A Month Later, There Was More

Tags

affair, D-Day, husband, infidelity, liar, trauma

About a month after I discovered my husband had been cheating on me with a married woman, I was once again hammered with more revelations.

Looking through his Facebook messages, I spotted one from someone I will call ‘Young Thing’ that read “I’m OK, darlin’, how are you?”

Young Thing and my husband play in a band together.

Now I’m no Einstein, but her message sounded distinctly like the answer to a question. A question that my husband had asked HER.

But where was this question? Where was their previous correspondence? Deleted.

Her next message, sent three hours later, read: “You should call me when you can.”

I let that message sink in. The words SHOULD and WHEN YOU CAN kept echoing in my head. You SHOULD call me WHEN YOU CAN. Oh, really?

And then the next day, yet another message: “Or we should do lunch some time soon.”

A month after discovering his affair with a married woman, this was the last thing I expected to find.

As soon as he walked through the door that evening, I was in no mood for small talk.

“Tell me about your relationship with Young Thing.”

“Relationship? There is no relationship.”

“Tell me now or so God help me, I will walk out this door right now.”

“OK, calm down,” he said smiling. I was in no fucking mood for smiling.

He went on to tell me had sent Young Thing a message asking how she was because she was going through a tough time right now. SERIOUSLY?

Really, because I’m working through the trauma of finding out you FUCKING CHEATED ON ME.

“She’s about to get kicked out of the [military] band because she can’t do push-ups properly.”

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

“We’ve all been rallying behind her, trying to give her encouragement. She’s only 20.”

I stared at my 41-year old husband like he was mad.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better??”

“And the reason she’s asking if we can have lunch is because she’s unemployed at the moment.”

A 20-year old unemployed skank who can’t do a fucking push-up. Brilliant.

“Why did you delete your previous conversations with her?”

“Because I didn’t want you to get upset.”

TOO FUCKING LATE.

The next day, I went and found Young Thing on Facebook and sent her a message asking her why she was (a) calling my husband ‘darling’, (b) telling him he should call her, and (c) trying to arrange a lunch date. I told her she sounded like a desperate home-wrecking whore.

She replied a few hours later telling me my message offended her (oh, BOO-FUCKING-HOO, GEN Y BIMBO) and that she did not wish to hear from me again. Then, she blocked me.

She also called my husband at work for an explanation and he told her – wait for it – we were “having problems”. FUCKING HELL.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK OFF!

I told, yes TOLD, my husband to unfriend her on Facebook, which he did but I’m not sure what the fucking point of that is. They still see each other every week at band rehearsal and there’s not a lot I can do about that.

So loyal wives out there, you’ve got to be on your guard for all that shameless pretty young pussy dangling itself in front of our husbands’ weary eyes.

Watch out, Young Thing, this ain’t over yet.

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How Do I Fucking Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

Tags

affair, cheating, emotional affair, hate, husband, infidelity, liar, trauma, wife

In my worst moments on my worst days, I think about the affair my husband had and how much I fucking hate him for it.

I fucking hate how he smiled and pretended everything was fine while our marriage was slowly crumbling.

I fucking hate that instead of talking to me, he sought solace in the arms of a married mother of two kids, otherwise known as The Whore.

I fucking hated how his phone went with him everywhere and how he’d plug in to recharge every chance he got so it would be juiced up and ready for when he and The Whore wanted to message each other.

I fucking hated how he’d come home after being with her at lunch and would kiss me more passionately (out of guilt, I suspect).

I fucking hated how I would send him on basic errands and how he would reappear hours later with bullshit explanations for the missing time he couldn’t account for.

I fucking hated how he lied to me about what he did at lunch when he was in fact meeting with her (“I decided go for a walk at lunch” – this from a man who hates walking.)

I fucking hated how he would get home late from work, lying about what kept him there.

I fucking hated how he’d get home from work and sit in the car texting and smiling while I was inside the house watching him. His explanation was always that it was his friend X and they needed to know something.

I fucking hated when I’d ask him to come to bed with me and he would have some reason to stay up late (I have to finish something for work) when he was really up late texting The Whore.

I REALLY fucking hate one of the messages he sent to her which said he couldn’t talk to her anymore that night because his phone battery was going flat and that his wife was “getting suspicious”.

I fucking hated when every trip to the bathroom became at least a 20-minute trip while he sat in there texting her.

I fucking hate how he became extremely short with kids, shouting at them and having zero patience for anything that kept him from spending time with The Whore.

I fucking hate how he would snap at me.

I fucking hate how his thoughts of an affair began while I was bed-ridden recovering from a botched caesarian. He says the actual affair began when our baby was just 8 weeks old. I think it was earlier.

I fucking hate how he took up running marathons and training hard to get fit to look good for The Whore.

I fucking hate how he ignored me when when I got dressed to the nines to go out together.

I fucking hate how he brushed aside my birthday card to him while he was in the midst of the affair, even though I poured my heart out to him.

I fucking hate him for adding this stress to our relationship so I end up reading countless books and forums on how to survive this fucked-up period in my life.

So much hate, right?

The sad truth is that I love him more than anyone.

How’s The Sex?

Tags

affair, divorce, hysterical bonding, marriage, post-affair, sex, trauma

Sex with your husband after discovering he had an affair is a strange thing.

A couple of nights after I found my husband had been cheating on me, all I wanted to do was fuck his brains out.

I can’t explain this phenomenon, but many have tried. It’s known as ‘hysterical bonding’. Google it.

