Insomnia

I am awake. It is 2.30am and I am thinking of him lying in his wifes arms at home. Did they have amazing sex tonight? Did he tell her he loved her?  

One part of me feels jealous of her….and another bigger part of me feels so so sorry for her. She has no iea what a lying cheating bastard he really is. She has no idea that when she went on holiday with her girlfriends he was at my house holding my hand and being intimate through the night. I never really gave her a thought to be honest while I was involved with him. It was only after it ended, and I foolishly looked her up on facebook that I got the slap in the face. She looks lovely. I mean genuinly lovely. Her picture is of her smiling holding the dogs that he spoke about to me, and the picture is obviously taken by him, due to the height differences. He is really tall and he told me that she was small. Such a domestic happy scene. A  happy couple smiling in the garden with their dogs. That hurt me so much. It made her real to me. Not the faceless wife who he was “trapped” by. The faceless wife who he didn’t feel any guilt towards. I felt floored to see this real person, looking so happy and it made me SO ANGRY with him. How could he be such a cold calculated bastard to her. And if he could do that to the woman he said he loves, the woman he promised to love forever in the eyes of god and the law, then he had no problem with screwing with my head. So not only did I feel the pain of it all I felt her pain too. Pain that she didn’t even know about, all while he settles back into his cosy domesticated life unscathed. And here I am. Unable to sleep. Alone.

Alarm Bells

We both enjoyed running-one of the many things we had in common, and we would update eachother on our running times. One day he said his legs were sore and I offered to give him a rub down-nudge nudge wink wink!! He said he was free there and then and so I said

“give me your postcode and I’ll be right over

“or I could come to you”

“no, it ok, I would like to get out today”

“I really don’t mind coming to you”

“lol, no I ll come to you! Postcode”

After a short silence I received

“My mother wouldn’t like it” (I blinked and shook my head when I received this)

Immediately afterwards “I live with her these days”….. texts began arriving at my phone at a rapid rate of knots explaining that he had gone bankrupt in the credit crunch, fallen on hard times and was picking himself up. How humiliated he was that he had to live with his mother, how he just wanted to jump off a bridge right now….how it made him feel less of a man.

I have to admit I was gobsmacked and absolutely gutted. I didn’t want or need these complications and his martyr act was very unattractive. “WHYYYYYYYY????????” I said to myself in a bemused kind of way. Why does there always have to be something????

“I bet you don’t want to know me now. I understand x” What a corker of a manipulative text. Of course I recognised the martyrdom in this but I replied

“meet me for lunch”

“I can’t, I feel too bad”

“don’t be ridiculous, lunch 12.30”

He argued the toss about not meeting for lunch but I was having none of it. We met half way on my suggestion, and he arrived looking very dejected. I kissed him in the car park and we began walking to a pub. I asked him a few questions and said it didn’t matter to me but I wished he had been honest. I took hold of his hand as we were walking but it only took a few seconds before he dropped it like a stone, making some type of exclamatory gesture with his hands. He wasn’t fooling me. This was a massive slap in the face to me. I love holding hands, its one of the most special things I think a couple can do and this really hurt me. My mind raced. Did he not like public affection? Was he really upset by his revelation to me? Or was it something else? I chose to store it in the back of my mind for future reference as I suppose I wasn’t brave enough to bring it up there and then. He told me all about how he went bankrupt, how his mother was ill so it worked out quite well that he could look after her, how it was better to text than talk on the phone as she would be listening all the time to see who he was talking to etc. Well it all made sense to me now. I was so very understanding and supportive. So very stupid and naive. I had no idea of the bombshell that awaited me.

Up and Down

I have had a better day today. I am getting ready for a holiday (my first time travelling alone with the children since my divorce) and all of the packing has made me excited. There have been periods of time (5 minutes here and there) where I haven’t thought about him at all, and then when he  popped into my mind again I was elated to have forgotten for a short time. There was even a whole hour this evening- now thats got to be progress! I hate the way he keeps polluting my mind. I just want him to vacate my thoughts completely so I can get back to where I was before he deceived his way into my life. Yesterday was very up and down. One minute I would be feeling so tired and sad, the next angry and strong. I keep remembering some of the callous things he said to me at our final meeting and that gives me the strength to feel angry. Reading other blogs definatley helps me. Its like reading my own story in some ways and its a comfort to know that I am not the only one in the world feeling this way. I just wish I could erase it all. I was so happy with myself, single strong and independant, before. I know that I will be there again soon, its just sickening that he keeps popping into my head all the time. I have checked my phone less today, maybe only 3 times, although it still hurts when there is no message from him. The irony here is that the last person I want to hear from is him!!

