single-parenting situation, any contemplation of new love after divorce. And while these are all elements of my journey in figuring out how to rebuild myself and my life after having an affair, maybe there's more to be said first about the affair itself - how it happened, what I learned, and whether it's too soon to make snappy sarcastic comments about the utter destruction of my life as I knew it.

I'd be interested in comments. What do people want to know, if they care enough to read this?

Oh, FYI, I do moderate comments, so it might be a few hours before your comment posts.

Boundaries

I've been thinking a lot about boundaries lately, especially the part where I don't seem to have any. Seriously, the crap I let my ex get away with would amaze you. To paraphrase, he wanted someone who would, to quote the timeless poetry of Sara Barielles, ride off into his delusional sunset. And the sick thing is, I did it. Whatever he wanted, that was what we did. I didn't get to eat when I was hungry, rest when I was tired, leave when I was ready, be comforted when I was sad, vent when I was angry, except when it was amenable to him. Everything, from vacations to sex to child rearing, it was all on his terms. Resistance was futile.

It's not that he is an overtly mean person - most people think he's quite nice, until they are on the receiving end of his narcissism. Even then, his form of manipulation is so subtle that often you don't realize what happened; you know you feel violated, but you don't know why. He doesn't yell, he doesn't throw things, he seems reasonable and oh-so-nice, but what he wants is what is going to happen, period. He pushes and pushes and pushes until he gets what he wants, and he will run over you with a bulldozer and never stop smiling. It's like Chinese water torture. I quickly learned that it was just easier to give him what he wanted, because he was never going to stop pushing. By the end - and the end came about 6 months before I had an affair - I felt like I didn't have any skin left. I felt like a pulpy mass of exposed nerves, and no one knew, because he was such a "nice" guy. It was a painful, enclosed, lonely, horrible place to be.

So, how do I not end up there again? The more I look at myself, the more I know I am susceptible to being manipulated in all kinds of relationships, from work to friendships to love. I was custom-built for someone like my ex. My whole life, I avoided conflict, because it always ended up with me losing, often painfully. So I just stopped resisting. In a way, there was sort of a Zen-like quality to the idea of bending so I wouldn't break. Only it didn't lead to a peaceful, detached, enlightened Nirvana. It let to footprints on my back. Once I realized that, it was as if a new lens clicked into place over my vision. I could never see my marriage the same way. I could never see any relationship the same way. Some say my spine grew 3 sizes that day (sorry, I've been reading too much Dr. Seuss with my son).

DB is a sweet, kind man, but he is human, and he has his own agenda. He does not want to manipulate me, but we all want what we want, particularly from those who are closest to us. Boundaries are important. Not to shut anyone out, or in; I think of it as more like a permeable membrane than a wall. I envision a barrier that lets certain things pass through, but protects my structural integrity and separateness.

Frost was right: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall,/That wants it down." ("Mending Wall," the poem is here). But we need to know where others end and we begin, and we need to know the difference.

On Loneliness

It has been a tough week. DB has been traveling a lot lately, between work responsibilities and flying out to visit his kids. One day in late August, we sat down with a calendar and realized that between our respective schedules, we were not going to have a weekend together until late October. So that was demoralizing.

Then last week my kids went back to school, and it was a tough adjustment, which meant that they were WHINING constantly with the whining that just wouldn't stop, except when they were fighting like rabid weasels, or lying on the floor and refusing to budge, even though it was time to leave for school, and if they didn't put on their shoes THAT INSTANT, Mommy's head was going to explode!! I'm not proud of this, but at one point, I was doing what can only be described as shrieking. My throat hurt all day, and when I got to work I locked myself in my office and cried.

This is usually when my children decide to tell me that they don't want to live with me anymore. It's less of a blow now than before I realized that they do the same thing to their father when he finally reaches a point where placating them with cookies/ice cream/TV/outings doesn't work anymore, and they manage to get on his last nerve. But still, it's not a good way to leave things.

Anyway, the afternoon immediately following the shrieking incident, the kids spent the weekend with their father, and I was solo. And I didn't know what to do with myself. I had a volunteer commitment for part of one day; I had brunch with friends the next morning; I walked the dog a lot. Thankfully he's a big dog.

