Chapter 2, Part 2: Getting over you

Remember when you first visited me for a few months in another country back when we met? Remember how you cried on my shoulder the first day? Remember how you felt? Remember the loneliness? But you had a way out, a flight back to your family, and I did everything I could to give you a way out. Remember how you were homesick? I may be homesick, too, at times, but you seem to have forgotten how it feels to be alone in a foreign country, culture, without friends or family. You make fun of me when I think about home and leaving this country. You make fun of my accent and certain words I use.

Remember how you felt? Now look at me. I am stuck, I have to defend myself against your lawyer, your family. You abandoned me. Do you think it is selfish for you to make fun of me, to accuse me that I mentioned thoughts of leaving this country? Of course I won’t. My children are here. Sometimes it feels I am standing against the army of an entire country and the only thing that I can hold on to are my kids. And I will. As hard as I can.

Being alone, though, is not much fun, I can tell you that. It makes me doubt, when I look at you, at your actions, at your understanding of fairness. Your claims that you are not willing to resolve our differences without lawyers and your intentions of spending every penny we have. Without willing to compromise to give me half of the time with my children. You will never be satisfied as long as I live.

Who are you?

It was easy for you to be angry at me, stay in denial of what you have done and enjoy your time with your family, boyfriend and friends. The first thing you did after the divorce was filed was that you went to a Las Vegas vacation with your boyfriend. I was alone and you could have cared less. You made sure that I had nobody there for me by talking to people behind my back. Remember those emails your wrote to our friends Alice and David about me? Telling them to be careful about me what I would say? And even when I was on the ground already, you got even angrier.

One day, you told me you did not want to be miserable anymore to the end of your days. I still believe I was a good husband and dad, perhaps not the best dad I could have been at all times. Sure, I worked way too much. From today’s view, I have to admit that I need someone to tell me my mistakes. Just like you are far from perfect, I make mistakes. But I believe I did everything I could, I gave everything I had, for my family, all from the bottom of my heart. Hearing you say you were miserable hurts. And it was not a reason to cheat in a way you did, in a way that could cost you much more than just your family at home. You know that. And I wonder whether you will be able to hide for the rest of your life or if you will stand up one day and clean up the mess you created?

I can’t control your feelings and if you felt I was not the one for you anymore, it was time to think about working on things or ending the marriage. But there are different ways how to do that and your choice was not what I would have expected from the woman I chose to spend my life with, the woman I gave my life up for. I never wanted to be treated like that, but I was, and I, and most certainly our children, will have to deal with that terrible choice for many, many years.

Those extra minutes of sex are somewhat interesting, because I never felt we had enough intimate time with each other. In my late 20s, I felt that we were in our 80s when I look at the frequency we were intimate with each other. I had doubts we would hit 250 times before we die. At a frequency of 1 time every six months or so, I may have been right. Does frequency count over quality? No. Does it count anyway? Sure it does. I was unhappy in that way. I was, in fact, very depressed. I always felt it was an important part of being married, an important and critical component on the way to happiness in a marriage. I had accepted that I would not get what I wanted. But you helped me learn. I believe I have a much better understanding of what I am looking for now. I never understood you and what you may have wanted. 

I occasionally wonder if you still think the medic or the simple act of cheating was really worth it. I sometimes tried to be you, trying to understand the Why?. I gave up trying some time ago, it did not matter to me anymore. But I wonder if it matters to you now or if it will at some point in the future. At a time you think back and think that I was not quite as bad as you thought I was and when you find out that you never were interested in knowing and understanding who I really am.

I am sure you see a jerk in me. You even call me an asshole quite frequently. You say I harass you. You say you are done with me. You do not want to be in the house when I am there. But I wonder if you really believe that I turned into that jerk overnight or if you sometimes think that your actions may have changed me. Maybe there will be a time when you will not blame me for everything anymore and you think back and see some things differently.

They say that the more two people loved each other in a marriage, the more they will fight in a divorce. If that is true, we must have loved each other quite a bit. And perhaps I am not the jerk you think I am. Perhaps we both fall into teh bitch/jerk category. It just makes me think when I am seeing what we are going through. There were two people who were able to build an incredible life in a short period of time. And those people now do everything they can to take everything apart just as much.

