He Passed!

That is a sarcastic exclamation point, if you must know.

I mean Jesus Christ, I still can’t believe I am married to someone I feel I must have polygraph tested. It’s such major fucking bullshit.

So The Player passed the polygraph in February. The polygrapher called me immediately when he was done and said The Player passed with “flying colors,” but he mentioned something that The Player “remembered” and came clean about.

I know you’ll be surprised to know that The Player remembered he told me a lie about meeting “Christi” at that bar and them having such a short conversation she didn’t even sit down. A lot of partners in the Afterlife of Infidelity have firsthand accounts about this phenomenon called “Parking Lot Confessions.” The Player told the polygrapher before the test started he wanted to clear the air before the test because he didn’t want testing to show his deceit. Apparently, as the story is told now, Christi did sit down at the bar, so the visit wasn’t so much so a “quick visit” as much as it was, “she sat down long enough to have a beer visit” and that my friends, is an example of The Player not wanting to deal with the discussions that would ensue because of his actions.

That is fucking not cool. That is however, being A Dick, and that is one type of person I am strongly against being married to. You know, now that I have a choice. Here’s the thing, is this how it’s going to be now, “little” white lies to navigate? I’ve asked that several times and he’s maintained that is a thing of the past, that he’s strong enough to have hard discussions with me, even when I disagree with him. He’s “solid” in recovery and even as the CSAT calls me “formidable” because I am healthy, know what I want, and am insightful and not afraid to speak my truth, The Player says he can now deal with things head on.

He has been wanting to avoid these types of conversations (this would be the third lie he has come clean to me since New Year’s Eve) because we were doing well, and I had turned the corner out of the trauma. In these three cases, he omitted the truth to cover the appearance or hint of impropriety. The polygraph test revealed what he has been saying for months, he has not tried, in any form, to begin a relationship of any kind with a woman. Even with Christi.

The real kick in the face has come with the conversations surrounding the bar incident since the bar incident. He has been steadfast that the entire situation was fine, that he was never at risk of losing his sobriety. We’ve talked about that for three fucking months. I am not okay with him giving any women (outside of work) his phone number and especially women he wants to help.

This is not negotiable. It won’t ever be negotiable if The Player would like to stay married to me.* I had to state this again recently to The Player and his CSAT because something must keep being lost in translation from betrayed to asshole speak. The Player recently had an epiphany about the situation, yay him. This fucking Christi incident keeps coming up for me though, it is not buried yet. The CSAT asked me why it wasn’t dead yet, why, The Played, why!? I’ve thought a lot about that the last two weeks and I finally know why.

Stay tuned.

*The Player signed a boundaries agreement with me in December and has agreed to this stipulation so I feel safe. There have been many conversations about this general philosophy. 

 

Honesty and The Player

The truth, I guess, is oozing out of The Player now.

Everyone congratulate him on doing what seven-year-olds learn and do! He recently told me that for sure now, looking back, even as early as eight to ten months ago, he wasn’t “solid” in his recovery. He was “white knuckling” his recovery, but still not connecting all of the dots. These dots – and quite expensive dots to the tune of about $20,000 in therapy for him – didn’t start making sense until the last five months. That means for almost two years he’s been trying “work it out” with me, but with every little real tools to do it.

So, I feel like I wasted a lot of fucking time during all of that therapy and those brutal two to three-time a week talks or (fuckingfuckedup) checkins.

Not only did he prolong my suffering and add to the depth of it by lying for the first two months with broken contact with the last whore, for the next year he lied about the 18 years of affairs with the other multiple whores and he didn’t face the fact that he’s been getting  his broken ego stroked by women he didn’t even have to fuck. I believe I resent him for this prolonged suffering.

Imagine how great it felt to know that during the last couple of years for many months in our “reconciliation” he said – looking back of course –  he was very much susceptible to an affair had I kicked him out. “I’m pretty sure I would have,” he said. Honestly speaking, I think this is the most fucked up thing I’ve heard in a long time. Well, not too long, if I’m honest, because nothing surprises me about this process.

Today, I wouldn’t mind yelling, “Fuck this bullshit!” and the whores he rode in on.

 

Self-Esteem and the Betrayed

I was talking to a friend yesterday whose husband cheated on her for a little over a year and she mentioned her self-esteem is still taking a hit.

I was like, “What? Good lord, why?”