You’ll See

written by Madonna and David Foster
Track 4, Time: 4:16
————————-
You think that I can’t live without your love
You’ll see,
You think I can’t go on another day.
You think I have nothing
Without you by my side,
You’ll see
Somehow, some way

You think that I can never laugh again
You’ll see,
You think that you destroyed my faith in love.
You think after all you’ve done
I’ll never find my way back home,
You’ll see
Somehow, someday

Chorus:

All by myself
I don’t need anyone at all
I know I’ll survive
I know I’ll stay alive,
All on my own
I don’t need anyone this time
It will be mine
No one can take it from me
You’ll see

You think that you are strong, but you are weak
You’ll see,
It takes more strength to cry, admit defeat.
I have truth on my side,
You only have deceit
You’ll see, somehow, someday

Chorus2:

All by myself
I don’t need anyone at all
I know I’ll survive
I know I’ll stay alive,
I’ll stand on my own
I won’t need anyone this time
It will be mine
No one can take it from me
You’ll see

You’ll see, you’ll see
You’ll see, mmmm, mmmm

On with the story…

We continued to text very frequently, although I noticed at the weekends it was quiet at best. He would return my texts but would not engage in anything with any substance and would never contact me first. He always blamed it on work….or he had left his phone in the car……or there was a bad signal. Alarm bells should have been ringing here…and indeed they were, however I was concerned only that he was losing interest in me. One Sunday I waited until quite late in the day and text

“Do you go to mars at weekends or something” to which he replied

“When I’m working, yes”

And that was it. I wasn’t replying to that as I was really offended, so I left it, but in the evening I couldn’t control myself and text

“Is everything ok”

No response. I was furious. How dare he treat me like a toy he could just pick up and put on the shelf when it suited him. I was not happy to be ignored one minute and spend hours texting the next. All on his time. The next day I received a text, an excuse from the excuse jar

“Sorry, left phone in car, no there’s no problem”

That day there were a few stilted text conversations until he asked if there was a problem. I told him that I was hurt and annoyed by his treatment of me and that I wouldn’t be used at his convenience. I deserved more respect. He was full of apologies…of course I wasn’t his plaything….he had just been really busy at work….he didn’t realise….he would have reacted the same way….of course he respected me. Right.  Whatever. Of course at the time this was just what I needed to hear and things returned to normal. So I thought……

My Mistake

My mistake I suppose is that I kind of think that because I am a decent human being then everyone else is. I think that by being honest then I will get that in return. I think that because I am open and loyal then people won’t abuse that. How wrong I have been.  The married man that I was involved with knew what I wanted. My profile on the dating site clearly stated “No Married Men” and yet he chose to message me. Maybe he saw it as a challenge. One day soon I am going to count up all of the lies he fed me. I am feeling very down today, two days no contact. I very much doubt he is giving me a single thought.

Feelings

Its so hard to control feelings isn’t it. One minute you are in control the next you are not. Its all about heart versus head, and in my case heart usually wins. Its not as though my head, my logic doesn’t know the right thing to do, it has been screaming STOP very loudly to me and even when I follow my hearts orders I know it is going to go badly for me. The logic is there loud and clear…..so why was not strong enough to listen to it instead of my heart leading me down a path of destruction. I will give you a bit of background of my life post marriage to show you how I got to be where I am today.

It is not very often that I am attracted to a man but when I am and the wind is blowing in the right direction then there is hell to pay. The result is that I usually end up getting hurt. I know I have been looking in the wrong place for my the health of my romantic heart (internet dating sites) but initially all I wanted to do after the final years of my hellish marriage was to have some fun and that is exactly what I did. The site that I joined was not for relationships. Basically it was about light hearted “fun” with no commitments and that is exactly what I wanted. That is exactly what I got. It was good to feel desired again in that way and after 14 years with the same man it was thrilling and exciting to be trying new things out. The upshot of this was that I met a man who I became kind of regular with. We used to communicate through msn and text almost constantly and we would meet up whenever we could. Always for lunch then a few hours in a hotel. God that sounds so sordid now but at the time it was just what I needed. Needed that is until I became attatched. Of course he was never going to feel the same way, he was on to a bloody good thing! The whole thing fizzled out in the end, but knowing what I know now I am sure he was married the whole time. I never even suspected it at the time but after my recent experience with a married man the behaviour wasd almost identical. And so I was hurt by that man and one other off that site, who I had a brief relationship with for a few months- we had a wonderful time and it didn’t appear to be just about sex. We did a lot of “couple stuff” but he kept on letting me down  so I ended it. My self respect limit kicked in and painful as it was I couldn’t cope with feeling like I was not important to him. He didn’t fight for me. Ouch.

