This is the end of our story…Mine and W’s.

February 10: Just writing the title I felt the tears come to the surface.  It is so familiar now, I almost didn’t recognize it, until the first tear hit my chest.  My friends and family have stopped asking what is wrong with me.  They recognize my need for silence until I can discuss it.

I ended things.  I did.  Finally.

Relief.  That’s what I feel at the moment.  Will it last?  Probably not.  I have been here, sort of.  I have never had to fully grieve for a love of this magnitude. For the moment I feel relief.  For the moment I think he understands where I am heading on a jouney that doesn’t include him.  For the moment I am free of the demons that haunt me.  There is something to be said for releasing him from obligations to me.  I won’t expect things that will break my heart when he doesn’t do them. I will no longer wait for that morning text.  I will never have to hear him tell me of the things he is doing, the things that he chooses to do over calling me or making plans to see me. I will no longer look at my phone longing for a phone call from him that never comes.  I will no longer look for a card or letter in the mail, that never comes.  I will no longer dream about surprise visits from him, that don’t happen. Iwill no longer chase the proverbial carrot dangled in front of me. Everytime I didn’t hear from him for several hours, my heart would sink andI would wonder anxiously was this discovery day. I am no longer waiting, I have my answer.

Actually, I have had my answer for a long time now.  I just didn’t want to see it.  In one of the texts I sent W ending things I wrote to him, one line in particular stands out.  I wrote I knew I wasn’t your choice when you would leave me hurting and disappointed so that you wouldn’t have to hurt or disappoint somebody you loved more.  You see this man had asked me to be his wife many, many times.  This would indicate that I should be number one in his world.  This would mean that he had chosen me for his life partner, yet I was constantly the one that got pushed to side.   This was consistent on his part from the fist time we met.  In our many visits over the past year, only one visit was extended when I didn’t want to say goodbye.  However, many more were cut short by an entire day, cause he just had to get home.  I was always crushed by this.  I had spent weeks just waiting my turn in anticipation wanting that visit so badly only to be told he had to leave in a couple of hours when he wasn’t supposed to be leaving until the next day.  The excuses for why he had to leave were always crazy it seemed to me, and to others when I would give them the explanations for why he had to leave. I honestly don’t know what is real and what isn’t.

Trust is a powerful thing.  Given his untruthful beginnings he understood that he to be transparent, truthful and upfront so that I could learn to trust him.  He also knew if he made a promise to me, he needed to follow through with those.  So many ways he broke my trust. I trusted him not hurt me.  He promised he wouldn’t. Swore that I was the last person he would ever want to hurt, and that he would do his best to never hurt me. He was so sincere, I believed him. I trusted him to make me his priority.  He didn’t.  He wasn’t transparent.  He didn’t keep his promises.  He wasn’t upfront.  He didn’t always do what he said he was going to do.  This whole topic of trust is one for another post.

I held up all my promises to him, until he made it impossible for me to keep them.  He asked me to hold him close so many times.  I did, until holding him close became more than I could bear.  It was easy to hold him close when he was holding on to me.  Then he slowly let go of me and holding him close became like holding a limp child.  I asked him to meet me half way and to make some hard decisions, to lighten my load.  I told him I couldn’t do this anymore with the way things were.  I asked him to make changes.  I even backed off at one point and decided to give him the space to do what he needed to.  He only became more distant, and said he appreciated it because it made things easier on him.  Things got easier for him.  It got harder for me.

February 11:  Well, today feels very different.  I feel the anxiety creeping in.  Last night as I lay in bed trying to sleep, I repeated over and over in my head…He doesn’t love you.  You don’t love him anymore.  This is not what love is.  I heard a text come through a little after 1am as I was trying to fall asleep.  I knew it was probably him, but I didn’t look at it.  I couldn’t.  I finally looked this morning.  It was from him, but I haven’t opened the text. I know what it will probably say already.  And if I were to be honest I find some comfort in knowing that I have a message from him waiting, because I know that the time of messages between us has probably come to an end.

I am crying. Again. That is nothing new anymore.  My heart feels so heavy.  I have been trying to write this post since last night to get some of the emotions out, but my brain feels like it is swirl of thoughts right now.  I am having the knee jerk reaction of thoughts wondering if I made the right choice.

Logically, I know that I have everything to gain by moving on.  Logically. It is funny how the heart skews your logic. I know that I am no longer obligated to hold up my side of the commitment he and I made to each other.  I can now see other men if I choose to, when I am ready.  Logically, I know that as long as I stayed the dutiful other woman he would exploit that.  I know that he would have never chosen to leave her.  I have read so many books and articles about affairs and infidelity, trying to find answers, or moreover find hope. FYI, I never found hope in those books or articles.  I know that less than 5% of married men leave their wives for the OW.  I know that as you approach the one year mark, that number drops to less than 1%.  I know that he and I followed the textbook patterns laid out in the articles and books.  There was the honeymoon phase of euphoria, then as the relationship progressed in intimacy and passion and it was time to add the third leg of commitment, we went into a state of disequalibrium.  This is the phase where tough decisions need to be made. Couples can stay here for years as they try to figure it out.  I told him this, he said we were different.  I was looking at our circumstances, we didn’t seem all that different.

