Just Swimmingly...

Any woman who has ever been pregnant, feels that by some sort of cosmic coincidence pregnant women are everywhere she goes and looks.  At the store, on television shows, walking down the street, coworkers, etc.

Now it seems that everywhere I look there are references to extra marital affairs.  For the last couple of weeks Dr. Phil has had at least three different shows where affairs were the topic.  One of the suggested recordings that my DVR selected for me is "The Good Wife". (Great show and helpful to watch, by the way.)  It seems like every other magazine at the grocery store has a story about "Why Men Cheat", "How to Keep your Man from Cheating", etc.  Were these things always there but because I wasn't going through "this" I didn't notice.

Of course I watch or read everything that I come in contact with, hoping for answers.  "Should I stay?" "Should I go?" "What did I do wrong?" "Could I have stopped this?" "How do I detach and stop the pain?" "What signs did I miss?" "How do I go on and stay married?" "How do I trust him again?" "Should I trust him again?" "How will I know if I can trust him?" "Can I trust him enough to go on living with him?" "Why do I still love him?" "How can somebody who is supposed to love you take such hurtful actions?"  "Did he ever really love me?" "What would be the best situation for my children?" "Can I live with whatever situation is best for my children?" "Why am I even thinking about trying to work this out?" "If this wasn't because of me then why am I involved and hurt?" "If this is about him then how do I know when he has it together and isn't faking it, like he did when he was seeing his whore?" The questions go on and on.

It has become an exhausting obsession.  I really just want to figure out what I should do.  I don't want to feel anything - the emotions that I feel only seem to make things more confusing.  I wish that I could come up with a plan, go to sleep and wake up where I should be.  There are times in each day that I can go about my tasks like nothing is going on at all, just swimming along.  Dropping kids off at school.  Making calls at work.  Answering emails.  Joking with friends.  But it all falls apart when I am quiet.  Usually on the drive home or at night when I am by myself.  Then it overtakes everything.  It is an emotional tsunami.  I try to keep it together.  Cry quietly.  Watch television.  Write really mean emails that I will never send because no good could ever come from them.  Fantasize about confronting Sparerica and crushing her little heart.  Sometimes I take a sleep aide, just so I can sleep through it and wake up to a new day.

How are we different?

"Our" name amplifies my need to make direct comparisons between the two of us.  I think it is impossible for the wife not to compare herself to "the other woman".  My husband made the choice again and again to spend his time and effort on his relationship with "her" instead of me.  I feel like I am a part of a "How are these pictures different?" activity on the last page of a magazine.  "How are these Erica's different?  Which one is better?" would be the name of mine.

How are we different? Is she smarter than me?  Is she funnier than me?  What does she look like? Is she skinnier than me?  How big are her boobs (he is a boob guy)? What did he call her?  Just "Erica"? Or did he have a special lovey dovey name that he called her so he wouldn't have to say our shared name. Was sex with her better? What did they talk about?  What did he say about me? About my children? 

Well she has long brown hair and brown eyes.  I cut my brown (a really lovely brown with golden streaks) hair last year and have green eyes.  She has little to no breasts and I have breasts that need architectural wonders to prop up.  (He has always said that he loved them.)  She isn't as smart as I am according to him. 

She is a little shorter than me, I am 5'3, (and he is 6'4) making her a dirty troll. She is skinnier than me.  Nice.  So now when I get out of the shower and stand in front of the mirror all I can think about is what he must see when he looks at me.  No matter that my body was stretched within an inch of it's life to birth his two children.  She doesn't have children. In all honesty, I think that I am cute but I could have taken better care of myself and paid more attention to my weight in particular.  I am not sloppy fat but definitely not the same as I was when he met me.  Though he met me in my senior year of high school.  By the same token, he played college football when I met him and let me tell you, his physique is not the same as the 21 year old college football player version of himself.  He hasn't let himself go and he is still really cute (mostly to women named "Erica"- no matter the nationality, breast size and marital status).  He has started getting gray hairs in his beard and now has to wear glasses all the time.

I don't know how to stop the comparative thoughts.  I have asked him and the answers he has given me are illuminating but not helpful.

A Whore by Any Other Name

I want my blog to be anonymous but a large portion of my hurt feelings and devastation is the whore's name.  My name is familiar but not very popular, especially for my age.  It's Erika.  Other than my 5th grade year when I thought my name should be Ashley, I liked my name. 

What is the girlfriend's name? Erica.  (I am holding on to the difference in spelling.)  WTF???  How could he have an affair with a woman with the same name?  Did it make things easier, he wouldn't even have to worry about saying the wrong name to the wrong person?  But shouldn't it have been a reminder of me?  Every time he said her name shouldn't he have thought of me? Our family? What he was doing? I told him that he cannot call me "Erika" again.  In the conversations that we have about her and he says "her" name it is at first confusing, shocking then crushing. In the meantime I have come up with a new name for her, just to help avoid further confusion, "Sparerica".  Apparently he can't have too many of us around.  Since he has a "Home Erika" and a "Work Erica", why not a "Commute Erica", "Vacation Erica" and one encased in glass - "Emergency Erica".  I have asked him to come up with another name to call me.  Something nice. Something sweet.  This request was made over a month ago......tick, tock, tick, tock.

(photo credit)

Thanks(for)giving me a broken heart

Today is the day after Thanksgiving and I am at home with my two dogs. Not my children or husband. They have been at my mother in laws since Wednesday evening. This is the second time this has happened. Last year we did the same thing but it was because I was working against a deadline and we couldn't do our normal Thanksgiving. Normally we have about 20 people at our house and I cook for two days making all the favorite dishes for both sides of our family.

This year Thanksgiving weekend lands about six weeks after I found out that my husband was having an affair. Tomorrow will be our 12 year wedding anniversary and I can't see us having a 13th. I don't have a problem with having a weekend by myself, when things are stable and my life doesn't seem to be built on quicksand. But this is a whole different monster; he says that he took the kids to his mother's so they can have a stress free holiday. He was also sure to tell me that "family is important during the holidays". Nice thought. My thought is that if he was that concerned with his children's well-being and if family was so important to him perhaps he shouldn't have had an affair. Now he can have the holiday at his mother's, where she can comfort him and help soften whatever guilt he is able to feel. I don't want him to have a break. I don't get a break. This is all I think about. I have turned in to a one dimensional person. One topic of conversation, this.

I thought I would start this blog as an outlet for everything that I want to say, that I need to say. There is a limit that I can tell other people. They have their own lives to lead. There is a limit that I can tell others about him and what is going on because they will start to hate him and if we decided to stay together it will be uncomfortable for everyone. If I decided to stay with my husband there is a limit that I can tell him, you know, angry weeping rages aren't attractive at all. (AND that I have to think about remaining attractive in order to stay married when this misery was caused by his choice to screw his whore makes me so mad!!) Everything that was listed online, when I would look up infidelity or cheating husbands, was so clinical and detached or weekend retreats that will cost more than he will spend or how to proceed after an affair, etc. I couldn't find anything that validated what I was going through. No bad words. No inappropriate thoughts or revenge plans. (Note: I wasn't going to plan anything that would violate any laws. Not in a few states at least.) So I decided I would create such a space.

(photo credit)