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.