Tuesday, February 17, 2009

A Bad Day Turns Good / Starting In the Middle

And now my first "real" post. Rather than start at the beginning, I think I'll start in the middle. As in yesterday. I have about 2 months of back story to fill in at some point, but I want to get the recent events out of my head before they get stale.

Yesterday started out about the same as many days. I wasn't particularly depressed, but I wasn't exactly happy either. It's how I would describe many days lately. I'm not sure if despair is the right word; but optimism certainly isn't the right one. My wife could tell I was looking a bit more down than usual, and I explained that nothing particular was wrong. We've had several conversations like that lately. I can't pinpoint a specific thing that I'm dwelling on, but I just don't feel "good." I also had a similar sense that something was wrong with her, but she wouldn't open up to me either.

She had the day off work and was planning on going shopping. I happen to be home with the kids for the day. I ran out on an errand before she left for shopping, and when I got home she had already left. I went to use the computer and noticed she had minimized rather than closed the web browser when she used it last. I'll admit I've been going to some lengths to spy on my wife since everything has happened. So doing a quick check of her recent web surfing seemed like a realtively minor invasion of privacy. She has her history turned off, so normally I can't see where she's been on the web, so this was a rare opportunity to check. Of course she was on Facebook. She's becoming a bit addicted to that; and I know none of the people that I "worry" about are Facebook friends; so no big deal there. But then she had a lot of pages with maps to various cellular phone stores. Why the heck would she need to go to a cell phone store? She never mentioned that she was going to a cell phone store today. She just got a new phone recently, and shouldn't need a new charger or anything. For that matter, these are different cell phone stores than she would normally go to. Quite strange.

I probably need to digress here for a moment. Both of her affairs involved her phone a lot. She did an inordinate amount of talking and texting with these two other men, so I have had a lot of paranoia surrounding her phone. After having about one argument per week regarding her phone, she finally agreed to leave it unlocked and leave her call and text history available for me to see. I don't really want to read all her text messages; just know who she's talking with. Mainly to make sure it's not one of "them," or even a third person I didn't know about. She threatened at one point to just get a whole new phone / phone number / service provider to cut me off of any access to her phone. I though we'd moved beyond that, but maybe not.

So back to the story, I obviously suspected the worst here, and it turns out that I was right. She went to get a new phone that she had no intention of telling me about. I was pretty proud of myself for the following piece of detective work. I was racking my brain trying to figure out how I could prove she just got a new phone. I thought maybe it would show up on our credit card statement one day, but I knew she'd have to be pretty dumb to put it on a credit card, and my wife isn't dumb. And a few more clicks on the computer proved I was right: she withdrew $200 in cash from an ATM right down the street from one of the stores she had looked up. My next thought was that maybe I could catch her with the phone. Either go through all her stuff when she got home or maybe at night. But again, there would be no guarantees I'd find the thing. Next option could be to hope she screwed up and left some evidence that I could trace, but that was a shot in the dark too. Then I came up with my bit of detective work. I just called the store to ask. I called and said something along the lines of:

Clerk: "Hello."

Me: "Yes, my wife was in there this morning. A blond woman, named Amy Smith."

Clerk: "Oh yes, I remember."

Me: "Did she get her new phone?"

Clerk: "Yes."

Me: "She was supposed to call me and she hasn't yet. Could you give me her new phone number?"

Clerk: "Sorry, sir. I can't do that.'"

Me: "That's okay, I understand. Thank, you."

And that was all I needed. While it would have been nice to call her on her new phone, the clerk's relatively innocent answers were all I needed to confirm that she did get a new phone.

Of course at this point I felt just plain sick. There's no good reason for her to get a separate cell phone. She has a brand new phone that she loves. The only reason would be my worst fear: she plans to go behind my back to either continue an affair or start a new one. After much pacing around the house with shaking hands, I decided to just call her up and confront her.

I started off causually enough. "How's shopping going? What did you get so far?" She named a few things, but no mention of phones. So I asked, "So what kind of phone did you get?" Which of course garnered a response of, "What are you talking about?" After a few more denials and my explaination of my detective work, she relented and admitted to getting a new phone. Which I couldn't handle, so I proceeded to curse her and hang up.

This will be a long posting if I continue with a verbatim recount of our conversation, but it roughly went like this. At first she came up with a very crappy excuse. Then a slightly better but still crappy one. Then she finally admitted that she got it to talk with, Mike. Mr. Affair #1. Arghhhh!!!!!

I was pretty much at the point of complete intolerance at this point. I cursed her and told her not to come home. I even went so far as to call our credit card companies and tell them that her cards had been lost. I'm not entirely sure why I did this; but it felt good at the time. I wasn't fully in the mind frame of wanting a divorce, but in the last couple months, I had thought about it much more than I ever thought I would think about it in my life. And I had at least come to the conclusion that I could go through with it if I had to. So I wasn't afraid to lay that threat on the table. And I did. She was driving back home at this point and crying and said she couldn't continue the conversation while driving. So I agreed to let her come home and talk. She said she wanted to be very honest with me. I said of course. In fact, that's what I had been begging her to do since this started. I was looking forward to getting some honesty. Although, I was a bit afraid that her honesty would be along the lines of her wanting a divorce too. Or telling me that she did sleep with one of these men. (Again, to be covered at some point, but as far as I know, she never actually had sex with either of her affairs, though it was pretty close with one)

When she came home, her big honest fact that she was afraid to tell me was that she wasn't happy with our marriage before the affairs started. Which to me, was no big surprise, but apparently she was in denial. We've both admitted that we have drifted apart over the last few years. I don't think I would say that I was unhappy; but I would agree that I wasn't happy. I think we would probably agree that we had digressed a bit to friends rather than lovers. It's sad, and I admit that now that I've realized it. But I don't think it really occurred to me until all of "this" started.

Anyway, the ensuing discussion was great! I've felt this whole time that I've been the only one trying to fix things. That I'm the only one talking about their feelings. And my interpretation of that was that she really didn't care, which hurt. A lot. But if I can believe her, (and I think I do) she had her own feelings of doubt and guilt that were keeping her from moving forward. Which was keeping me from moving forward. So it really felt like a turning point. It's so ironic that the conversation that she was afraid of turned out to be the best thing in about a month between us.

We talked more, and I think we both became happier as we did. She returned the other phone already on her way home. Unfortunately, since she paid cash and didn't keep the receipt, she couldn't prove that she returned it. But I believe her. She almost started crying again when I asked to see proof that she returned the phone, so I think I believe her. I definitely still have a lot of trust issues to work out. But again, it turned into a good day. We were both happier than we've been for the rest of the day. And that feel good. Finally. I really hope today was a turning point. I could use it. Because the last couple months have really been wearing me down.

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