From my First post in 2014:
Dday was in August, over the span of a week. I came home from work and saw my husband leaving the house with his ex-girlfriend. They were together for a year or so back in 1990, before he and I were together. He has kept in touch with her over the years. I see her occasionally at parties. They were walking out of the house, and WH told me that she was taking him out for Thai food as a thank you for him fixing her computer. He off-handedly told me the kids hadn't had dinner yet, and then they left.
I walked in the house feeling hurt, and very confused, and then my mind went “click.” Then it was like a flash montage in a movie:
My husband, ignoring me at parties we had gone to recently.
My husband, constantly on Facebook.
My husband, who goes to movies by himself.
My husband going out on weeknights and weekends this past year to hang out with new friends I had not met.
My husband being so withdrawn from the family. Impatient. Short-tempered. Yelling at the kids over stupid things. Coming home and parking himself in front of the TV, watching what he wanted to watch and getting mad if the kids got loud or ran around the living room. Totally ignoring housework.
My husband suddenly deciding we should have smart phones.
My husband who forgets his wedding ring all the time.
More than anything else, though, was the way he had been looking at me and talking to me. There was veiled contempt towards me. Smug. He was rude, walked ahead of me and rolled his eyes when I struggled to catch up. And his anger would just lash out of him sometimes if I contradicted him or questioned his ideas. I was like a smelly dog that he was responsible for taking care of but didn't want to touch or be seen in public with.
And I thought, "oh my god. This is really happening."
First confrontation: “Don't be absurd. Nothing is going on. It is so strange that you are jealous, that's not like you. I'm not even attracted to her anymore.”
Second confrontation: “I am not interested in my ex-girlfriend. I may have flirted with some other women, but it was only because you have been pushing me away, and not meeting my needs and making me a low priority. You are acting crazy. This has to stop.”
Then I found a journal of his, and read it. Not much in it about ex-girlfriend. However: My husband spent six months obsessed over a young and gorgeous new co-worker. He spent time thinking about ways that he could form an emotional bond with her, get her to talk to him about her feelings and insecurities. He pushed it too far by sending her an e-mail (which I haven't read) and she got freaked and kept him at arms length. After this, he began exchanging e-mails with an on-line stranger. Secret e-mail account. Husband says he backed out of it before it got serious. Just “flirting.” Not “sexting.”
After that he was, as he wrote in his journal, “on the lookout for an affair.” He had joined a new community that was forming in our area for atheists and agnostics, and he was really enthusiastic about it. There were a lot of attractive single women, as well as couples who practice “open” marriage and polyamorous relationships. He told me that yes, he had flirted, yes he had been looking, but that when it came close, when he could have made a move, he found that he didn't want to, as he put it, “make the effort.”
He tells me that he nothing physical had happened, and that there was no sexting or virtual sex.
I believe him, and I also don't believe him.
I don't think he understands how shattering this was to me.
Part of me thinks, “All of these different crushes and flirtations, lasting almost a year, and your man never did anything physical or any sexting?”
Part of me wants to ask to see the secret e-mail account and read what he wrote to the on-line woman.
Part of me doesn't want to rip off that scab and have to bleed all over again.
Part of me thinks I am making a huge thing out of nothing.
Part of me wants to know that he did have a physical affair, because then my feelings would be thoroughly justified.
Part of me thinks, “Would it matter if he had been physical? Would it hurt any more?”
Part of me is just so tired, I feel like another confrontation would wreck me.
Moving on.
I came up positive for high-risk HPV, I can't even remember the date. I had to get a "punch" biopsy (think of a hole-puncher, but on your cervix.) It came back benign. I had one long-term relationship with a boyfriend that ended in 1992. My WH and I started dating for real around 1993. I have been monogamous with only him since then. 25 years. Never had a positive pap. But the thing with HPV is it has this little disclaimer which says it can lay dormant in the body for an indeterminate time. It can. It is very, very unlikely, but not impossible. He found that out through a web search and hung onto it. My HPV was clearly one of those dormant ones. It was the HPV fairy, not him.
I clung on. Maybe it never got physical. Maybe the virus was a fluke. Maybe he's lying, maybe I'm crazy. I wanted to be validated, because dammit I knew he wasn't telling me everything. I wanted to be wrong. I wanted to believe him. I wanted him to be the person I always thought he was.