I explained that since this began, there was just a short time at the beginning that I believed it was me who caused The Player to cheat (remember, just thought it was one affair and a one night stand at that time) because he basically told me that. I was a mother who didn’t understand her kids, I was fat and I didn’t have any common interests with him. It being about me lasted maybe just a month. As his behavior (gaslighting, lying, reaching back out to last whore) continued, I realized it was all about him. It was his problem, his deficiencies, his shame, his lack of insight and morality, his, his, his.

I said these things aloud to my friend yesterday and I meant every word.

I’m fucking awesome. I’m still as awesome as I ever was.

The Player’s self esteem should be hit, not mine.

He feels lucky to be in the home. Better yet, he IS lucky to be in the home after what he has done.

It would be easier on me to break up than recover, this shit is hard.

I have been able to mother well under extremely hard circumstances.

I told her he is privileged to be speaking to me, for me giving him a real chance to recover and heal our marriage. He is privileged that I am working my ass off to heal myself and hopefully the marriage, fully, someday.

I am an amazing person for surviving what I have the last couple of years even though the pain was caused by someone else’s choices.

I am a thoughtful, loving and caring mother to want to preserve my kids’ family. The thing that probably gives me the most self-esteem in all of this mess is that I’m  showing another human – one who betrayed me for 20 years – a generous amount of grace by allowing him time in our home to recover during the worst time in his life. He abuses these privileges and opportunities, it’s on him, not me. I can live with myself and my behavior.

So yes, my self-esteem is just fine. And yours should be, too.

 

 

The Middle of a Very Big Lake

Is this what the middle looks like?

I feel like I’m out of crisis (thank the ever-loving hell out of that fact) but I’m not yet where I’ll be when the dust settles, in whatever way that looks like in my future. Right now, I’m settling for NOT FUCKING TRAUMATIZED and NOT FUCKING CRYING all the damn time.

I finally feel like I am swimming. A little endlessly, but swimming above water. I’m somewhere in the middle of a huge lake and I can see the shore on both sides but I am not clear on which shore I will eventually land. I’m past the two year mark – two really shitty, shitty years – of knowing The Player was a cheater, but because The Player is a cheater and a liar, he decided to withhold some other 19 years of cheating information from me, because, well, in addition to a liar he was also a dick.

It took another year for him to face the truth and tell me he cheated on me the entire marriage. The first year after “D-day” was a waste of time because he didn’t come clean and we weren’t in true reconciliation. I don’t have one thing I can tell you that was positive that I gained from that year of being hidden from the truth. Because I knew there was more – I knew intuitively – there was no progress on my part of healing and there was no progress on The Player’s part of being less of a dick. It was a complete waste of a year. It also happened to be a year I lost someone very close to me unexpectedly and the grief from learning my marriage was a lie and my husband was a dick made it impossible for me to grieve properly for my loved one. He royalty fucked up my life, then made sure that I couldn’t heal from it nor heal from the loss of someone important to me for many more months and probably still there is residual grief that is fermenting inside me.

Of course, resentment has settled in me like someone unwanted who has stayed too long and very unwelcome. I suppose not all people would hang onto the resentments like I have but I had my reasons. One, he really fucked things up for me and for us and for our children. He did it over and over. Then he did it more. He also decided when and how the information THAT I DESERVED TO KNOW was delivered to me.

I resent him. Resentment, as my sister stated many times, would only hurt me and I knew this but I also knew I couldn’t let it go until I was ready. I’ve worked hard to analyze the pain and resentment and tried to figure out how to navigate this world that no one thinks they will have to navigate when they are holding the hands of the person they love and exchanging marriage vows. Promises.

In search of peace I’ve done therapy. I’ve pulled back and distanced myself from The Player. I’ve walked. I’ve cried. I wrote and I write. I had more therapy. Guided meditation. I’ve talked until I needed to with understanding friends and other betrayed spouses, both women and men. I’ve read a slew of articles and forums and books. I’ve watched videos. All of those things helped me understand that my feelings are normal, that the trauma was real and that no matter what happened I would always be scarred by what The Player did. All of that reading and soul-searching has given me a good idea of what I needed FOR ME.