Bottom line, I was lonely. Like, cringing, long-dark-night-of-the-soul, pit-of-despair lonely. The weird thing is, I'm an introvert, and I never get any time to myself, so I thought I was going to enjoy getting to read and work out and putter around. Instead, I wanted a family around me. To be perfectly clear, I didn't want to go back to the family I had. Living in the same house with my ex was even more lonely, and I was so alienated from my children when I was trying to choke down my own anger and frustration. Being on my own is better, and it would be so even if DB weren't in the picture. But last weekend, I wanted my children, and I wanted DB, and I wanted DB's children. I wanted them all to be ours, to hear them playing, to walk up to DB and put my arms around him and see what we had made and feel that it was good. Of course, right after that the kids would doubtless start fighting, but that's part of being a family, too, and I would know that I had a partner to deal with it. I've never had that.

I don't expect bliss - it's not realistic. I know that in reality, if and when DB and I are able to live together with some combination of our children, it won't be easy. And while shrieking is suboptimal, I'm not sorry for requiring my children to behave like human beings, and I'm not going to bribe them the way my ex does. And I know that stepparent issues are their own separate emotional minefield that I can't even fathom yet. And, finally, and most importantly, I know that I need to confront and explore this loneliness, that my children and DB can't heal the broken places inside me. So I'm working on that, I really am.

Still, I have to say that when my children came home on Monday, they wrapped their little arms around me, and nothing has ever felt so good. I'm not sure what they're currently plotting, but I don't even care.

High School Musical

I lost my best friend over this affair. My BFF from high school and college isn't talking to me. When this all started, and I had to talk to someone, I talked to her. We've always been able to do that. I spilled my guts: how unhappy I had been in my marriage, for how long, all the ways my ex had humiliated me, how ashamed of myself I was, how much I loved DB, how it had hit me like a freight train. She was empathetic, not that she gave me a green light to commit adultery, but rather she understood how I ended up where I was, and how I was trying to forge the least dishonorable path out of it.

And then, completely out of the blue, she started dating DB's close college friend, Buddy, who used to be a friend of mine, too. These are people who live on opposite sides of the country who could not be more different; I never would have predicted this. He has been divorced twice; she has not had a long term intimate relationship with anyone since college, so they have their own issues (don't we all).

BFF kept my secret from Buddy for awhile, but she didn't feel right about it. I respected that, and I asked DB to tell Buddy what was going on, which he did. 2 days later, DB and I got a scathing e-mail from Buddy about what horrible people we were. Because we needed to be reminded; it wasn't something that tortured us every day or anything (*insert sarcasm here*). It wasn't that he was wrong as far as it went; it was more that I didn't have the energy to manage his feelings, nor did I see how I was obligated to do so, given that I wasn't married to him. I didn't respond to that e-mail.

After that, BFF cooled considerably. She never amended her opinion about whether I was justified in leaving my ex, but she changed her party line significantly about DB. The only thing that changed so far as I can tell was the fact that her boyfriend disapproved. I can't fault him for disapproving of adultery; I do, too. But it wasn't his business, and the only reason he even knew about it was because BFF asked that he be told, AND his sole source of information about the whole thing was a 15-minute phone conversation in which he did not ask a single question.

I never asked BFF to blow sunshine up my ass; I just wanted someone who had known me for a very long time to understand the situation in the context of my entire history and who I am. That was how BFF started out, but then suddenly I was reduced to a scarlet A. Screw that.

Shortly after all of this, when DB's ex absconded across the country with his children, and BFF told me she thought this was completely justified, I knew we just couldn't talk about it anymore. For awhile, my relationship with DB was like the elephant in the room. I continued to try to support her through her own struggles, but communication became more and more strained, and then gradually she stopped talking. This is someone with whom I have been friends for 23 years, and she dumped me for a boy.

Moral of the story: if you are having an affair, consider carefully before telling anyone who you want to keep as a friend.

By the way, I am fully aware of how whiny and high school this post sounds. But this has been bugging me for a long time, and it's not like I have the moral high ground here. Maybe if I just walk around for a few days with my iPod turned up, sulking and rolling my eyes at everyone, I'll feel better.

Why he was worth it

When I realized I had fallen in love with a man other than my husband, I was completely gobsmacked. There I was, a respectable, fairly cerebral married mother of 2, staring off into space like a 16 year-old, twirling my hair, sending surreptitious text messages, and even, I kid you not, giggling. Yes, I know that the neurotransmitters released when we're giddy in love are the equivalent of being high on drugs. And in this case, it was probably doubly enhanced by the risk involved, even though I've never been a thrill-seeker. I look back at myself and shake my head, because I must have looked like an idiot.