8am

Chapter 2, Part 1: Getting over you

You often said I have not gotten over you. You even laugh at me when you say that. In a very strange way, you seem to need that persuasion that I am still hanging on to you. A lot of people also said I am not over you and it may take years until I could.

I don’t have that much time.

It is only seven months or so since I found out that the life I always dreamed of had been nothing more than boring routine, imagination, and a sea of broken glass. And yes, it took me a long time to understand what I may or may not have done to deserve what you have done to me.

It took a lot of research and it took me a long time to understand that cheating has, often, very little to do with the actions of spouses. And it took me a long time to understand why you have not assumed any guilt and blame virtually anything on me these days.

Remember that you blamed me for almost hitting that car at a mall a couple months ago, because I had the sun visor down and you claimed you were not able to see that car because of that? Today I have to smile when you come up with something new that you say is my fault. Somehow it seems that even the color of the blue sky is my fault. Blaming me has become a routine. A routine I will have to live with.  Maybe, one day, all these things will sound just as absurd to you as they do to me now. I do not believe that anyone deserves to be treated like this. I was told by so many people that this blaming game would happen. That the spouse who caused the marriage to break will find many ways to shift the guilt over to me. I can’t do anything about it. But I believe that life will be fair in the end.      

Yes, my world fell apart earlier this year and I was frustrated. And it is impossible for you to imagine how disruptive this experience was for me. I was in this country, alone, and I once had laid everything I had to give in your hands, trusting you with all of my heart. You took everything and more from me in a blink of an eye and left me emotionally bleeding on the floor.

On the day I learned that you had cheated on me at least three and probably four times, probably the worst and most painful day in my life, I drank much more than I was able to handle. And while you continued to play this circumstance to describe me as suicidal, which I personally felt was very selfish, careless and mean, I know it was a bad decision.

But I found out in a very dramatic way that you can learn from any mistake. Especially the tough ones. I do not believe that you ever understood what the drinking was about. Remember, I asked you to give me answers to my questions, answers you were not ready to give? My life was collapsing in front of my eyes. You did not care and you were busy feeling sorry for yourself.

But I do not blame you for my drinking, it was my decision.

So, do you think I was suicidal in this moment? I talked to doctors, psychologists and friends about this. Others who went through the same. When you go through such a dramatic event, many people do stupid things and they do it in a very specific way. There is a common pattern you may not notice if you have not been in the same situation. Almost anyone in such a situation would tell you that they just do not care if they died. Even if they are parents and have children to care for. What is the same with all those people is that they exactly, perhaps subconsciously, know what they do and do it exactly in a way so they would not die or be hurt. At that night, I knew how much I had drunk, I knew when the alcohol kicked in and I knew when it was time to stop.

I remember you trying to talk to me after I had plenty of drinks. I was simply not willing to answer, even if I was able to. I told you that while the alcohol impaired my ability to move, my mind was always awake. I was sad, angry, beaten down. I did not want to answer you. But I had your attention. That is what mattered to me at that point. And I am sorry that I may have misled you.

My drinking was not a suicide attempt. It was a cry for help. A cry for help you did not want to hear. Perhaps your work as a nurse has changed into a routine. I remember that you decided to become a nurse because you wanted to help sick people because of your own family experiences. I still have a lot of respect for that and would wish more nurses would show the affection for their work as you do sometimes. But at that night, I felt that your work may have brought a routine which does not allow you to see those cries for help anymore. You once told me that your co-workers told you that you do not have the cold attitude an emergency room nurse needs. That night, you were cold.

For the first time in more than a decade, I felt truly alone.

11pm

Chapter 1, Part 4: Cheating and broken promises

If I think about your motivation to cheat, I wonder how little our children mean to you and how much did you mean to yourself at the time you cheated? How little did we mean to you when you can tell me that you ‘consciously’ cheated? You never felt guilty that you cheated and I think that is wrong in any way you look at it. You never apologized.

I remember what you wrote to your guy in one chat. When you and I were intimate with each other, just days before you cheated, you told him that you imagined that I was him, and how much that turned you on.

What were you thinking? You were not the woman anymore I had married.

You had forgotten who I was, you had forgotten your responsibility of a married mother and you simply used me, and in some way, your children for your own pleasure. In the end, you used many lies about me to make that medic feel sorry for you. That woman who drove around in her fancy SUV and was under constant observation by her husband who kept a log about the mileage on her car.