I figured out what I require of him for the privilege of him staying in our home and staying married to me. Also the privilege of being an in-home dad instead of dinner and weekend dad. These are all privileges that he enjoys and the price of admission for these privileges is working on himself and being able to share his knowledge of self awareness with me. It’s imperative The Player continue to grow, however that is, but he cannot stop growing. He cannot stop being connected to other sex addicts for friendship and fellowship and he cannot stop answering my questions. He can’t be defensive. He has to be open and willing to talk and do new things that can help me heal and our marriage heal. He has a lot to do and I have a lot to do in order to stay with him (least of which is change my entire perspective of my life, ugh), and I have found what I have to do wholly mutherfucking unfair (hence, the resentment).

My goal is to stay in the marriage for the kids and I know I don’t want to do that if I’m going to be miserable. If I have made the decision to stay – and I have – I figured I had to find a way to live better, right now. I wanted to quit putting that shit off.

The Player has done enough damage to my soul and I’m tired of the bloodletting and I wanted it to stop. It needed to stop and not because of changed behavior in him, but because I am the only person I can control. I will not stay and be unhappy. I will not stay and make his life miserable. I will not live in fear of him doing it again, because he will never ever be able to obliterate my life again no matter what he does. He does not have that power over me and in fact, he never has. I already know what I will do if it happens again (leave) and so there is power and peace in that knowledge.

I wish I could tell you I came to this knowledge alone but I had help. I’ve started seeing a hypnotist. I know, I know. But hear me out. I was looking for ways to address my inability to move on and let go of the pain that was blocking me. I’ve only had two visits with the guy (only slated for 6 total) and listening to the sessions daily and I have to say, I feel at peace. It has helped me take in the knowledge in my subconscious of a couple of things, not just intellectually know them. One, I have a plan if The Player cheats on me again and two, I don’t need answers to some of the questions I had about timing of the affairs (if he was fucking people on actual days like our anniversary and during a personal crisis at home while he was out traveling and “working for the family”) because it doesn’t matter that I know. I won’t do anything different with the knowledge.

It’s like the guy said, for someone who has a fear of flying, them worrying on the flight and having a stressful, horrible flight won’t stop the plane from crashing, so why ruin the flight.

The hypnosis isn’t even for us. It was for me. To find more peace. I’m going to fucking rock my life, with him or without him. I’m going to do MY life, my way. I’m going to make my life matter and I’m going to keep putting my kids first. I do know one thing for certain: The Player is going to have to keep up with me, not the other way around.

Merging Lies with Everyday Life

That was some day nearly a year ago that I learned the depth of the betrayals. My marriage of 20 years was with a serial cheater. A betrayer. For the last 20 years he will tell you he was also a devoted husband and father. He will tell you that his life with me is real.

How is that possible?

He’s taken time away from me and his children to fulfill a desire to have women adore him. He’s spent extra time on the road. He’s lied on the phone so he could have the life he wanted to on the road. He put his energy into other women. He continued all of the relationships in some form, even while not sexual, with the women he had sex with, in order to satisfy his insatiable need for attention and adoration.

He also took a lot of time away from his family because he spent a lot of energy covering his tracks, even introducing me to a couple of women he had sex with, or having sex with one woman I personally knew. But the women closest to him in work became the ones who “adored” him and therefore easily fuckable, apparently.

I guess he felt guilty, but you’d have to tell me how that manifested itself because guilt didn’t stop him and it didn’t change the direction of his time and affection. He was increasing his extra bold extra marital affairs. The affairs were getting closer together and overlapping. The last affair he brought into our daily life, sitting right beside me in bed while I was asleep, talking about how much he cared for her. He was caught and spent another few months trying to continue the affair because he doesn’t know why, but “he just couldn’t let it go.”

I will tell you why he couldn’t let it go. He wanted the feeling of being desired more than his family. He wanted the feeling of being desired more than the wanted his children to look up to an honest and honorable father. He wanted the feeling of being desired more than the wanted to tell the truth and be an honest person. He didn’t want to let go of the feeling the other women gave him. He put himself first during this time, not unlike the 20 years prior, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The sex with other people, I could probably get over with remorse and hard work on himself. The lies? The betrayals? I am not so sure. What makes a person lie? What do they have to tell themselves to keep doing it?

What was my husband thinking about when he was calling me from our vacation home on a trip with one of the whores? I’d strongly encouraged him to take the trip because of the pressure he was under at work. She sat beside him as we talked about our day, the kids’ school day. What was he thinking when he called me when there was another woman in the house waiting for him to fuck her? What was he thinking as he opened the car door for her on a dates to our favorite restaurants? Or holding her hand on the the very same walking path we laughed on?