Now that several years have passed and the infatuation phase has worn off, I am happy to say that I no longer giggle much, thank God. What's left is that I really love this man. I trust him in a way I've never trusted anyone, and couldn't have imagined trusting my ex-husband (for good reason). Why is it that my feelings survived the toxic landscape we've crossed? Why was he worth all of that?

Here are some of the things I love about him. He is sweet and kind and patient. He is wonderful with my children. He talks to his dog. He makes me lemon tea when I'm sick. He will go with me to Ikea and spend the better part of a day helping me pick out things for my kids' rooms, then he will bring it all home, carry it into the house, and assemble it. He sings when he cooks. Did I mention that he cooks? On bad days, he will hold me while I cry, until I finish crying. He listens to me whine about work. He reassures me that I am a good mother. He is smart, with a wide range of interests. He calls me on my bullshit but doesn't make me feel stupid about it. He is graceful about admitting his mistakes. He makes me feel cherished and constantly tells me I'm beautiful and sexy. He empties the dishwasher without being asked. He has always, in my mind, been the most handsome man I've ever seen in real life, even more so now than when I first met him 20 years ago. Are you vomiting yet? Because I could go on.

Does he have faults? Oh, my God, yes. He can be a real pain in the ass. He gets his feelings hurt easily. He is protective and sometimes even possessive. He has a certain pedantic tone he takes when talking about his area of expertise, and I can only take but so much of it. He does not always follow through, even when he intends in good faith to complete a task. And he contributed to the end of his own marriage, and not just by having an affair.

I don't think that I idealize him. But I do love him. For a long time after this relationship re-ignited, I wondered whether my feelings were real. We all project onto others what we need to see. And for many people who have an affair, the relationship is too stifled by its inherent limitations for love to flourish, even when it takes root. For whatever reason, though, here we are, searching to get it right this time. And still occasionally giggling.

What about the children?

I’ve been putting off the most complicated part of this whole story because, well, it’s complicated.

DB and I each have 2 children apiece of similar ages, ranging from preschool to early elementary school. They’re beautiful and funny and smart and we both love them all. They are adjusting so far to the divorces, albeit not without difficulty at times. Things seem to be going better for my kids because they spend about 50/50 time with me and their father, which gives them stability and constant reassurance that their parents love them and will always take care of them. It also helps a lot that my ex and I get along pretty well. For DB’s children, who were moved across the country suddenly one day, away from their father, with no notice, it has been tougher. They miss their dad, and he can’t explain to them that he isn’t with them because their mother took them away. On the upside, they are well-loved, well cared-for children, and mostly they do pretty well.

But sometimes I wonder whether we were obligated to stay for the children regardless of what it would have cost us emotionally.

Back before all the shit went down, when I was trying to figure out whether I could stop this freight train and stay in my marriage, I read lots of books. I do that. Many of these books posited that nearly all marriages are ultimately salvageable, and we HAVE to save our marriages whether we want to or not, because if we don’t, it will destroy our children. *Insert the author’s favorite set of statistics about the increased likelihood of your child ending up turning tricks in an alleyway for drug money if you get divorced.* Great. So not only do I have a ton of guilt hanging over my head already for the mortal sin I’ve committed, but now my son is destined to be a rent boy, and God help the little one because she already likes to show everyone her Cinderella underpants. And, as an added bonus, if you believe these books, divorce is destroying all of Western civilization. No pressure or anything.

In all seriousness, I wondered a lot about whether my failure to work things out in my marriage would be a betrayal of my children. Believe me, I spent many sleepless nights flogging myself with that particular scourge, but in the end, I have to say no. I think the same is true for DB. We betrayed our spouses, but we didn’t betray our children. It’s different.

Look, I believe that many a marriage can be saved, if both people want to save it, and both people are willing and able to pull their heads out of their respective posteriors and face some uncomfortable truths about themselves and how they treat others. Infidelity is symptomatic of much deeper problems within the relationship and the psyche of the cheater, and I think it’s childishly simplistic and fatally stupid for either the betrayed spouse or the cheater to view it as a question of simply not being able to keep one’s pants zipped. If you try to save your marriage because you and your spouse sincerely want to do so and both of you are willing to do whatever it takes, it will turn out better for your kids if you succeed. Even if you fail, you’ll feel much better about it having tried. Or so I’m told.