I never checked the mileage on your car. But you needed to say it to the guy you wanted to sleep with to show how horrible I am, to make him feel sorry for you. What a miserable life you have. You told him I do not iron my shirts. The number of shirts you ironed for me in 13 years can be counted on two hands. But you forgot to mention that. In retrospective, I believe that he only slept with you because he felt sorry for you. Do you think he has any respect for you?

He surely must have felt sorry for you. So sorry that he told me, when I confronted him, that I am just a paycheck to you. How right he was. And how wrong I was, believing he was a jerk. He discovered more of the real you within a few hours of chatting than I did in 13 years of knowing you.   

Seeing all these things in perspective to our children is surreal, something I cannot believe did happen. Especially not from the one woman I once believed was the best and most caring mother in the world. How could you have ever neglected your responsibilities in such a shameful, immature and selfish way? What happened to you? Who are you? These were questions I wanted answers to. But I know I will never get those answers.

I admit that I had doubts about our marriage long ago. I admit that I had thoughts about a divorce. But I would have never cheated on you and flooded the family with shame.

8am

Chapter 1, Part 3: Cheating and broken Promises

You often say I sound like a broken record when I repeat things that have been said in the past. You even laugh at me when you say this. I don’t want to repeat myself now, but it seems that every spark of common sense has been extinguished.

Why does this have to be so hard? Why can’t we just take apart what we built and save what can be saved? Why can’t we go on with our lives? Why can’t we do this? What is the sense of this destruction? Why do we do this to our children? Why do they deserve this? Why? Can you answer this question if you look inside your heart without feeling any guilt?   

When I found out that you cheated, my world fell apart. You said you cannot feel what I feel. You were right. You will never be able to understand the pain I felt. You will not even know when someone cheats on you in the same way you cheated on me, since the situation would be different. And since you know that cheating is a reality that can happen anytime, you may be able to easily accept it. We felt different things for each other, on, what I believe, an entirely different emotional level. 

You will never see the scars that will remain for the rest of my life and will impact me in so many things I will do - impact our children in some way and people I will meet in the future. You said that you do not care about my pain. You have changed me forever, my feelings of trust, my understanding of the law, of justice, my view of material things, marriage and partnership, my view of the value of family. Some of these changes are positive and you clearly opened my eyes. But other changes are negative and I still cannot believe I gave you the power to change me in the way you did.

You had the power and you took advantage of it, relentlessly. I had way too much exposure to you. I do not think that you have any idea how you impacted me, what it means to me and no, I do not think you had any right to do this to me. You told me to burn in hell. Ironically, that came from someone and a family that has always been so focused on the church. I could not help wondering that, if heaven and hell really exist, what will God say to you? Was cheating ok?

Will you go to heaven or to hell? But, on the positive side, what you have given to me is the opportunity to collect a lifetime of experiences over the past months, many experiences you have no idea of, experiences that made me a better and stronger person, experiences that sharpened my focus and taught me that I was not the person I wanted to be when I was with you. Experiences no one can ever take away. Experiences I am infinitely grateful for. You can beat me to the ground for the next 17 years over and over again. But you will not be able to take my soul. You cannot take those experiences away.   

You said you never forced me to move for you to the U.S., and, from saying that, I learned in an instant that you would not have done the same for me. You will never understand what I have surrendered, what and why I have done things for you and what I would have done for you in the future. That simple statement from you, that you did not force me to move, was a wake-up call that helped me to detach myself from you. It told me that you never loved me as much as I loved you, as silly as that sounds.

We did not have the same understanding of what love really means. In my case, that means that you give yourself up entirely for someone else. Never ever during those 11 years did I think about breaking that commitment and I would not have broken my promise for the rest of my life, no matter how enticing the opportunity would have been. I was yours, completely melted in your hands. That was my promise I had given you in front of the altar. Until death do us part. That was my promise and there was nothing that could have convinced me to break it. Nothing.

For you, there was no such promise. Or it did not mean the same to you as it did to me, if I look at the fact how easy it was for you to cheat.

In the end, it was not just a promise broken to me. It was a promise broken to our children. As I write this, I have to cry when I think about the severity of this broken promise. Have you ever thought about it? Is there a more important promise in this world, in our lives?

