One of the saddest parts of our marriage, for me, was that we never did anything. Try as I might, I could not entice D to go anywhere with me for a nice weekend away. And where we live, there are plenty of majestic, fantastic places to visit. I wanted to take Little One on some little adventures. But every time I would try to broach the subject, I was told, "I don't feel like it. I have too much to do. [!] It's too expensive. I just want to stay at home."
So imagine my surprise when I heard this proclamation from D in early December:
"Just so you know, I'm going to be going out of town on the weekend before Christmas."
Now, dear reader, this is where the internet is oh-so-helpful. See, Sally Lee, Sally's bellydancer alter-ego, had a website, on which she listed her upcoming performances. And on this weekend in question, there was a performance listed at some sort of bellydancer conference (I kid you not) in a large city a few hours away from here. We'll call it Cityville.
So, my response was, "Oh, so you're going to Cityville?"
The shock on his face was instantaneous. He paled. "You - what - yeah, um." Eloquent as ever.
"Yeah, it's amazing what you can find on the internet these days," I said, not exactly letting him know how I knew. That just freaked him out even more.
"Let me get this straight," I continued. "You're actually going out of town - that's surprise number 1. Number 2 - you're leaving for four days, right before Christmas. 3 - you're going with Sally. And 4 - and I love this one - you're going to the same city where we had our Babymoon?" (This was the last trip he and I had taken together before Little One was born, and I was about 5 months pregnant.)
To his credit, he looked like he got it. "Yes," he said.
"Okay, then, have a good trip," I said. As I calmly shut the door behind him (regretting that I was too well-raised to slam it), I had to fight the tears, nausea, and anger, all welling up at the same time. Little One needed me, so it would have to wait. And so it did.
I poured the anger into research. What I needed to know was, did my state consider an agreement created via email to be a binding contract? I was checking because I wanted to make sure this damn bellydancer stayed away from my kid, since it was plain she was going to be around my husband for a while. And while D had been visiting his relatives for Thanksgiving, I had decided I was going to get EVERYTHING in writing. Such as:
D,
My goal is to ensure that you and I are on exactly the same page with regard to matters we have discussed on the phone. Therefore I would like you to respond to this email with your own written response, for purposes of documentation.
1. Sally A. Smith will not be present during any time you and Little One are going to have together, until such time that you and I mutually agree to change this arrangement if necessary and appropriate.
2. We will carefully work together on the parenting plan to ensure that we create something the court will accept, particularly with respect to your substance abuse history and DUI/assault charges. My intention is to ensure that, while the court may consider those as safety concerns, we construct a plan which responsibly addresses both your past, and contingencies with respect to these issues going forward. I appreciate your offer to continue AA and have a record of your attendance, etc.; that may be one good option. I commit to working with you to construct this plan.
3. I will continue to pack your remaining items, including clothing, shoes/shoe racks, toys, and posters, in boxes, with the exception of the items hanging in Little One's closet, which I will leave on the hangers. (Which you can keep, of course.)
4. I will also give you the coffee table in the living room.
5. I believe that you have every intention of keeping Little One safe and maintaining a close relationship with her. Insofar as this is in Little One’s best interest, I will do what I can to help you make that happen.
His response had been, "That all sounds fine." He then went on to clarify what qualified as "substance abuse" and give me a lesson in alcoholism recovery. I won't bore you with it. (I just read it again and my eyes glaze over every time.)
You may notice that the #1 statement, that Sally would steer clear of Little One, wasn't even addressed outright. This was because I had already secured his verbal commitment on this one during a phone conversation. This was also because it wasn't the most important part of the email to him - his drinking/substance abuse was.
Back to the legal research. What it indicated was that I would indeed be able to use emails, such as the exchange above, as a binding contract, should the need arise. In other words, I could threaten to sue him for breach of contract, should he put Sally and Little One together without my knowledge.
That was all I had to make me feel safer in this moment, and so I clung to it. Because I was NOT happy about him going away with her the days before Christmas.
As it turns out, there was someone else who was not entirely happy about it, either: Mr. Anonymous.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
22. Cherry Chapstick Capitulation
During the first week of December, I got to have another one of those "here's how I feel" sessions with D. We had started to get into a rhythm with childcare: I had Little One 100% of the time outside of daycare, except for 3-4 evenings a week when D would take her to his place for a few hours at a time. She never slept anywhere else but home, with me. That was how it needed to be, because I did not trust D at all. It made me crazy that he was alone with her at all, primarily because he had so little prior experience in this area.
I was, in retrospect, rather glad I had no social life to speak of, since this arrangement would not have helped it.
On this particular day, D had discovered, much to his chagrin, that some of his local relatives were not interested in having him come to their house. They did not approve of his behavior, and told him so. His response - no shocker here - was to be shitty to me. This time, however, I called him on it. I pushed him to tell me why he was being short with me, even though I knew. (He didn't know I knew, or perhaps he assumed I was behind the ostracizing. I was not.)
This turned into a loooooong phone call, during which he was also taking care of Little One. (Later, I would find out that she was quietly mashing cherry Chapstick into his carpets while he was on the phone with me in the other room. I love that kid.) I was pissed off and I was no longer going to let him be shitty to me, especially given that he thought it was okay to treat me that way given that it was HIS behavior which had caused these consequences which he didn't find palatable.
During this phone call - which I will not rehash here, because quite frankly, dear reader, you've heard it all before - I accused him of having used Sally to fuck his way out of two relationships. That really got to him. It felt good. Once again, I found myself yelling at him while sitting in my car, in my driveway. Only this time, I was alone, and it was dark, and I had much, much less to fear.
I had been able, once again, to say everything I could possibly think of, and had pretty much done it in a way I can be proud of. No name-calling (except liar, etc. - you know, factually accurate ones), no fighting dirty. I had just said everything that I'd been feeling, all the conversations I'd been having with D in my head for weeks now - all of that, I got to say to him.
All that nasty stuff I had to get out of my system, all the ways in which he done me wrong, I got it out. I told him that I mourned his passing. I felt like the man I had married was dead. Not that he was any sort of prince, but at least I thought I knew who I was divorcing. Turns out that guy didn't really exist, not really. He was a figment of our collective imagination, created by Sally's interaction with him.
I got to clarify that no, Sally was not the reason we were getting a divorce. I got to explain that she was the reason we were getting a divorce at that moment, and the reason that the divorce was now the way that it was. So there, assholes.
I wish I could say that I made him feel bad. But even though he'd tell you I did hurt him and I did make him feel bad about his behavior, I honestly didn't believe he was the kind of person who would ever really get it. He would never be the kind of guy to really truly get what he'd done, and the depth of how it had impacted me. Nothing I could ever say would get me there.
So now I knew from experience.
A part of me - which diminished quickly, with time - wished at this moment that I hadn't had this conversation with him. But a bigger part of me was so glad to have had the opportunity to get this all out in the open.
When the call was done, and I had once again said everything I could possibly want to say, in the way that I wanted, and had him respond to everything the best possible way that he could, I walked into the house.
And right then, I found myself calling up Athena, sobbing to her, telling her I didn't feel any better.
When D brought Little One home, maybe a half hour later, he didn't get out of his car. It was not an offensive he was mounting; rather, I took that as a sign that he understood how little I wanted to see him.
When I had put Little One to bed, and returned downstairs, I realized I felt different.
I was looking around the house, alone there, and suddenly, it doesn't feel so violated or violating for me to be there.
Maybe, I thought, just maybe, one day, I'll be able to walk into that office again, where he and Sally did whatever. Maybe.
Or maybe I'll just sell the fucking house.
As with all emotional states around D, this feeling of hope was short-lived. Because the next day, he informed me about a trip he was going to be taking right before Christmas. With Mrs. Bellydancer. Ah, but this did not go well.
I was, in retrospect, rather glad I had no social life to speak of, since this arrangement would not have helped it.
On this particular day, D had discovered, much to his chagrin, that some of his local relatives were not interested in having him come to their house. They did not approve of his behavior, and told him so. His response - no shocker here - was to be shitty to me. This time, however, I called him on it. I pushed him to tell me why he was being short with me, even though I knew. (He didn't know I knew, or perhaps he assumed I was behind the ostracizing. I was not.)
This turned into a loooooong phone call, during which he was also taking care of Little One. (Later, I would find out that she was quietly mashing cherry Chapstick into his carpets while he was on the phone with me in the other room. I love that kid.) I was pissed off and I was no longer going to let him be shitty to me, especially given that he thought it was okay to treat me that way given that it was HIS behavior which had caused these consequences which he didn't find palatable.
During this phone call - which I will not rehash here, because quite frankly, dear reader, you've heard it all before - I accused him of having used Sally to fuck his way out of two relationships. That really got to him. It felt good. Once again, I found myself yelling at him while sitting in my car, in my driveway. Only this time, I was alone, and it was dark, and I had much, much less to fear.
I had been able, once again, to say everything I could possibly think of, and had pretty much done it in a way I can be proud of. No name-calling (except liar, etc. - you know, factually accurate ones), no fighting dirty. I had just said everything that I'd been feeling, all the conversations I'd been having with D in my head for weeks now - all of that, I got to say to him.
All that nasty stuff I had to get out of my system, all the ways in which he done me wrong, I got it out. I told him that I mourned his passing. I felt like the man I had married was dead. Not that he was any sort of prince, but at least I thought I knew who I was divorcing. Turns out that guy didn't really exist, not really. He was a figment of our collective imagination, created by Sally's interaction with him.
I got to clarify that no, Sally was not the reason we were getting a divorce. I got to explain that she was the reason we were getting a divorce at that moment, and the reason that the divorce was now the way that it was. So there, assholes.
I wish I could say that I made him feel bad. But even though he'd tell you I did hurt him and I did make him feel bad about his behavior, I honestly didn't believe he was the kind of person who would ever really get it. He would never be the kind of guy to really truly get what he'd done, and the depth of how it had impacted me. Nothing I could ever say would get me there.
So now I knew from experience.
A part of me - which diminished quickly, with time - wished at this moment that I hadn't had this conversation with him. But a bigger part of me was so glad to have had the opportunity to get this all out in the open.
When the call was done, and I had once again said everything I could possibly want to say, in the way that I wanted, and had him respond to everything the best possible way that he could, I walked into the house.
And right then, I found myself calling up Athena, sobbing to her, telling her I didn't feel any better.
When D brought Little One home, maybe a half hour later, he didn't get out of his car. It was not an offensive he was mounting; rather, I took that as a sign that he understood how little I wanted to see him.
When I had put Little One to bed, and returned downstairs, I realized I felt different.
I was looking around the house, alone there, and suddenly, it doesn't feel so violated or violating for me to be there.
Maybe, I thought, just maybe, one day, I'll be able to walk into that office again, where he and Sally did whatever. Maybe.
Or maybe I'll just sell the fucking house.
As with all emotional states around D, this feeling of hope was short-lived. Because the next day, he informed me about a trip he was going to be taking right before Christmas. With Mrs. Bellydancer. Ah, but this did not go well.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
21. Writing Unsendable Letters
I had tried. Honestly, I had. I had really, really tried to elevate myself above the negative, to be grateful, to rise above, so to speak. I really had.
But I was in an absolute rage. Seething with bitterness and longing for vengeance. When Little One was around, I felt calmer, more at ease - I looked at her, and I knew why things were already on a good path, a better one for her and for me. I knew that she wouldn't have to grow up watching her mother mistreated by her father. And even among all that suffocating, anxious anger, I used that as my anchor: what had happened was right for her, and therefore, was right for me.
What I did not understand - to this day - was how a woman, namely Sally Bellydancer, could participate in deceiving another woman. Was she dumb? Was she mean? She'd seemed perfectly nice when I had met her. And yet, she had not only married a man who saw fit to reach out and piss off her boyfriend's wife via anonymous email (allegedly), but she had helped that boyfriend to completely dupe his wife into thinking that he was a decent guy, dedicated to family and not to getting laid by a tattoo-covered bellydancer.
So the jury was out. But I wrote her a letter - you know, one of those letters that you never send, you just feel better writing it:
Dear Sally,
You stupid, stupid bitch.
What kind of mother does this to another mother?
What kind of woman does this to another woman?
How could you be so complicit in his lies, his deceptions?
Are you so desperate for affection that you would accept a sub-par human being like D?
Do you understand the fact that he "seems" to know himself so well only gives him license to behave however he wants?
Do you realize you don't know him at all, because he himself has no idea who he really is?
Do you understand the damage YOU have caused to my relationship with him?
Did you really think it was appropriate to come into our house and have intimate relations with him?
How could you participate in the breakup of a family when that family so needed to stick together through a tough time?
How could you do this to a child, to a child's mother?
I hope you suffer and hurt and that, when you wake up to who D is, it's too late for you to leave. I hope you drown in him.
You fucking whore.
Love,
Penelope
So. Yeah, so. I was angry. But it doesn't stop there: I was still angry at D, too, and itching to tell him all about it. For now, precariously perched in that "jolly" time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was content to write him a "never-to-be-sent" letter, too:
Dear D,
I don't care anymore.
There, I said it. I can't and won't care anymore about how you live your life and who you live it with.
I won't try to fix you anymore.
I won't try to prove to you that I'm right.
I only need you to be a good dad. I need and want nothing else from you.
I don't care who you're with or what you're doing with them.
I don't care if you're sick or if you're well - as long as, when you're sick, you're not with Little One. And by sick I mean in every way, shape or form.
I will no longer invest my emotional energy in whether you are unhappy or happy or feeling guilty or sad or angry. I will no longer have my actions be dictated by your anger.
I will no longer harbor any illusions about you and who you really are: You are your mother's son.
I will no longer try to show you that I'm better than you thought I was. You do not deserve the attention.
I won't engage in conversations with you that have nothing to do with Little One or the divorce. I will also try to apply this rule to the many conversations I have with you in my head.
I will treat you civilly and decently, but I will not go out of my way to make you comfortable or happy.
I will no longer hold your happiness above mine.
I will, however, and probably for a long time, wish you complete and utter suffering in your new relationship and throughout the rest of your life. Though someday I hope to be able to retract this statement.
You are worthless. You are scum. You never deserved me and you never will. I will watch you like a hawk with regards to Little One, her safety, and her happiness. And if you are not precisely synced up on those items I will come down on you with the hammer of the law. Repeatedly and with great glee.
Do not piss me off again, joker. You don't know who you're dealing with.
Very sincerely,
Your soon-to-be-ex-wife-and-couldn't-be-happier-about-it,
Penelope
But I was in an absolute rage. Seething with bitterness and longing for vengeance. When Little One was around, I felt calmer, more at ease - I looked at her, and I knew why things were already on a good path, a better one for her and for me. I knew that she wouldn't have to grow up watching her mother mistreated by her father. And even among all that suffocating, anxious anger, I used that as my anchor: what had happened was right for her, and therefore, was right for me.
What I did not understand - to this day - was how a woman, namely Sally Bellydancer, could participate in deceiving another woman. Was she dumb? Was she mean? She'd seemed perfectly nice when I had met her. And yet, she had not only married a man who saw fit to reach out and piss off her boyfriend's wife via anonymous email (allegedly), but she had helped that boyfriend to completely dupe his wife into thinking that he was a decent guy, dedicated to family and not to getting laid by a tattoo-covered bellydancer.
