BOOM

I've been through many years of therapy in my adult life, and it's been tremendously beneficial. I went from being debilitated by severe depression (and suicidal), highly anxious and taking medications, to being able to wean off medications, hold a job for several years, meet and marry a man, have children - all the things I dreamed of but thought weren't in the cards for me. I worked extremely hard. Can I say that again? I worked extremely hard. I always wanted to be who I am today, but seriously doubted it was a possibility. I was forced to cut my parents out of my life so I could become this new, healthy person. I prided myself on being a rational, reasonable person most of the time. I'll admit I can get easily irritated over small stuff, I am Irish after all, lol. But I get over the small stuff quickly. I rarely get truly angry, but when I do, it ain't pretty. I'm pretty tolerant of the people I love most (probably to a fault), and I take a lot of crap for a long time. It slowly builds up, and when I've had enough - KABOOM. Huge explosion. No turning back. Not to the point of violence or anything like that, but you definitely know I'm at the end of my rope at this point.

While I was waiting for him we were texting. He revealed their relationship (over text) was sexual - they were having cyber sex. I felt like somebody punched me in the stomach. He said they never had phone sex, but they had been together since late last year. Here it was July, so this was going on for close to a year. My head spun. I went into shock, I think. I completely lost it - fell down on the floor and sobbed uncontrollably, curled up in a fetal position. "OH MY GOD!!!!!!" I screamed...."NO NO NO PLEASE GOD THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!!!" I was frantic....I wanted to run. I knew this journey had only begun, and I needed to get some semblance of control before J came home. I couldn't decide if I wanted to kick him out, let him stay....I begged God for guidance. I was terrified, grief-stricken. I don't consider myself especially religious, but I do believe in God and have a relationship with Him.

J came home. I glared at him. "So?" he nervously said. "'SO?!"' I repeated. "Is that all you f*ing have to say is 'so?' ?!" He sat down and didn't say anything. I proceeded to scream at him for the next hour. I mean literally scream. Jugular veins standing out, beet red-in-the-face, spitting, screamed at him. I honestly can't remember the last time I was so enraged. It's certainly never happened in the nearly 8 years we've been together. I called him (and her) every filthy name in the book. I pummeled him with questions. How could you do this to me? Why her? Did you sleep with her? Are you in love with her? All the typical questions you'd expect. Then my instincts took over. I didn't really actively decide this. Call it divine intervention, stupidity, whatever. But in the moment, I decided I didn't want him to leave. I told him he was going to call her in front of me and end it. He was shocked and resisted at first. I told him "then you can pack your sh*t and get the f*ck out RIGHT NOW." He looked up at me and blinked. I said "I'm serious - you call her right this minute and end it or you can get the f*ck out." He called her. Then I told him if he ever did anything remotely similar to this again, I would divorce him so fast his head would spin, I'd sue him for full custody of our boys, as well as support, and I'd f*ck up his masonic career. I think he nearly pissed his pants then. I kind of laugh at that now - I kind of went ghetto on him. My emotions took complete control of my mouth and kept my normally rational brain out of the loop.

When I was done, he apologized. Said that he didn't want our marriage to end. He said he was stunned at seeing so much passion from me, because it had never happened before. Then he said "Well, it's nice to finally see some passion out of you. Right now you are sexier than ever and I am so totally turned on by all this passion." I had calmed down significantly but glared at him and said "WTF is the matter with you?" He kind of chuckled and said "I don't know." He came to give me a hug, I gave him a half-hearted slap across the face and said "I f*cking hate you." He said "I know...I am so sorry....I love you and have never stopped."

The Day My World Turned Upside Down

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

I got to work a little early. My mouth was dry. My heart thundering in my chest. My brain in a fog. The voice in my brain kept whispering "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God...." as I walked towards my building. I knew. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I knew. I kept praying I was wrong. Kept begging God in my mind that there was an innocent explanation. But I did know.

I logged into my computer, re-analyzed Sherry's MySpace. Her profile said she's from Florida. Hmmmm....that didn't make sense. J has done some traveling but not to Florida. How does he know her?? She claims to be in a relationship. I wanted so bad for this connection to be innocent. So bad. I kept going back to that possibility, trying to force that puzzle piece to fit. No matter how hard I tried to pound it in, it just didn't fit. I created a MySpace account - no random mysterious people popping up to be my friend. I had to create a password to even start my account. So I knew he knew Sherry before even starting his MySpace account. Even then, I told my friend "if there's ANY possibility I'm looking at this wrong and this could be innocent, PLEASE tell me." She couldn't think of any. Guilty. I knew. I was in shock. I angrily texted J - told him I knew he was lying, demanded to know how he knew this woman. Did he sleep with her? After a while he texted me back and confessed. She was dating a fellow mason who lives in Texas. He came to town and attended a lodge meeting. He and J clicked and decided to go out to the bar afterwards, he brought Sherry with him. J felt he "clicked" more with Sherry and has seen her a couple times. He said he was talking with her about our problems, and that it felt good to talk with someone who understood and comforted him. They were talking and she suggested the MySpace to keep in touch. No regrets. This later turned out to be a lie - their relationship was sexually-oriented pretty much from the beginning. He says they only texted and she sent him a nude picture once, my gut tells me they had phone sex too. He claims to not recall that.

I was a mess. I thought I was going to vomit. I couldn't concentrate, kept making mistakes at work. My anxiety level was through the roof. I was furious beyond belief and I couldn't see straight. I had to go home to figure the rest of this out. I told my boss I wasn't feeling well, and went home. I got onto our cell provider's web page and analyzed J's call record. There was a number I didn't recognize. I looked up the area code - Las Vegas. I was even more puzzled. I know he doesn't know anybody that lives in Las Vegas. I checked her MySpace again - I made the connection based on her MySpace nickname. I decided to check on this strange number. I called the number listed - would it be her? If so, I had some questions for this woman! How does she know my husband? Who is she? Why are they calling each other?? My hands were sweaty and my mind raced at the thought of the conversation we were about to have. No answer. Voicemail picked up. "Hi this is Sherry, leave a message." I dropped my phone and screamed a little. OH MY GOD!!! My hands were shaking so bad now I couldn't hold onto anything. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest I thought it would burst through my chest wall. I paced. My mind raced. OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod....what have I just discovered??? I burst into tears. Wait. I had to try to stay calm - I needed the full picture. I called my cell provider to see if I could get text message records. Online they provide records of phone numbers of sent & received texts, but not context. They taught me how to find them. I called her again (about an hour and a half had passed). She changed her voicemail message. She knew it was me. She knew. Again I didn't leave a message. I started printing out phone records. Contemplated how to kill my husband (not seriously kill him, but you get the picture). Then I texted her. I figured their relationship had been sexual, but didn't know for sure. I told her that I knew she had been in contact with him, and that their relationship could destroy our marriage and impact our two boys' lives forever. I asked her, woman to woman, to end the relationship. I got no response. I waited for J to come home.

Showdown

I deleted his MySpace account right away. I waited until the boys were in bed, and I asked him......who is Sherry? He claimed to not know a Sherry. I said he did, and told him what I'd found. He defended having a MySpace page, saying someone named Tom thought it would be a good idea for a Masonic meetup, and claimed he'd told me about it. He said when you sign up for MySpace, random people pop up as friends, and she was that random person. I told him that didn't make sense - why the password then? He claimed it was just easy to remember since she was the first thing that popped up. My gut told me he was lying, but I let it go. I would investigate at work the next day when I had more time.

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.