3pm

Chapter 1, Part 2: Cheating and Broken Promises

There is a good chance that you are already upset with me now, by having said that your actions were led by mine. I really don’t want to assume anything, especially since I have received zero answers from you to my questions so far, but I believe this was often the case, not just between the two of us. I often was amazed how easily you could be influenced by other people, how often your actions are determined what others do or have done.

Other people always seemed to matter to you. They made you upset. They made you smile. They changed your thoughts. Their actions motivated you. They made you buy things. You wanted to impress them with our money. The way you were perceived by them was always important to you. You always wanted to be much more popular than you really were. Sometimes that worked, but often it did not. If I think about the cheating, I truly believe that this may not have been just something what you wanted for yourself, it may have been something you may have wanted because you wanted the recognition from someone else.

You knew that one of your co-workers had a relationship with him. You should have known that was wrong since he was married and has two young children. But you were impressed instead. Perhaps, just perhaps, you went after him, because someone else did and you wanted to achieve the same. You needed proof that you were just as desirable as someone else. I am not sure if that was really the case, but it makes me think that both you and your co-worker had sexual encounters with him and you both knew and talked so much about each other’s experiences, even in my presence after I had found out. You talked about what kind of jerk he was. How he played you both. It sounds surreal to me today that this really happened. What kind of fool I was. I should write a soap opera.

I believe you wanted to impress your co-worker and sleeping with that medic was one way for you to do it. So many people told me in the past that they thought you lack a certain amount of self-confidence. This scenario may just be a reflection of that. Your co-worker, a tech, was way below you in the professional hierarchy in your job, and she should have been impressed by what you have accomplished. But she was able to impress you that she had slept with a medic. This still makes me think occasionally. Think, what that really means. I guess that is girl stuff and guys just don’t get it.

The fact that you were so angry after he dumped you, that you basically slandered him by saying he played you, fits the entire picture of your desire to be popular. You could not have admitted to your co-worker or anyone else that he simply dumped you. But you wanted to be popular. And someone popular simply does not get dumped, I guess. I get this one and I even feel bad for the guy who pinned you down on the family room couch. Bad, because that he fell so easily for you.

I am not sure whether you live in denial and you ended up believing yourself that he played you. He dumped you because his morals kicked in when you could not get enough and asked him to come back a second time and a third time the same day, at a time at night when the kids were sleeping in our house. It is interesting that you even considered an affair with that medic, knowing that he had a family and knowing that he had something going on with your co-worker. The fact that you were selfishly willing to destroy someone else’s family for sex, aside the fact that you easily accepted the risk of drowning your own, puts your personality in a very differently light and does not fit the word “angel” you so much enjoy to hear from your friends, most of them you only communicate with through Facebook.

I can’t deny that I hope that one day you will see what you have done, what it meant to the people around you, especially to your children.

Looking at all of this, how many promises did we break? I know I worked too much, sometimes 80 hours a week, to keep us safe from the looming recession. I know you said you lost your butterflies for me. I know you were upset that I did not take care of myself as I much as did before the marriage. I know that you sometimes must have felt like living in a golden cage, a life that may have been financially safe, but was dull and boring emotionally and physically for both of us. Even if I promised to make you the happiest woman in this world, I failed. In that way, I also broke the promise to our children to maintain a safe family environment for them. But I keep wondering if all of this justifies infidelity?  

To end a marriage in this way is shameful. But it is up to us to think about our children and guide them through the next years and I am worried that selfishness, even if it is required in some way to make ourselves happy again before we can make them happy, will take over entirely and leave them behind. I hope that we soon will be able to drop all the anger and selfishness. We need to be reasonable enough to make this process as easy and smooth as possible for them.

In the end, we do not matter. They matter. Right now, I think especially you are using them as a tool to make you happy and make me angry.

We are hitting big roadblocks all the time and I do not understand why. We hardly talk and if we do, the exchange of words is filled with distrust, threats, blaming, accusations, lies. It impacts our children. Robert is becoming much more introverted than he has ever been, even if he seems to be dealing with the situation and change in life much better than Michael. Michael is changing. You know he is more aggressive and his fears are met with behavior from both of us that is not what we once promised. He walks all over you and I do not like that. He says things he has never said before. Hurtful things and surely things he regrets to have said. Please keep in mind what is important for our children, to drop selfish behavior, to return to common sense and quickly become the best parents we can be when we are separated and, hopefully, soon divorced.

