One Year, To The Day

Yesterday marked one year to the day that W stepped out on me. Four days shy of exactly six months from D-Day. I knew this time of year was going to bring up some hard emotions. I attach a lot of importance to dates and as such expected that the next month or so would be slightly harder than it has been. What I didn’t expect was for it to hit me like a ton of bricks and I wasn’t prepared for the level or depression and feeling out of control. Of course there’s more going on than just the A but it all comes back to it in one way or another. I wanted to write yesterday but I couldn’t figure out how to order everything. hell I’m not sure I’ve got it right even now but I need to get this out.

Holidays have always been a mixed bag for me. I have issues with a sibling so the big ones, Thanksgiving and Christmas, are always hard for me since I rarely get to see my side of the family for either of them and when I do it always feels like they are doing it out of pity for me. So From shortly after Halloween until New Year’s I struggle not to be depressed. Some years back I threw everything in to New Year’s and the Fourth of July. I could have fun, blow things up, and not think about what are, for most people, the important holidays.

New Year’s Day marked the end of the season during which I felt depressed and I could shake it off and start anew. I could take the kids to fireworks stand and spend too much money, stay up late, and ring in a fresh start with my immediate family. This was the lesser of the two holidays for me since it was so close to the season during which I fight depression. It was certainly an exclamation point for me though. Something I really enjoyed and to which I looked forward. Now it’s three days after December Twenty-Eight, D-Day, and I didn’t want to do anything last year but I still set up for the kids and smiled for them. I doubt it’ll ever be that important again. If you’ve read W’s side of this you also know that it’s the first time VR ever made a move on her so there’s that as well. If it weren’t for the kids I’d sleep through it from now on.

The Fourth of July has long been my favorite holiday. I love what we are celebrating, I love the fireworks, I love the gathering of friends and family. I put everything in to it. I spend way too much money on things to blow up, food to eat, and try to get everyone involved. For years we’ve done this at my best friend’s house with few exceptions. Last year was one of the exceptions. Smack in the middle of W’s affair with another of my best friends we went to his house. My night ended with W yelling at me in front of people and me being utterly confused as to what was going on. This year I wanted to reclaim it. I didn’t want to let the A have that day. What I am getting is most of my kids being gone, a depression I don’t see ending until after mid-July (I am figuring the length of the affair), and a feeling that I can’t control much of anything at the moment.

In essence W managed to take the two holidays I had managed to make my own, to have some celebration where I didn’t have to think about how shitty my family is to me, and ruin them for me. Make no mistake they are ruined for this year at least. I don’t think there’s any saving them. What I get to do is put on my happy face for the kids, who know nothing about the A, buy fireworks, carry on the tradition, and pretend like there’s nothing wrong. Sounds exciting doesn’t it?

I didn’t want the kids gone, two of them I don’t think I could have stopped as that situation involves their summer visitation with their egg donor but the other two I made clear I didn’t want them to leave. Guess where they’ll be? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. I could cancel their plans. I am their father. But that would upset them. Well one of them, the other would roll with it and have a grand time at our traditional celebration. That’s really the key here. I needed this 4th, out of all of them, to match our tradition as closely as possible and it’s not going to happen. I made this clear before plans were ever made. I made it known I didn’t want them to go. I gave up because it seemed like there were other battles to fight at that moment, and there were, and now W tells me she didn’t mean to make me feel like I couldn’t say “no”. The problem is that is exactly how I felt. I felt like I couldn’t say “no” without upsetting everyone aside from myself. I felt selfish wanting my tradition. Now I can’t have it. I get to deal with a situation I didn’t have any say in creating by not having any say in how I deal with it.

Fuck. My. Life.

…and time passed

Things seem to be on an even keel right now. I’m not consumed by the affair any longer, I am learning to recognize my triggers, I pick my battles carefully, the boundary agreement is safely in place, and we are still talking about things on a daily basis. It’s strange really, to have this be part of our life but not have it be the all-consuming beast that it was for almost three months. When this all started I knew I would have to get over it eventually but I had no idea how that could happen.

Getting over the affair started out as a minute by minute fight and has slowly progressed from there, in increments, to where it is now. It’s not much of a fight for me anymore and when it is winning that fight is fairly easy. I am still battling depression and taking pills to help me sleep but that’s to be expected. I haven’t taken an anxiety pill in over two weeks and I think that’s progress. To be honest I could have used the sleep aid before D-Day so blaming that on W, or letting her take the blame, is really disingenuous.

The most important thing to me, right now, is W. She’s in a dark place, unable to start moving past what she has done. It kills me to see her hate herself like she does right now, to question why I would stay, much less why I would even like her. So that’s my focus for the foreseeable future. I need to be here for her, to help her see herself how I see her and not through the grimy lens of self loathing.