What was he thinking on all the other nights as he would talk to me to get the call him over with, only to have the evening to himself and one of his affair partners? Was there a woman sitting on or laying in his hotel bed while he made his call? He’d call home, tell me he loved me and then head down to the bar so he could laugh and drink it up and get one of the willing vaginas to come up or invite him up to their rooms.

He never really ended any of the affairs, in fact, he remained friendly with them all. He remained flirty and fun and interested in them. What did all of these women have in common? The adored him and were willing. But he didn’t let them go. From what I understand the sex wasn’t anything magical or special, in fact, he had some performance anxiety (guilty much?) on several of the occasions. I’d be stupid not to admit, that gives me a little thrill.

I can’t accept he had a real life with me in our shared tragedy and celebrations without acknowledging he was also the liar, cheater and betrayer. How do I merge those two lives?

I don’t do waiting well.

Anyone who knows me in real life knows I’m not a patient person. It’s just been a little over a week since The Player lost his shit and so now I wait. Mutherfucking again. I wait. I fucking hate it. I am changing the more he makes me wait.

I have been waiting for a long time for him to find his shit. It is getting old, but yet, here I sit. Somewhere around 4 hours after I went to sleep and hours before I need to get up and I contemplate why I wait.

The main reason I stare up at near blackness above me is because I wonder if I am here because I am afraid to be alone. I dismiss it as quickly as it enters my mind because I know that I would leave and be fine if it weren’t for our children. Their happiness is my happiness. I cannot be fine if they are not fine, I don’t care how many therapists say, “You know they’ll be okay, don’t you?” No, I don’t because they won’t be “fine.”

I can stay right now because there is progress, albeit slow. Also, I guess, because there is no more acting out, “At least I don’t have to deal with that right now, too,” I think to myself. My kids are worth all the tries I can give to their dad but he is not making it easy. I don’t know how long I can stand the emotional whiplash he insists on placing on me but I am truly living One Day at a Time, a favorite saying of someone I love, who has maintained many, many years of sobriety. Or I could be living an Hour at a Time, or maybe a Minute at a Time, I am unsure.

My patience and what love I thought I had for him is thinning and I can feel the change taking place as I wait for him to be able to handle his life better. I am letting go as I wait for him to work through his daddy issues, as I wait for him to handle stress without wanting to be numbed by the giggles and vaginas of other women. I can feel a change in me as I wait for him to act like a moral, decent human, I can feel myself letting go.

No matter what I tell myself, or him for that matter, I think I might be letting him go. Even while letting go, I know I will figure out how to live in this marriage – even in name only – to create a peaceful and loving home for my children. I start crying at the thought of staying in a marriage with a partner who causes me so much pain.

So I look up at blackness above me.

The Moment He Knew

The Player and I are in reconciliation. I just had to resist the urge to put quotes around the word reconciliation because typing out “reconciliation” feels more comfortable for me right now.

The Player had a rough start to the week. He was a little down, depressed and had to leave town on Monday afternoon, so his “check-in” with me didn’t happen. He didn’t do it. He didn’t mention it and he needs to take responsibility for it so I didn’t mention it either.

The Player left town for an overnight business trip on that same afternoon. His traveling is always suspect now. Literally, he would go out-of-town on business and hook up with colleagues, women he called his “friends,” several of whom I knew personally. So anyway, he started to check-in more frequently. Just a simple text when he lands, maybe when he was heading from a meeting to the hotel and then at dinner or event or on the way back to the hotel. So he left town on Monday and no text. Not when he landed, not around dinner time. Not around my bedtime. I relented, checked GPS on his phone and he was at the hotel. I texted him.

I texted him, he called me and we talked about the anxiety I had because of his lack of communication. He said he understood and would do better. The next day around two in the afternoon he texted and sent a “Good morning” text saying he typed it out but didn’t hit send.

It had been a few weeks, for various reasons, he’s missed group therapy and he hadn’t attended a 12-step meeting in at least 2-3 weeks. He hadn’t mentioned he spoke with his sponsor. I saw no visible proof of him “working” on sobriety.

This morning, he overslept and missed a SLAA meeting. He intended to go, he said, because he was dropping an SA meeting during the week that wasn’t working for him. He liked this meeting and has said that several times to me.