So the jury was out. But I wrote her a letter - you know, one of those letters that you never send, you just feel better writing it:
Dear Sally,
You stupid, stupid bitch.
What kind of mother does this to another mother?
What kind of woman does this to another woman?
How could you be so complicit in his lies, his deceptions?
Are you so desperate for affection that you would accept a sub-par human being like D?
Do you understand the fact that he "seems" to know himself so well only gives him license to behave however he wants?
Do you realize you don't know him at all, because he himself has no idea who he really is?
Do you understand the damage YOU have caused to my relationship with him?
Did you really think it was appropriate to come into our house and have intimate relations with him?
How could you participate in the breakup of a family when that family so needed to stick together through a tough time?
How could you do this to a child, to a child's mother?
I hope you suffer and hurt and that, when you wake up to who D is, it's too late for you to leave. I hope you drown in him.
You fucking whore.
Love,
Penelope
So. Yeah, so. I was angry. But it doesn't stop there: I was still angry at D, too, and itching to tell him all about it. For now, precariously perched in that "jolly" time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was content to write him a "never-to-be-sent" letter, too:
Dear D,
I don't care anymore.
There, I said it. I can't and won't care anymore about how you live your life and who you live it with.
I won't try to fix you anymore.
I won't try to prove to you that I'm right.
I only need you to be a good dad. I need and want nothing else from you.
I don't care who you're with or what you're doing with them.
I don't care if you're sick or if you're well - as long as, when you're sick, you're not with Little One. And by sick I mean in every way, shape or form.
I will no longer invest my emotional energy in whether you are unhappy or happy or feeling guilty or sad or angry. I will no longer have my actions be dictated by your anger.
I will no longer harbor any illusions about you and who you really are: You are your mother's son.
I will no longer try to show you that I'm better than you thought I was. You do not deserve the attention.
I won't engage in conversations with you that have nothing to do with Little One or the divorce. I will also try to apply this rule to the many conversations I have with you in my head.
I will treat you civilly and decently, but I will not go out of my way to make you comfortable or happy.
I will no longer hold your happiness above mine.
I will, however, and probably for a long time, wish you complete and utter suffering in your new relationship and throughout the rest of your life. Though someday I hope to be able to retract this statement.
You are worthless. You are scum. You never deserved me and you never will. I will watch you like a hawk with regards to Little One, her safety, and her happiness. And if you are not precisely synced up on those items I will come down on you with the hammer of the law. Repeatedly and with great glee.
Do not piss me off again, joker. You don't know who you're dealing with.
Very sincerely,
Your soon-to-be-ex-wife-and-couldn't-be-happier-about-it,
Penelope
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
20. Next Exit: Douchebag Dickhead Parking
Ugh, Thanksgiving during a divorce. Only to be topped by Christmas during a divorce. I soothed myself by remembering that D was with his not-entirely-approving-of-his-life-choices family and not with his bellydancer; that I was NOT with D; and that I would only ever have one "during-divorce Thanksgiving" to contend with.
Fortunately, Little One was thriving. Deprived only of her parents' unhappiness and fighting, she was able to have each of us to her very own self for hours at a time. This was a new phenomenon, as D had spent nearly no, one-on-one alone time with her at this point in her life. And I hadn't pushed it, simply because I didn't trust him to be a) sober and b) an actual parent.
Sidebar. There was this one time, when Little One was about 4 months old, and I was driving our SUV. D was in the back seat with Little One, and we decided to stop at a grocery store on our way home. It was about 75 degrees and the sun was shining. I left the keys in the car, notated this, and went inside. Approximately 6 minutes later, I returned to the car to find Little One screaming, and D livid. Apoplectic. What had happened, I asked? "She got hot!" he yelled back, freaking out. So I asked the obvious question: "Why didn't you open the car door?" I was told to shut up and "just fucking drive."
It was times like this that made me pessimistic about D's ability to parent independently.
Back to Thanksgiving. So I had conjured up as much gratitude as I could, and I was still feeling like I was carrying a very large weight. I hadn't seen D in about 6 days, other than a couple of iChat episodes which were comical, particularly with his brothers and extended family waving to me uncomfortably in the background. "Hi, Penelope!" they'd say. What I heard: "We're really sorry D is such a douchebag dickhead!"
I waved back emphatically.
For the actual Thanksgiving dinner, I'd gone to D's cousin's house, the cousin whose substantial presence in the house during the Talking Points talk had made me feel like I was relatively safe from D hurting me. I felt safe with this cousin, and his amazing wife and kids. They wanted what was best for Little One, and they understood that taking care of me was a big part of taking care of her. They also knew all the details of D's infidelities, and didn't seem the least surprised when I first told them we were divorcing.
Huh.
In any case, this Thanksgiving, I was most grateful for having them to help me weather this tremendous storm. Whatever I needed, they were there. It was one of the two things in all this miserableness that I completely cherished, the other one being Little One.
They also understood that D was, emotionally speaking, a few cards short of a full deck, a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and all those other wonderful ways of saying "not 100% there."
To wit: During the last of those iChat conversations, he made sure to point out, in front of his family, that he had parked at the airport, so I wouldn't have to come pick him up or anything.
Yes, really. I know, I know.
I politely said, not wanting to embarrass him, "Good."
"Bye, Penelope!" D's family waved in the background. What I heard: "We're really, really, really sorry D is such a douchebag dickhead!"
Fortunately, Little One was thriving. Deprived only of her parents' unhappiness and fighting, she was able to have each of us to her very own self for hours at a time. This was a new phenomenon, as D had spent nearly no, one-on-one alone time with her at this point in her life. And I hadn't pushed it, simply because I didn't trust him to be a) sober and b) an actual parent.
Sidebar. There was this one time, when Little One was about 4 months old, and I was driving our SUV. D was in the back seat with Little One, and we decided to stop at a grocery store on our way home. It was about 75 degrees and the sun was shining. I left the keys in the car, notated this, and went inside. Approximately 6 minutes later, I returned to the car to find Little One screaming, and D livid. Apoplectic. What had happened, I asked? "She got hot!" he yelled back, freaking out. So I asked the obvious question: "Why didn't you open the car door?" I was told to shut up and "just fucking drive."
It was times like this that made me pessimistic about D's ability to parent independently.
Back to Thanksgiving. So I had conjured up as much gratitude as I could, and I was still feeling like I was carrying a very large weight. I hadn't seen D in about 6 days, other than a couple of iChat episodes which were comical, particularly with his brothers and extended family waving to me uncomfortably in the background. "Hi, Penelope!" they'd say. What I heard: "We're really sorry D is such a douchebag dickhead!"
I waved back emphatically.
For the actual Thanksgiving dinner, I'd gone to D's cousin's house, the cousin whose substantial presence in the house during the Talking Points talk had made me feel like I was relatively safe from D hurting me. I felt safe with this cousin, and his amazing wife and kids. They wanted what was best for Little One, and they understood that taking care of me was a big part of taking care of her. They also knew all the details of D's infidelities, and didn't seem the least surprised when I first told them we were divorcing.
Huh.
In any case, this Thanksgiving, I was most grateful for having them to help me weather this tremendous storm. Whatever I needed, they were there. It was one of the two things in all this miserableness that I completely cherished, the other one being Little One.
They also understood that D was, emotionally speaking, a few cards short of a full deck, a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and all those other wonderful ways of saying "not 100% there."
To wit: During the last of those iChat conversations, he made sure to point out, in front of his family, that he had parked at the airport, so I wouldn't have to come pick him up or anything.
Yes, really. I know, I know.
I politely said, not wanting to embarrass him, "Good."
"Bye, Penelope!" D's family waved in the background. What I heard: "We're really, really, really sorry D is such a douchebag dickhead!"
Saturday, August 14, 2010
19. There's something good in here. Now where did I put it...
I was struggling for gratitude. Here it was, my first holiday season without my husband in nearly eight years. And I wasn't sure how I felt about that. One the one hand, it seemed awfully freeing. On the other, it was hopelessly tragic.
Maybe it was because Thanksgiving was right around the corner, but I was trying really hard to be grateful for what I had, in the midst of the shock and awe campaign my husband had launched.
I'm a pretty sunny person, most often. I haven't committed any major crimes or sins. I have tried to be good to people, I've tried to be a positive influence on those around me. So it felt all the more incongruous that all of this bullshit had piled up around me.
So I sat down and, through my tears, wrote up a list. I tried to conjure up everything that I could that I was grateful for, and I share it with you now.
I am grateful that I now know the truth.
I am grateful that new beginnings are just around the corner.
I am grateful that my daughter is healthy, happy, loving, and the absolute center of my crazy universe.
I’m grateful for the moments of quietude.
I’m grateful for the moments of toddler craziness.
I’m grateful that I have a nice home and that I’ll be able to continue to provide a safe environment for my daughter.
I’m grateful that I am who I am.
I’m grateful that I have so, so many people in my life who care about me, and I’m grateful to finally know that they are there.
I’m grateful to be rediscovering my self-worth.
I’m grateful that I let myself cry every once in a while, but that I never do it in front of my baby.
I’m grateful for my Roomba.
I’m grateful to be leaving an unhealthy relationship.
I’m grateful that I have my health, even if I could do better to take care of myself.
I’m grateful for my job.
I’m grateful that I want for nothing.
I’m grateful that my parents raised me with a solid sense of propriety, morality, and integrity.
I’m grateful that my daughter will likely spend the majority of the next fifteen and a half years with me.
I’m grateful that I have no plans to get into a relationship with someone else for a long time.
I’m grateful that I’m okay being single for a while.
I’m grateful for my family.
I’m grateful for all my cousins and aunts and uncles and Grandpop.
I’m grateful that my grandmother didn’t have to see me go through this.
Maybe it was because Thanksgiving was right around the corner, but I was trying really hard to be grateful for what I had, in the midst of the shock and awe campaign my husband had launched.
I'm a pretty sunny person, most often. I haven't committed any major crimes or sins. I have tried to be good to people, I've tried to be a positive influence on those around me. So it felt all the more incongruous that all of this bullshit had piled up around me.
So I sat down and, through my tears, wrote up a list. I tried to conjure up everything that I could that I was grateful for, and I share it with you now.
I am grateful that I now know the truth.
I am grateful that new beginnings are just around the corner.
I am grateful that my daughter is healthy, happy, loving, and the absolute center of my crazy universe.
I’m grateful for the moments of quietude.
I’m grateful for the moments of toddler craziness.
I’m grateful that I have a nice home and that I’ll be able to continue to provide a safe environment for my daughter.
I’m grateful that I am who I am.
I’m grateful that I have so, so many people in my life who care about me, and I’m grateful to finally know that they are there.
I’m grateful to be rediscovering my self-worth.
I’m grateful that I let myself cry every once in a while, but that I never do it in front of my baby.
I’m grateful for my Roomba.
I’m grateful to be leaving an unhealthy relationship.
I’m grateful that I have my health, even if I could do better to take care of myself.
I’m grateful for my job.
I’m grateful that I want for nothing.
I’m grateful that my parents raised me with a solid sense of propriety, morality, and integrity.
I’m grateful that my daughter will likely spend the majority of the next fifteen and a half years with me.
I’m grateful that I have no plans to get into a relationship with someone else for a long time.
I’m grateful that I’m okay being single for a while.
I’m grateful for my family.
I’m grateful for all my cousins and aunts and uncles and Grandpop.
I’m grateful that my grandmother didn’t have to see me go through this.
18. Wait - the bellydancer who what now?
Two days after the Talking Points talk, D left for that trip I mentioned. He was thousands of miles away, and it was a great time to have some distance between the two of us. It also meant that I didn't have to see him for nearly a week - that was, in itself, extremely comforting.
As I am wont to do, I called my friend Gaia, who was one half of a couple who'd introduced D and I nearly 10 years before. Her boyfriend, Ted, had been friends with D for years. Gaia and D didn't get along very well; she made him anxious, and he made her uncomfortable. But she and Ted knew him like no one else, so I'd been leaning on Gaia a lot recently, asking for her uniquely spiritual perspective on things.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I called Gaia during work on my cellphone, so I could pace. I was having a particularly rotten day, thinking about everything that had transpired, feeling anxious about how the hell things were going to work out in the long run. Ultimately, I couldn't escape that feeling that Little One was going to suffer because her father was such a turd. That was the last thing I wanted, so I was basically coming to terms with what it was going to mean to have to deal with said turd and make him seem like the father Little One deserved, not the father he actually had been, and was.
So in speaking to Gaia, she mentioned out loud about "the bellydancer." And I heard Ted in the background say something (I couldn't make it out). And then Gaia said, "Hey, you said this bellydancer's name was Sally, right?" And I said yes. And she said, "Ted, was that her? Sally?" and I heard him say "Yeah, that was her, no doubt about it." Her what?
Gaia paused a moment before speaking. "So - you knew that D and Sally knew each other before, right?"
"Yes," I said. "She was a friend of his when he went to college."
"Did you know that they were involved back then?" She was referring to the mid-90s.
I paused. Had I known? I thought back. Nope, definitely not. I can pretty much guarantee that this was knowledge that was new to me.
"No," I said quietly.
I heard Ted say something in the background. Gaia said to me, "Yeah, so - I don't know if this is going to make you feel better or worse, but it was D's involvement with Sally that caused April to break it off with him. There was some sort of menage-a-trois thing going on with them, only April didn't want Sally in it. D got involved with Sally anyway, so April broke off the engagement. And she never spoke to him again." Gaia paused. "I'm sorry."
I got that rush of anxiety-ridden adrenaline again, the one that had become so familiar to me. You might call it batshit-crazy-anger.
"Gaia," I said, as calmly as possible, "Thank you for telling me this."
"I'm sorry," she repeated.
"No, really - it's okay," I said. "I didn't know, but given that D has now used Sally to end the two most committed relationships he's ever had, I think this puts things into a bit more context." I was gearing up. "You know what, Gaia?" I said. "I will call you back later - I really think I need to talk to D right now." The pacing had become more frenetic. I'm sure I looked like a lunatic at this moment, walking in circles around the lobby of my big office building. I thanked Gaia again and dialed D's number.
"Hello?" D said.
"D, how are you," I said flatly.
"Good," he said, somewhat hesitantly.
"Great," I shot back. "Hey, I've got a quick question for you."
"Sure, what?"
"Were you involved with Sally back in the mid-90s, and was your involvement with her what caused April to break off your engagement?"
He paused. "Well, yeah, but - "
"That's all I needed to know," I said, and hung up.
Hey, I'm not proud of it. But I knew, if asked a direct question, using the element of surprise, D would manage to tell me the truth. And he did, so bully for him.
It was approximately 4 minutes later that I saw that he was calling me back. I had already traveled up the elevator to my floor, and ducked into a nearby empty conference room.
"What?" I answered the phone.
He sighed, forcefully. "You - what was - what the hell - why - ?"
"D, did it ever occur to you that this was something you should tell me?"
"I did tell you!" I'm sorry, you imbecile, but this is the kind of thing a woman never forgets.
"NO, D, you did NOT tell me. You want to know why I know this? Because if I had known that you were doing 'yard work' for someone that you had FUCKED previously? I can tell you that things would have gone down VERY differently."
