I know that I've previously mentioned how I found out about The Man's affair with The One Who Threw Him Back (or Boobs McChesty if I'm feeling cranky and/or fat), but I didn't really get into it. Since it is the most recent wound, I avoided poking at it until I was pretty sure that it had healed.
Last fall, we took a trip with extended family. World's Most Amazing Baby got to spend a long weekend with two great-grandparents, all four of her grandparents, her dog, one of her cats and both of her parents. It was really a great experience to have all of us together for more than just a holiday meal.
Rather, it was a great experience until our last night there. We had been whooping it up after dinner with wine, music and games. Everyone else had gone to bed, but The Man and his mom stayed up way too late acting highly competitive and silly. By then, I was puttering around the perimeter tidying and making noises about how tired I was. I wandered over to The Man's laptop to check out the playlist that he had thrown together for the night. I pulled down the 'history' tab and was confronted by a log-in name that was unfamiliar to me, but seemed to reference an inside joke between The Man and myself. I paused briefly to check that The Man and his mom were paying no attention to me, then started clicking.
As it turns out, the screen name was for a playlist account that The Man and TOWTHB had shared. It was full of songs that I love and had introduced The Man to. It also had messages and photos... and a LONG letter from The Man to Her (dated before our daughter's birth) begging her to take him back, and detailing their relationship.
I was in shock. I felt duped. I felt betrayed. I felt like he had YET AGAIN given pieces of me away. Nicknames, songs... he took things from my life and gave them to someone else... I guess I could be flattered that I'm so awesome that everything about me is worth copying (HA!), but it really just felt like it depleted me.
I was also very deeply hurt to discover the true nature of their relationship. I had chosen to believe The Man when he told me that they were 'just friends'. I knew that their 'friendship' was allowing him to cross a line in that it was an outlet for him to receive flattery and to flirt, but I was pregnant and hormonal and wounded. I didn't want to believe that he could be selfish enough to start another affair after what we had been through. To find out that he had deliberately chosen to start another relationship while I was pregnant... all I could hear in my head was 'He didn't chose you. Look at that letter - he loved her. He would have stayed with her. She left him so he was stuck with you.' It played on a loop in my head.
I couldn't stop shaking. I wanted more information, but had no way of getting any. The Man was passed out. The interwebs were failing me. It was the middle of the damn night, and I had no cell phone reception, so I couldn't even call a friend.
I stayed awake all night. I drifted in and out of fitful sleep for an hour or so right before dawn. I woke The Man up and told him that I knew about 'her'. I asked him to tell me what happened. I imagined that I could see his mind racing as he tried to decipher how much I knew, how I had found out, exactly what he had to own up to and what he could conceal. In his defense, he was also still more than half asleep and really hung over. I battered him with accusations then left the house.
He avoided being alone with me for most of the morning. I finally cornered him. To his credit, he had been giving the whole thing serious thought. First, he was completely taken off guard by my anger. To him, the relationship had been over for so long that it was almost as though it hadn't happened, but he understood that I felt newly betrayed. Secondly, he said that when he wrote that letter, he was in one of the worst mental states of his life. He had immersed himself so deeply in the 'selfish jerk' persona, that he was almost unrecognizable. All he knew was that her attention was something that he wanted, and it was being denied to him. She wouldn't accept his calls, return his texts or read his e-mails. The letter was his last appeal to her, and she never replied. Fine. Then why was it still there? Oh, he didn't even think about it being a part of that account... he just really liked the playlist that he had put together (for her!!!), so he kept the account open and listened to it from time to time. Jerk. Third, he addressed my fear that he was 'stuck with me by default'. He swore that it just wasn't true - here with me was where he wanted to be. He admitted that it had taken a while for him to get back from Selfish Jerk Land, but he was ridiculously grateful every day that I had been willing to take him back when he had finally returned.
I asked him to close the account. Not because I believed that he still used it to communicate with her, but because if it was open, then there was a possibility that one day she would return to it. He agreed, then hesitated - he REALLY liked those songs, and it had taken him a long time to put the list together - seriously!? I walked over and pressed 'delete'.
The part of this that wounds me the most is the continued theme of giving bits of me away. During that time period, he chose to give these women nicknames, create on-line accounts to communicate with them, created playlists for them, showered them with romantic gestures... and through it all, he used memories of things that we had created and shared together over the years to impress them and win them over. As though I wasn't there. As though he had come up with these things on his own. Meanwhile, I would have wept with gratitude if he had put even part of that huge amount of effort into our relationship.
This is one of our last big hurdles in getting past that time. I want that kind of effort. I want to feel pursued and wooed. I feel loved, but knowing that he put more effort into other relationships continues to really hurt. I'm not asking for diamonds, but I am asking for a level of thoughtfulness that doesn't come easily to him. We butted heads about this again recently. We may or may not have broken through to the next level on this one. I feel like he finally heard me. I hope that he did. I hope that I really heard what he had to say as well.
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