When you truly love the one you are with you over look the “flaws” of your diamond. You make excuses for them, and for you, when people begin to question things. You start to lie to yourself about what is going on because this could not be possible happening to you. Everything seemed so “perfect” and on track. Sure, there were some minor moments or disagreements and their were time our sex life wasn’t great but I thought that was just part of married life (and having kids and I had an injury with the birth of our second son where I could hardly walk for 3 months, and our second baby didn’t sleep more then 3 hours a night for 9 months and I was the only one up with him every night and working full time and when I asked the ex to take 2 nights a week so I could get to sleep he told me no because he needed sleep – but those were just growing pain – right?? We can get through it all – I thought). Let’s face it, no marriage is 100% perfect all the time, but is can still be imperfectly perfect! You are in it for the good times and bad, in sickness and in health and you honor each other. You get upset at each other, you have different opinions or ideas or ways of doing things but you work through those things to make your marriage bigger, better, stronger. So – how could someone who told you and wrote notes to you about how amazing the last year of his life with you was and how excited he was to spend the rest of his life with you and create an Epic Legacy that will Impact your lives and your family’s lives for the better possible betray you?!? How could he destroy the picture he painted for you and you wanted to help him paint together?!? How could he just start ripping every little thing about you apart!?! The things he used to love about you, now he hates or makes him irritated or he tells you are no longer good enough for him and his standards for his new friends. It is truly living a nightmare when that starts to happen. When your knight in shinning armor turns Mr. Hyde and your whole life starts to fall apart around you, and you still try to keep the pieces glued together. You go on every day taking care of your family, trying to smile and hide the pain, the tears, the guilt, the loneliness, ignore the lies he tells you, the hurt you feel because you believe with every part of your being you can still make it work. You keep it all to yourself because you don’t want others to know your marriage is “in trouble” and you can make it work so you don’t want others to judge when you do if they know the “dark side” of it. You feel like it is a nightmare you just have to wake up from and your “perfect” life he thanked you for will be back.
For me it took years to face the truth, that no matter what I did, what I said, how hard I worked at my job, making the money to support us as he started his practice, how good I was with the kids and what I did for them and for him, supporting his frequent travels because he wanted to start speaking more at conferences and everything he wanted to do, that he would never appreciate it. No matter what I sacrificed for him, he would never be happy “with us” again. Once a narcissist makes up his mind there is no changing it, and everything that happened is your fault not his. I wish I could say I was strong enough to have found out and kicked his ass to the curb that night but I wasn’t. I loved him, I loved my family and there was nothing on earth more important to me than that. I was willing to forgive and forget and build a stronger marriage, because that is what I thought I was supposed to do. After all, in fairy tales love concord all and I thought I had enough love for us both, to fix it all and get us back on track to the place that would take us to happily ever after. But what took me probably way too long to realize is even if I did, I couldn’t do it alone. It takes 2 people to get married, it takes 2 people working and giving 100% for and to each other to stay married but it only takes one person to break a marriage. I struggled that I stayed in it for so long but at the same time I feel at peace that it took me as long as it did because I can honestly say in my heart I did everything I could to save our marriage and one day when my boys are old enough to put the pieces together and come asking questions, I can honestly tell them that I did everything to make it work and keep our family together but I couldn’t do it on my own. But yes – knowing what I know now, I would not have stayed as long.
The night I found out about that affair I felt like an arrow had pierced my heart and my soul. I can still see it in my mind like it was yesterday and it was 5 year and a half years ago. How did I find out?!? I plugged his cell phone in, a simple little, what I thought was an act of kindness, (because he hated waking up to a low battery) forever changed my life. On the night of February 1st, 2012 at about midnight when I came up stairs from breastfeeding and pumping and putting our 7 month old son to bed, I found that man I loved, supported in all ways and pictured building and spending the rest of my life with was having an affair, lying to me and God knows what else. It hit me so hard I vomited and I cried, I wanted to wake him up and kick his ass, but I didn’t. Instead I messaged her and kindly asked her ” stop making out with my husband please. Thank you!” and to “stop smiling when you think of him”. I used those words because that was part of the text she sent to him that night. The texted that popped up on his phone screen when I plugged it in so he would have a full battery when he woke in the morning.
When I did confronted him that morning when he woke, (because I didn’t sleep that night just waited for him to wake up) he denied it all. He denied having an affair, he denied ever lying to me about anything. He told me how much he loved me, how the boys and I were his world, how much he loved our life together, how much he loved our boys, (one was 2 yrs old and the other 7 months) how excited he was to continue to grow our life together and grow old with me. He told me how much our life together meant to him and how happy he was. He apologized for be too flirtatious with his “business partner” and that it would never ever ever happen again! I probably should not have, but I loved him, I loved our family and I believed him. He seemed like he was truly sorry and that we could get through this, I believed our love could get through anything. She replied as well to my messages and she said “it wasn’t anything serious, I promise you! my husband is the most amazing man in the world, and I would never risk that. “X” is a a great guy — I agree that the joking shouldn’t have gone there — but you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Please trust me — this relationship is absolutely one to enhance my professional life, not my personal one. You absolutely have my word. I am truly sorry for any alarm that stupid text may have caused–you can be sure nothing like that would ever happen again.” That day I believed them both, they both said the “right things,” they both seemed sorry and more than anything I wanted to believe in my marriage vows and in my husband. As it turned out that day was the beginning of the end. That was also the day I would come to find out my husband could look me in the eyes and lie without hesitation, without remorse directly to me. That is the day the switch flipped and Mr. Hyde slowly but surly started to take over our lives. Since he was diagnosed as a narcissist (by therapists not just my opinion) and I learned that narcissist have no empathy or sympathy for others which can be detrimental to personal relationships, so lying for them is easy – it’s all about what they can gain not about right or wrong or who may get hurt along the way. Yes, I have spent many hours with our marriage couples therapist and many many more hours with him since the divorce trying to figure all this shit out. And figure it out and learn from it, grow stronger, wiser and happier, bolder and braver from it (and also avoid falling into the same type of relationship again) I am!
(And if you are wondering – Yes, I still have every message she ever sent to me and every email, text, picture she send to him and him to her. Why do I have them?!? At the time I saved them because I thought I may need them one day in court but thanks to a No Fault state they didn’t do me any good there.)
Live, Laugh, Love Your Life!
Jodi
From Diamonds - To Disaster - To DAZZLE! 