He was livid, I could tell, but also knew he was wrong. "I thought I had told you," he said tightly.
"No, you hadn't, D."
"I - I don't know, I really thought - "
"You know what, D? You spend the rest of your trip thinking of anything else that I should know, and we can talk when you get home. Kay?"
"I - look, Penelope, I'm sorry, I really don't know why I didn't tell you."
"Yes, you do know," I said. "You know exactly why. Don't give me that bullshit. Tell your family hi from me. Have a nice trip."
I hung up.
As I am wont to do, I called my friend Gaia, who was one half of a couple who'd introduced D and I nearly 10 years before. Her boyfriend, Ted, had been friends with D for years. Gaia and D didn't get along very well; she made him anxious, and he made her uncomfortable. But she and Ted knew him like no one else, so I'd been leaning on Gaia a lot recently, asking for her uniquely spiritual perspective on things.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I called Gaia during work on my cellphone, so I could pace. I was having a particularly rotten day, thinking about everything that had transpired, feeling anxious about how the hell things were going to work out in the long run. Ultimately, I couldn't escape that feeling that Little One was going to suffer because her father was such a turd. That was the last thing I wanted, so I was basically coming to terms with what it was going to mean to have to deal with said turd and make him seem like the father Little One deserved, not the father he actually had been, and was.
So in speaking to Gaia, she mentioned out loud about "the bellydancer." And I heard Ted in the background say something (I couldn't make it out). And then Gaia said, "Hey, you said this bellydancer's name was Sally, right?" And I said yes. And she said, "Ted, was that her? Sally?" and I heard him say "Yeah, that was her, no doubt about it." Her what?
Gaia paused a moment before speaking. "So - you knew that D and Sally knew each other before, right?"
"Yes," I said. "She was a friend of his when he went to college."
"Did you know that they were involved back then?" She was referring to the mid-90s.
I paused. Had I known? I thought back. Nope, definitely not. I can pretty much guarantee that this was knowledge that was new to me.
"No," I said quietly.
I heard Ted say something in the background. Gaia said to me, "Yeah, so - I don't know if this is going to make you feel better or worse, but it was D's involvement with Sally that caused April to break it off with him. There was some sort of menage-a-trois thing going on with them, only April didn't want Sally in it. D got involved with Sally anyway, so April broke off the engagement. And she never spoke to him again." Gaia paused. "I'm sorry."
I got that rush of anxiety-ridden adrenaline again, the one that had become so familiar to me. You might call it batshit-crazy-anger.
"Gaia," I said, as calmly as possible, "Thank you for telling me this."
"I'm sorry," she repeated.
"No, really - it's okay," I said. "I didn't know, but given that D has now used Sally to end the two most committed relationships he's ever had, I think this puts things into a bit more context." I was gearing up. "You know what, Gaia?" I said. "I will call you back later - I really think I need to talk to D right now." The pacing had become more frenetic. I'm sure I looked like a lunatic at this moment, walking in circles around the lobby of my big office building. I thanked Gaia again and dialed D's number.
"Hello?" D said.
"D, how are you," I said flatly.
"Good," he said, somewhat hesitantly.
"Great," I shot back. "Hey, I've got a quick question for you."
"Sure, what?"
"Were you involved with Sally back in the mid-90s, and was your involvement with her what caused April to break off your engagement?"
He paused. "Well, yeah, but - "
"That's all I needed to know," I said, and hung up.
Hey, I'm not proud of it. But I knew, if asked a direct question, using the element of surprise, D would manage to tell me the truth. And he did, so bully for him.
It was approximately 4 minutes later that I saw that he was calling me back. I had already traveled up the elevator to my floor, and ducked into a nearby empty conference room.
"What?" I answered the phone.
He sighed, forcefully. "You - what was - what the hell - why - ?"
"D, did it ever occur to you that this was something you should tell me?"
"I did tell you!" I'm sorry, you imbecile, but this is the kind of thing a woman never forgets.
"NO, D, you did NOT tell me. You want to know why I know this? Because if I had known that you were doing 'yard work' for someone that you had FUCKED previously? I can tell you that things would have gone down VERY differently."
He was livid, I could tell, but also knew he was wrong. "I thought I had told you," he said tightly.
"No, you hadn't, D."
"I - I don't know, I really thought - "
"You know what, D? You spend the rest of your trip thinking of anything else that I should know, and we can talk when you get home. Kay?"
"I - look, Penelope, I'm sorry, I really don't know why I didn't tell you."
"Yes, you do know," I said. "You know exactly why. Don't give me that bullshit. Tell your family hi from me. Have a nice trip."
I hung up.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
17. J'accuse! Now what?
I couldn't begin to imagine what D thought as he drove away from his former home that night, after being called out for lying. J'accuse! I had exclaimed, and he could do nothing but acquiesce.
I had said everything I wanted to say. Every dress rehearsal in my head, every line that I wanted to deliver, everything that I wanted to get across. I had absolutely no "I wish I had said THAT instead!" moments after the fact.
But here's the lesson I learned, which I would end up learning again and again until I could recite it in my sleep. I had gotten my message across, and I did not feel one bit better.
You can say everything you want to say. Everything you rehearsed, those "perfect lines" that you wish you had said in the moment. Well, I have to tell you: I said them all, every last one of them. And I couldn't have asked for a better reception on D's end.
But nothing changed. Having that chance, to say so much, did not change one damn thing. Everything that had happened, had still happened. It didn't change the past, it didn't change how I found out about it, and it didn't change who D was or how hurt I felt.
What I found was that getting all of that said was more of a logistical victory. It set the stage for the coming months, where I was going to have to "negotiate" with my own husband for control of our finances, our child's welfare, our house, and our divorce. I was not feeling optimistic about husband-wrangling.
At least I had now tipped the balance of power in my favor. This was a new feeling, this sense of being at least equal with D and not being so afraid of him anymore. I hated him, but mostly I hated myself for letting him control me. That would become a common theme in the coming months.
But then I went to the state-mandated parenting seminar the next day, and realized I was going to have to deal with this prick for the rest of my life, in some way or another. I entered that seminar knowing full well that I was going to have to co-parent with this man. What I left with was the lingering feeling that I was going to hate this long haul. I actually used the analogy - and please forgive me, as I look back on this now and cringe - but back then I would tell people that D was like a tumor that I couldn't get removed, so having to deal with him was going to be like having chemo for the next 15 years. Or, in another desperate analogy, I told people I felt like I was going to prison for 15 years.
Either way, you see the desperation and the utter, simple despair that I felt. I don't feel that way now, which mystifies me somewhat, that I feel better now than I did. (It's that whole "time heals all wounds" thing that sucks in its truth.)
Ah, but there is more drama ahead. Because this utterly ridiculous divorce process would have a break, in the form of D going to visit his relatives in the South for a week, over Thanksgiving.
It was not exactly the break you'd think it would be.
I had said everything I wanted to say. Every dress rehearsal in my head, every line that I wanted to deliver, everything that I wanted to get across. I had absolutely no "I wish I had said THAT instead!" moments after the fact.
But here's the lesson I learned, which I would end up learning again and again until I could recite it in my sleep. I had gotten my message across, and I did not feel one bit better.
You can say everything you want to say. Everything you rehearsed, those "perfect lines" that you wish you had said in the moment. Well, I have to tell you: I said them all, every last one of them. And I couldn't have asked for a better reception on D's end.
But nothing changed. Having that chance, to say so much, did not change one damn thing. Everything that had happened, had still happened. It didn't change the past, it didn't change how I found out about it, and it didn't change who D was or how hurt I felt.
What I found was that getting all of that said was more of a logistical victory. It set the stage for the coming months, where I was going to have to "negotiate" with my own husband for control of our finances, our child's welfare, our house, and our divorce. I was not feeling optimistic about husband-wrangling.
At least I had now tipped the balance of power in my favor. This was a new feeling, this sense of being at least equal with D and not being so afraid of him anymore. I hated him, but mostly I hated myself for letting him control me. That would become a common theme in the coming months.
But then I went to the state-mandated parenting seminar the next day, and realized I was going to have to deal with this prick for the rest of my life, in some way or another. I entered that seminar knowing full well that I was going to have to co-parent with this man. What I left with was the lingering feeling that I was going to hate this long haul. I actually used the analogy - and please forgive me, as I look back on this now and cringe - but back then I would tell people that D was like a tumor that I couldn't get removed, so having to deal with him was going to be like having chemo for the next 15 years. Or, in another desperate analogy, I told people I felt like I was going to prison for 15 years.
Either way, you see the desperation and the utter, simple despair that I felt. I don't feel that way now, which mystifies me somewhat, that I feel better now than I did. (It's that whole "time heals all wounds" thing that sucks in its truth.)
Ah, but there is more drama ahead. Because this utterly ridiculous divorce process would have a break, in the form of D going to visit his relatives in the South for a week, over Thanksgiving.
It was not exactly the break you'd think it would be.
Monday, August 9, 2010
16. The Talking Points: Part 2
After sitting silently for nearly a minute, I had to get across what my most important points were: my Talking Points.
"I really hoped that we were going to be able to do the kind of relationship that we had agreed upon, but when I needed you to be honest the most, you weren’t. When it meant the most."
D sputtered, "What’s the consequence of – of – I was honest about everything except for that. Since our marriage was over, um -"
"You made a promise, D. You made a promise that you wouldn’t get involved with anyone while you were still living under this roof. You broke the promise, you lied. You lied repeatedly about who you were with, and what you were doing. Your activities are detailed ad nauseum on a daily basis, on this Facebook page."
At this point, D's family member, still upstairs playing with Little One, called me for some motherly advice. I excused myself for about a minute to let him know where to find a diaper. It was a nice opening to enlighten D. Returning to my perch on the couch, I said: "In case you’re wondering why your cousin is here - "
"I’m not."
"Ok. But in case you were, I’d like for you to understand what my motivation was in asking him to come, actually, they offered to come. Having had this put in front of me in the way that it has been, and actually having been able to verify that this person is telling me the truth, 100%, I simply can no longer trust you. And it breaks my heart to say that, because we spent seven and a half years creating a relationship that you’ve just completely killed with a three-month affair."
"When our marriage was done, because I didn’t fully wait until I'd moved out, but all of the inability to accomplish what we promised each other when we got married doesn’t matter anything, um, when it led us to this point, and that I would still want to try and have a relationship with you and see the value and the things I appreciate about you despite there being very little accomplished in seven and a half years. So because of me spending my time with someone who for whatever purpose or whatever I was getting out of it made me feel better about myself, when I hadn’t for that long, or a portion of that time, you’ve chosen that as the trigger, um, and I overlooked much more than that in wanting to try to keep … interactions …"
"What did you overlook?" I asked, as evenly as possible. D cleared his throat, staying silent for a moment. As he’s about to speak, I cut in: "Actually, you know what? It doesn’t really matter."
"You probably don’t, I mean, that’s just one aspect of this, that you, for whatever reasons, my drinking, the yelling, we had talked – "
"Throwing things – " I interjected.
D continued: "We had talked ad nauseum during our marriage about how there was a lot that was very easily pointed at, about my behavior. But – "
Whoa, buddy. "Let’s be clear. Our marriage did not cause your affair. Your choices caused you to enter into a relationship with this woman and to lie to me about it, and to go to great duplicitous efforts to cover it up."
"Once our marriage was over." That's right, folks: he's going to justify!
Sigh. "Once our marriage was over, and we were trying to get to a point where we could actually have a civil friendship going forward. You invalidated all of that with this."
"No I didn’t." And now the 8-year-old comes to the party. "You’re looking for a reason to wipe clean any responsibility you have in seven and a half years – "
"You’re looking for a reason to justify an affair."
"No, I’m not." Yeah, I'm not kidding. He really did say that.
"You’re really gonna tell me this relationship didn’t start before we decided to divorce? You’re going to tell me that this relationship started after we decided to divorce?"
"Yup." You fucking liar, D. You great, big, fat, liar.
That was what I was thinking, anyway. What I said was, "Okay then. It depends on what you define as “affair” then, doesn’t it."
"Yeah, I suppose it does." I was beginning to have flashbacks to preschool at this point.
"The point of the matter is – I don’t care. I don’t care how we got to this point. The point is that you lied to me repeatedly. I no longer trust you. That is going to inform every decision that I make from here on out and you need to know that. I don’t care how we got here. It’s completely moot." Talking Points FTW!
"No, you should have cared in the first place." Come ON, D.
I continued: "It’s a completely moot point. If you cared too, you would have stopped drinking a long time ago, you would have stopped shoving me, sober or drunk. You would have stopped throwing beer bottles across the room – "
D was actually hurt. "I only did that once!"
"You’re right, because that makes it better, that it was only one time." I looked at him, squarely, not letting him off the hook. "I’m not going to rehash our marriage, D."
"Yeah, well, I could see where you wouldn’t want to beat it, um, you don’t really like looking at anything that might suggest that there was anything that you could have done and that it wasn’t just me."
"So I'll ask you this, D: You started drinking again yet?"
"What do you think?"
"I don’t know," I continued innocently, "what I saw on that Facebook page makes me wonder. There are a couple of things on there that are references to you drinking. Absinthe? I mean, I know you’re eating a lot of pie, but…" (OK, folks, I could not resist a barb there. I was trying really, really hard at this moment to be the "bigger person." But I just had to mention the pies that Sally had written so many status updates about, and that D had apparently eaten so many of.)
That got him, too. "You are so full of yourself and self-centered." Niiiice comeback.
I surprised myself when I said, "I don’t give a shit what you think about me anymore" - and it was true.
At this point, I instructed D to leave. He seemed shocked - shocked! - that I would ask him to get out. I asked nicely. I think he was just battening down the hatches for the big brawl - the one that never came, because I just wasn't going to be baited. I had, after all, my Talking Points.
But he didn't leave, not yet. He was reeling now, and needed to lash out. I knew this dance well. "You know, you never did a thing wrong the whole time, or there’s nothing about our marriage or our divorce that is on you."
Sorry, buddy. That is not one of the Talking Points. "Your affair with Sally has NOTHING to do with me. It was your choice. You violated my trust."
"Our marriage was over. You had already turned in divorce papers."
Oh, dude. Dude, dude, dude. Did you really want to look so irretrievably stupid? You need to get your facts straight. I was quick to make sure that he stood corrected. Moreover, I wanted him to know that I had documented EVERYTHING.
"Ohhhh, no. No," I stated. "No, actually. If you want to look at the dates? You might want to be very careful about making that statement. Very careful. Please go get your things."
At that moment, something in this inevitable power play shifted. I think he was, finally, out of his league, and knew it: I had proof, he had nothing but his own anger (and his bellydancer).
"Do you want me to – I mean – how do you want me to arrange getting stuff out of the house?"
I was formal in my response. "We will arrange times for you to be here, and I’ll be here to let you in, and I’ll help you move stuff out. I just want you to be very clear that, regardless of what you think about our marriage, and the fact that you seem to think that your drinking and your yelling were tiny little things in the marriage?"
"I don’t think they were tiny. I have great regrets about that."