When we decided to put our children into this world, we gave the promise to do all we can to bring them up as decent people of this world and to give them everything they need to be able pursue their own dreams, to allow them to change the world in their own way to make it a better place to be. We don’t do that right now and it breaks my heart that we are stalling at a phase that is so painful for them.

All three children are a symbol of, from my view, how much I loved you. Look at them, look at how they smile, how they talk, how different they are in the way they express themselves, feel the love they are willing to share when they look at you, smile at you, hug you. These are all expressions of what I once felt for you.

Every day I look at them, I try to imagine how much I must have loved you, what I was willing to do for you. Now my feelings are entirely wrapped into them. It is an amazing, breathtaking feeling. It is the single most important reason why it is worth living. Michael, Robert and Nicholas are my purpose in this world. That has always been the case, even when I worked more than what I should have and missed time to spend with them. But they always were my priority in everything I did and they will always be. They will always guide my thinking and doing.

11pm

Chapter 1, Part 1: Cheating and Broken Promises

I believe this is a time of uncertainty for both of us, a time of change, hardship, pain, compromise and a time of very difficult decisions that, right or wrong, will impact both of us for a long, long time. When I found out earlier this year that you cheated on me several times with a coworker, it took me some time to realize that, while we both should try to become happy again, there is nothing more important than to be the best parents we can be, no matter what we feel or not feel for each other.

I do not think that we are the best parents we can be these days.

Over the past weeks and months, when I began moving past the anger, I tried to start thinking about my life after you. Thought by thought. Word by word. Smile by smile. I will write more about it later, but the children have always been my focus.

It was a time of confusion. I told you how helpless I felt at times. How desperate and upset I was that you dropped me and your young family like a hot potato in exchange for a few minutes of sex with a co-worker you were attracted to. You said his medic uniform was so “steaming hot”. You told him how “miserable” you were in your marriage. That is all you need to achieve your goal.

When I found out that you cheated, I felt alone. Incredibly lost. You told me to go out and find friends to talk to. I did. After 11 years of marriage, I was afraid how difficult it would be for me to find friends, but I was surprised how easy it turned out to be. Today, I do not believe that I am as a bad as a person as you claimed, which I believe guided me to friends that helped me get back up again. In the end, I have to be grateful for your initial advice that I needed to find friends.   

I did introduce our children carefully to friends I made. There were people who thought this decision was a mistake. Perhaps it was. But I had no friends in this country. No family. I was lost. I felt our children knew that I was lost. When our 8-year old told me that he wanted to be close to me when he went to sleep and when he said “Dad, I don’t want you to be alone,” I saw in his eyes that he was worried about me. Our two older sons knew so much more about our marriage and its desperate state than we understood at the time. But I wanted them to know that their dad was ok. And showing them that there were people I could go to, not just you, was one way for me to show them just that.   

Strangely enough, it seemed that you felt you needed to exceed everything I did. Would you have brought your boyfriend into our childrens’ lives so early, just a few weeks after I filed for divorce, if I had not begun introducing them to a female friend, who really was just a friend, but you were so jealous of?

I truly believe that your actions were led by my actions, perhaps with a sense of envy and anger, but not a sense for what was right or wrong. Maybe you were also looking for a justification that you could finally introduce them to Brian, which so apparently was your boyfriend, even if you always denied he was.

I remember when I said that I do not want Brian to see my children and how you reacted. It seemed as if it was the most trivial thing to you that your boyfriend can be exposed to them. But then, Brian had already seen them the night after you cheated anyway, when you brought him into the house late at night, a night I was still on a business trip a few thousand miles away and you felt you were safe to have him at our house. Two guys in two nights – of four nights I was away. Sometimes I feel that you must have been truly miserable in our marriage. Would you have taken advantage of the first time I was away in a year in such an extreme way otherwise?

You two drank wine and laughed so loud the children woke up and saw the two of you sitting on the family room couch. I will never forget what Michael asked me: ‘Dad, is the reason for your separation that mom has brought men into the house when you were not here?’ I had no idea at the time that Brian had been in the house at the time and I am stilled dazzled how easy it was for you to forget our children for a few hours of fun with males.