I just couldn’t do that. I knew that the best I was going to get with my ex was benign neglect, and that I was going to have to stand in for his mother his whole life. It was exhausting to arrange my existence around the whims of another person all the time. That’s something I was willing to do for my children, but not for an adult man. And, shockingly, I found that I was actually compromising my children’s needs to indulge my ex’s wants. He didn’t see why it should be any different. It was working for him, so if I had a problem with it, that was my problem. By the time I figured all of that out, I had run out of willingness to pour any more of my time and energy into that black hole. I had to be honest about the toll it would take on me, and the person I would become as a result. I did not think that person could be the mother my children deserved.

Having grown up with parents who are still married and miserable with each other, I don’t really think it does anyone a service to stay together for the kids if you can’t fix the marriage. I bear many scars from my upbringing in an “intact” family. From my observations, getting a divorce, while traumatic, is not the end of the world for children. I don’t believe it’s any worse than growing up in the midst of an unhappy marriage; it’s just different. Don’t get me wrong, there have been horrible times, and I’d be remiss if I sugarcoated the billion little heartbreaks I’ve had every day over the past few years. And I have to own the fact that I made this choice, and it has caused pain to my children. But, aside from the choice to have an affair (granted, a big aside), I did the best I could with the situation I had, given the mental and emotional resources available to me. I left my marriage because it was the best choice at that decision point, not because of DB. If he had not been there for me on the other side, I still would not regret my choice.

Thankfully, none of the children have any idea that DB and I had an affair. It occurred to me in a moment of gut-wrenching panic that probably my kids will find out because, assuming we stay together as planned, DB’s kids will tell them, because DB’s ex will make sure they know. I just don’t see her missing a chance to rub DB’s nose in this – I don’t think she can help herself. When the day comes, I will have to put on my big girl panties and continue to take responsibility for my choices. I hope it happens later rather than sooner. Meanwhile, I try to do the best I can by my children and hope it’s enough to ensure that even if they blame me for failing their father, they will know that I have always been a good mother to them. When I’m feeling particularly optimistic, I think they might possibly someday understand why I couldn’t stay.

Followers!

I returned from a great vacation with my kids to discover a flooded basement. Good times. As soon as I re-attained dry basement status, I did what any sensible person would do: I re-connected the modem. And then, lo and behold, I log into Blogger, and I have 2 followers! This makes me unspeakably happy, even if I'm a tremendous dork for feeling that way. Thank you, followers! Someone is reading! Perhaps I should start putting out snacks!

I'm working through a thoughtful, substantive post, which I want to finish tomorrow when it finishes deciding about which of 2 topics it's being written.

Meanwhile, my babies are about to go off on vacation with their dad, and I am going to miss them terribly, though I know they will have a good time.

DB has a vile stomach virus, and I was forbidden to go to his place for the next 24 hours other than to hand him a 2-liter of Ginger Ale and take possession of the dog because he's too sick to walk him.

I'm finally tired enough, after the flooded-basement adrenaline kick, to head off to sleep, DB's dog sleeping beside me, blowers and dehumidifiers humming below me.

Peace out, all, and sorry for the ramble. Just wanted to give a current sense of my exciting and illicit life.

Perspective

DB’s ex blames me for their divorce. Of course, she blames DB, too, but she describes him as “emotionally lost,” a compromised state of which I somehow took advantage. In truth, if he was emotionally lost, it was because she emotionally put a burlap sack over his head, beat the crap out of him, shoved him in the trunk of her car, drove around for 14 years, dumped him in a ditch in the middle of the Everglades at night, then sped off. Rather than owning her piece of the responsibility for the fact that DB was abjectly miserable in his marriage before I got anywhere near him, it is much easier to think he had a mid-life crisis, and that he never would have had such a crisis had I not arrived on the scene. It’s an interesting perspective.

I’m not saying DB was justified in cheating on her because he was unhappy in the marriage. I’m not saying DB wasn’t responsible for his contributions to the sorry state of his marriage before I came along. I’m just saying that he didn’t stray out of the blue, and she had a large role in creating the circumstances under which a good man did a bad thing. He didn’t lose his mind or his senses. He had simply had enough, and after multiple rounds of marriage counseling and realizing things were not going to get better, he became severely depressed at the thought that he was serving a life sentence. When we found each other, it was like a prison door opening. I didn’t tempt him. I didn’t have to.