"Well, I appreciate that. But you need to know that you are now THE most hurtful person I’ve ever known in my entire life. You have hurt me more than anyone else in my entire life. So I’m going to beat myself up about that for a while. But you’re still my child’s father." Damn it, I thought. "Your actions have put us here. Your behavior – publicly, publicly! – has put us here."
"It’s not public." Aw, for Christ's sake.
"It’s completely public on Facebook, D. 'Sally Smith, In a Relationship with Don Jeremy.'"
Despite his repeated affirmations that Facebook simply isn't public, there was still one thing I needed to know. So I brought it all back to the Talking Points.
(Here we go, down the rabbit hole!) "Has Sally ever been in this house?"
"She’s been here."
"How many times?"
"Once or twice."
Despite the wave of nausea and violent bitterness, I held back. I figured that simple, short questions were the way to go here.
Further down the rabbit hole. "Has she slept here?"
"Yeah. She slept in the office." (This, you might remember, was D's de facto bedroom for a few months before he moved out.)
"Was that her hairband on the sink?"
"I don’t know."
"Has she met Little One?"
"No." He was lying.
"You telling me the truth?"
D relented. Slightly. "Actually, she did. She met her at the park. She didn’t really interact with her. She just saw her." Again, semantics! Please.
"So not only have you been having this relationship, you’ve had Sally in the house, without my knowledge, and you’ve had her meet our little one, without my knowledge."
"She didn’t really meet her. I – you know – " Flummoxed, I think is the word.
"D, I appreciate your honesty when I ask you direct questions. What I would have loved to have you do is sit me down two months ago, and say “look, I know this is going to be really hard to hear. But I’ve got this relationship going with Sally. I know it sucks for you, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m happy.” What would have been wrong with that course of action? Was it more fun to be duplicitous?"
"No. It was – I really felt like I was incredibly disappointed about our marriage being over. I didn’t want to hurt you further." He looked down. "You’ve already told me that you’re not going to believe anything I say or that you don’t care about anything."
I had to draw the distinction. "No, I believe what you’re saying right now. I just don’t trust you going forward."
"I never felt like you really did." D's voice was starting to shake. "I’ve done enough things where I could see you wouldn’t trust me. [pause] [shaky voice] I don’t want to claw, and scratch, and – I don’t want it to matter so much that I need there to be recognition that there were times where I tried to approach you and you didn’t treat me very well or that you didn’t like me very much. Or that you were mean to me. Before any of these things happened."
"Tell you what, D. Here's what I'll do. I will go through the notes that I’ve kept since the beginning of our marriage, and I’ll pull out the key phrases that you’ve used against me. Repeatedly. Did you know that that’s actually called emotional abuse?"
"I’m sure it’s emotional abuse. But you abused me too. I felt – I felt a lot of those things as well. And – you know that I always regretted the things I said, and wished I hadn’t said them, and I told you that I either didn’t feel – I was striking out, and it was wrong."
"Yeah, it was. And ultimately it led me to not trust you anymore and to fight back in ways that I felt comfortable. I’ve spent the last 5 years afraid of you."
Quietly, D said, "I’m sorry." He was always sorry. It was just always after the fact, after the damage had been done. And it never changed anything.
"D, I really, really hope for your sake that Sally already knows who you truly are. I doubt it. Because when I first met you, and fell in love with you, too, you were sober. And you weren’t smoking, you weren’t spiraling. Right now, I don’t see your true self." I wound up for the pitch: fastball down the center. This line, I had rehearsed:
"The fact that she’s 'in a relationship with' a fictitious character is beautifully metaphorical." (That might be my favorite line, like, ever, to come out of my mouth.)
"Why do you feel like I’m not me right now?"
"What about you matches the guy that I’ve known? The guy that you’ve been the last seven and a half years? The fact that you even thought that having her in this house was appropriate? I had already decided that, if you told me that, I’m gonna sell the fucking house."
He looked mildly surprised. "Okay."
I kept going: "Because of YOU, and your choices. And that woman was in MY house. Without my knowledge. How dare you." I paused. He didn't say anything.
"D, you will get what you fairly deserve out of this divorce. Nothing more. My lawyer and I are going through what “community property” is. You will get half. You will have time with Little One. You will, someday, regret this conversation and your behavior. I don’t wish for that day because it’s going to be really hard for you and I still care about you enough to know that."
"Penelope, I already feel a lot of regrets and have been trying -"
"You feel guilt. Guilt, D."
"No, I feel a whole lot of regret. You don’t think these things are addressed in what I’ve been dealing with in AA?"
"No, apparently not. Because you have valued your happiness above anyone else’s, including mine, for the last three months. You knew – you KNEW – specifically – how hurt I was by your relationship with Sally before it even became a full-blown relationship. And yet, you didn’t care. You just kept going."
"I did care! You mean, if you really care, you won’t do something?"
Here's the summary, dipshit. I spoke slowly, carefully, enunciating ev-er-y syll-a-ble. "If you promise not to do it, yes, you don’t do it. If you promise the woman who begs you with tears in her eyes, who loves you, that you will not do something, you DON’T do it if you say, I agree, I won’t do it. It’s that simple. It’s called integrity. It’s called honesty. And it’s called not lying to your wife. I don’t care if we were already on the path to divorce. I’d already put a lot of time and effort into supporting you. Up until recently, I was still your biggest fan. You have got to understand that there are broader consequences here. What you’re giving up here is someone with such a good heart."
I was starting to find the emotion in this for me. It was just so sad, in addition to being utterly ridiculous.
"I know."
It was hard, this part. "It was just never enough for you. I was your number one fan."
"I know, I’m sorry."
"I believed in you, D. I had faith in you. And this is where I find myself? Having other people tell me what you should have told me? YOU. You didn’t even respect me enough." I swallowed hard, mostly to keep my dinner down for what I was about to convey. "D, I’ve read every single post. For legal reasons, I had to, to make sure. I simply don’t deserve to be put in a situation where your behavior impacts me so that I have to get an email from someone. Here – take a look – " I got up and reached over to the table, where I had a print-out of the first email from Mr. Anonymous.
"I don’t want to see it."
Elementary school, here we come! I was tired, I just had to fight back. "I don’t care if you want to see it."
D said, "Well, I’m not gonna look at it just because you want to show it to me."
"Then you can take it home and look at it," I retorted.
"I’m not gonna take it anywhere with me."
"Well, then I’ll leave it here for you."
At this point, the conversation softened a bit. Everything I could say had been said. I had nothing more that I had to get across. Even when, later in the conversation, D told me that Sally and he hadn't done a whole lot of "sleeping" when she was in my house, I kept my cool. (Yeah, he's a really classy douchebag, that D.)
We had talked for nearly an hour and a half when he finally left. He looked worn. I felt alive, emboldened by my bravado in combat. For the first time, I thought that maybe I just might have a really good outcome from all this.
But then D's cousin left, I put Little One to bed, and I sat down on that same couch perch and cried. For a very long time.
"I really hoped that we were going to be able to do the kind of relationship that we had agreed upon, but when I needed you to be honest the most, you weren’t. When it meant the most."
D sputtered, "What’s the consequence of – of – I was honest about everything except for that. Since our marriage was over, um -"
"You made a promise, D. You made a promise that you wouldn’t get involved with anyone while you were still living under this roof. You broke the promise, you lied. You lied repeatedly about who you were with, and what you were doing. Your activities are detailed ad nauseum on a daily basis, on this Facebook page."
At this point, D's family member, still upstairs playing with Little One, called me for some motherly advice. I excused myself for about a minute to let him know where to find a diaper. It was a nice opening to enlighten D. Returning to my perch on the couch, I said: "In case you’re wondering why your cousin is here - "
"I’m not."
"Ok. But in case you were, I’d like for you to understand what my motivation was in asking him to come, actually, they offered to come. Having had this put in front of me in the way that it has been, and actually having been able to verify that this person is telling me the truth, 100%, I simply can no longer trust you. And it breaks my heart to say that, because we spent seven and a half years creating a relationship that you’ve just completely killed with a three-month affair."
"When our marriage was done, because I didn’t fully wait until I'd moved out, but all of the inability to accomplish what we promised each other when we got married doesn’t matter anything, um, when it led us to this point, and that I would still want to try and have a relationship with you and see the value and the things I appreciate about you despite there being very little accomplished in seven and a half years. So because of me spending my time with someone who for whatever purpose or whatever I was getting out of it made me feel better about myself, when I hadn’t for that long, or a portion of that time, you’ve chosen that as the trigger, um, and I overlooked much more than that in wanting to try to keep … interactions …"
"What did you overlook?" I asked, as evenly as possible. D cleared his throat, staying silent for a moment. As he’s about to speak, I cut in: "Actually, you know what? It doesn’t really matter."
"You probably don’t, I mean, that’s just one aspect of this, that you, for whatever reasons, my drinking, the yelling, we had talked – "
"Throwing things – " I interjected.
D continued: "We had talked ad nauseum during our marriage about how there was a lot that was very easily pointed at, about my behavior. But – "
Whoa, buddy. "Let’s be clear. Our marriage did not cause your affair. Your choices caused you to enter into a relationship with this woman and to lie to me about it, and to go to great duplicitous efforts to cover it up."
"Once our marriage was over." That's right, folks: he's going to justify!
Sigh. "Once our marriage was over, and we were trying to get to a point where we could actually have a civil friendship going forward. You invalidated all of that with this."
"No I didn’t." And now the 8-year-old comes to the party. "You’re looking for a reason to wipe clean any responsibility you have in seven and a half years – "
"You’re looking for a reason to justify an affair."
"No, I’m not." Yeah, I'm not kidding. He really did say that.
"You’re really gonna tell me this relationship didn’t start before we decided to divorce? You’re going to tell me that this relationship started after we decided to divorce?"
"Yup." You fucking liar, D. You great, big, fat, liar.
That was what I was thinking, anyway. What I said was, "Okay then. It depends on what you define as “affair” then, doesn’t it."
"Yeah, I suppose it does." I was beginning to have flashbacks to preschool at this point.
"The point of the matter is – I don’t care. I don’t care how we got to this point. The point is that you lied to me repeatedly. I no longer trust you. That is going to inform every decision that I make from here on out and you need to know that. I don’t care how we got here. It’s completely moot." Talking Points FTW!
"No, you should have cared in the first place." Come ON, D.
I continued: "It’s a completely moot point. If you cared too, you would have stopped drinking a long time ago, you would have stopped shoving me, sober or drunk. You would have stopped throwing beer bottles across the room – "
D was actually hurt. "I only did that once!"
"You’re right, because that makes it better, that it was only one time." I looked at him, squarely, not letting him off the hook. "I’m not going to rehash our marriage, D."
"Yeah, well, I could see where you wouldn’t want to beat it, um, you don’t really like looking at anything that might suggest that there was anything that you could have done and that it wasn’t just me."
"So I'll ask you this, D: You started drinking again yet?"
"What do you think?"
"I don’t know," I continued innocently, "what I saw on that Facebook page makes me wonder. There are a couple of things on there that are references to you drinking. Absinthe? I mean, I know you’re eating a lot of pie, but…" (OK, folks, I could not resist a barb there. I was trying really, really hard at this moment to be the "bigger person." But I just had to mention the pies that Sally had written so many status updates about, and that D had apparently eaten so many of.)
That got him, too. "You are so full of yourself and self-centered." Niiiice comeback.
I surprised myself when I said, "I don’t give a shit what you think about me anymore" - and it was true.
At this point, I instructed D to leave. He seemed shocked - shocked! - that I would ask him to get out. I asked nicely. I think he was just battening down the hatches for the big brawl - the one that never came, because I just wasn't going to be baited. I had, after all, my Talking Points.
But he didn't leave, not yet. He was reeling now, and needed to lash out. I knew this dance well. "You know, you never did a thing wrong the whole time, or there’s nothing about our marriage or our divorce that is on you."
Sorry, buddy. That is not one of the Talking Points. "Your affair with Sally has NOTHING to do with me. It was your choice. You violated my trust."
"Our marriage was over. You had already turned in divorce papers."
Oh, dude. Dude, dude, dude. Did you really want to look so irretrievably stupid? You need to get your facts straight. I was quick to make sure that he stood corrected. Moreover, I wanted him to know that I had documented EVERYTHING.
"Ohhhh, no. No," I stated. "No, actually. If you want to look at the dates? You might want to be very careful about making that statement. Very careful. Please go get your things."
At that moment, something in this inevitable power play shifted. I think he was, finally, out of his league, and knew it: I had proof, he had nothing but his own anger (and his bellydancer).
"Do you want me to – I mean – how do you want me to arrange getting stuff out of the house?"
I was formal in my response. "We will arrange times for you to be here, and I’ll be here to let you in, and I’ll help you move stuff out. I just want you to be very clear that, regardless of what you think about our marriage, and the fact that you seem to think that your drinking and your yelling were tiny little things in the marriage?"
"I don’t think they were tiny. I have great regrets about that."
"Well, I appreciate that. But you need to know that you are now THE most hurtful person I’ve ever known in my entire life. You have hurt me more than anyone else in my entire life. So I’m going to beat myself up about that for a while. But you’re still my child’s father." Damn it, I thought. "Your actions have put us here. Your behavior – publicly, publicly! – has put us here."
"It’s not public." Aw, for Christ's sake.
"It’s completely public on Facebook, D. 'Sally Smith, In a Relationship with Don Jeremy.'"
Despite his repeated affirmations that Facebook simply isn't public, there was still one thing I needed to know. So I brought it all back to the Talking Points.
(Here we go, down the rabbit hole!) "Has Sally ever been in this house?"
"She’s been here."
"How many times?"
"Once or twice."
Despite the wave of nausea and violent bitterness, I held back. I figured that simple, short questions were the way to go here.
Further down the rabbit hole. "Has she slept here?"
"Yeah. She slept in the office." (This, you might remember, was D's de facto bedroom for a few months before he moved out.)
"Was that her hairband on the sink?"
"I don’t know."
"Has she met Little One?"
"No." He was lying.
"You telling me the truth?"
D relented. Slightly. "Actually, she did. She met her at the park. She didn’t really interact with her. She just saw her." Again, semantics! Please.
"So not only have you been having this relationship, you’ve had Sally in the house, without my knowledge, and you’ve had her meet our little one, without my knowledge."
"She didn’t really meet her. I – you know – " Flummoxed, I think is the word.
"D, I appreciate your honesty when I ask you direct questions. What I would have loved to have you do is sit me down two months ago, and say “look, I know this is going to be really hard to hear. But I’ve got this relationship going with Sally. I know it sucks for you, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m happy.” What would have been wrong with that course of action? Was it more fun to be duplicitous?"
"No. It was – I really felt like I was incredibly disappointed about our marriage being over. I didn’t want to hurt you further." He looked down. "You’ve already told me that you’re not going to believe anything I say or that you don’t care about anything."
I had to draw the distinction. "No, I believe what you’re saying right now. I just don’t trust you going forward."
"I never felt like you really did." D's voice was starting to shake. "I’ve done enough things where I could see you wouldn’t trust me. [pause] [shaky voice] I don’t want to claw, and scratch, and – I don’t want it to matter so much that I need there to be recognition that there were times where I tried to approach you and you didn’t treat me very well or that you didn’t like me very much. Or that you were mean to me. Before any of these things happened."
