Some Background: I met my wife when she was 13 and I was 16. We hit it off, but I thought she was just a kid. I spent the summer hanging out with her, and she kinda mentioned an ex, but I got the impression she didn’t have a lot of friends and stuff. No big deal. VERY small town, so not that uncommon.
We met again after I graduated High School. I was 18, she was 16, and we were clearly pretty attracted to each other. But my girlfriend from high school was going to be moving up to live with me… which didn’t matter. I was a bad person, and was cheating on my girlfriend for months, before i finally broke up with her. I broke up with her for a chance to be with this girl, my current wife, as a couple. But before that happened, she got involved with some other dude. I was upset, but I moved on.
I moved back to California, got married, had some kids… and she and I got back in touch over the internet. Her life was collapsing. She was divorcing, had just graduated college with a degree in a field she hated, and had lost her job. I talked it over with my then wife, and she said she should move in with us (open marriage, blah blah blah). She did so.
After 6 months of that, she gave me an ultimatum… pick one of us within X weeks, or I’ll be moving out. I can’t keep doing this. She had stopped being involved with my then wife within a few months of her arrival anyways.
I picked her. I loved her with all my heart and soul. My ex was bitter, but we are amicable. She has since remarried and moved on. All is ok there.
I moved 3000 miles across the country so my wife could be with her family, leaving mine and all my friends on the other side of the country.
I have left or taken jobs on her advice, in an effort to both grow as a person and make her happy. i have bent over backwards trying to make her happy. I felt this was my job, as husband, to keep her happy.
She has issues. As an abuse survivor, who still has to deal with the abuser, she has boundary and sexual issues. She is diagnosed bi-polar, with anxiety disorder and Complex PTSD. She is medicated, and takes her medication faithfully.
We have a child, who is amazing. I love him so much it blows my mind. He fits in so well with my other 2 children it’s mindboggling.
She has said, from the beginning of this phase of our relationship that she loved me, but was worried that she didn’t love me the way I love her. I didn’t care. She was still the best partner I had ever had. She encouraged me, and believed in me. She was always there for me. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me. So I didn’t worry about that, I would tell her that what I got from her was more than enough, that I was happy.
So, the week before Thanksgiving, my wife told me that she wanted to split up. This kinda came as a shock, but not a 100% surprise. She had been angry and upset pretty consistently for 6 months, but I thought it was over her work, and I was getting the overflow of angry (a common pattern for her as long as I’ve known her). After some hemming and hawing, she agreed to try counseling first.
But some things she had said, and some of her behaviors, had me suspicious. She had gotten contacted by that ex I mentioned way up there. He had turned out to be a very very bad man. She was 13 or 14 when they were involved. He was at least 18, possibly 19 or 20. While I was visiting that first time, he was off in the army. When he dumped her, he did it by terrorizing her. He held her against a wall, cut her arm and told her he could kill her at any time. She was messed up by him, for years. Nightmares, and a constant low level fear that he would be coming for her.
But last summer he had gotten ahold of her to apologize. To say he was sorry for the way he had treated her. Facebook, of course.
After she told me that she thought we weren’t working, I kept seeing her on Facebook, and then she would close her email as soon as I walked into the computer room. This, combined with her telling me months before that he didn’t understand why we were together if we didn’t have anything in common, made me think something was going on.
So, I did my bad thing. I hacked her FB, and her email. I saw that she had been writing to him, with lots of “I Love You”'s on both parts. I was furious. She had always told me that the one thing she couldn’t stand, the one thing I could do to deepsix our relationship would be to cheat. And I had opportunity, several times, but I didn’t. For me, Monogamy was hard, but she was worth it.
At first it was emotional cheating, but through all of her stuff was lots and lots of flirting and sexual innuendo. I know they “cybered” at least once, though she said it was only because she was really drunk, and I wasn’t home.
I told her everything, that I had seen it all, and knew everything. She was furious. I had violated her. I was a terrible person for doing these things. And yes, she was in love, but she would stop talking to him so we could work on our marriage.
That was also a lie. But I bought it, and promised not to tell his wife (dude is married, of course).
After 5 counseling sessions, she said she was still in love with him, that she didn’t think she would ever be able to be with me that way. So I gave up on counseling, and thought that I would show her that I could change. I addressed all of the issues she had brought up in counseling, and have made marked changes in who I am. She was right on one score there… I needed to change, I needed to grow up, for myself and for my kids. So I have. I still have fun, still play video games, but I am also now part of the discipline process with all of my children (a role I avoided before). I am self sufficient, I dont’ need someone to make my appointments for me, or call people back on my behalf.
