There I was, faced with pages, upon pages of an unfamilar cell phone number starring back at me from the warm sheets off the printer. I shuffled through them over and over and over. The phone calls happened 4-10 times a day on average. Generally one long phone call either “on the way home” or in the evening when he was supposed to be using the treadmill. My eyes blurred with rage and with tears as I looked this over again and again.
I calmly went down the hall to his office and sat in the chair and closed the door. He was sitting there looking at his computer screen looking up his next patient. I asked him if he was having an affair. He mumbled something back. I shoved the cell phone bill and asked him again. He looked me straight in the eye and said something to the effect of ” I think you know the truth then,” He may have even said sorry. The one time that I recall. My ears were ringing. My face was hot. My stomach was lurching. All I knew was I wasn’t ready to lose him. Here I am, 6 months later, I still am not ready to lose him, but I suppose I knew, even at the moment, he wasn’t mine anymore. He wasn’t himself anymore then either. I had caught him in his double life.
I told him quietly and calmly that I was going home, feigning a stomach illness. In the time of Covid, one has to chose carefully what they say their ailment is. I went to tell my boss I had to leave, that I had to go home. She saw it on my face something was horrifically wrong. I was trying to hold it together, but I couldn’t. I felt like my life my over. I still feel like my life is over. I can’t explain why; I know my self worth is more than a man. It’s all the other promises that were made. The promises of forever. With this ring I thee wed. For better or worse. Through sickness and health. Not through whatever his problem was. I still don’t know why. I don’t know what made him have an affair. I don’t know what made him start sleeping with someone else.
I do know that it has wrecked me. That day is the last day I think I may have been “healthy” and the last time I was myself. I don’t know if I am ever going to get that back. I lost my best friend that day. It was the last time I was whole. I have been slowly crumbling since then.
I went home and cried myself sick. He called at some point and told me he wanted to be done. I begged him no. I told him I wanted to talk when he got home. When he got home we talked. We agreed to try. I forbid him from taking to her. This was a recurring them for 2 months; he wouldn’t stop. No matter what happened, he would not stop talking to her. I could have been laying there in front of him bleeding to death, and he would have excused himself to call her. He just was “miserable” without her. He couldn’t see the misery was within himself.
He came down with a fever that night and I had to take care of him for the next several days. We both had to get Covid tested. I waited on him hand and foot. I gave him a bell, just the way he likes, when he is sick, like Momma used to do. For the first time in 6 months, I had to go out in the world and go to the store to get food. I went because I had to. I was terrified; I hadn’t been out in 6 months because everyone had told me because of my multiple sclerosis I shouldn’t do it. I took his cell phone with me. When I got home, he had called her on the landline. Too weak to get up to do anything, but he could muster up the strength to go in the other room to get the landline to call her. I was sick. I admonished him. He ignored it.
We watched movies. He napped. I perseverated; which is now one of my new favorite pasttimes. We waited to see if he would get better so we could go on our planned vacation together. His fever broke and we were able to go. Everything seemed ok. Turns out, he is just a good actor. Or just her puppet. Or just having a midlife crisis. I still don’t know. I know precious little more now than I did then. I know that she is pathological liar who ruined my life. She lied to my husband and told him she had a roomate that she lived with. It was her long term boyfriend. Everything she tells him he believes.
He has demonized me to help himself get through this. I didn’t dissolve the marriage. We went on vacation together. I did serious soul searching asking myself what I had been doing wrong as a wife. I read self help books. Eight to be exact in that week. In addition to the fiction books I read. I don’t remeber how many I read that week. He napped and read mysteries; finished one and started a second. We kayaked, canoed and hiked that week. We played horseshoes for the first time. For me anyway. I can’t assume anything is the first time for him. I had panic attacks for the first time in my life that week. I have continued with them since.
When we got back, I started having accupuncture and going to therapy. I had already been signed up for a mindfulness class to help me center myself. I know throughout our our relationship I have not been the perfect wife and partner; but I am aware of it. I don’t claim I am. Without communicating about it, it can not ever be improved. With the truth out in the open, he did the opposite one would think; he started crawling into himself and outwardly pushing me away.
Never had a white picket fence 