"Tell you what, D. Here's what I'll do. I will go through the notes that I’ve kept since the beginning of our marriage, and I’ll pull out the key phrases that you’ve used against me. Repeatedly. Did you know that that’s actually called emotional abuse?"
"I’m sure it’s emotional abuse. But you abused me too. I felt – I felt a lot of those things as well. And – you know that I always regretted the things I said, and wished I hadn’t said them, and I told you that I either didn’t feel – I was striking out, and it was wrong."
"Yeah, it was. And ultimately it led me to not trust you anymore and to fight back in ways that I felt comfortable. I’ve spent the last 5 years afraid of you."
Quietly, D said, "I’m sorry." He was always sorry. It was just always after the fact, after the damage had been done. And it never changed anything.
"D, I really, really hope for your sake that Sally already knows who you truly are. I doubt it. Because when I first met you, and fell in love with you, too, you were sober. And you weren’t smoking, you weren’t spiraling. Right now, I don’t see your true self." I wound up for the pitch: fastball down the center. This line, I had rehearsed:
"The fact that she’s 'in a relationship with' a fictitious character is beautifully metaphorical." (That might be my favorite line, like, ever, to come out of my mouth.)
"Why do you feel like I’m not me right now?"
"What about you matches the guy that I’ve known? The guy that you’ve been the last seven and a half years? The fact that you even thought that having her in this house was appropriate? I had already decided that, if you told me that, I’m gonna sell the fucking house."
He looked mildly surprised. "Okay."
I kept going: "Because of YOU, and your choices. And that woman was in MY house. Without my knowledge. How dare you." I paused. He didn't say anything.
"D, you will get what you fairly deserve out of this divorce. Nothing more. My lawyer and I are going through what “community property” is. You will get half. You will have time with Little One. You will, someday, regret this conversation and your behavior. I don’t wish for that day because it’s going to be really hard for you and I still care about you enough to know that."
"Penelope, I already feel a lot of regrets and have been trying -"
"You feel guilt. Guilt, D."
"No, I feel a whole lot of regret. You don’t think these things are addressed in what I’ve been dealing with in AA?"
"No, apparently not. Because you have valued your happiness above anyone else’s, including mine, for the last three months. You knew – you KNEW – specifically – how hurt I was by your relationship with Sally before it even became a full-blown relationship. And yet, you didn’t care. You just kept going."
"I did care! You mean, if you really care, you won’t do something?"
Here's the summary, dipshit. I spoke slowly, carefully, enunciating ev-er-y syll-a-ble. "If you promise not to do it, yes, you don’t do it. If you promise the woman who begs you with tears in her eyes, who loves you, that you will not do something, you DON’T do it if you say, I agree, I won’t do it. It’s that simple. It’s called integrity. It’s called honesty. And it’s called not lying to your wife. I don’t care if we were already on the path to divorce. I’d already put a lot of time and effort into supporting you. Up until recently, I was still your biggest fan. You have got to understand that there are broader consequences here. What you’re giving up here is someone with such a good heart."
I was starting to find the emotion in this for me. It was just so sad, in addition to being utterly ridiculous.
"I know."
It was hard, this part. "It was just never enough for you. I was your number one fan."
"I know, I’m sorry."
"I believed in you, D. I had faith in you. And this is where I find myself? Having other people tell me what you should have told me? YOU. You didn’t even respect me enough." I swallowed hard, mostly to keep my dinner down for what I was about to convey. "D, I’ve read every single post. For legal reasons, I had to, to make sure. I simply don’t deserve to be put in a situation where your behavior impacts me so that I have to get an email from someone. Here – take a look – " I got up and reached over to the table, where I had a print-out of the first email from Mr. Anonymous.
"I don’t want to see it."
Elementary school, here we come! I was tired, I just had to fight back. "I don’t care if you want to see it."
D said, "Well, I’m not gonna look at it just because you want to show it to me."
"Then you can take it home and look at it," I retorted.
"I’m not gonna take it anywhere with me."
"Well, then I’ll leave it here for you."
At this point, the conversation softened a bit. Everything I could say had been said. I had nothing more that I had to get across. Even when, later in the conversation, D told me that Sally and he hadn't done a whole lot of "sleeping" when she was in my house, I kept my cool. (Yeah, he's a really classy douchebag, that D.)
We had talked for nearly an hour and a half when he finally left. He looked worn. I felt alive, emboldened by my bravado in combat. For the first time, I thought that maybe I just might have a really good outcome from all this.
But then D's cousin left, I put Little One to bed, and I sat down on that same couch perch and cried. For a very long time.
15. The Talking (Taking?) Points: Part 1
While my flagrant attempt at husband provocation via Facebook had largely fallen flat, it did give me a unique opportunity to completely and totally blindside him during our talk that evening.
I had arranged for D to come over. I was also petrified of actually, really provoking him into some sort of altercation. (See post lucky 13.) Granted, he was stone-cold sober - he had been since that night, because a judge told him he'd better be, or he was going to jail - but I had reason to worry. This was not a predictable person coming over, this was D, lord of the fake Facebook account and bellydancer seduction. I was going to be on my guard.
And so I made sure I had company in the house, inviting one of D's own family members to come over and play with Little One upstairs while D and I could talk downstairs. In fact, I didn't exactly invite; they offered to come over when they heard what had been transpiring and what I needed to talk to D about. So any concerns I might have had about "They're D's blood relatives, so they're going to support him" largely went out the window.
D arrived round 6:30. D's family member had just arrived as well, and said a cursory hello to D before getting Little One upstairs to her room to play. D looked wary, but only because he didn't understand why his family member was there.
I sat down on the couch, D perching (voluntarily) on one of Little One's toddler stools. (If that isn't just a great visual, I thought.)
"So, thanks for coming over to talk," I said. D was cordial enough, exchanging pleasantries. He had moved out about 2 weeks prior to this, so he still had some things in the house to remove. We chatted about that for the moment.
I had notes in front of me. Earlier that day, my therapist (God bless that man) and I had created the Talking Points, which I should fall back to if the conversation got off course. And with D, it was going to go off course, that was for sure:
1. You lied to me over and over again.
2. You were dishonest with me when it mattered most to our marriage and our family.
3. I no longer trust you.
I had these scribbles on a piece of yellow lined paper in front of me as D and I exchanged the pleasantries. Then I began what I really wanted to talk about.
"D, I want to thank you," I said, as sincerely as I'm able. "I know the last few months have been hard, and I really appreciate that you and I have been able to be mature, and honest, and have really tried to work through these months together, to maintain our relationship and our family."
"Thanks," he said, looking slightly soothed and yet perplexed, too. "Me too."
"Great," I said. "Which is why I'd like to spend some time now talking to you about Don Jeremy."
I watched the color drain quickly from his face. To his credit, his facial expression barely changed at first. Then it hardened. "Okay," he said, starting down the road to Defensiveland.
"This conversation is, ostensibly," I said [I pull out my big SAT words when really, really pissed] "a discussion about that fake Facebook account, and what you've been using it for."
Crickets. But he was trapped and he knew it. I could see him starting to chew on the inside of his lip, a sure signal that he was churning inside.
I continued: "Do you happen to remember the conversation that we had, a few days after deciding to divorce, that we would not date anyone else while you were still living here, and that we were dedicated to helping each other through this tough time?"
More crickets. I think he might have nodded.
"So, against that backdrop," I said, "you can imagine my surprise here. It has come to my attention that you've been having a relationship with Sally for several months now. Rather openly, as it turns out."
"What do you mean, openly?" He countered. He was about to go into conflict mode - where I had much less stable footing, simply because it intimidated me - and I had to shut it down, fast. At least he hadn't tried to deny that he wasn't Don Jeremy - somewhere he must have remembered what his profile picture was. Dumb ass.
"I mean that I now have pages worth of screen shots of your relationship with Sally, as played out on Facebook, including pictures, love notes, and dates, and that this evidence conclusively illustrates that the two of you have been having a relationship behind my back. For months now. I don't know how I'm going to use this information yet, but I wanted you to know that I'm compiling it. You have been lying to me for months, D. And what's worse, I had to find this out from some anonymous emailer."
This took him off guard. "What? Who? What do you mean?"
I breathed deeply, and collected my thoughts. (Yay, I thought, I'm collecting my thoughts!) "I mean that, in mid-September - which is right around the time that I was in Florida - someone took it upon themselves to email me, from an anonymous email account, that my husband was having an affair. Any idea who that might be?"
"That's ridiculous. Who would do that? None of my friends would do that. No one who knew -"
"I don't know," I answered. I was thrilled that I had riled him, but very, very glad that his (rather tall and strong) family member was upstairs in case he was needed. "Whoever this person is, for what it’s worth, felt that your behavior with Sally in mid-September among friends was already so public and so indiscreet, they found it unkind and felt I had a right to know."
"Well, it wasn’t public." Haggle, haggle. That's the D way.
"Whatever. Unfortunately, I have to draw a boundary around my life now, one that I had hoped that you would be a bigger part of. That’s no longer going to happen, so what we need to figure out is – and the parenting plan seminar will help me figure this out a little tomorrow – is what’s in Little One’s best interest going forward. And at this point, I am going to investigate ALL possibilities as to what is in her best interest."
Sitting on that little chair, I almost - almost - felt sorry for him. "What. Meaning? Meaning, keeping me from seeing her?"
"No, not at all, that’s not what I mean at all. I would only do that if it were in Little One's best interest. It does, however, mean that there will have to be considerations about whether she’s going to spend time with Sally when you are with her. If that’s already happened, well, nothing I can do about that now, other than to reinforce the fact that that was something you should never have done behind my back, use our child that way. I’m assuming it’s hasn’t, I’d like to think that it hasn’t, I’d like to think that you’re not that guy."
"What do you mean, use our child that way?" Yes, D, semantics. Exactly what you should be concerned with right now. Good job.
I continued, "I would prefer to think that you would separate your current personal situation with Sally from our family situation, which has been difficult enough for everyone involved. Now, the fact that you went to such great lengths to hide your relationship with Sally from me makes me wonder what else I don’t know. Natural human instinct. So in light of the fact that I would like to minimize my time spent with you, I would prefer that we figure out another couple of times when we can help you move your stuff, whatever else you want to take, um and we can arrange that once you get back from your trip to visit your family. [Upcoming - he was going to the south to visit his immediate relatives for Thanksgiving.] And that’s why I would also like for you to think about how much time you want to spend with our kid, because you do have this other person in your life, what the interaction between that person and our daughter is going to be, if any, because I want that to be very clearly delineated going forward." I paused.
I was really, really surprised to hear myself say these things, to sound so sure of myself. I had never really had that in our marriage. All it took was a bellydancer to push it out of me, I guess. "I would like you to start being honest with me now. And I have no intention of keeping Little One from you. I have no intention of using our child as a pawn, no matter how I feel. That would simply be the wrong thing to do, and it’s well below what I would ever consider to do, even to you." Here, I have to admit, I paused for dramatic effect. He was processing everything I had said, figuring out his next maneuver. I could see the gears turning behind those scared eyes. He was cornered, and he was going to have to try and figure out a way out. We were both silent for nearly a minute.
I've never really enjoyed silence during arguments, however, so I started again.
I had arranged for D to come over. I was also petrified of actually, really provoking him into some sort of altercation. (See post lucky 13.) Granted, he was stone-cold sober - he had been since that night, because a judge told him he'd better be, or he was going to jail - but I had reason to worry. This was not a predictable person coming over, this was D, lord of the fake Facebook account and bellydancer seduction. I was going to be on my guard.
And so I made sure I had company in the house, inviting one of D's own family members to come over and play with Little One upstairs while D and I could talk downstairs. In fact, I didn't exactly invite; they offered to come over when they heard what had been transpiring and what I needed to talk to D about. So any concerns I might have had about "They're D's blood relatives, so they're going to support him" largely went out the window.
D arrived round 6:30. D's family member had just arrived as well, and said a cursory hello to D before getting Little One upstairs to her room to play. D looked wary, but only because he didn't understand why his family member was there.
I sat down on the couch, D perching (voluntarily) on one of Little One's toddler stools. (If that isn't just a great visual, I thought.)
"So, thanks for coming over to talk," I said. D was cordial enough, exchanging pleasantries. He had moved out about 2 weeks prior to this, so he still had some things in the house to remove. We chatted about that for the moment.
I had notes in front of me. Earlier that day, my therapist (God bless that man) and I had created the Talking Points, which I should fall back to if the conversation got off course. And with D, it was going to go off course, that was for sure:
1. You lied to me over and over again.
2. You were dishonest with me when it mattered most to our marriage and our family.
3. I no longer trust you.
I had these scribbles on a piece of yellow lined paper in front of me as D and I exchanged the pleasantries. Then I began what I really wanted to talk about.
"D, I want to thank you," I said, as sincerely as I'm able. "I know the last few months have been hard, and I really appreciate that you and I have been able to be mature, and honest, and have really tried to work through these months together, to maintain our relationship and our family."
"Thanks," he said, looking slightly soothed and yet perplexed, too. "Me too."
"Great," I said. "Which is why I'd like to spend some time now talking to you about Don Jeremy."
I watched the color drain quickly from his face. To his credit, his facial expression barely changed at first. Then it hardened. "Okay," he said, starting down the road to Defensiveland.
"This conversation is, ostensibly," I said [I pull out my big SAT words when really, really pissed] "a discussion about that fake Facebook account, and what you've been using it for."
Crickets. But he was trapped and he knew it. I could see him starting to chew on the inside of his lip, a sure signal that he was churning inside.
I continued: "Do you happen to remember the conversation that we had, a few days after deciding to divorce, that we would not date anyone else while you were still living here, and that we were dedicated to helping each other through this tough time?"
More crickets. I think he might have nodded.
"So, against that backdrop," I said, "you can imagine my surprise here. It has come to my attention that you've been having a relationship with Sally for several months now. Rather openly, as it turns out."
"What do you mean, openly?" He countered. He was about to go into conflict mode - where I had much less stable footing, simply because it intimidated me - and I had to shut it down, fast. At least he hadn't tried to deny that he wasn't Don Jeremy - somewhere he must have remembered what his profile picture was. Dumb ass.
"I mean that I now have pages worth of screen shots of your relationship with Sally, as played out on Facebook, including pictures, love notes, and dates, and that this evidence conclusively illustrates that the two of you have been having a relationship behind my back. For months now. I don't know how I'm going to use this information yet, but I wanted you to know that I'm compiling it. You have been lying to me for months, D. And what's worse, I had to find this out from some anonymous emailer."
This took him off guard. "What? Who? What do you mean?"
I breathed deeply, and collected my thoughts. (Yay, I thought, I'm collecting my thoughts!) "I mean that, in mid-September - which is right around the time that I was in Florida - someone took it upon themselves to email me, from an anonymous email account, that my husband was having an affair. Any idea who that might be?"
"That's ridiculous. Who would do that? None of my friends would do that. No one who knew -"
"I don't know," I answered. I was thrilled that I had riled him, but very, very glad that his (rather tall and strong) family member was upstairs in case he was needed. "Whoever this person is, for what it’s worth, felt that your behavior with Sally in mid-September among friends was already so public and so indiscreet, they found it unkind and felt I had a right to know."
