Hello All.

Well, this is it, January 11. I have reached the one year anniversary of discovery day. In about eight hours, it will be the exact moment one year ago today that a delusional woman called me on my mobile phone and informed me that she had been having sex with my husband for eight years and traveling the world with him on business trips for five years. She called me by my name as if she knew me. She insinuated their relationship was ongoing and that I knew all about it and was somehow okay with it. She told me that she had been to both of our offices. She mentioned my son’s name. She acted like she was part of our family, and that she meant something to my husband. I found out through a long and drawn out series of disclosures by my husband, that he told her he loved her and he told her that she was beautiful and that he loved having sex with her and thought about her all the time. He told her that he was neglected and that I was unloving, and we didn’t have sex and that he didn’t even know if I was in love with him anymore, which couldn’t have been further from the truth, and he knew that, but she did not. He had actually broken things off with her five months prior to her phone call. She has stalked me, intermittently, for the entire year. Disclosure by my husband included the fact that he actually had four acting out partners over the past 15 years. He was diagnosed as a sex addict on Monday, January 13, 2014 and has spent the entire year learning what recovering from sex addiction actually feels like. It’s a bitch, just like the whore that called my mobile phone and turned my life upside down! My blog is derived mostly from journal entries I have been keeping literally since discovery. I have learned a lot this year. A lot about my husband, a lot about myself, and a lot about cheating, mistresses, sex addiction, betrayal, heartbreak, forgiveness, and survival.

I am hoping 2015 will include continued healing for me, for my husband, and for our marriage. In the meantime, back to my journal.

Journal Entry, Cont’d: December 17, 2014

For many reasons, I did not walk out onto that highway tonight. First, there was no way I was ready to leave MY life behind. As I muddle through this devastating journey with my sex addict husband, I am realizing pretty quickly that I don’t really want to leave this life. I haven’t decided yet whether I want to leave my husband, but I do not want to leave my life. I love life. I always have. I love my husband, I have for 30 years. I can walk away from him, and still love him, and still love myself, and go on. I can do that. Some days the pain is excruciating, but I still choose life, and I will not walk away from it.

Also, I am a pretty practical person and as I sat there in the parking lot of Teshima’s Restaurant on this warm tropical evening, I surmised that if I did walk out into the road, and a car hit me, most likely it would not kill me anyway, and then I would be physically injured, maybe even catastrophically, as well as emotionally and mentally battered. And who fucking wants that. If I actually wanted to kill myself, I would make it stick. No coming back, no waking up from a coma with everyone looking at me all pathetic like, and then having to live my life in a wheelchair, depending on the same people I was trying to run away from.

By the time my husband finished paying and stepped out into the parking lot, I was standing by the rental car. I was still crying, but without the overwhelming doom and gloom attitude. Blue Eyes opened the door for me, made sure I was safely in the passenger seat before gently shutting my door, and then got in beside me and we took off for the hotel. He is now used to guiding me through my hazy episodes. He doesn’t stop to talk, he just helps me along. Sometimes I wish he would say something, or even get frustrated with me, but he doesn’t, at least not out loud. Tonight I did not want him to say anything anyway. I just wanted to think about how I let myself get so down so quickly. It has been a while since I had thoughts of hurting myself, or leaving for good. The other thing ruminating in my brain, was the thought that I did not want to tell my husband about thoughts of walking into traffic. I decided to think on why I was feeling apprehensive about opening up to my husband, or being honest about my thoughts and feelings. Of course, since I was silent on the 30 minute drive to the hotel, so was he. He never starts a conversation, at least not one that includes my trauma, or anything about his sexual acting out or acting out partners.

We walked in silence to our room. I sat down on the bed and he left me alone, and I felt alone. Eventually he asked if I wanted him to run a bath. A bath did sound like a good idea. Baths have become a common source of soothing and a place for bonding over the past 11 months. As I sat in the bathtub, and he climbed in next to me, the tears started to flow again. I wasn’t even sure where they were coming from this time. I thought about opening up to Blue Eyes and explaining what had happened at the restaurant, and in the parking lot. But I was afraid. I could feel the anxiety creeping up on me. I could feel my heart beat out of rhythm. I could feel the murmur and I realized I was frightened to tell him that I was still so weak, that I was still desperately searching for the person that could help me through the pain, that I was not as strong as I wanted to be and that I knew he couldn’t be my strength. And then I realized, I had to tell him. If we weren’t able to share our deepest darkest secrets with each other, we weren’t healing. We would not be able to. I had never kept secrets and I didn’t want to start now. It took me more than thirty minutes of stopping and starting and at one point, of uncontrollable sobbing, before I could actually get all the words out. I had taken a big leap backwards and had thought about harming myself, again.

I think he was scared, but he put on his strong face and kissed me and said he was happy I had told him. He didn’t want me to be having these feelings in isolation. He needed to be part of my healing. I could feel a shift. A shift away from me always being the strong one. A shift away from me being the only one that knows how to care for and nurture people. His reactions felt genuine and his emotions felt real. I think we made some progress tonight. If we are going to make it, I can’t start shutting down now. I have to be strong for myself, and yet vulnerable in our relationship. Vulnerable enough to let him in and believe that he can actually  do his share. That he can be a real partner in our marriage.