Tuesday, July 1, 2008

This is D-day for me. My world would never be the same. Not everything came to light this day, but it was the beginning. The rest was yet to come.

I came home from work, and my husband, J, hadn't made it home yet. I had a little time to kill so I decided to get on our computer. I sat down and opened up Internet Explorer. When I did, the history was showing. I thought this was a little odd - I hadn't been on the computer all day, so I knew it must have been my husband. My stomach did a little flip-flop when I saw that it was pulled up. What was he looking for?

Let me backtrack a bit.

I'll openly admit I have trust issues. I trust people about as far as I can spit, and let me tell ya, that ain't far. I've been badly burned as far as that goes - the first (and not least) of which - my parents. In a word, they're....dysfunctional. And that's putting it nicely. If you can't trust your parents, who can you trust? They're supposed to be your rock, your main source of unconditional love, your soft place to land. They were none of these things. So, that is just one of many scars I bear from them. Trust. It's a lot of work for me. It hurts me to let people in, to make myself vulnerable - open myself up to potentially be hurt. People will hurt you, they'll disappoint you - it's a fact of life. I've accepted that (I think). It's less painful for me to let a very select few number of people in, than to be a hermit. Loneliness is agony. People, well....we're complicated creatures.

I've been married to J nearly 7 years now, together almost 8. We have two beautiful boys, R who is 4, and A, who will be 2 on the 29th. As every parent knows, you love your children like you love no other human being. I would lay my life on the line for either of them in the blink of an eye and never question it. That goes without saying. I have always very firmly believed that in order for a marriage to work, both partners have to be absolutely transparent. Next to your parents, you trust no other human being more than your spouse. That has to be treated with great care. I have lived my life with my husband that way. I have no passwords he doesn't know, he openly reads my text messages, etc. and I have no problem with that. I live by the saying "if I wouldn't do something in front of J, then I shouldn't be doing it."

J is a great guy, but a complicated one. He's very intelligent, articulate, funny, outgoing (which I'm not), ambitious, a great father, smiles easily and is well-liked....an all-around nice guy. Good-looking too. Sounds like quite the package, doesn't he? I thought so too when we were dating. Even from the beginning. I pushed him away. When we met I had ended a long-term relationship 3 months prior. The ending wasn't pretty. I'll spare the details on that, but my ex couldn't let go for quite some time. The last thing I wanted was another relationship. Dating was fine. But a relationship? No thanks. I was still licking my wounds and wasn't all that sure that ANY man was worth a damn. J was patient. He pursued me. We took it one date at a time. Hell, it took him a month to even kiss me for the first time. He told me that he was a good, honorable man that could be trusted. He's a freemason, and the credo of that fraternity is that they "take good men and make them better." I thought - surely, he must be an exceptional man. Human, but exceptional. I fell in love. Hard. We got married. A year later I got pregnant with R. Two years after that, I got pregnant with A. Happily ever after, right?

I wish.

J didn't believe as I do - that both partners need to be absolutely transparent. He believed he had a right to a certain amount of privacy. I disagreed with that, but tried to work with that as much as I could. That day though, major alarms were going off in my head. Without even having to search very hard, I discovered that J had an alternate email address, and a MySpace page. Both major no-nos in our relationship. My heart began to pound in my chest. I could hear it in my ears. My hands started to shake. What the heck was going on? The password to his MySpace page was Sherry. Who the heck was that?? I quickly scanned my brain for all the people I knew J knew - both past and present. No Sherry. Since his password was her name, she's obviously significant. My stomach went into a knot. I quickly went to his MySpace page and saw that he had one friend. Two guesses who it was. I checked out her page. I'm far from being conceited. Far. But when I saw this person who a) I don't know or recognize and b) my husband's MySpace page's password is her name....I wanted to vomit. It was the normal, expected, upset-wife reaction. But I also thought she was butt-freakin'-ugly. I said out loud "UCK!! Even I look better than her!" She has great (fake) boobs, but please - put a paper bag over your head lady. Know who Carly Simon is? That's what she looks like - disproportionately big mouth and everything. Her profile claims she's 37 (same age as me), but she looks more like early 50's. That one's been doing some hard livin'. I noticed she wasn't in the same state as us, but didn't retain which one she was from. Too much info to take in at once. I pushed back from my computer desk. I needed time to sort all this out. This isn't real, is it? Aren't I jumping to conclusions? There has to be a reasonable explanation.