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.