The only things that had kept him in the marriage were his love for his children and his sense of duty. He never stopped loving his children, and he continued to do his duty. He picked up his son from preschool, he made dinner for the family, he unloaded the dishwasher, he did the laundry, he installed baby gates, he pruned the hedges, he gave time-outs, he went to the grocery store, he took the dog to the groomer, he made the coffee every morning. I know that he did those things, because now he does them for me. My ex didn’t do any of that. I did it all, and held down a full-time job, and took care of two small children. I would have been thankful every day if I had had a husband like DB. I am certainly thankful that I have him now. I would be bitter if I lost him, too, especially if I had spent so many years making him feel like a deadbeat and then realized only after he was gone that I was never going to have it that good again.

As for his children, she accuses him of having abandoned them for me. What really happened was that she took them. One day not long after he told her he wasn’t interested in fixing the marriage, he came home from work, and they were gone. No note, no message, luggage, clothes, toys, gone. And then she gave him an ultimatum: return to the marriage or lose his children (he cannot relocate to where she moved with the children – it’s complicated). This was the moment that I knew what kind of person she really was. She thought she could force someone to love her, and that if they didn’t, they deserved to be punished, no matter the cost to her sweet, beautiful children.

DB decided that the psychological effects of living with her in daily misery would detract from his ability to be a good father far more than not living in the same house with them, which I take as a testament to how unhappy he was. He also believed that engaging in a lengthy and acrimonious court battle to keep her in the state was not in the best interest of his children. He decided to go the peaceful route, and he is a cooperative and involved co-parent. He talks to them every day. He sees them as often as he can. When they are with him, he makes sure they brush their teeth and go to bed on time and use their nice voices. When they’re not, he misses them terribly.

Whenever she wants to slap him around, she says that he chose to be away from his children, which truly baffles me. He chose to cheat, but he never stopped loving and taking care of his children. He didn’t want her, but he will always want them. He did not choose me instead of his children. He is not with them because she took them. That was her choice. Not his, not mine, hers.

Look, she can be angry that he cheated, obviously. But I didn’t marry her; he did. I didn’t seduce him. She lost her husband a long time before he found me; she just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t lead him astray. He was already astray. She played a big part in that.

Supporting DB through this emotionally wrenching situation sometimes robs me of all objectivity and sends me into protective mama-bear mode. When I can calm down, I try to view her with compassion, because she was wronged. I know her life is harder now. Financially, she is fine (great, actually), but she is finding that moving thousands of miles away from the one person who would have provided her with regular time to herself was not such a great idea, after all. She chose to move off in a huff, but she didn’t choose to have her world yanked out from under her. She is doing the best she can. She is upset and confused and angry, and she has every right to be. She just doesn’t have the right to hold me responsible for it.

How Much It Sucked, Part 2

The experience of going through my affair partner’s D-day (the term often used to describe the day when your spouse discovers you’re having an affair) and the resulting fallout was incredibly difficult, and continues to be so, but it wasn’t the worst part of navigating this situation for me. The worst part was killing my dying marriage, and then grieving the loss.

I know, you’re thinking, “This is someone who cheated on her husband. She clearly has no compunctions. Why did it bother her to break up with her husband when she was willing to cheat on him? And if she feels grief about it now, isn’t that her own fault?” Fair enough. Still, that’s how it was.

I know that what I experienced, I would have experienced no matter why I left my ex-husband, but because I was leaving him in conjunction with an affair, the guilt I felt made the whole process much more painful and complicated. I offer this because I think that people who are trying to navigate a situation like this need to know that it is not easy to end your marriage, no matter why you’re ending it, and that you will experience it as a loss, often at unexpected moments, in unexpected ways, and it will be surprisingly and sometimes excruciatingly painful.

A friend told me on the day of her divorce hearing that she almost envied someone whose spouse had died, because at least for that person, the wound can close over. They don’t have to see and figure out how to communicate and raise children with someone who looks and acts like the person they loved, but isn’t. I think this insight applies to spouses who are left behind, for whatever reason, and for spouses who decide to leave, for whatever reason.

I’ve said that my relationship with my ex-husband was bad, and I do believe that it was irretrievably broken. My ex was never going to change. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think people fundamentally change; they can only modify their behavior to be less maladaptive, within the range of behaviors of which they are capable. My ex had abandoned me emotionally and physically, and our relationship was extremely codependent. He was always going to view me as an accessory to the lifestyle he wanted, not a true partner. Whenever I tried to talk about our problems, he essentially told me I was crazy, and I was almost convinced. I was looking at the rest of my life, and it was a bleak, sad picture.