You said that you did not tell me about Brian since you knew it would make me upset and you were sure our sons would forget that Brian had been at the house. They did not. They remembered the wine glasses you used, wine glasses that were special to you and me. They knew how his hair looked. They knew about the clothes he was wearing. Two months after that happened, they told me about that incident. And I wonder how deep that experience really sits in their minds? Is it one of the reasons why Michael is so angry with you today? So angry that he says he hates you? So angry that he calls you a liar? So angry that he calls you a bully?       

I am no psychologist. I am purely guessing what is happening. I wish you would follow my request that the two of you go counseling so we have an idea what we need to do to make him happy again and enable a good relationship to you.

Why did you cheat? That is a question I have been scratching my head over for a long time. You may have been angry at me, angry for working too much. You also said that you had lost your butterflies some time back, sometime in November of last year. You can’t deny that there was at least a hint of selfishness in your actions. It was important to you to meet certain people. Our children were not as important. In my situation, I feel they had no idea what my life would look like after the divorce and they needed to know that their dad is ok. This is why they were introduced to Brianna and Danielle, they needed to know their dad is not alone and he will be ok.

10am

Introduction, part 2

I am not sure what these pages will mean to you. Since I am writing these lines after I already have typed tens of thousands of words in this letter, I know that I will talk on the following pages about many things I repeatedly told you over the past few months, but many other things I never told you as well. There may be answers you like, answers you don’t like, words that may make you cry, words that may hurt and make you upset, and possibly surprising things you have never heard before and you may not expect. But above all, they are all written with a sincere feeling of honesty that comes from deep inside my heart. If you were ever interested in who I am, this is more than you have ever known about me. I have never written anything like this before and, hopefully, I will never have to write such a letter again.

I believe that one reason that we were so attracted to each other initially was that we both were in a phase of wanting and needing, foremost peace and harmony. That sense for harmony may have determined the course of our marriage and prevented us from communicating in a way we should have. Things should have been said that unfortunately have never been said and I am sure it is not just me who feels that way. This letter is a way for me to break free, to talk to you in a way I always should have.

In a way, this is new to me. It feels somewhat selfish to talk only from my perspective, to say what I believe is right and not being guided by what I think you may or may not want to hear. In the past, I always focused on what others want and put myself last. When we went into our downward spiral, I finally learned that putting me last was a mistake. A few months ago I discovered that it would have been important to let you know how I feel about our relationship and I just recently learned that I need to be entirely open about what I think. I learned how to leave my shell.    

I am pretty sure that you may not perceive the content of these letters as fair. But I promise that what you will find are words that are about as honest and pure as I can be. It is a letter from me to you, written with the intention to never share its content, but I believe that you should have access to it, should you be interested in it. With some distance, many things that are unclear to the both of us now, may make sense one day when we wake up in the morning. If you were ever interested in finding an answer why certain things happened in the way they did, and would care about what made me tick, there is a good chance that you would find an answer in this letter or at least a hint that would give you an idea what the answer might be. Many things I ever felt for you and people who touched both our lives are somehow wrapped into this letter. 

As I am writing this line, the letter is finished and I just need to click the “Save” and “Send” button. It is a feeling I never had before. A feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of silence and peace to be able to comfortably close a chapter of my life. In a way, the events of this year and the following years will remain with me for the rest of my life, yet it seems that I can now easily deal with it, store it away in some drawer in the back of my brain and selectively pick those parts I enjoyed – and leave the painful ones behind. When I click on “Send”, I believe a new chapter of my life will begin. 

They say it will take years to shed the pain of divorce. You know it always takes me a bit longer to understand certain things and figure out how to deal with them. But eventually, I get it and I can adjust very quickly. I have to think back to a night in October 1997, when I asked one of my best friends whether I should leave everything behind for you.

He told me that if I really loved you, I should leave my home country as quickly as possible, because I would not do it later on if I hesitated. I followed his advice and I would do the same again, if I had the choice. I am in a similar situation now, very similar, a situation with substantial emotional pressure. I know this letter represents me sitting next to my friend once again, I can see him looking in my eyes and telling me that I need to follow my reasoning and my heart. I will follow his advice once again. I have no regrets in that way and despite our marriage was, in my view, a waste of time- leaving the children out of consideration for a moment - closure will help me reorganize and make my own life richer, while I always will believe that we both carry the enormous guilt of what we have done to our children.