I couldn’t help it, but I could physically feel my anxiety rising. Over coffee I told him I knew I was supposed to stay out of his recovery business and I could only decide what to do about myself and myself felt super stupid. Like a fool. “Why?” he asked. I had to tell him it was because it felt like as soon as I said, “reconciliation” he quit working on his recovery the way he led me to believe he would.

The Player seemed stunned. I had to point out, “There’s been a lack of communication this week when you traveled, you completely forgot and ignored our “check-in” and now, no meeting. I have no idea if you are even talking with your sponsor or working on anything, so yes, I feel like a fool. Just like the first 20 years of our marriage.”

In one week that is what happened. ONE FUCKING WEEK of changed behavior on his part – in not a good direction – and I was in a spiral of feelings like he was disregarding the new rules for reconciliation he set up and agreed to. I told him as much, probably with a few more vulgar words. He just never put the things together and added them up like I did. Why? Because he’s The Player and the emotional equivalent of a teenager.

Because that is what I fucking do now. I add up things he does or does not now and I try to figure out what the hell he is thinking or even if he is fucking thinking. I wish I didn’t. I wish he didn’t create this in me, I wish he didn’t create me having to look at things differently forever.

I saw the moment he realized what it looked like from my end. He stood up, sat close to me, put his hand on my leg and spoke from a place of truth that he understood how it must have felt for me and explained each point I brought up on why it happened and accepted full responsibility for his actions for my feelings of uncertainty. Both because of what he did the last 20 years and what he did the last week.

I believe at that moment he had his very first empathic revelation without it being pointed out to him by myself or our CSAT.

Pigs may have just flown.

Hell might have just frozen over.

Money may be growing on trees.

A betrayed wife’s heart may have opened up a little bit.

History and a New Vow to Monogamy

There’s a therapist who said, (sorry I can’t find the link) something about how history begs us to remember that serial cheaters like my husband aren’t likely to all of a sudden be able to keep true to a vow of monogamy.

If that doesn’t slap you in your already stupefied face as a betrayed spouse, I don’t know what does.

I’ve searched many, many times to try to find statistics because they comfort me (usually) and I’ve not been helped by what I have found. Anywhere from 90-97% for those with behaviors of Sex Addicts relapse. That means very nearly 100% of people like The Player do their acting out behavior again. The main behavior would be sex outside of our marriage, but there are so many behaviors leading up to and related to sex outside of our marriage. Those behaviors would be considered “slips” like flirting/inappropriate language (which I argue leads to sex outside the marriage) with the opposite sex, drinking in bars to find people to flirt with to feed his ego and too close of hero type friendships with women.

The Player takes exception to these numbers – of course he does – because he says numbers and percentages don’t apply to everyone, they don’t know his intentions, and those numbers don’t know how much he “will never risk” his family again. He even said, “Those numbers don’t know what is in my heart.” The problem with this thinking is that everyone thinks they’re the exception (like me) but obviously some of us aren’t, right? Some of us – most of us if we believe the research – will be lied to again, cheated on again, hurt again by the people who beg us to stay and try to trust them again.

I want a peaceful and loving home for my kids. If I can somehow accept what he’s done, I will not hate to have an authentic person to share my life with even though I feel shafted in what I was promised by him for a quarter of a century. I’m not stupid. I go into our reconciliation with the best intentions but realize the odds are against me. The difference this time vs. last time I found out is that I now know he is capable (and likely) to cheat on me. I won’t be surprised. I also know I will survive. I will even thrive if we split up. I have as many safeguards as I can in place, with the big one being a polygraph exam annually, so number two is coming soon.

So, I’m moving on with serious trepidation and realistic expectations, I guess.

The Blindness of Assholes

A couple of months ago we took a family trip to our favorite spot. The place where all of the important things in our life together happened. We have recuperated there from tragedy, conceived one of our children there, and even named all of our children there. It’s where we have talked about retiring to someday. That’s how special this place is…

Until.

Almost a year ago at “full disclosure” I sat in silence as he said, “I didn’t and don’t want to tell you this. In fact, I called CSAT yesterday and asked if I had to reveal this or if I could reveal part of it because it’s bad, it’s really bad. I have so much shame around what I did. The last person I’m going to tell you about is Whore.”

The Player continued, “I know this is going to be painful because of who it is and what I’ve done. I’ve seen Whore very sporadically for 13 years on and off since a few years into our marriage and until a few years ago when I lost interest.” He took deep breaths. He started crying and said, “I took her to [vacation spot] when you thought I was there alone. I am so, so sorry.”