"Well, it wasn’t public." Haggle, haggle. That's the D way.
"Whatever. Unfortunately, I have to draw a boundary around my life now, one that I had hoped that you would be a bigger part of. That’s no longer going to happen, so what we need to figure out is – and the parenting plan seminar will help me figure this out a little tomorrow – is what’s in Little One’s best interest going forward. And at this point, I am going to investigate ALL possibilities as to what is in her best interest."
Sitting on that little chair, I almost - almost - felt sorry for him. "What. Meaning? Meaning, keeping me from seeing her?"
"No, not at all, that’s not what I mean at all. I would only do that if it were in Little One's best interest. It does, however, mean that there will have to be considerations about whether she’s going to spend time with Sally when you are with her. If that’s already happened, well, nothing I can do about that now, other than to reinforce the fact that that was something you should never have done behind my back, use our child that way. I’m assuming it’s hasn’t, I’d like to think that it hasn’t, I’d like to think that you’re not that guy."
"What do you mean, use our child that way?" Yes, D, semantics. Exactly what you should be concerned with right now. Good job.
I continued, "I would prefer to think that you would separate your current personal situation with Sally from our family situation, which has been difficult enough for everyone involved. Now, the fact that you went to such great lengths to hide your relationship with Sally from me makes me wonder what else I don’t know. Natural human instinct. So in light of the fact that I would like to minimize my time spent with you, I would prefer that we figure out another couple of times when we can help you move your stuff, whatever else you want to take, um and we can arrange that once you get back from your trip to visit your family. [Upcoming - he was going to the south to visit his immediate relatives for Thanksgiving.] And that’s why I would also like for you to think about how much time you want to spend with our kid, because you do have this other person in your life, what the interaction between that person and our daughter is going to be, if any, because I want that to be very clearly delineated going forward." I paused.
I was really, really surprised to hear myself say these things, to sound so sure of myself. I had never really had that in our marriage. All it took was a bellydancer to push it out of me, I guess. "I would like you to start being honest with me now. And I have no intention of keeping Little One from you. I have no intention of using our child as a pawn, no matter how I feel. That would simply be the wrong thing to do, and it’s well below what I would ever consider to do, even to you." Here, I have to admit, I paused for dramatic effect. He was processing everything I had said, figuring out his next maneuver. I could see the gears turning behind those scared eyes. He was cornered, and he was going to have to try and figure out a way out. We were both silent for nearly a minute.
I've never really enjoyed silence during arguments, however, so I started again.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
14. Unfriending my husband
It was now a Thursday in November. I'd found the original email from Mr. Anonymous on Monday. It was exactly 3 months, almost to the day, since I'd found the text message from Sally on D's phone.
The night before, I had sent off one more email to ever-helpful Mr. Anonymous. I really needed to figure out who this was, even though the pool of suspects was starting to shrink considerably.
The response came late that night, and whoever this person was, well, they were certainly not the "helpful, altruistic" party they had wanted me to believe. I think you'll see what I mean here when I use the words "Ulterior Motive":
From: yourhubbyhavingaffair
To: Penelope
Sent: Thu Nov 19 01:33:20
Subject: RE: this is difficult to say
They were being very public among friends, and I thought it indiscrete and unkind. Wasn't sure you knew, and thought you had a right to. Glad to hear it sounds like you did know. Sorry to meddle...
May I please ask you one question? I don't mean to pry, and I will keep this completely confidential. Was he violent with you?
Seriously. Did you just really ask that in an email? Really? Talk about an out-of-left-field question. I mean, how could I even begin to formulate a response to that?
Well, as it turns out, when one is as amped up as I was during this particular week, one does not sleep particularly well because one's brain is CONSTANTLY ON. So, here I was, at 4 am Thursday morning, formulating a response. And quite a good one, I thought.
From: Penelope
To: 'husbandishavinganaffair@gmail.com'
Sent: Thu Nov 19 04:53:11
Subject: Re: this is difficult to say
First off, you're not meddling. This info may be costing me a bit of sleep in the short term, but I am glad to know it. I did not know the extent of their affair and its history until now, as he told me this would never happen. You have helped me to clarify truth from fiction!
As for your question, since I don't know who you are, all I can comfortably tell you is what is public record. In March of this year he was arrested for domestic violence. I was not injured but I was the alleged victim.
So I have to wonder, why would you ask?
Not surprisingly, the response came quickly.
From: yourhubbyhavingaffair
To: Penelope
Sent: Thu Nov 19 8:45:10
Subject: RE: this is difficult to say
I just thought that might be part of the story, and thought I would ask.
Best wishes to u and your little one.
So.
There it was. In three days, I'd gone from head-in-the-sand me, keeping my blinders on, to emailing a total stranger about the intimate components of my failing marriage and my husband's amazing attempts to keep his bellydancer girlfriend hidden. I had almost no doubt at this point that Mr. Anonymous was, in fact, Mr. Bellydancer, Sally's spurned husband. Which was odd, really, when one considered what I knew about Mr. Bellydancer:
1. He was not a bellydancer himself.
2. He was a high-tech sort of guy with a high-paying job.
3. He and Sally had "not slept together in years." (Thanks, D!)
4. He and Sally had some sort of arrangement where they would date on alternate nights. Date other people, you see.
5. He was, according to D (and please, consider the source, here), a douchebag.
He was also very, very savvy at creating fake email accounts.
Because really, who else?
Who else would care? Who else would know about Sally's two different Facebook profile names - the bellydancer one, and the personal one?
Who else could possibly gain anything from stirring the pot around Sally and D?
Who indeed. Hello, Mr. Anonymous.
Given that I was 98% sure who this was, I could draw some deductions: he was, essentially, using me to make D's life hell by way of Sally, and to, thereby, make his own wife miserable.
And you know what, folks? At this point in the story, I was more than happy to oblige him. So, I put his emails in a folder, and resolved to stop that conversation. Because it was time to start the conversation that I had been thinking about for three days (or really, for nearly eight years): D and I were about to invert the power in our relationship. Only thing was, he was coming over Thursday evening for what I had termed a "talk," and he had no idea what the talk was about.
During the day on Thursday, I met with my therapist, and readied my "talking points." He helped me pinpoint what it was that I wanted to get out of this conversation, and what it was that I wanted to focus it on.
In the meantime, I went on Facebook, and did three liberating things:
1. I changed my Facebook profile name from my married name to my maiden name.
2. I changed my status from "In a relationship" to "Single."
3. After those two items had been accomplished - and the order was key here - I unfriended my husband.
What was I looking for? Well, I wanted to get D's attention. I didn't. But what I did do was ensure that my changing of my name and my status would be located somewhere in his feed, right before I de-friended him. Later, I thought, he would be able to go back in and understand how the timeline had happened. I knew him well enough to know that, once we'd had our "talk" that evening, things were going to be very different between him and me, and that he was going to be spiraling on the experience for quite some time. Here's some fodder, I thought. Chew on this.
Well, so, that wasn't exactly all that happened before the talk. As it turned out, some people on Facebook saw my relationship status update. They also saw my name change. And, apparently, no one had actually told them about the divorce. Oops! We're talking, like, close, extended family here, aunts and uncles, cousins. After the third "WHAT?" email from some of these folks, I called my mom and asked, "Didn't you tell me you told everyone about the divorce?" As it turned out, she had not.
So my flagrant attempt to get my husband's attention backfired on me. Hard. And I felt terrible that so many people had come across my "sad news" that way.
But at least now I had started what would become, thematically speaking, the overarching raison d'etre for me the next few months:
I had started to unravel and untangle from my husband, and unfriending him was a small, but extremely significant, first step.
The night before, I had sent off one more email to ever-helpful Mr. Anonymous. I really needed to figure out who this was, even though the pool of suspects was starting to shrink considerably.
From: Penelope
Sent: Wednesday, November 18 11:11 PM
To: husbandishavinganaffair@gmail.com
Subject: Re: this is difficult to say
One more question, if you choose to answer. What was it that compelled you to contact me back in September? What were they doing then?
Again - thanks.
The response came late that night, and whoever this person was, well, they were certainly not the "helpful, altruistic" party they had wanted me to believe. I think you'll see what I mean here when I use the words "Ulterior Motive":
From: yourhubbyhavingaffair
To: Penelope
Sent: Thu Nov 19 01:33:20
Subject: RE: this is difficult to say
They were being very public among friends, and I thought it indiscrete and unkind. Wasn't sure you knew, and thought you had a right to. Glad to hear it sounds like you did know. Sorry to meddle...
May I please ask you one question? I don't mean to pry, and I will keep this completely confidential. Was he violent with you?
Seriously. Did you just really ask that in an email? Really? Talk about an out-of-left-field question. I mean, how could I even begin to formulate a response to that?
From: Penelope
To: 'husbandishavinganaffair@gmail.com'
Sent: Thu Nov 19 04:53:11
Subject: Re: this is difficult to say
First off, you're not meddling. This info may be costing me a bit of sleep in the short term, but I am glad to know it. I did not know the extent of their affair and its history until now, as he told me this would never happen. You have helped me to clarify truth from fiction!
As for your question, since I don't know who you are, all I can comfortably tell you is what is public record. In March of this year he was arrested for domestic violence. I was not injured but I was the alleged victim.
So I have to wonder, why would you ask?
Not surprisingly, the response came quickly.
From: yourhubbyhavingaffair
To: Penelope
Sent: Thu Nov 19 8:45:10
Subject: RE: this is difficult to say
I just thought that might be part of the story, and thought I would ask.
Best wishes to u and your little one.
So.
There it was. In three days, I'd gone from head-in-the-sand me, keeping my blinders on, to emailing a total stranger about the intimate components of my failing marriage and my husband's amazing attempts to keep his bellydancer girlfriend hidden. I had almost no doubt at this point that Mr. Anonymous was, in fact, Mr. Bellydancer, Sally's spurned husband. Which was odd, really, when one considered what I knew about Mr. Bellydancer:
1. He was not a bellydancer himself.
2. He was a high-tech sort of guy with a high-paying job.
3. He and Sally had "not slept together in years." (Thanks, D!)
4. He and Sally had some sort of arrangement where they would date on alternate nights. Date other people, you see.
5. He was, according to D (and please, consider the source, here), a douchebag.
He was also very, very savvy at creating fake email accounts.
Because really, who else?
Who else would care? Who else would know about Sally's two different Facebook profile names - the bellydancer one, and the personal one?
Who else could possibly gain anything from stirring the pot around Sally and D?
Who indeed. Hello, Mr. Anonymous.
Given that I was 98% sure who this was, I could draw some deductions: he was, essentially, using me to make D's life hell by way of Sally, and to, thereby, make his own wife miserable.
And you know what, folks? At this point in the story, I was more than happy to oblige him. So, I put his emails in a folder, and resolved to stop that conversation. Because it was time to start the conversation that I had been thinking about for three days (or really, for nearly eight years): D and I were about to invert the power in our relationship. Only thing was, he was coming over Thursday evening for what I had termed a "talk," and he had no idea what the talk was about.
During the day on Thursday, I met with my therapist, and readied my "talking points." He helped me pinpoint what it was that I wanted to get out of this conversation, and what it was that I wanted to focus it on.
In the meantime, I went on Facebook, and did three liberating things:
1. I changed my Facebook profile name from my married name to my maiden name.
2. I changed my status from "In a relationship" to "Single."
3. After those two items had been accomplished - and the order was key here - I unfriended my husband.
What was I looking for? Well, I wanted to get D's attention. I didn't. But what I did do was ensure that my changing of my name and my status would be located somewhere in his feed, right before I de-friended him. Later, I thought, he would be able to go back in and understand how the timeline had happened. I knew him well enough to know that, once we'd had our "talk" that evening, things were going to be very different between him and me, and that he was going to be spiraling on the experience for quite some time. Here's some fodder, I thought. Chew on this.
Well, so, that wasn't exactly all that happened before the talk. As it turned out, some people on Facebook saw my relationship status update. They also saw my name change. And, apparently, no one had actually told them about the divorce. Oops! We're talking, like, close, extended family here, aunts and uncles, cousins. After the third "WHAT?" email from some of these folks, I called my mom and asked, "Didn't you tell me you told everyone about the divorce?" As it turned out, she had not.
So my flagrant attempt to get my husband's attention backfired on me. Hard. And I felt terrible that so many people had come across my "sad news" that way.
But at least now I had started what would become, thematically speaking, the overarching raison d'etre for me the next few months:
I had started to unravel and untangle from my husband, and unfriending him was a small, but extremely significant, first step.
Monday, August 2, 2010
13. Sidebar: What happened.
It's time to tell you about what happened, one night in March, about 4 months before everything went completely haywire.
Let's just refer to it from here on out as The Incident.
I wasn't sure how much D was going to remember about The Incident later, primarily because D had been spectacularly inebriated at the time. So after the police had taken him away, yes, really, I wrote everything down that I could remember. I wanted to document The Incident, not to disperse judgment or punishment. My hope was that it would give us both some insight into this event and help us figure out what to do next.
Well, that didn't happen, Dear Reader, because D has since, repeatedly, refused to read this here document. So, his loss is our gain, I think.
It was about 7:30pm one night in March, and I had just put Little One to bed. D had been on the phone for about an hour with his friend, Bob, who lived in another state. He'd been drinking for at least three hours, since shortly after a particularly vigorous phone call with his half-crazy mother. After he got off the phone with Bob, he was feeling pretty goofy. Happy drunk, you might say.
He came into the living room, where I, stone-cold sober, was sitting with my laptop. (I had remained sober for years in the hopes that it would inspire my husband to do so, as well. It didn't.) We lightheartedly bantered for a few minutes, and then he went into his office.
About 10 minutes later, D came back in and ask me if I wanted to go for a walk. I said no, since Little One was sleeping upstairs. (I was very kind, mind you, even though I knew this was a dumb drunkard asking the question.) D replied that then maybe one of us could go for a walk. Then he left the room.
After that, D went into the kitchen and started emptying things into the sink – Little One’s bottle bits and pieces and parts, things on the edge of the sink, etc. I came in to see what was going on, and he wouldn’t talk to me. So I walked back to the living room. Over the next 15 or 20 minutes, he went back to the sink twice, and started banging bottle parts on the counter. He went in and out of the house through the back door and kept closing the door loudly each time. I got the impression that D was trying to provoke me into some sort of reaction. Knowing that this was a no-win situation, I started to feel uneasy and tried to avoid him.
But D seemed intent on engaging with me in some provocative way. He came into the living room and told me I should stop doing “fucking stupid things.” Not really knowing what he was referring to, I looked at him, but didn’t respond. He left the room. From his office, D kept yelling things at me. Unfortunately, they were unintelligible, other than an occasional “bullshit” or “fuck.” Honestly, that’s all I could make out.
A few minutes passed, and D came back into the living room. He walked to the front door, taking his keys and wallet. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was going out for a drive. I pointed out that he was in no condition to drive, and that I loved him, and that I didn’t want him to do any harm to himself or anyone else so please don’t drive. (D also had four DUIs from about 8 years ago or more. I felt this was a rather urgent issue.) D gave me the keys, and I suggested he go for a walk, get some air, if he needed to get out for a while. “I’ll fucking do that,” he replied, and left.
