I have hit a brick wall in the reconciliation process. For the last couple of weeks I have been fighting this feeling that I am the world’s biggest idiot for attempting to reconcile with this man. And this weekend it's like I hit a wall.
At the time that I committed fully to R (a few weeks ago) I figured that I was faced with two choices and neither of them was particularly appealing – reconcile with this man who has betrayed me so badly or divorce and be financially far worse off and lonely as well.
If I choose divorce I will lose not only my comfortable life-style, but my house, my extremely beloved pets… life will be hugely different and more difficult. I simply don’t have the earning power that fWH has. I could probably afford to live in a tiny little flat on my salary. It’s a horrifying thought to me. VERY horrifying.
I thought about it a lot and ultimately decided that at this stage of my life the upheaval of divorce, the drastic drop in my standard of living and the loneliness of being single (my younger daughter leaves home at the end of this year as well, so I face an empty nest) was really not something I could face, on the other hand fWH is really trying hard in the R process, we do love each other and live together extremely well. So I decided I obviously had to choose to R.
The problem is that I under-estimated how hard it would be to live with ME if we R. I am furious with myself for tolerating his bad behaviour. I have this voice inside my head that is saying “you useless, spineless idiot… how could you accept him back after what he has done to you? How can you tolerate the way he treated you?... blah, blah, blah…” It is relentless.
I think the thing that makes this so hard is this:
3 years after we got married fWH lost his job because he stole some money. I was mortified, nothing like that had ever happened in my family, it was a concept completely foreign to me. I was a SAHM and we were in a complete mess. My parents helped us out until fWH found a new job. He assured me nothing like that would ever happen again.
In 2000 fWH and I decided to emigrate. A few years previously fWH had been retrenched and my father bailed us out – bought a business for fWH to run. When we decided to emigrate fWH sold the business, we rented out our house and fWH left for the UK, leaving me and the kids with my parents while he found a job, a house for us etc in the UK. I duly booked our plane tickets and all was looking peachy. It then came time to pay for our tickets and I asked fWH if he could send money over, he said that I must get the money from my father as the sale of business was due to be finalised any day, the money was being paid into my father’s account, and our plane tickets would be paid from the proceeds. I approached my father only to be told that fWH had stolen money from the business, had confessed the day before he flew out and that the sale of the business would only JUST cover the money he had stolen and a loan he had taken from his brother (unbeknown to me)…. In other words, there was no money for me and the kids to fly over to join fWH.
I was beyond devastated! Totally mortified by what fWH had done. I told fWH that our marriage was over and I set about getting a job, renting a flat for the kids and myself etc. I missed fWH desperately, I hated being single, I was in a really bad place.
A few months later I got a letter in the post from fWH. It was the most touching, heart-felt letter, from a man who had never been great at expressing emotion or admitting fault. He admitted that he had never been the husband I deserved, he owned up to all his faults, he expressed how I was his soul-mate and he couldn’t live without me, he showed true remorse for what he had done and told me that if I gave him a second chance he would spend the rest of his life proving to me that he loved me more than anything, that he could be the man I deserved. At that point I just melted. I forgave him completely. That letter was literally a turning point in my life, I think that was the first time I really and truly gave my ENTIRE heart to fWH.
He came home a couple of months later for a holiday and we were fully reconciled. My whole family thought I was making a huge mistake and told me so, but said that it was my decision and they would stand by me whatever I decided. He applied for a transfer back to S.A and it took 2 more years before the transfer became final.
In that time our relationship got better and better. We were communicating on a level we had never before, even though we were living on separate continents. We would email each other numerous times through-out the day, sms, phone at least once a day. I felt a connection that had never been there before and he felt it too. Every 6 months he would come home on holiday and it was like a 6 week long honey-moon. Pure bliss! We couldn't wait for him to come home permanently.
He finally came home in May 2003. Within 3 months the EA began and the PA began at the beginning of Feb 2004. To make matters worse this wasn’t just some hours stolen here and there with OW. He literally had 2 lives running parallel. He would spend 4 days and 2 nights a week living with her as if she was his wife! He was an accepted part of her family, they socialised with her sister and brother… that type of thing.
I believed that letter he sent me from the UK completely. I put my faith in that letter. I went against my family by taking him back then. This man KNEW I had huge abandonment issues (my birth-father walked out of my life at age 11 and I have never seen him since) he knew how the death of my only sibling in 1996 had hurt me. He knew how deeply HE had hurt me in 2000 and what it took for me to R then. I just don’t understand how he could have then gone and betrayed my love for him in such a horrible way. But worse still, I don’t understand how I can even think of taking him back now? Why I want to? I don’t understand why I still love him? I feel like our relationship is so toxic now because on the one hand I am trying to return to some kind of normality, focus on NOW, see the efforts he is making, look to the future, but on the other hand I am FURIOUS at him, at ME. And every now and again it all comes spewing out in hideous rages. What a mess!