I shook my head, laughed/sighed in disbelief. “You what? You are an unbelievable asshole.” The CSAT told The Player to stop. No more for a few minutes while he checked in with me. I was in shock. My throat closed, I felt dizzy. Tears streamed from my face but I couldn’t put together a sentence. CSAT said, “Do you want to take a moment and take a break?” I shook my head yes. I stood up, grabbed my purse. He asked if I was returning and I said I didn’t know. I stepped outside to the parking lot and threw up a few seconds after the brisk air hit my face. Since I was already holding wads of tissue, I used them to clean my mouth. I got some gum and took a minute to decide if I was entering again. I decided I wanted to ask some questions I’d prepared. So I walked back in the room and sat back in my spot. I was calm. I was the kind of calm one should be afraid of and he was afraid.

He reached to hold my hand to comfort me. I looked at him like, “You did not just blow up my life AGAIN and want to comfort me, did you?” He pulled his hand back. “You can’t touch me. You don’t get the right to comfort me.”

“Let me get this straight. You took her to OUR place, our house. You fucked her on a trip I planned for you? A trip I encouraged you to take because of your stress? A trip I packed you for? Bought your groceries for? Are you fucking kidding me?”

He wasn’t kidding.

I find it hard to believe I will ever get over this particular betrayal. I’ve been back to our place but first with a friend and a short trip with him a couple of months later. I will not let those two assholes take my special place away from me. I refuse. I can’t lie though, it was hard to face it.

Those two fucking, fuckwad assholes.

Oh, and to add insult to injury he said didn’t invite her, she invited herself. He just didn’t say no. He knows (well, he says) it’s really bad and he isn’t trying to minimize how bad it is, but he wanted me to know that he didn’t want her there. He didn’t invite her. He wanted her to leave the whole time she was there because he really did want to be there alone and decompress.

What a shitty, weak, wuss of a man.

He better up his game in 12-step and figure that shit out. My “sponsor” (a woman who has been through a very similar story as mine) said he is too new in recovery for him to have even analyzed fully the relationships with these women that there isn’t even a way for him to address it with me yet. He better figure something else out because “I just couldn’t say no!” isn’t going to cut it for long. He is so blind to his behavior.

But hey! Let’s reconcile! Gross.

Round and round we go.

So we began our CSAT directed weekly “check-in” and it was as expected, I guess. It’s weird these check-ins because we’re basically saying, “Were you a good boy, The Player? Did you do everything that was asked of you?” I mean, I guess he wants to check-in so that I know what work he is doing, but fuck, this shit is getting old.

The Player told me where he was in his sobriety in working with his sponsor, if he’d had any acting out or potential acting out and the answer is no, he hasn’t. You know, he says. I mean, he’s a confirmed liar, right? I mean 20some years of lies and all of a sudden he’s going to be honest and trustworthy. He would say, yes, exactly that. He said he won’t risk me again, he won’t risk our marriage. He wasn’t thinking. He didn’t think THAT behavior and our marriage would merge.

The Player went on for a bit about how he is focused on why and on the prevention of acting out. Super, that’s a fucking good start, asshole. He also said he wrote a response to my impact letter and he hoped I was okay with it but he feared it wouldn’t be “right.” Whateverthefuck that means. I told him where I was in my recovery (still fucking pissed I have to be in recovery, but whatever.) and how I’m doing pretty well in staying out of his shit. The spying has stopped, the double checking has stopped. I had one occasion that made me uncomfortable as a result of him being out in a bar for several hours with a friend watching a game but I didn’t go down the rabbit hole too far. I told him I’m having one problem with his and my differences on his “relationships.” My problem is he doesn’t really see them as relationships. He saw them as sex and that his bad behavior started then not in the “grooming” of them to later become sexual partners because that wasn’t his intention in the years leading up to the sex.

What the fuckity fuck? You read that right. He doesn’t consider the flirting friendships with the later affair partners as “relationships” and doesn’t even find them that significant. He goes on and on with sentences that begin with, “In my recovery, I am focusing on the most important thing and that is how not to let myself get to a point where I flirt like that.” Really? Is that my new life? Wondering if my husband can restrain from getting ego kibbles from homely women he know will say yes?

This is so fucking far from where I should be or where my life was (I thought) or where I want to be.

So far our check-ins have only made me more pissed. As if that is possible.