After an affair, your life doesn't belong to you anymore. For over a year, I couldn't control my own thoughts.
The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random. With this blog, I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Awkward & Pointless

The countdown to our meeting was tense to say the least.  The plan was to meet Jaymie at Richard's office after our son's soccer game.  I may have said this meeting was set up for the Saturday right after DDay.  That seems wrong.  I think it was the second Saturday after DDay.  Details like that don't really matter, except I am fairly certain I didn't have the strength to deal with Jaymie face to face just 4 days into the collapse of life as I knew it.

Richard was freaking out.  I've never seen him so nervous.  I didn't know he was capable of so many emotions.  Seriously, he was like a teenage girl right before her period.  Guess that's what happens when you are caught with your hand in the pussy jar.  (Sorry.  That was crass, but I'm not gonna delete it.)

He was insistent that I tell him exactly what he was supposed to say to Jaymie during the meeting.  That would kind of defeat the purpose, right?  I wanted him to tell her the truth!  Or, at least what he told me was the truth....He never loved her!  It was fun.  He thought he deserved a mistress. It was exciting, but he lied through his teeth when he told her they would be together forever.  It wasn't real love.  It was a selfish fantasy, nothing more.

I was a complete fool. (do I say that a lot?)  Thought I could ram-rod a confrontation that would help me figure it all out, fix everything.  If not everything, than perhaps start to climb out of the depths of relationship ruin and see a way forward.  Such a good reason to write this blog!  Try to save others from making the same ignorant mistakes I made!  Shine a little light on the utter darkness that is DDay!  Richard did love her.  It was a love enveloped in the fog of his breakdown, but I am sure it felt real to him.  Took me another month to get him to admit it, even though I knew it on DDay because of "the Flinch."

The drive to Richard's office was 45 minutes of nerves on steroids.  Richard, still scared to death that he would say the wrong thing and I'd throw him out of the house again.  (I let him back on the third night, in the guest bedroom.  The lovely, Dr. K, suggested it.)  For me, it was about facing a pathetic, immature girl that let herself be swept up by a man old enough to be her grandfather.  I felt nothing but disdain for her.  I wasn't nervous, because I was in control, my comfort zone.  Not nervous, but oh, so angry!   I felt explosive.  I had to reel it in and get through this, accomplish my goal...as lame as it was.  I thought this would make it better for me.  I was soooo grasping at straws.  If I could be convinced that Richard was only in it for hot sex with a young hard body, that might be less painful.  If he really loved someone else, truly gave her a piece of his heart, I couldn't fathom how our marriage could be redeemed.

We arrived first and waited on the street by the main entrance.  She was late.  Hey, no one wants to be on time to face the jury when the verdict is sure to be "Guilty as Hell"!  She drove by once.  I remember Richard spotting her instantly.  "There she is."  He seemed to breathe out in relief and anticipation.  Not the reaction I expected.  Nothing is normal in my new reality.  She parked.  Headed toward the door and never looked me in the eye once.  Into the elevator we went.  Google AWKWARD.  You'll find an image of the 3 of us in that elevator.

We decided to sit in Richard's conference room.  She chose a chair at the back.  I sat with Richard on the opposite side of the table.  Can't you just see it??  Jaymie trying to look composed.  Sitting up so very straight with her hands folded in her lap.  Striving for the essence of dignity, knowing there might as well have been a colossal "A" stitched to the front of her chest.  I was sitting across from her on the edge of my seat, ready to hear MY husband set this little piece of morally corrupt trash straight.  Richard never sat down.  He squirmed, fidgeted and tried to use humor to lighten the mood.  He can be such an ass.  He actually started the conversation with, "So...no chance of a three way, huh?"  I seethed, "Get on with it."

I am about to disappoint you.  If I tell you what was said in the meeting, I'd be making most of it up.  Only one of us cried.  That was my poor hormonal husband.  Jaymie had her head down for the most part.  She spoke after Richard finished telling her their affair was not real and he was more sorry than he could say.  She spoke, but I can't remember a damn word of it.  What could she say...I'm such an idiot....I'm truly sorry...your husband is pretty good in bed for an old guy...What?  I didn't go there to hear a thing from her.  I wanted, no...I thought I NEEDED, to hear Richard tell her it was over and it had never been real.  Reality is honest.  In his midlife crisis, she was his Porsche.