But it was my life. It was what I knew. I had married on the young side for my demographic, and at that time I believed my husband was a very different person. It was hard to realize that that person had never existed. There were key points of resemblance, mainly an intellectual affinity and a sense of humor that kept me going for a long time, but ultimately it wasn’t enough. Leaving that marriage was like experiencing a death. But because of my betrayal, it felt not only as if my husband had died, but that I had killed him.

Also, it didn’t help that I had spent most of my adult life smoothing things over for my ex, shielding him from painful experiences because, I realize now, someone had always been there to do that for him. First his mother, then me. And suddenly, I was the cause of the painful experience, yet for a long time I still felt obligated to manage his feelings about it. I would have felt this pressure no matter why I left, but my guilt increased it exponentially. I had to let that go and make him deal with his own suffering, even if I was responsible for it. Eventually, I had to face up to how much comfort and validation I had gotten out of being a martyr all those years. Not a proud moment.

From the time that I became emotionally involved with DB to the time I left my ex-husband was about 10 months. They were not good months. There was the daily stress of worrying about discovery of the affair. There was guilt about the affair. There was the emotional roller coaster of being in love, but not being able to be with the person I loved. There was extreme anxiety about what would happen to my children, and agonizing about whether it was worse to have them grow up in the middle of a loveless marriage vs. weathering a divorce (a whole separate blog entry in and of itself). There was the confusion of wondering whether any of my feelings were real, and wondering whether DB would be able to be there for me on the other side of all of this if I left. There was the worry about finances. There was the fact that I dreaded going home every night and couldn’t sleep. I’m not sure how I managed to function. It’s all a blur. It ended when I realized that to save myself, I had to end the marriage, and nothing was ever going to make that hurt any less.

The upshot is this: to do what I did, you must realize that you are going to have to commit a deliberate act that will result in the death of a relationship. As nice as it is to fantasize about your affair partner riding up on a white horse to sweep you away from all of this, that’s not going to happen. If you are going to get out, it is going to be because you walked away from everything that had previously kept you in your marriage, which, as messed up as it was, probably wasn’t all bad, either. If you leave it behind, you will lose it forever. Don’t think it won’t hurt. Make sure it’s worth it.

How Much It Sucked (Part 1)

Most people who have affairs, whatever their motivations, do not give adequate thought to the possible consequences. They’re in a hormonal and/or emotional state that is simply not conducive to rational thought. I worry that by saying I left my husband and ended up with my lover, people might think it was a blithe decision, and easy to do. It wasn’t. It sucked. It is difficult to express the extent to which it sucked, and will eventually suck for you if you have an affair, but I will try.

First, let’s start with the very concrete reality that most people who have affairs get caught, and YOU SHOULD ASSUME THAT YOU ARE NOT AN EXCEPTION. I didn’t get caught, but that’s really rare in the long term, and more a testament to my ex-husband’s self-involvement than to my keen intellect and considerable paranoia. DB got caught, and if you have an affair, you probably will, too. Having an affair requires a lot of attention to detail, and it’s almost impossible to be vigilant all the time. You will get lazy as you get into a routine, and that is when you will screw up. It only takes an absent-minded moment when you forget to secure your phone, or you get caught not being where you said you were. A suspicious and determined spouse will find out, and your spouse will get suspicious. You will not be acting normal.

Getting caught sucks. Quite unexpectly, you have to explain yourself, and you can’t possibly explain yourself. You suddenly see yourself through your spouse’s eyes, and it’s not a pretty picture. You have to deal with someone who is justifiably furious at you, who you have betrayed, someone with whom you have built a life and have a history, and you will feel enormously guilty and conflicted, no matter why you had the affair or what your relationship with your spouse was like. You will also have to deal with the consequences of their rage, which might include some pretty bad things, such as bolting across the country with your children, or draining your bank accounts, or humiliating you in front of friends, neighbors, colleagues, or even your own children. Unless you are a complete sociopath, the moment of getting caught is a horrible, shameful, pants-crappingly terrifying moment, beyond your worst imaginings.

It also sucks if you haven’t gotten caught (yet) and your affair partner gets caught. Suddenly, you have to face the fact that there is a real person on the other side, who is suffering because of a decision to which you were a party, and who has a hold over your affair partner that you do not. Until she found out what was going on, DB’s ex was almost a cardboard cutout in my mind. Afterward, she was a real person. A real person who was pissed off and had access to firearms, a real person might show up at my house or work, a real person who might call my spouse, a real person who had probably already learned quite a bit about me. But also a real person in pain.