This is how I explain it: I wanted to see if there was anything there. Did he still desire me? Did I still want to be with him? Did we still have any sexual chemistry?

Three days later, I hated him and didn’t even want to look at him.

This is the strangeness of life after an affair. Wild swings between wanting him and despising him.

Did you have the urge to have sex with your spouse after learning of their affair? Why? How intense was it? And how long did your hysterical bonding period last?

I Don’t Want To Be a Member of This Club

Tags

affair, betrayal, cheater, D-Day, husband, liar, trauma, wife

The day I discovered my husband’s affair, I joined a special club: a club for betrayed spouses.

I didn’t want to be a member. Ever. And yet here I am. With a lifetime membership.

I feel immense shame and embarrassment to be known as a wife whose husband has cheated on her.

And this goddam club comes with its own jargon. It angers me.

Here are some of the acronyms I had to learn and get my head around as I navigated this new environment.

BS – Betrayed Spouse. That would be me.

WS – Wayward Spouse. That would be my husband.

AP – Affair Partner.

OW – Other Woman. In my book, also known as The Whore.

MLC – Mid-Life Crisis. As in, the popular stage men are going through when they have an affair.

Fuck these fucking acronyms. I hate them. I hate everything about my husband’s affair. I hate my life at this moment. I hate myself.

Confronting My Husband About His Affair

Tags

affair, betrayal, D-Day, emotional affair, trauma

The most surreal conversation I have ever had with my husband came after I unwittingly discovered he was having an affair.

Yesterday, I wrote about that time-stopping moment and how my life – as I knew it – ended the moment I found insanely inappropriate messages to another woman on his phone.

It was 2am on Saturday, November 9.

I stormed into my son’s bedroom where he had fallen asleep while putting our son to sleep and woke him up, none too gently.

He followed me out of the bedroom and I asked him to sit on the couch.

“Why are we doing all this stuff for our future?” I asked him. That was my first question. We’d recently invested in a number of ventures to secure our financial future.

He didn’t answer, so I asked the question again. “Why are we doing all this stuff?”

He looked at me confused. “So we can have a secure future, for our children.”

I looked at him like he was mad.

“Who’s Kat?”, I asked. And when I got no answer, I asked it slower and louder.

“WHO IS KAT?”

The look on his face told me what I had suspected.

Kat was the woman with whom he was having an affair.

A million questions were fighting each other in my head to be the first to be asked. But this one won:

“How long has it been going on?”

“About 3 months,” he answered with his head hanging.

“Three months?”, I asked. “But our baby was only two months old.”

Oh God. My heart sank. Our little baby. Our beautiful little baby, betrayed by his father.

“Did you sleep with her?”

“No.” I didn’t believe him.

“DID YOU SLEEP WITH HER?”

“No.”

Anyone who thinks an emotional affair is less damaging because there is no sex is dreadfully wrong. An emotional affair is one in which there is an exchange of personal information, and which is kept secret from the spouse.

Unlike wham-bam-sex affairs, emotional affairs can be far more dangerous due to their nature of getting to know one another intimately first. An emotional connection is a meeting of minds. It’s about finding someone who understands you and can empathise with your situation.

Kat, it turned out, was a married mother of two children.

Perfect.

And my husband, it turned out, had begun chatting to her via a phone app.

They had also met in person. Twice. On a work day. For lunch. More about that another time.

So in a nutshell, while I was busy bringing our third child into the world, waking every two hours at night to feed him, and while recovering from a botched caesarian where I still could not stand fully upright, my husband was off having an affair.

What a stand-up bloke.

Discovering My Husband’s Affair, or ‘D-Day’

Tags

affair, betrayal, cheater, D-Day, husband, liar, trauma, wife

Two months ago, I discovered my husband was having an affair.

That was the day my life as I knew it shattered into millions of little pieces, never to be the same.

I am 42. I met my husband when I was 20. We have been together for more than half my life.

He was my everything.

Now, he is a lot of other things. A cheater. A bastard. A coward. A liar. A betrayer. A sneak. Someone I no longer recognise.

He will never be my everything again.

Because once someone who professes to love you has an affair, life comes to a screeching halt. They no longer deserve that exclusive place in your heart.

The hurt is unlike any other. It penetrates your soul and consumes you like a parasite, sucking any joy and light out as it goes.

You cannot breathe. You cannot eat. Your mind races with hundreds of questions. You cannot concentrate. You cannot think about anything else.

It’s exhausting.

That night, my husband had put one of our three children to bed and ended up crashing out on his bed.

I was in bed when I woke to feed our youngest, our 5-month old baby. When I finished, I put the baby back in his bed and went downstairs to see where my husband had ended up.

On my way, I walked via my computer and noticed he had plugged his phone into the charger next to it. For some reason, his phone wasn’t locked. His phone is ALWAYS locked. There go the warning sirens right there, no?

I looked at his phone and noticed a curious app symbol at the top of the screen. Curiosity got the better of me and I tapped the icon.

And then I almost collapsed.

Because what I saw on the screen next would change my life forever.

It was a conversation between him and his ‘affair partner’ or ‘AP’.

I saw goodnights at the bottom of the conversation so I scrolled back up the screen.

“I want to put my lips in your pussy.”

Huh? What was he saying? I thought I was going to pass out.

“I can’t talk anymore. My phone battery is dying and my wife is getting suspicious.”

Oh God. Did he really just say those words to another woman? A stranger?! Who the fuck was she?

Like a car crash, I couldn’t look away. I read. And I read.

And then I stormed into my son’s bedroom where he lay to have it out with him.