He bought a sex-toy at some point in 2013 without telling me about it or using it with me. It was for porn, he said, and he was embarrassed about it so he didn't tell me.
I found underwear, basic bikini haines, grey, but they were way too small for me. They looked new. Now, they could have been mine. Maybe I had them 3 or 4 years back when I was skinnier, and I kicked them under the bed, and they stayed there without being noticed. We're pretty sloppy. Maybe I picked them up randomly one day and stuck them in the wash. But even at skinnier, I would not have bought that size. There were a couple of times David brought me a pack of underwear from target, and I remember one time laughing at how small a size he'd gotten. Only I remember those small ones being workable. Some were black, some white. Still they could have been mine, just ones I never wore because I wore them once and then they got kicked under the bed.
Once I came home and found him changing the sheets. He freaking NEVER changes the sheets. I don't remember him ever doing that. I was like "Oh, thanks, thats so nice of you." He gave me a kind of half-smile, half-grimace. Said something like, "That's just the great kind of guy I am." I asked him why he changed them. We are very slobby, and can go a long time before I feel like changing sheets. He said they had (pardon the crudity) gotten too 'crusty' on his side. Semen gets on sheets. But again, we are not tidy people. Crustiness had never been an issue before. I don't remember when that happened. The memory just popped up one day after dday. Out of the blue.
After many, many painful, frustrating months of You Don't Get It, I said to him, gently, without anger, "You know, you don't have to be here. You are not obligated to be married to be. There's nothing keeping you from leaving if that's what you want. The door is open, no locks. We don't have any assets to speak of besides the house. There wouldn't even be child support if we have equal custody. The process would suck, but it would be over in time. I don't want you to leave. But like I said, the door is open. You can stay or you can leave." Somehow that punched through. He was not forced to put up with a crying, angry wife who was keeping him from having fun. If he was staying it was his choice.
It's not like everything was wonderful after that. But the grudging resentment that often radiated off of him went away. He started to realize that he had done serious damage.
It was never full R. He has never admitted to sex with anyone, despite the HPV. Rugsweeping. And sadly, a slow drain of my respect. All I wanted was the truth. Telling the truth was too hard and he didn't want to face the consequences. I get that. A full confession would require courage, effort, soul searching. I always thought he was brave. I was wrong. I always thought he was honest. I was wrong. I always saw him as a protector, like he'd take a bullet for me. Not this bullet, hell no. He cheated on me, lied to me, deceived me. It damned near killed me. I thought he loved me. I thought we were an Us. Something unbreakable, something priceless. Who knows. If it ever did exist Its smashed to bits now. And all he wants is for it to go away, back to status quo. I thought he would fight to keep me with him. I was wrong.
I stopped posting on SI in 2016 because my WH had a kidney biopsy. He has nephropathy, which is a long-term breakdown in kidney functioning. He had it for years without symptoms. The biopsy had him at 29% kidney function, with sclerosis of almost half of the little filters that the blood goes through. Prognosis, without intervention he'll die from renal failure. So a kidney transplant and probably dialysis is in his future. He hit 15% this last month August 2018, which is officially end-stage renal disease. He will be starting dialysis soon, and get tested to see if he is a suitable candidate for a transplant. Live donors have offered to be checked for a match.
One of them who absolutely insists on donating her kidney if she is a match? Ex-girlfriend.
I mean, just, what can you say?
I realized at the diagnosis that I cannot honorably leave a dying husband to fend for himself. My health insurance covers him, for one thing. My kids are going to being dealing with parent who has a terminal illness. A person can survive on dialysis alone for an average of 5 years. Transplants can prolong life for 10-15 years, but eventually the new kidney will fail. So yeah, Trivial, how about bailing out of the marriage? Not happening.
In my head, it was like a heavy garage door slammed down on all things infidelity related. Cut it off. The new emergency took precedent. And I would have been FINE with that, if I had been able to keep that door shut and that pain and suspicion locked away. But the head never does cooperate. As months went by the door edged up and bits escaped. And one piece of it, the HPV and his denial of doing anything that might have given me the virus, that was what would not, could not be shut up.
So here we are. He's dying. I need the truth. And just like at the beginning, my need is petty. Trivial, in fact.