Thankfully no bunnies were boiled in the course of this affair, but DB’s getting caught sucked. It was obviously far worse for him than for me, but if you care about the person you have an affair with, it’s important to consider how the implosion of his or her world will affect you. You will feel partly responsible for what is happening to your affair partner, and it is hard to support someone through the kind of fallout that is coming, especially when you are trying to navigate your own situation and figure out what to do. Your affair partner might lose custody of their children, not to mention money, reputation, professional credibility, and self-respect, to name a few things. Your affair partner might (possibly repeatedly, changing his/her mind back and forth) throw you under the bus and break your heart out of a desire for self-preservation, or to avoid breaking up his/her children’s household, or just from the paralyzing guilt of it all. DB didn’t do this to me, but in my darkest moments I feared he would and wouldn’t have even blamed him. That would have really sucked.

I’ve just scratched the surface here. Shall I go on?

The View From This Side

So, how does a nice girl become a fallen woman?

Are people who have affairs shallow, selfish sociopaths who are incapable of love, don’t feel guilt, and will fuck anything that moves? Some are. We all know people like that. It’s certainly easier to believe that everyone who strays is like that, especially if your spouse cheated. But even my ex-husband would tell you that I’m not like that.

At the other end of the spectrum, it would be far too easy to blame my ex for my actions. But my ex didn’t beat me. He didn’t cheat on me or call me names or belittle me publicly or privately or control my finances or molest our children. There were serious issues, and while those who know us tend to agree that I was right to leave him, and understand why I did so, he did not compel me to cheat on him. I chose to do that.

From my current perspective, I have learned that (a) almost anyone is capable of doing things they never thought they would ever do, given the right circumstances, and (b) having an affair is incredibly stressful for anyone with a conscience. If you do such a thing, there are some pretty powerful forces at work. No matter how you decide to resolve the situation, it’s important to understand what those forces were so that you can deal with them; otherwise you have wasted a lot of time and effort and soul-crushing guilt over nothing.

Look, I don’t expect hugs or warm fuzzies, nor do I expect pity for or absolution from the consequences my choices set into place. At the same time, I do maintain that I am not a bad person. I loved my ex-husband dearly. I took care of him, I cooked for him, I washed his underwear, I picked up his drycleaning, I listened to him and supported him, I was responsible with our money, I gave birth to his children, I tried to give him a comfortable, inviting home. I traveled with him, I had amazing adventures with him. I was a good wife. And I put up with a lot of crap. Crap that objective observers, including qualified mental health professionals, have deemed inordinate. I always assumed that I was doing this as quid pro quo – when I needed my ex to make sacrifices for me, he would do it. That never happened. It slowly broke my heart until finally it almost broke my sanity.

Why didn’t I try harder, or put my foot down sooner? Why didn’t I insist that we work things out in counseling? Why did I choose to start a new relationship rather than make the old one work? This is the truth. I was in denial over how bad things were. I was so busy trying to convince myself that I was happy, and the things I wasn’t happy about were my fault, and if I could just have a better attitude, there would be no problems. I remember the precise moment, long before DB came into my life, that I realized I didn’t enjoy having sex with my then-husband. I remember thinking that there was no way I could ever tell him, that this was going to be my life of quiet desperation, and that I had made my bed and would have to lie in it (literally). And then I felt horribly guilty and tried to pretend I hadn’t just thought any of that. I didn’t understand that the house was burning down until I fell in love with DB. And then it was too late.

That’s the honest truth. I didn’t manage to get my then-husband into counseling until I had no intention of working on the relationship anymore. There was nothing he could have done or said that would have (a) convinced me he could or would change the behaviors that were slowly killing me, or (b) made me willing to give DB up. So I left the marriage as quickly as courage and resources would allow. It sucked. It was horribly painful. But not even in the worst moments, like when my children were there to see the movers take my things away (my husband was supposed to have taken them somewhere but didn’t), with all the neighbors looking as I stood in my driveway and bawled, even then, I was not willing to stay. It felt then, and feels now, like a matter of survival, like running for my life.