10am

Letters To A Cheating Spouse: Introduction

Never would I have expected that I might be caught up in the middle of a divorce. In fact, until the beginning this year I believed that I was happily married, settled for life and creating an environment for three young children in which they can thrive and simply enjoy to grow up.

I was wrong, terribly wrong, as I found out a little over nine months ago that my wife had cheated multiple times while I was on a business trip earlier this year.   

Anyone who has gone through such an experience knows the emotional impact of being cheated on. Now, almost 10 months after my discovery, I am in the middle of a divorce and custody battle, and sort of back rebuilding my life, trying to pick up the dream of a perfect marriage I once I believed I lived.     

I always found it ironic that many of us try to find support in professional counseling, from counselors who may have never experienced the same kind of emotional stress. Today, I believe that counseling may help, it may show a door, but we will have to walk through that door ourselves. And the way we walk through will be different in each case. I, for myself, looked for so many tools to deal with my frustration, anger and depression and made some pretty dumb moves, but some very good choices as well.

One of them was writing these letters to my spouse.

They reflect actual events from my point of view (well, of course) and in fact tell the story of an 11-year marriage. I truly believe that had I taken my marriage more serious than I anyway did, serious in a different way, had I taken my pink glasses off once in a while, I could have figured out a long time ago that this marriage could only end up in divorce. Within the past 10 months, I have been blessed (is blessed the right word?) a life time of experiences I would not want to miss anymore and experiences I believe will help make a future relationship better than what I once had.

So, what is the purpose of publishing these letters, which I never intended to show to anyone? Simple: I want to share my experiences with you, ask for interaction and discussion. I hope there will be those who will be reading them in time to avoid the mistakes I made. Somehow it seems we always learn just five minutes too late what we should have done to avoid a disaster.

There is no malicious intent to expose my spouse and others. Needless to say, all names are changed. What you need to know when reading these letters are the actual names that will show up. I may modify the letters a bit to make it more clear who the people I mention are, but here is the overall list.

Jillian, my ex-wife
Michael, our 9-year old son
Robert, our 8-year old son
Nicholas, our 1-year old son
Brian, her boyfriend
Danielle, my girlfriend
Alice and David, two of our closest friends

I am looking forward to your comments.




Introduction


Jillian,

this is the letter I could have never thought of until the beginning of this year.

I began writing this letter as one of the ways to cope with what has happened earlier this year between us. Dramatic events that forced me to file for divorce. I never intended to share the content with anyone. But often our views change over time as we go forward. At some point, when I started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of my frustration and depression, it suddenly became clear that I would need to open up this letter to others, perhaps to you, perhaps to our children at some point in their lives and perhaps to more people. I know this letter holds all the keys for entire emotional closure to my relationship to you. It will allow me to leave the marriage to you, and what it once meant to me, behind.

I never understood what people define as closure when we hear them talk on TV in interviews with reporters. In some cases, I believe closure is just a word we like to use in certain circumstances, sad circumstances, but actual closure may not be possible, no matter what we do and how hard we try. But I know I need some sort of closure to this marriage, not just arguments, not just a signed paper that is social and legal evidence that we are in fact not a couple anymore. I need emotional closure to find peace for my mind and to be able to continue with my life. I do not know if you are looking for that kind of closure as well, and I have no idea how you would accomplish that or if you have found it already. For me, it is this letter that I have written over the past few months in emotional moments, in sad and happy times. In times I missed you. In times I was angry with you. In times I hated you. In times I did not care about you. In times I missed my children. In times I found peace and calm for the time after our marriage.  

An email once created the foundation for our relationship. In the same way, I believe an email can break it apart and conclude our marriage. It is that final point of no return, that point where I cross over into a new phase of my life and never want to look back. However, it seems this letter will not end our relationship. It just cuts my remaining emotional ties to you. Over the past months, I added words to these pages every day, which helped me shed weight from my mind. We will be in a new kind of non-emotional relationship, a relationship that I expect to last until our three sons are ready to take their lives into their own hands, when they are ready to have separate relationships with us. In some way, our paths may cross in some instances in the future, hopefully at more normal moments than we are able to have now.

9am