2013 in Retrospect - The Affair

We all make new year resolutions. Whether we voice them to our friends and family or we keep them to ourselves, we all make goals for what we would like to achieve in the new year. 2013 was a pretty shitty year for me. We had just celebrated our 8th year wedding anniversary and I thought Phew! We got past the 7 year itch! Well, that turned out to be wrong. What happened next was an absolute shocker that I wouldn't wish on anyone no matter how much I didn't like them. A week after the anniversary (and I mean exactly a week!), "The Grinch" (that's his name and I'll explain why later) comes home from work incredibly moody and silent. So I leave him to it with whatever he was sulking about and do my thing. I went to the grocery store grabbed a few things needed for school lunches and went home. He was still in a mood, looking at this phone so I went to bed and read a book. At 10.30pm, 24th June, 2013, he comes in and asks me if I knew why he was quiet. He proceeds to tell me he doesn't love me like a man should love his wife and that he was leaving. There are no words to explain to you what that feels like but I can tell you the thoughts that ran through my mind. Wow, so this is what the end of a marriage feels like... If he doesn't love me anymore then I can't force him to love me... You have to let him go.. So, after a long silence, I tell him if that's how he feels then I guess this is it. He says he'll sleep in the girls room and leave me to it. I remember just sitting there thinking WTF, what the hell just happened. Replaying events in my head that could lead to this. We just celebrated our 8th year wedding anniversary, we just spent a beautiful winter morning having coffee with our 1 year old son (we took photos!)... I started talking to a friend on Facebook and told her what jut happened. Then I heard him snore next door. How the hell can he go to sleep after dropping a bomb like that!! I remember thinking, NO WAY! I deserve to know the truth! So I went in to my girls room and woke him up. After pressing the issue more, finally at 4.30am in the morning I found out, he had been having an intimate affair at work with a work colleague and he wanted to pursue the relationship further and be with her. Do you want to know what that feels like hearing your husband tell you he's been seeing someone else? It's like being punched in the chest and having something heavy on it that won't move, there's a lump in your throat, you can't breath and you feel internally sick. Slowly the details start coming out. My initial thoughts were The Kids! Trying to stay composed, I told him that he needed to really think about this and that he had kids he needed to think about. I made him call his mum (rational thinking was not part of my vocabulary at that time!)and tell her what has happened and she said the same thing and to not make any drastic decisions. Then I remembered, there was a time when he wanted me to check his mobile info because he ran out of text credit a month ago. I remember seeing the list of text messages being sent. I remember seeing the same number a lot. At that time I just thought it was a male work colleague (well.. it was a work colleague alright! and.. she had a manly name! so, I was half right!) But I remember thinking that it was odd that messages were being sent at all hours of the day. So I went on the laptop and looked at it again. I got the number and as you do with no rational thinking, I messaged her and told her to leave him alone while we work through this. I received a reply "He's a grown ass man, he can make his own decisions" Those words will prove ironic later one. Well, that was obviously the wrong move! I saw my husband, in all the years that we had been together behave like an child throwing a tantrum. Imagine this, he finds out, starts yelling "why did you message her?" Stomps off down the hallway, in to my daughters room, gets in to the sleeping bag and throws the covers over his head in a huff! I go in (without raising my voice, I remember this because I just thought, this is ridiculous, a 32 year old man throwing a tantrum) and ask him why he is acting that way. I kid you not, looking down at him, listening, watching him as he explains, was like watching my daughters talk to me in the middle of a tantrum. And they were 7 and 8 years old! As the details of the affair came out, it felt like daggers were being thrown at me. I remember standing there in the kitchen thinking I should throw something at him but I didn't. Instead I just stood there in shock as every detail was re-lived. I remember standing there watching him leave the kitchen, go to the toilet, vomit and come back. He tells me he doesn't know why he's vomiting. I coolly tell him "that's all your guilt wanting to come out. I don't know if there's any psychological truth to that. It just felt good saying it at that time. His mother was calling as many people as she knew to try and do some kind of damage control. Pastors, counselors etc. She wanted us to stay put while she tried to sort something about. That week, was the most awkward, uncomfortable week I have ever lived. We were strangers in our home. We hardly talked, I stayed in our room, he stayed in the living room. To be honest, I don't even remember how we managed to feed the kids, sort them out for the day and deal with them at home with dinner and homework. My son was one and I can't even remember how I spent time with him during that week. On Thursday, his mum managed to get us in to see her Pastor to talk things through. Great! I would have to endure more details of this affair. And yes I did! So much that I walked out of the room. I didn't want to hear anymore. There's only so much one can take especially if she's trying to maintain her composure and be dignified in all this. I don't know why my brain and body went in to this mode trying to act like a composed and emotionless person. Maybe it was my way of trying to maintain control over something I had no control of. He agreed to do couples counselling