On the way out the door, D tripped over his cat, a large, white, sweetheart of a cat. As the cat ran to get out of his way, D ran after him and kicked him on his right side, about where his ribs are. The cat flew about 4 or 5 feet and then ran off. That cat died four months later of cancer, poor thing. (By which I mean the cat. And maybe D, a little.)
D left, and slammed the door shut. I closed and locked the door behind him. Five minutes later, he came back and was trying to get in, which he couldn’t do because the door was locked and he didn’t have his keys. D knocked loudly on the door exactly nine times. I counted. I came to the door, opened it, and didn’t say anything. D reached past me to get his keys and said he was leaving. He was standing with his back to the front door. I asked him to please not go, once again expressing how scared I was that something bad would happen to him. I reached out in the hopes he would give me his keys again.
Instead, D grabbed my shirt at both shoulders, shook me, and then shoved me until I fell on the floor. On the way down, I tripped over one of our pets, landing hard on my right hip.
I once again asked D, “Please don’t do this.” He told me, “Fuck off.”
“I’m going to call the police, D,” I said, my voice quiet, and solid, alas slightly shaky.
“Go ahead,” he said, and left, slamming the door, very hard.
As I laid there on the floor, for the first time in our relationship, I was really, really scared of D and what he might do – I was now in a situation where he’d shown that he would actually use physical violence. I no longer trusted D to NOT harm me, or - my God - Little One. Mama Bear was hunkering down to protect her cub. I was terrified that D might hurt himself or someone else by driving. Mostly, though, I was scared by what I saw on his face when he pushed me down. He was vicious. It was like some bad horror movie where a demon takes over someone’s face. Remember how the vampires used to turn all “vampire-y” on “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”? Well, this was that.
I locked the front door, and heard the car engine turn on. I went over to the phone, picked it up, and dialed 911. They answered almost immediately. (Ours is a sleepy town.) I told the dispatcher that my husband was extremely drunk, and that he had pushed me down while trying to get out of our house to go and drive. I told them that he had taken the car keys with the intention of driving, and I was terrified.
While on the phone with the police dispatcher, I had no idea whether D had left or not. I was utterly panicked that D might come back in and hurt me, really hurt me. That’s what I saw on his face when he left – it scared the hell out of me. That person was not my husband, I reasoned.
As I paced around the living room, I suddenly saw D in the backyard – I didn’t know he was there. He’d snuck around the side of the house. He was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs. I was now really, really scared. My God, my Little One was still sound asleep upstairs. And I was going to protect her from this madman no matter what. I held the phone tighter, now my lifeline to someone who could actually make this stop, make this crazy person go away.
About a minute later D popped up outside a large picture window in the living room. He banged on it several times to get my attention. “FUCK YOU!” he shouted twice, giving me the finger with both hands. I was clutching the phone to my ear, pleading with the dispatcher to get an officer to my house. Then D disappeared again.
At that moment, I saw one of the police cars slinking up the hill, its lights off, no sirens. I could see the glint of a streetlight in its darkened windshield – that was all. I felt only mild, mixed relief, because it was only going to get messier from here on out, though I did feel safer - a bit.
D came back to that same window. “I’m going to jail. I’m going to fucking jail!” he shouted. He must have seen them too. I was still on the phone with the dispatcher, who was assuring me that the police were coming. I was begging her, “Please, tell them to come. I’m scared of him. My baby is sleeping upstairs. Please, make the police come faster,” I whispered. “Please.” I recounted D’s every move to the dispatcher.
Then D came around to the back door and banged on the window, repeating, screaming, “I’m going to FUCKING JAIL!” In my ear, the dispatcher repeatedly asked me if I was all right, if he was attempting to come in the house. She could hear him. I didn’t know. I had no idea what the fuck was going on anymore.
At that moment, a flashlight lit him up, and I heard a stern woman’s voice out back:
“Sir, stand back from the door. Sir, step away from the door. Put your hands behind your head.”
The officers were there. D’s arms immediately went up, he turned around, and obeyed their every word.
Once I knew that D was being watched - and, well, subdued - a female police officer – a detective, I think – came in through the back door and asked me what had happened. I was very honest with her, both about what happened, and how scared I was. I told her D didn’t hurt me, but that he had pushed me down. I told her that D was very drunk, and that this kind of thing had never happened before. I told them I regretted having called them, and that I didn’t want D to get in trouble, but I was so scared at that moment that I didn’t know what else to do.
I watched them handcuff D and seat him on the bench on the back porch. My husband was in handcuffs, sitting on our back porch. There was absolutely nothing to be gained here, I thought. This would not end well. This was completely surreal.
I believe that they asked D about what I had said, about my recounting of the evening, but by that time I was crying so hard I couldn’t hear very much. She told me they were taking him to the county jail on suspicion of domestic violence.
What? I asked her. What? But that’s – he’s not – no, not D. I cried harder.
The officers politely instructed me to go inside and try to calm down.
Next thing I knew, I was watching them bring D around the pathway along the side of the house. The officer told me that this was a domestic abuse case, and here were all the things I could do about being a victim. Being a victim? I thought. Me? No way.
The officer gave me a pamphlet. A fucking pamphlet. Are you kidding? Seriously? I didn’t need a fucking pamphlet. I was not a victim! Not! NOT! (Sorta was.)
Then the officer told me this: “Your husband won’t be allowed to come home for at least 30 days,” she said. She saw the panic on my face, because she quickly followed that with, “It’s better for everyone – and safer for you.”
She sat down next to me on the couch and looked me in the eye. “Does he ever make you feel stupid? Does he get drunk often? Maybe say things to you that really hurt your feelings?” I didn’t say anything, so she continued, “Does he make you feel un-safe? Does he call you names?”
I numbly, silently nodded. Aw, shit.
“This is how domestic violence starts,” she said. “All the signs are there. Now, you have a little one upstairs who needs your protection. You don’t have the luxury of making excuses for this guy. Okay?”
I nodded again and signed the statement she’d taken from me. No going back now.
But rather than plot my divorce, I panicked.
I felt responsible for getting him arrested. I felt guilty.
So I reeled everything back in and thought, How can I change this? How can I fix it? How can I fix him? Maybe if I just love him more, he’ll get better, he’ll stop drinking, and we can be the family that we’ve always wanted to be. Yes, that’s it! I thought. I will get out my toolbox, and I WILL FIX THINGS!
So I did the only thing I knew how to do at that point: I rushed in and saved D. I stayed up most of the night, researching what would happen to D legally, and how I could help him. I found a top-notch, female lawyer who specialized in domestic violence cases and rarely lost. I called the court when they opened the next morning, and asked to speak with the Domestic Violence advocate. I pleaded my case to her, asking her, begging her to please not take my husband away for a month. “It’s not what will help us,” I told her. “This is not him – I can’t do this alone without him, I need his support. I work full time. I have to have his help to keep the household running and take care of my daughter. And no, he’s never made me feel threatened before.”
Honestly, I don’t know where those lies came from. But I was damn sure not going to let my husband sit in a jail cell for any longer than necessary. I had only called the police because he was going to drive drunk – right? Right?
Huh.
And so, believe it or not, Dear Reader, I succeeded. I got the judge to let him come home later that next day. When you ask a Domestic Violence Advocate how often a DV offender comes home the next day after a DV incident, they’ll basically tell you never.
Well, folks, meet the gal who managed to eek into "never" and find an "except this once." And I did it all because…because…well, fucked if I know. I really don’t know now.
But that was the beginning of the end, the true end, for the marriage.
(Soapbox. If you’re reading this, and relating to any of it, but you feel completely trapped in your situation, please know that the life that you have is not the only one that you can have. There really is a better, safer place for you out there – please, don’t be afraid to go and find it. That will be my only P.S.A. on the subject. End soapbox.)
Seeing D in court, in a bright orange jumpsuit, with his hands and feet tethered to his waist and to other prisoners - it gave me absolutely no satisfaction. All I felt was sorry. Sorry that it had come to this, sorry to see how hungover D was. And I knew he was very, very sorry for what he had done. He was also apeshit scared to have woken up in a jail cell.
So, there you have it. When you layer The Incident with everything that followed it – the bellydancer, the texts, the months of duplicity, the Facebook proof, the requests for alimony, the “I will bury you!” comment, the emails from Mr. Anonymous – well, it explains why everything that followed, did.
And it gives you a bit more insight into why I felt this story needed to be shared.
Let's just refer to it from here on out as The Incident.
I wasn't sure how much D was going to remember about The Incident later, primarily because D had been spectacularly inebriated at the time. So after the police had taken him away, yes, really, I wrote everything down that I could remember. I wanted to document The Incident, not to disperse judgment or punishment. My hope was that it would give us both some insight into this event and help us figure out what to do next.
Well, that didn't happen, Dear Reader, because D has since, repeatedly, refused to read this here document. So, his loss is our gain, I think.
It was about 7:30pm one night in March, and I had just put Little One to bed. D had been on the phone for about an hour with his friend, Bob, who lived in another state. He'd been drinking for at least three hours, since shortly after a particularly vigorous phone call with his half-crazy mother. After he got off the phone with Bob, he was feeling pretty goofy. Happy drunk, you might say.
He came into the living room, where I, stone-cold sober, was sitting with my laptop. (I had remained sober for years in the hopes that it would inspire my husband to do so, as well. It didn't.) We lightheartedly bantered for a few minutes, and then he went into his office.
About 10 minutes later, D came back in and ask me if I wanted to go for a walk. I said no, since Little One was sleeping upstairs. (I was very kind, mind you, even though I knew this was a dumb drunkard asking the question.) D replied that then maybe one of us could go for a walk. Then he left the room.
After that, D went into the kitchen and started emptying things into the sink – Little One’s bottle bits and pieces and parts, things on the edge of the sink, etc. I came in to see what was going on, and he wouldn’t talk to me. So I walked back to the living room. Over the next 15 or 20 minutes, he went back to the sink twice, and started banging bottle parts on the counter. He went in and out of the house through the back door and kept closing the door loudly each time. I got the impression that D was trying to provoke me into some sort of reaction. Knowing that this was a no-win situation, I started to feel uneasy and tried to avoid him.
But D seemed intent on engaging with me in some provocative way. He came into the living room and told me I should stop doing “fucking stupid things.” Not really knowing what he was referring to, I looked at him, but didn’t respond. He left the room. From his office, D kept yelling things at me. Unfortunately, they were unintelligible, other than an occasional “bullshit” or “fuck.” Honestly, that’s all I could make out.
A few minutes passed, and D came back into the living room. He walked to the front door, taking his keys and wallet. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was going out for a drive. I pointed out that he was in no condition to drive, and that I loved him, and that I didn’t want him to do any harm to himself or anyone else so please don’t drive. (D also had four DUIs from about 8 years ago or more. I felt this was a rather urgent issue.) D gave me the keys, and I suggested he go for a walk, get some air, if he needed to get out for a while. “I’ll fucking do that,” he replied, and left.
On the way out the door, D tripped over his cat, a large, white, sweetheart of a cat. As the cat ran to get out of his way, D ran after him and kicked him on his right side, about where his ribs are. The cat flew about 4 or 5 feet and then ran off. That cat died four months later of cancer, poor thing. (By which I mean the cat. And maybe D, a little.)
D left, and slammed the door shut. I closed and locked the door behind him. Five minutes later, he came back and was trying to get in, which he couldn’t do because the door was locked and he didn’t have his keys. D knocked loudly on the door exactly nine times. I counted. I came to the door, opened it, and didn’t say anything. D reached past me to get his keys and said he was leaving. He was standing with his back to the front door. I asked him to please not go, once again expressing how scared I was that something bad would happen to him. I reached out in the hopes he would give me his keys again.
Instead, D grabbed my shirt at both shoulders, shook me, and then shoved me until I fell on the floor. On the way down, I tripped over one of our pets, landing hard on my right hip.
I once again asked D, “Please don’t do this.” He told me, “Fuck off.”
“I’m going to call the police, D,” I said, my voice quiet, and solid, alas slightly shaky.
“Go ahead,” he said, and left, slamming the door, very hard.
As I laid there on the floor, for the first time in our relationship, I was really, really scared of D and what he might do – I was now in a situation where he’d shown that he would actually use physical violence. I no longer trusted D to NOT harm me, or - my God - Little One. Mama Bear was hunkering down to protect her cub. I was terrified that D might hurt himself or someone else by driving. Mostly, though, I was scared by what I saw on his face when he pushed me down. He was vicious. It was like some bad horror movie where a demon takes over someone’s face. Remember how the vampires used to turn all “vampire-y” on “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”? Well, this was that.
I locked the front door, and heard the car engine turn on. I went over to the phone, picked it up, and dialed 911. They answered almost immediately. (Ours is a sleepy town.) I told the dispatcher that my husband was extremely drunk, and that he had pushed me down while trying to get out of our house to go and drive. I told them that he had taken the car keys with the intention of driving, and I was terrified.
While on the phone with the police dispatcher, I had no idea whether D had left or not. I was utterly panicked that D might come back in and hurt me, really hurt me. That’s what I saw on his face when he left – it scared the hell out of me. That person was not my husband, I reasoned.
As I paced around the living room, I suddenly saw D in the backyard – I didn’t know he was there. He’d snuck around the side of the house. He was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs. I was now really, really scared. My God, my Little One was still sound asleep upstairs. And I was going to protect her from this madman no matter what. I held the phone tighter, now my lifeline to someone who could actually make this stop, make this crazy person go away.
About a minute later D popped up outside a large picture window in the living room. He banged on it several times to get my attention. “FUCK YOU!” he shouted twice, giving me the finger with both hands. I was clutching the phone to my ear, pleading with the dispatcher to get an officer to my house. Then D disappeared again.
At that moment, I saw one of the police cars slinking up the hill, its lights off, no sirens. I could see the glint of a streetlight in its darkened windshield – that was all. I felt only mild, mixed relief, because it was only going to get messier from here on out, though I did feel safer - a bit.
D came back to that same window. “I’m going to jail. I’m going to fucking jail!” he shouted. He must have seen them too. I was still on the phone with the dispatcher, who was assuring me that the police were coming. I was begging her, “Please, tell them to come. I’m scared of him. My baby is sleeping upstairs. Please, make the police come faster,” I whispered. “Please.” I recounted D’s every move to the dispatcher.
Then D came around to the back door and banged on the window, repeating, screaming, “I’m going to FUCKING JAIL!” In my ear, the dispatcher repeatedly asked me if I was all right, if he was attempting to come in the house. She could hear him. I didn’t know. I had no idea what the fuck was going on anymore.
At that moment, a flashlight lit him up, and I heard a stern woman’s voice out back:
“Sir, stand back from the door. Sir, step away from the door. Put your hands behind your head.”
The officers were there. D’s arms immediately went up, he turned around, and obeyed their every word.
Once I knew that D was being watched - and, well, subdued - a female police officer – a detective, I think – came in through the back door and asked me what had happened. I was very honest with her, both about what happened, and how scared I was. I told her D didn’t hurt me, but that he had pushed me down. I told her that D was very drunk, and that this kind of thing had never happened before. I told them I regretted having called them, and that I didn’t want D to get in trouble, but I was so scared at that moment that I didn’t know what else to do.
