Every. Single. Day.

I am not sure why it never occurred to me but for my life and situation I realize I have to wake up each day with a new resolve to work things out with The Player.

Each morning I wake up and before I am completely coherent, I swim along where the water takes me and I realize it’s a day of therapy, or The Player will see one of the whores, or I think, “I should write about that to work it through in my head.” Then I come to and realize things are okay. I’m not in trauma and I won’t ever be in trauma like I was during that horrible, dark time. I realize I will be okay, but never the same.

The fact is, each day when I come to and realize that my life isn’t the life I thought I had or rather the one that The Player led me to believe I had, I feel a sadness wash over me. The sadness doesn’t stop me anymore from fully waking up or beginning my day. The sadness doesn’t even stop me from doing everything I need to do or from living well. The sadness doesn’t propel me to weep in the shower quietly. The sadness doesn’t permeate everything I do that day, not anymore anyway.

I can only tell you the sadness is a part of me now, like an extra layer of skin that feels, unfortunately, like normal. It’s like I don’t feel completely like me yet, but I’ve learned to accept the new layer. Every morning I forget for a second the new skin is a part of me and I question its presence. Then I stretch it, remember that it’s a familiar feeling and not foreign. The sadness feels familiar. The sadness no longer lives just in my heart or my head. It is now bearable because it’s spread thin throughout all of me.

I wake up each morning with the resolve to live in the new skin and live well in spite of the what brought me here or even the sadness. It’s like a blanket of acceptance washes over me each day and I make the choice to stay.

Let’s talk about sex, baby

We still have a lot of it.

While there is something called “Hysterical Bonding” after the discovery of an affair, I’d have to argue we were always in a state of hysterical bonding, maybe not as much as prior to the last five years when I declared myself wanting to have a marriage with more sex and I took that situation into my own hands (so to speak) and rectified it.

I don’t have any shame in telling you as a couple, even one that has a 20 year betrayal story as part of their marriage, had and still has amazing sex. It’s been good sex and frequent sex for a long time. Luckily my ability to separate the household struggles, personal irritants or being too tired out of my mind in order to fuck. I’m lucky that way. My player cheating husband is lucky that way (for the record I would have more sex and The Player would have less, so we meet in the middle).

We have a healthy sex life with imagination and fun and a lot of orgasms. When I first found out about him fucking other women some of my first conversations with him included, “What the fuck? We have sex? We have great sex! I give you blow jobs and very nearly everything else! I put out regularly and like it! I’m enthusiastic about fucking! What the hell? We’re fucking good at fucking!”

He pursued friendships with other women and encouraged the back and forth flirting because they made him feel good. Desired, adored. For him, it wasn’t even about the sex (in my humble opinion). If you saw them, none of them (besides the stripper I guess, who looked a little bit transgendered because she had a large jaw, possible adams apple and a lot of cosmetic work done) was all that attractive and it isn’t like they fucked like rabbits each time they saw each other. Sometimes they would go months seeing each other through business but not fuck, even though they had opportunity. In fact, on several occasions, he couldn’t even get it up. It was about the idea that he could put his penis inside a vagina if he wanted to, in my opinion. He told me he didn’t try to move forward with any of these “friends” whores unless he was sure they would fuck him and maybe that’s why he pursued the more homely women he knew. When you think about a player, this one doesn’t sound like a man of confidence, does it?

He’s not. He’s broken. For years and years, he’s needed women to laugh at his jokes, to adore him, to desire him in order to feel good about himself. That means that being a good husband, provider, a good father and friend didn’t mean shit to him. How pathetic is that?

Last night I asked him now that he doesn’t have the women making him feel good where is he getting this from? He said he’s just staying focused on what he wants; me and our marriage and family intact. He said he wasn’t sure that’s why he did it in the first place.

Okay Player, say what you will.

Discovery Days

Let me tell you what the fuck happens in the moments and hours when you first find out your partner has been fucking someone else and your world as you know is gone. Obliterated. Never, ever the same.

Some of us throw up. For me, I found out pre breakfast but post coffee, so you can imagine what that looked like as my face was starring directly into our shitter. My stomach wrenching and the sound of heaving.

You feel like you will pass out. I felt faint for three days. It’s the shock and the fact that I didn’t eat for over two days.

You almost lose the ability to stand and walk. The room spun a little bit and it felt like the floor might open up and swallow me whole. Actually that was wishful thinking.

You cry. A lot. Out of shock. Pain. Exhaustion. The shower is the worst fucking offender. It’s quiet, people can’t hear a low cry and your face isn’t puffy when you get out.

Your body and mind are in shock. Utter disbelief. The person you trusted the most did the most horrible thing he could do to betray you. You know your world doesn’t feel right and won’t years later.

You think, “What did I do to deserve this?” several times, obsessively.

In your mind you run over and over the last several weeks to see if you can remember when you should have known.

You can’t sleep. My sleep pattern was all fucked up. Up during nights because I didn’t want to cry and sleep during the day so I didn’t have to face my new horrid reality in daylight.

It would be easier to jump off a bridge or stick a needle full of heroin into your vein than face the goddamn face of your betrayer.

You ask a lot of questions and at least 30 times a day you say, “How could you?”

You throw things. You scream. You fall to the ground from weakness.

You look at people out and about and wonder why life is just going on as normal because you know, without a doubt, normal doesn’t exist for you anymore.