And there we go. That is why I was so so keen for this not just to be about sex. I had abstained from men for six months and my self respect was at an all time high. The married man knew all of this and continued to steamroller over my emotions.

Cruel Games

The first time we met I made it crystal clear that I was looking for something more than sex; I wanted to be clear and upfront. Honest. Now there’s a word! He seemed quite agreeable with that, and we talked about all sorts. It seemed that we were in a time warp, 3 hours passed in a blink of an eye. I had not been involved with a man in any way shape or form for six months and was stronger than I had ever been ;I did not need a man in my life, but to meet someone would have been the cherry on the icing of the preverbial cake. My life was (and still is) pretty good. Although I am a single parent I have my own (small!)home, car and am finally living out my dream of training to be a teacher, which I am doing well at. I have a handful of really good friends, plenty of mates and in the main a great family. Anyone in my life who has let me down repeatedly or who has hurt me I am able to remove from my life. I hate negativity or negative influences. Call me harsh if you will but I suppose it is a defence mechanism. So there I was, the top of my game, finally over my horrible divorce and recovered from a year of “sowing my wild oats” in which I was hurt more than once. My problem is that I can’t separate sex and emotion you see. Or is that a problem? I think it is human. Maybe it would have been simpler for me if I could have emotionless sex, but the fact is I can’t and I am not going to apologise for it anymore god dammit!

I had said to myself and then to him that I was done with all of that, that I didn’t want to play that game anymore. He said that we were singing from the same hymn sheet. What a blatant lie-although I was not to know this at the time. We met again for lunch and it was just the same. The conversation and laughs flowed freely again and I thought it looked promising. We were texting and emailing very frequently and these were getting more and more flirty. One morning he asked if he could come round and give me a snog….innocent enough as we hadn’t quite sealed the deal yet, we had only had one quick peck in the car park after our second date. I spoke to him on the phone before he came over, telling him that before he came over I wanted to make sure that this wasn’ t just about sex for him. He assured me that it wasn’t and that we had already talked about this. How easily the lies rolled off his tongue. How easily he could use his voice to reassure me. He came over straight away and we shared the most amazing kiss I had ever experienced! Wow, this was going well!! We talked for a bit and snogged some more. It got passionate to say the least, and his hands began to wander. In the back of my mind alarm bells were ringing but I quickly silenced them with the rationalisation that we both hadn’t had sex in a long time and we were very attracted to each other. What a hoot. He came so fast he didn’ t even manage to make it to penetrative sex. Typical man, two minutes of a blow job and he was sorted and back to work. Of course there was the “My god…that’s never happened to me before” bullshit, and of course I bought it. The second time we slept together he did manage to complete the job in hand, although it was decidedly average, typical first time with a new partner sex. Congratulations Married man, you acheived your objective. I however was still totally and utterly in the dark and had no idea of his cruel game.

In the dark

We lose dignity when we tolerate the intolerable. Well that is what I did. The treatment given to me last night was intolerable and yet I tolerated it. I allowed a man to deceive his way into my life, manipulate me into thinking that he gave a shit, and used me to even the score with his wife who had cheated on him before.

How could I have let myself be drawn into this? Well firstly I was unaware that this person was a seasoned liar with no conscience whatsoever….well if he did it eluded me. You know when you meet someone who you just click with (or think you do)? Well that’s how it was. Easy conversation, lots of laughs and loads in common. There was a physical attraction too. For me, anyway. I don’t think he would have minded what I looked like. Anyone who was an easy target would have done. Anyone to massage his poor battered ego and make him feel like a man again. Anyone who he could get into bed at the earliest opportunity. Sex. That is all it ever was for him.

Hello world!

Well here it is….my first blog. I have no idea if I have set this up right or really what I am doing, but having read other peoples blogs about affairs and having seen how it has helped me I thought it might be useful to myself and others if I write my experience too. I have just ended an affair with a married man (yesterday) for what feels like the millionth time but this time it is for real. He has hurt me too much and has left me feeling utterly worthless. To him anyway. I know my worth, I just need to really feel it again and try and forget…or learn to live with what I have done over the past few months.