I watched them handcuff D and seat him on the bench on the back porch. My husband was in handcuffs, sitting on our back porch. There was absolutely nothing to be gained here, I thought. This would not end well. This was completely surreal.
I believe that they asked D about what I had said, about my recounting of the evening, but by that time I was crying so hard I couldn’t hear very much. She told me they were taking him to the county jail on suspicion of domestic violence.
What? I asked her. What? But that’s – he’s not – no, not D. I cried harder.
The officers politely instructed me to go inside and try to calm down.
Next thing I knew, I was watching them bring D around the pathway along the side of the house. The officer told me that this was a domestic abuse case, and here were all the things I could do about being a victim. Being a victim? I thought. Me? No way.
The officer gave me a pamphlet. A fucking pamphlet. Are you kidding? Seriously? I didn’t need a fucking pamphlet. I was not a victim! Not! NOT! (Sorta was.)
Then the officer told me this: “Your husband won’t be allowed to come home for at least 30 days,” she said. She saw the panic on my face, because she quickly followed that with, “It’s better for everyone – and safer for you.”
She sat down next to me on the couch and looked me in the eye. “Does he ever make you feel stupid? Does he get drunk often? Maybe say things to you that really hurt your feelings?” I didn’t say anything, so she continued, “Does he make you feel un-safe? Does he call you names?”
I numbly, silently nodded. Aw, shit.
“This is how domestic violence starts,” she said. “All the signs are there. Now, you have a little one upstairs who needs your protection. You don’t have the luxury of making excuses for this guy. Okay?”
I nodded again and signed the statement she’d taken from me. No going back now.
But rather than plot my divorce, I panicked.
I felt responsible for getting him arrested. I felt guilty.
So I reeled everything back in and thought, How can I change this? How can I fix it? How can I fix him? Maybe if I just love him more, he’ll get better, he’ll stop drinking, and we can be the family that we’ve always wanted to be. Yes, that’s it! I thought. I will get out my toolbox, and I WILL FIX THINGS!
So I did the only thing I knew how to do at that point: I rushed in and saved D. I stayed up most of the night, researching what would happen to D legally, and how I could help him. I found a top-notch, female lawyer who specialized in domestic violence cases and rarely lost. I called the court when they opened the next morning, and asked to speak with the Domestic Violence advocate. I pleaded my case to her, asking her, begging her to please not take my husband away for a month. “It’s not what will help us,” I told her. “This is not him – I can’t do this alone without him, I need his support. I work full time. I have to have his help to keep the household running and take care of my daughter. And no, he’s never made me feel threatened before.”
Honestly, I don’t know where those lies came from. But I was damn sure not going to let my husband sit in a jail cell for any longer than necessary. I had only called the police because he was going to drive drunk – right? Right?
Huh.
And so, believe it or not, Dear Reader, I succeeded. I got the judge to let him come home later that next day. When you ask a Domestic Violence Advocate how often a DV offender comes home the next day after a DV incident, they’ll basically tell you never.
Well, folks, meet the gal who managed to eek into "never" and find an "except this once." And I did it all because…because…well, fucked if I know. I really don’t know now.
But that was the beginning of the end, the true end, for the marriage.
(Soapbox. If you’re reading this, and relating to any of it, but you feel completely trapped in your situation, please know that the life that you have is not the only one that you can have. There really is a better, safer place for you out there – please, don’t be afraid to go and find it. That will be my only P.S.A. on the subject. End soapbox.)
Seeing D in court, in a bright orange jumpsuit, with his hands and feet tethered to his waist and to other prisoners - it gave me absolutely no satisfaction. All I felt was sorry. Sorry that it had come to this, sorry to see how hungover D was. And I knew he was very, very sorry for what he had done. He was also apeshit scared to have woken up in a jail cell.
So, there you have it. When you layer The Incident with everything that followed it – the bellydancer, the texts, the months of duplicity, the Facebook proof, the requests for alimony, the “I will bury you!” comment, the emails from Mr. Anonymous – well, it explains why everything that followed, did.
And it gives you a bit more insight into why I felt this story needed to be shared.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
12. CSI: My Marriage
For a day and a half I stewed on this. I pretty much thought of nothing else that wouldn't keep me and Little One alive and fed. What would it mean, I thought, if the last few months of my relationship with D had been one, big fat lie?
Maybe he wasn't out "playing pool" every night. [Insert your own sexual-innuendo-laden euphemism here.]
Maybe that hairband on the sink and the pair of not-my-size underwear that I found in my laundry a few days after coming back from Florida really were NOT mine. (I know, I know. But at the time I found them, I thought, they could be, since my organizational skills are inconsistent at best.)
For that day and a half, I played out every single scenario in my head where I had suddenly gone from partner-in-divorce to Fool. Complete, utter Fool, I thought. How could you be so dumb?
It was at this point that I started taking a half a milligram of Xanax every evening. My doctor had prescribed them to me right after D had been arrested. (I promise, I'll get to that story soon.) The Xanax helped me stay focused and calm, and unlike the anti-depressants I had been on after having Little One, these didn't make me feel all fuzzy and complacent.
No, I was not complacent, not at all. But if you'd asked D what I was like these few days, to him, he'd tell you, I was completely, utterly "normal." Not a word was said by me about the emailer. I never once tipped my hand as to the potential knowledge I had, because I knew that this knowledge could change the course of things.
I forwarded the anonymous email to my lawyer, whose response was, "It's not something you can use in the divorce, legally speaking, even if it turns out that it's true. State laws don't allow for that. However, whoever sent that email to you is a real jerk."
I hadn't yet really contemplated the motivation of someone to send me that email. And after two days of not hearing back, I was starting to think that my brilliant "ping maneuver" had failed.
I was wrong. The anonymous emailer responded, upping the ante, and forcing my forced nonchalance right out the proverbial window.
Crap. Remember that can of worms, the one I was worried that I might be opening? Here it was. And not only was it here, it was mine to investigate if I were so inclined.
I was going to be nothing if not polite, in the hopes that I could find out, definitively, who this emailer was.
I knew that Sally Lee was Sally's bellydancer account, but this "Don Jeremy" account that my husband seemed to have set up was completely new to me. Dumb ass.
But before I could seriously contemplate going in and looking to see what I would find, I got another anonymous email:
A-ha, I thought. This is someone who wants me to investigate her personal page. This is someone who wants me to find the right Facebook page to view, so I can actually see this interaction. This, therefore, must be personal to this person, too.
I knew I had a major decision to make here. I narrowed it down to one of two choices:
a) Take the easier path, which would be to not look at the Facebook page, to stop emailing this person, and to forget about everything. I would just make for the divorce finish line as quickly as possible.
b) Take an anti-nausea medication and dive right in to Facebook, gathering evidence of D's amazingly dumb duplicity and figuring out a way to turn it to my advantage.
I went with B. Minus the anti-nausea medication, which I really should have followed through on.
I went into Facebook, and I typed in Sally Smith. Her profile came up first in the list of people, because we had a "mutual friend" - my husband, under his real-name Facebook account.
I took a deep breath, and clicked on her profile page. It was completely available to me. Someone has "Friends of Friends" as their setting, I thought. That's not very smart if they're trying to cover things up.
It didn't take long to find a comment on the page by "Don Jeremy." Thanks to the power of Facebook, and its "Older Posts" function, I was able to find all the proof I need that D and Sally had indeed been intimately involved since early, early September. Probably right around the date that D and I had agreed we wouldn't see anyone until he moved out, because we were both dedicated to keeping our relationship the focus, for our sakes and especially for Little One's.
Well, he'd wasted no time in throwing that relationship under the bus.
I clicked on "Don Jeremy"'s name. Want to know the best part? While I couldn't see the profile for Don Jeremy - at least he'd been smart enough to adjust his settings to Friends Only - do you know what his profile picture was?
A picture of himself, sitting and playing guitar at age 10.
Yes, really.
In a session the following day, my therapist summed it up nicely. "What an asshole," he said under his breath, shaking his head.
So now I knew. I knew that I'd been lied to for months, been made to feel bad for all kinds of things in the relationship, been asked repeatedly for alimony, all while D was NOT looking for a job. Had been yelled at, threatened, and just all-around pretty much mistreated. Given that this was D, you'd think I wouldn't have been surprised, but I was. This was a new low. Even for him.
And during this time, Ms. Sally - I'm sorry, Mrs. Sally, the middle-aged bellydancer with two children and a husband - had apparently been baking D lots of homemade pies, letting him paint her toenails, and enjoying long nights of very intimate behaviors with him. I can't really describe how painful it was to read those comments between them, because it is quite simply still too raw for me to eloquently discuss. While the forensics side of my brain appreciated the evidence, and took screen shots of everything, the rest of me was pretty devastated to discover that this woman had indeed been intimately involved in our lives - as a family, as a couple - since, well, before the marriage officially ended.
And D had lied. Oh, how he had lied.
I wrote back to Mr. Anonymous, because I know suspected I knew who it was. Ever polite, that's me.
Thanks. Legally speaking, not a whole lot of help. But certainly good to have my decision reinforced!
Please know how much you have ultimately helped me and that I am grateful for you telling me these details.
I knew what I was going to do. I was going to come down on D. Hard. I just had to figure out how.
Maybe he wasn't out "playing pool" every night. [Insert your own sexual-innuendo-laden euphemism here.]
Maybe that hairband on the sink and the pair of not-my-size underwear that I found in my laundry a few days after coming back from Florida really were NOT mine. (I know, I know. But at the time I found them, I thought, they could be, since my organizational skills are inconsistent at best.)
For that day and a half, I played out every single scenario in my head where I had suddenly gone from partner-in-divorce to Fool. Complete, utter Fool, I thought. How could you be so dumb?
It was at this point that I started taking a half a milligram of Xanax every evening. My doctor had prescribed them to me right after D had been arrested. (I promise, I'll get to that story soon.) The Xanax helped me stay focused and calm, and unlike the anti-depressants I had been on after having Little One, these didn't make me feel all fuzzy and complacent.
No, I was not complacent, not at all. But if you'd asked D what I was like these few days, to him, he'd tell you, I was completely, utterly "normal." Not a word was said by me about the emailer. I never once tipped my hand as to the potential knowledge I had, because I knew that this knowledge could change the course of things.
I forwarded the anonymous email to my lawyer, whose response was, "It's not something you can use in the divorce, legally speaking, even if it turns out that it's true. State laws don't allow for that. However, whoever sent that email to you is a real jerk."
I hadn't yet really contemplated the motivation of someone to send me that email. And after two days of not hearing back, I was starting to think that my brilliant "ping maneuver" had failed.
I was wrong. The anonymous emailer responded, upping the ante, and forcing my forced nonchalance right out the proverbial window.
From: yourhubbyhavingaffair [husbandishavinganaffair@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 18 1:17 AM
To: Penelope
Subject: RE: this is difficult to say
Glad you knew. He's also been carrying on a very public relationship w/her on Facebook. He is don jeremy, she is sally lee.
Wish u the best.
Crap. Remember that can of worms, the one I was worried that I might be opening? Here it was. And not only was it here, it was mine to investigate if I were so inclined.
I was going to be nothing if not polite, in the hopes that I could find out, definitively, who this emailer was.
From: Penelope
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 8:27 AM
To: husbandishavinganaffair@gmail.com
Subject: Re: this is difficult to say
Thank you. I really appreciate this. I do wish I knew who you were, but appreciate the lengths you went to stay anonymous. If ever you'd like to assuage my curiosity I am all ears.
Thanks again.
Penelope
I knew that Sally Lee was Sally's bellydancer account, but this "Don Jeremy" account that my husband seemed to have set up was completely new to me. Dumb ass.
But before I could seriously contemplate going in and looking to see what I would find, I got another anonymous email:
From: yourhubbyhavingaffair
To: Penelope
Sent: Wed Nov 18 21:51:06
To: Penelope
Sent: Wed Nov 18 21:51:06
Subject: RE: this is difficult to say
I had it wrong. Her name is Sally Smith. Hope this info helps you.
I had it wrong. Her name is Sally Smith. Hope this info helps you.
A-ha, I thought. This is someone who wants me to investigate her personal page. This is someone who wants me to find the right Facebook page to view, so I can actually see this interaction. This, therefore, must be personal to this person, too.
I knew I had a major decision to make here. I narrowed it down to one of two choices:
a) Take the easier path, which would be to not look at the Facebook page, to stop emailing this person, and to forget about everything. I would just make for the divorce finish line as quickly as possible.
b) Take an anti-nausea medication and dive right in to Facebook, gathering evidence of D's amazingly dumb duplicity and figuring out a way to turn it to my advantage.
I went with B. Minus the anti-nausea medication, which I really should have followed through on.
I went into Facebook, and I typed in Sally Smith. Her profile came up first in the list of people, because we had a "mutual friend" - my husband, under his real-name Facebook account.
I took a deep breath, and clicked on her profile page. It was completely available to me. Someone has "Friends of Friends" as their setting, I thought. That's not very smart if they're trying to cover things up.
It didn't take long to find a comment on the page by "Don Jeremy." Thanks to the power of Facebook, and its "Older Posts" function, I was able to find all the proof I need that D and Sally had indeed been intimately involved since early, early September. Probably right around the date that D and I had agreed we wouldn't see anyone until he moved out, because we were both dedicated to keeping our relationship the focus, for our sakes and especially for Little One's.
Well, he'd wasted no time in throwing that relationship under the bus.
I clicked on "Don Jeremy"'s name. Want to know the best part? While I couldn't see the profile for Don Jeremy - at least he'd been smart enough to adjust his settings to Friends Only - do you know what his profile picture was?
A picture of himself, sitting and playing guitar at age 10.
Yes, really.
In a session the following day, my therapist summed it up nicely. "What an asshole," he said under his breath, shaking his head.
So now I knew. I knew that I'd been lied to for months, been made to feel bad for all kinds of things in the relationship, been asked repeatedly for alimony, all while D was NOT looking for a job. Had been yelled at, threatened, and just all-around pretty much mistreated. Given that this was D, you'd think I wouldn't have been surprised, but I was. This was a new low. Even for him.
And during this time, Ms. Sally - I'm sorry, Mrs. Sally, the middle-aged bellydancer with two children and a husband - had apparently been baking D lots of homemade pies, letting him paint her toenails, and enjoying long nights of very intimate behaviors with him. I can't really describe how painful it was to read those comments between them, because it is quite simply still too raw for me to eloquently discuss. While the forensics side of my brain appreciated the evidence, and took screen shots of everything, the rest of me was pretty devastated to discover that this woman had indeed been intimately involved in our lives - as a family, as a couple - since, well, before the marriage officially ended.
And D had lied. Oh, how he had lied.
I wrote back to Mr. Anonymous, because I know suspected I knew who it was. Ever polite, that's me.
From: Penelope
To: 'husbandishavinganaffair@gmail.com'
To: 'husbandishavinganaffair@gmail.com'
Sent: Wed Nov 18 22:25:54
Subject: Re: this is difficult to sayThanks. Legally speaking, not a whole lot of help. But certainly good to have my decision reinforced!
Please know how much you have ultimately helped me and that I am grateful for you telling me these details.
I knew what I was going to do. I was going to come down on D. Hard. I just had to figure out how.
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