Hysterical Bonding

Had my face-off with Jaymie.  Felt vindicated.  Sort of.  MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him.  Sort of.  I told her, she was a pathetic loser.  Sort of.  Nothing is concrete or definitive in my new reality.  The only thing that was as clear as my new best friend, Ketel One vodka, was my deep seeded need to reclaim my husband as my own and hence, life as I knew it pre-DDay.

Richard was my life line, my emotional flotation device.  He threw me overboard, yet I still depended on him to be my savior.

Richard spent the first night out of the house with Jaymie, the second and third night in a tiny motel near our home.  On the fourth day, after 6 hours of emergency counseling, he made it back into the house.  Banished to the guest room, he could not have been more elated.  He never wanted to leave our home, but to his credit, he never argued with me about it.  Part of that may have been due to the fact he thought I might kill him in his sleep. (For those of you that take things too literally, please disregard the last remark.  It's called dark humor.)

When I acquiesced and agreed to let him back in our home, I told him it was for our kids.  I didn't want them to worry. I wanted to get back to normal as soon as possible for them.  Mostly true.
Completely true...I missed him so much!  Our king size bed felt like an immense cavern.  I can't remember ever feeling so alone, so lonely, so needing the man I had loved for over half of my life.
Starting to tear up as I type.  That is a very raw memory.

He hadn't been home long.  One night, after hours talking and drinking in the dark, we parted to retire in our separate bedrooms.  Sleep doesn't come easy.  The excuse for my next move was:  maybe I'll sleep better if he's in the bed with me.  I ventured into the guest room and asked him to please come back to our bed.  Didn't have to ask him twice.  Within minutes of feeling his warmth next to me,  I asked if I could lay in "my spot".  That's what we call it when I rest my head on his chest, under his arm.  His arm flew up, I crawled over.  With my ear to his chest, the beating of his heart penetrated my protective layer of self preservation.  I gave in to pure primal need.

I gotta draw the line with sharing all the passionate details of what happened next.  Suffice it to say, it may have been the best sex we have had EVER!  Well, I shouldn't speak for him, but it was the best I ever had.  No holds barred!  Inhibitions be damned!   It was like having sex with a stranger, but better because I knew every inch of him and he sure as hell knew me.

After, I was exhausted, utterly confused and mortified!  We laughed about it.  Humor can be a huge relief during uncomfortable moments, but the relief didn't last long.  My brain went into over-drive.  What did I just do?  Did he do that with her?  When did he learn that new thing? Was she better than me?  I'm losing my mind.  I cried myself to sleep in "my spot."
Woke up the next day and did it again.  I think we hid in the bathroom while the kids got ready for school.

Told Dr. K about the sexual marathon.  It wasn't love-making.  It was way too fast and furious.  When we talked about it, we giggled like hormonal teenagers.  Dr. K didn't have much to say.  She almost seemed as surprised by this behavior as I was.  That didn't make me feel better about it.  I felt dirty and shameful, but that didn't stop me from initiating another round of copulation again the next night.   I couldn't get enough of him.  So much sex!  All kinds of sex!  AND, even better, the hugging, the holding and deeper kisses than we had shared for years.

I'm finding it hard to describe how this addition to the coaster made me feel.  In one breath, I was putty, completely engulfed by my love for this man.  Then my brain would switch gears in a heartbeat and I haven't the skills to write well enough to explain the depth of my sorrow.  Crap.  Sorrow....such an inadequate word!  It was so much more than that.  I wanted to be with him.  I wanted to prove I was the only woman he loved.  (Who I was trying to prove it to is a question for another post!) Even while we were being more intimate than I could imagine, my mind imagined him being with her.

It was a year later that I found the Healing Heart.  Until then,  I thought the whole crazed sex component of this ride meant I was weak.  I was ignoring my true state of mind. Denial was comfortable and so much easier than my reality.  My first day reading the HH message boards, I came upon a post by someone brave enough to ask this question, "Is it normal to have tons of sex after you catch your spouse cheating?"  That woman is my hero!  There were many welcoming, compassionate, understanding responses.  Most of them told of the newest term in my vocabulary, Hysterical Bonding.

All at once, sitting at my computer a year after DDay and only a few days after I started this blog, I learned more about what I was dealing with than I had in hours of therapy.  Hysterical Bonding was normal!  In turn, that meant I was normal!  I was just taking back what was mine!  It was a turf war and I was not gonna lose! Without even realizing it, I was trying to be better than Jaymie.  Make certain Richard felt things with me that she could never make him feel.
There were so many more posts on HH that spoke directly to all of the pain, confusion and anger that I had experienced since DDay.  I read the message boards for hours.

I don't want to jump too far ahead.  There is so much more to tell.  The first year of my journey to healing still had many twists and turns for me to endure.  But, I'm glad this post took me to a place to talk more about hope and healing.  I want to stress that healing is possible.  No matter how demoralized and hopeless you feel, regardless of the darkness, if you don't give up, you may find a light, sometimes where you least expect it, to guide you back out of your emotional abyss.