In May, she worked her tail off at her job so she could go to Texas for a work convention. Ex-dude lives in Texas, and I instantly got suspicious again. After I had confessed that I had hacked her stuff, she had changed all her passwords. But I decided I would trust that she was still not talking to him, that there was still a chance for me, and for us. When things are good, they are VERY good between us. How could she want to end that?
There were so many red flags. She packed “sexy” things, that she said she just wanted to wear, for her. She brought some personal grooming things that made NO sense, outside of a sexual context, but I tried hard to buy her story.
We argued the day before she left, and we argued the day she got back. The following weekend, I was looking for some pics of our son on her phone when I saw some rather… sexual pics. Nothing overt, nothing naughty, but way out of character for her to take. And with rage in my heart, I went through her phone, found out the new mail account and chat ID she had, and found the chat logs on her phone, where I saw her chatting with him again, starting right out with “I love you”. Turns out they hadn’t actually hooked up, he was out of town on business, but she tired. She tried HARD.
I gave her a few days to tell me. I hinted that I was angry that she was throwing me away for this guy from her past, this married man. She denied it. She said over and over that she hadn’t talked to him since I busted her, and she got angry at me for bringing him up.
And finally, when she wrote me a note telling me essentially that all this was my fault, for not growing up, that she had been telling me all along to do so but she no longer respected me, I lost it.
I wrote her a nice long letter, telling her again what I knew. She cried, I cried. I said it was clear to me now that it was over, that there was nothing I could do, but if and when she was talking to him, would she please let me know. And she promised.
But I no longer believed, and shortly after this I had made plans to spend 2 weeks away, so she could see what it would be like, and so maybe she could realize the mistake she was making. And so maybe I could get some distance. some acceptance. But at the same time, I hacked her secret e-mail account. I avoided it for weeks at a time, and other than the occasional note from her to him, there wasn’t much there.
Then, last month, I left for 2 weeks. And as soon as I did, she was writing to him about how lonely she was. And how big her bed was. And how she would be keeping him up allll night, if he were there.
I got drunk, and I wrote to him. Then I got sober, and wrote him again, apologizing for writing to him drunk, but still standing by my stance that he was a bad man, and had a big hand in ruining my marriage.
He wrote me back, telling me how what she and he had was special, that if I lived for 1000 years, I would never have what they have. How it was 100% my fault, alone, that this was happening. And that what they did or didn’t do was none of my business. He also backed up her lies about not talking to him since February, as apparently she had neglected to tell him that I had busted her on her Texas trip.
It sucked, but at least I got to see the truth.
She is broken, so badly broken. She is in love with a man who threatened to kill her, smitten with another married man. A psychopathic semi-pedophile (18, 19, 20… and dating a 13-14 year old. Fits the bill in my book, no matter how mature she was) is more to her taste than I am. She believes, based on her emails, that they are on some Path that will lead to them together, where she can help him be the man he wants to be, and he will sweep her off her feet. And I am just the stupid husband, a schmuck who can’t let go. Apparently all she feels for me now, most of the time, is disdain and boredom.
I told her, in the midst of a phone fight, that I had done it again. She said “I hate you” and for the 2nd time in my life, I hung up on someone. She called right back.
By the end of the discussion, she was trying to tell me that it was just banter, and flirting. It was meaningless. But she started it by saying that yes, somehow, she loved him. It just happened.
My life is ruined. I’m living in a house, with my son (whom I love) and my older son from my first marriage. I can’t afford to move out until at least February, and at this point I had decided to stick it out and wait until the school year was over, and move me and my oldest boy back to California. I have nothing here, other than my son and a dead end (though decent paying) job. My youngest is currently slated to stay here, with her, though I am still thinking about that.
In California, I have friends, and family, and loved ones. But I also have no job, and no place to stay. I will be arriving, if all goes as planned, with money to pay bills and live for 2-4 months. and hopefully I can find a job before I run out of money. I’m terrified, but committed.
What sucks the most is, despite all this, I still love my wife. I have told her at this point that I would not take her back, even if she said she wanted to try and fix it.
But the truth is, I don’t know if I could say no. She was the world to me, and has thrown it away, in part because of my failures, but even more in part because she thinks she’s in love with the man she used to call Senor Psychopath. And after all that, all this, with cheating and snooping and hate, and angst, and her crushing me and lying, over and over and over again, I don’t know if I could say no to her.
I’m a weak, pathetic man.
Fuck my life.
This was supposed to be cathartic, to get me out of my bad mood. Boy, was I wrong on that score.