I've held on to one clear memory of this ill-conceived meeting, at the end, I had my say.  I told Jaymie any woman capable of causing so much hurt to another woman, was not at real woman at all.  A person so selfish might never earn her place in the ranks of womanhood.  I was trying to give her the smallest benefit of the doubt because of her age.  I told her that, too.  Then I said, "I hope the pain you have brought to my family comes back to you ten fold."  Then, she said that she was not there to defend herself, as if there was any defense for fucking another woman's husband.  I told her that, too.  Got in the last word.  Meeting ajourned.

She left alone.   Richard and I waited to give her time to get to her car so she could drive her worthless ass back to Mommy and Daddy's house.  On our ride home, Richard was sweating it out, waiting for my approval of his performance.  That's all it was.  An Oscar worthy performance.

4 comments:

Wes said...

I'm going to have this conversation tonight. Slightly different circumstances, but similar enough that I found reading about your experience helpful. Thanks.

shawnthewife said...

Hi, Wes: You're meeting with the other person? If so, I'd say cancel the meeting. Do not drag the OP back into your life. Let the OP go! They don't matter. What they have to say means nothing. It's only their point of view and who cares what they think?? They are liars, cheaters and have no moral compass!
I wish I knew your story. Many of us have quite a few months of experience dealing with infidelity. I hope whatever the conversation is that you're planning to have, it helps you heal.
Please check in again. I'd like to know how you're doing.
Hope & Hugs, Shawn

Anonymous said...

Dear Shawn: Don't hate me, please. I am very new to your AMAZING blog. It really is a brilliant, sad, funny, enduring piece of literature on computer.

I guess, though, you and I have been treated so horrendously by our husbands, I feel as if that is where our minds stop meeting.

I love the funny stuff you did later on - with the boyfriend, with Jaymie. But to make her come to your husband's business and try to shove this into her face is beyond me simply because you said that your husband went after her, groomed her. For Gosh sakes, girl, she was only 24. You stupid husband is ancient! And this aint his first rodeo - it was just the rodeo he like best - he went to 10 cuz she was so stupid!!! He won this beautiful chick at an age that most 40 years old can't get. And here he is a dinosaur and gets the youngster just out of high school barely!

Imagine her effed up head - effing a 60 year old at age 24? She was just immoral - that is too easy. She was effed up mentally and your husband used her and used you and you blame her.

When my husband told me almost everything - I blamed him !!! Totally! Not the effing strippers or massage parlors prostitutes. Him. The stupid women, and the world is full of them, are so messed up emotionally...can you imagine doing that for a living? No, I blamed him because he ruined my life and my chances of a real life because now I have a toddler to contend with and she is all that matters.

And by the way, you never mention your age. Yet your children are relatively young. Is this Richard's second marriage? Or did he marry late and found you, a young babe to marry. They, the cheaters, generally don't like to cheat down - so you were his porsche also, just a few years earlier, maybe? The g. I will try to rest from my comments, Dear. Thanks again for such an amazing blog. It gets my blood boiled - that he hurt you so much that you couldn't blame him 100%. I'm sorry.

shawnthewife said...

The G: comment away, Darlin'! I am an open book/blog! Glad you are joining our little club but I certainly wish you had no need to be.
To answer your questions....I was 50 when Richard was doing the nasty with Jaymie in 2010. Richard and I had our 31st anniversary yesterday. I am his one and only wife.

I hope you don't believe that your chances of a "real" life, a very happy life are truly ruined. So not true. Your life will be what YOU make it. You have to choose to find your path back onto the Road to Happy. The fact that you lay the blame solely at your wayward hubby's cheating feet is a great start! Please consider MC and IC for both yourself and your WH. He must get help to find out why he has made such horrendous choices. It sounds like sex addiction to me.
We will be here to help you find your way. Please do not accept an average life. Choose a splendid one!
Hope & Hugs, Shawn