I am quite fine enough to stop worrying about myself all the time. There are still some little things but those can be dealt with as they come up, and they are truly little things. Well there’s one larger thing but I think dealing with that will be as much for her as it is for me. The key here, in my opinion, is that we deal with all of this together, as a single entity and not as adversarial parties.

W’s actions made us adversaries but through a lot of hard work and a lot of communication we aren’t that any more. We are a couple, married, together, striving for the same goals. Whether our enemies are internal, self loathing, unhealthy desires, unclear communication, etc, or external, people who don’t support the marriage, issues with extended family, etc, as long as we get to the root and face them together, hand in hand, there’s nothing we can’t do. Neither of us is in this alone nor will we ever be again and together we’ll make through.

It’s harder to write when things aren’t moving very quickly but aren’t stagnant. Progress towards getting past this and moving in to a new normal is slow, painfully so at times but it’s there. Each day we make progress but it’s hard to find a milestone about which to write. So my entries have been few and far between as of late but I really want to document our progress in case I ever start feeling defeated and need something on which I can reflect or because of the remote possibility that my scattered thoughts might help someone going through the same thing. Not much of a closing paragraph really but that’s all I got at the moment…

Three Months In

Yesterday marked three months since D-Day. That should seem like a milestone and I guess it is somewhat. It’s a nice, identifiable marker if nothing else. I’m not sure where we should be in our recovery since everyone is different but I’m not completely comfortable with the way things are going.

I need to make one thing clear before I go on: W isn’t causing any of what I want to talk about. Yes she’s the root cause of the situation but since D-Day she’s been nothing but willing to do anything to prove herself to me. She hasn’t pushed about our boundaries even once and the one time I felt like she was pushing she corrected that quickly and made sure I understood she wasn’t. This isn’t about her at all. It’s about the way I process and handle things.

So I feel like life is returning to normal. That’s basically what’s got me feeling not quite comfortable in my own skin. We’ve talked to whole affair to death, we’ve gone over the reasons and the causes. We talk about every thought that pops in to my head even now. This has resulted in me understanding, as much as I can, the why and how of what happened. I have all the gory details and visceral reality of their sexual encounters. I’ve had most of that for two months or more. I’m starting not to care about it at all but it’s not like I’m starting to trust W again and I’m not ready to modify our boundaries yet, not even close. I’m not sure what it is that’s happening.

Certain things still trigger me and raise emotions. I got gut punched by a movie reference just the other night and nearly lost it so there’s still pain there. My problem is that, day to day, the affair has seemingly ceased to matter as much. I can work all day without having to concentrate on holding it together. I can go an hour or two without clicking on GTalk and expecting an immediate response from W. We’ve almost got the household routine back to normal. And you’d expect all of this to be good but it’s making me very anxious. Not so much that I have to take my anxiety meds but still anxious nonetheless.

We’ve moved past the hysterical bonding and are settling back in to our normal sex life. Not that there aren’t a couple of problems there but they’re minor and we’re dealing with them heads up and eyes open. The intensity of the whole affair has faded. I’m not going to mourn the hysterical bonding being over with, it was intense and fun but a man my age can only keep up. with sex two to three times a day for long and our sex life, even during the affair, was always good.

I don’t think I’m ready for the intensity to be over and done with. I think that’s why I’m feeling this way. As I write I feel like I had so much taken away that I deserve the intensity. That’s ridiculous sounding but it’s what I am feeling. Like there hasn’t been enough. There’s the rub though, enough of what? She’s done everything I asked and more and she isn’t stopping. Do I need more apologies, more deference, more introspection? I have no clue what I couldn’t have not gotten enough of except maybe time.

This is all in my head though, really, because W isn’t getting over it or having it lose intensity for her. She’s not doing as well as I would like her to be. She said yesterday that she feels like this all just happened. I’m not even overwhelmed anymore. The affair happened, it’s part of our lives. I love her more than I ever knew I could, she’s discovered love she never knew existed. Things really are going well if look at the situation objectively. So why do I feel like something’s not right? Why am I terrified of things getting back to normal and enjoying our renewed feelings for each other? I can’t get a handle on this and it’s really starting to drag me down.

Overall I’ve got pretty mild depression symptoms but nothing I can’t get out of bed over. We’ve got a good set of boundaries. She’s willing to do whatever I ask. I’m not pushing myself to make things better faster or anything. Everything looks right. So why the fuck does it seem skewed?

Enough of my rambling BS for today. I’m getting close to work so I’ll sign off by wishing you all a solemn Good Friday…