Not everyone would do what I did. Some people might have been able to turn the situation around, to commit to counseling, to cut ties with their lover. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

A mutual friend of mine and DB’s, upon learning what we had done, sent us both a scathing e-mail stating that we had done “bad and shameful things” and recommending that we cut off our relationship while we got our of our bad marriages, and only then would he be able to support us. Neither of us had actually requested his support; he just felt the need to volunteer his input. I haven’t been able to speak to him since. It’s not that I’m angry at him for judging me – I judge myself. It’s not that this wouldn’t be sound advice if it hadn’t been about a year too late, and if either DB or I had had any daily emotional support besides each other while going through the hell of divorce. But where I am is so far from this friend’s perspective that I just don’t have the words to speak to him, and don’t know if I ever will. It’s like trying to shout across the Grand Canyon at someone. You can’t convey any meaning, much less nuanced meaning, across a chasm that immense.

I’m not trying to justify myself. I’m just trying to give the view from this side.

Can anything good come from talking about this?

I am a suburban mom from anywhere. I could be you, I could be your neighbor, I could be anyone. I love my children; I go to work; I take my kids to soccer practice; I abide by the speed limit; I pay my taxes; I recycle. I am a nice girl. I was raised by middle class, conservative, religious parents who have no idea about any of this. I wanted the things everyone wants: an attractive, intelligent spouse, a comfortable lifestyle, beautiful healthy children, security. I had just about convinced myself I had them, but on some level I knew I didn’t, and I had no idea what to do about it. I was honestly too busy, and too tired, and too depressed. I simply hoped that my angst would work itself out, and maybe someday I would again want my husband to touch me. It wasn’t looking good for the home team.

Then, by incremental degrees, I became involved in a relationship – first emotional and eventually physical - with a man I’d been in love with since college, who I’d worked very hard to put out of my mind over the years, but with whom I’d reconnected on Facebook (could I be more of a cliché?). This eventually led me to leave my husband and make a fresh start for myself. I am still madly in love with the other man (who I will call DB), and we are still together. My ex never knew about the affair; DB’s found out when he was in the process of leaving (Rule #1, a.k.a. the Tiger Rule: be careful with your cellphone). We are both awaiting pending divorces, and we want to get married when we can. We each have children from our prior relationships. It has been, as you can imagine, a trainwreck. And I would do it all over again if I had to, because it means I can be with DB and not face 50+ years of quiet desperation. It is worth it. I know that doesn’t make me look good.

I have debated with myself at great length over whether to start this blog. It’s not that I expect sympathy or kudos for talking about this. I did something I shouldn’t have done, and I got away with it (mostly). I haven’t had to suffer any consequences for my own actions except for the guilt and shame I have heaped on myself (considerable) and the loss of a couple of friendships. My divorce has brought considerable consequences for my children, but it was inevitable – I was going to get a divorce eventually anyway, or develop a drinking problem, or gain 500 pounds, or have a nervous breakdown. My marriage was that bad. My mistake was marrying my ex to begin with, or not realizing before we had children that I needed to RUN, screaming, AWAY. It was never, I know now, a matter of if we would divorce, but when and how.

That doesn’t make it right.

But I wonder, how many people have been here? How many people have faced and became unable to evade any longer the cold, hard truth that their marriages were and always had been doomed because experiencing something like this gave them a perspective they never would have otherwise had? It’s just not something you talk about. I, too, used to think that there was no excuse, you tried to work things out in your marriage, and if that didn’t work, after that, you got out of it, and then, only then, you figured out whether you should get involved in another relationship. That’s certainly the wisest course of action, and one I whole-heartedly endorse. It’s also easier said than done sometimes.

It’s a long, involved story, and an extremely complex subject. I can’t possibly tell it all, and say everything there is to say, with my first entry. I would note that there are online support groups for people in this situation, not to mention an excellent book (“When Good People Have Affairs: Inside the Hearts & Minds of People in Two Relationships” by Mira Kirshenbaum).

For what it's worth, I didn't have an ongoing, indefinite affair, and I would not have done so. I also do not condone or recommend having an affair. I just happen to have had one, and I think I’m not the only person who never thought they would do such a thing, but did. If writing this can provide food for thought for someone in that situation, or provoke compassion and understanding from others for someone who is trying to navigate such a situation and figure out how to make it right, then it’s worth doing. If you want to judge me because it makes you feel better about having been wronged or having been tempted to cheat, or because it’s fun to bash on people you don’t know as an armchair sport, go ahead. Just remember that it’s easy to be self-righteous about something you’ve never experienced. I should know. And if you do experience it later, I’ll probably still be here, talking about it.

Peace,

TNG