I spoke with a friend earlier.  She said she had a friend going through exactly what I am going through with a MM.  They have been in a rough patch since Thanksgiving.  Holidays are extremely hard when you are the OW.  I am not surprised.  This is when it happened for me too.  I knew he was where he wanted to be and I was alone.   It is hard to lie to yourself when it so clear of where your place is in their lives.  Holidays are supposed to be spent with the ones you love and cherish.  When you are the OW holidays awaken how very much on the outside you are.  How unimportant and insignificant you really are to the man you love.  My friend told me to pray about this and ask for some release from the pain.  I will.  Right now I just hurt.

The final straw:  Valentine’s day and our anniversary (February 12 is the day we first met) occur two days apart.  Not that I am big fan of Valentine’s day or anything, but I wanted to spend the weekend with him.  I had asked him to spend this coming weekend with me last week, but he never gave me an answer.  Something else came up for me, that would take me out of town for the weekend.  I couldn’t pass it up.  Rather than turn down the opportunity and wait for him to make a decision which I knew would be “not me” I decided to take it.  I texted him on the off chance that he might be making arrangement to come here…you know on the off chance hell did freeze over, which isn’t a far reach given this polar f*cking vortex.  I told him I had a change of plans and was going to do XYZ and since he hadn’t given me an answer I went ahead made the commitment to go.  He sent back a text saying good, because he wasn’t going to make it because he had to do ABC, but he wished we could be together that weekend.  It doesn’t seem like much, but when your bucket is filled to the f*cking rim it is a lot.  That was all it took.  It was one more of the hundreds of times something else came before me. I know I had already made the commitment to do something else, but I did that because I knew there would be something else he had to do.  His text only confirmed that.

I simply said I can’t do this anymore.  You see, it absolutely breaks my heart every time he tells me he is doing something else.  I know it sounds petty.  Here is why.  I got so little of him and his plans or what he was doing rarely involved me or picking up the phone to even call me.  Anytime he would say he talked to his parents, children, made a work call in my head I’m thinking…You can make time for them to pick up the phone and see how they are, but you can’t spare a minute to pick up the phone for the person you claim you want to marry.  Or you can find time to go to the movies and dinner with so and so, but you can’t seem to carve out time for me.  Whereas, I on the other hand would make every single effort I could to see him and spend time with him.  I got him at his convenience when he desired it.  Yesterday, I thought I don’t want to know what he is doing anymore.  I don’t want to care.  I would rather just not ever talk to him then feel like I am rolling up a ball waiting for the hit every time I hear from him.  Can anybody else relate to this, or I am just the most petty person ever?

So I sent two very lengthy texts telling him why I couldn’t do this anymore.  How being his OW made me feel.  That I had decided to walk away.  I sent them and then got away from the house.  At first I was just numb.  Then after a couple of hours his response came.  He agreed.  It was the right thing to do.  He said if he was my friend he would advise me to do the same thing, but he held onto me because he was in love with me.  Then he said he wasn’t letting me go because he didn’t care about me he was letting me go, because he did and it was the right thing to do. He admitted he wasn’t willing to risk leaving his wife for a future with me. He hoped that I knew he loves me.

Well, that’s when my pity party ended and the anger kicked in.  LOVES ME…WTF does that even mean to him?  Love doesn’t feel like this.  When you love somebody you don’t hurt them, lie to them, make them promises you don’t intend to keep, and use them for your gain.  Love is reciprocal and there is nurturing and care involved.  We all make sacrifices for the ones we love.  Where was his sacrifice in any of this?  I told him I didn’t feel loved.  I feel used.  He said that made him cry.  That should have made me feel bad on some level.  I have been crying for months now.  I cried a lot in the beginning when I found out he was married and he had lied to me, and have cried rivers in recent months.  I have wept for this man, over this man so many times I cannot even begin to explain.  I have spent days just trying to get through them, because of what this situation has put me through.  My self esteem, self worth and moral integrity has taken huge hits to accomodate him into my life. Why?  Because I love him with my whole heart and soul and for as long as could bear it, I would for us.  That’s what love looks like, not what it should look like, but that is what it has looked like the last 3 months.  There were some other texts that went back and forth briefly, but they were all pretty much the same, but I did tell him I wanted to forget all of this and move forward.  I know I will never forget him or all of this.  Maybe one day I will be able to look back and appreciate and enjoy the beauty that was W in my life, but right now it is hard. My friend said it is a process I need to go through.  Looking at the ugly stuff so that I can fall out of love. I think she is right, if I sit and dwell on the beauty that was us I don’t think I can get through it.

Alliewestern said that this was the only way and that maybe he will miss me when he realizes he has lost me.  At one time I fantasized about that, but I knew I had to get to a place where that wasn’t my goal for ending things.  So many people told me over the course of the year to just end things with him and tell him if he ever leaves his wife come and find me and if I am available we will re-evalute.  I knew I could never do that, because if I even thought there was a chance of hope he would come back to me, I would never really move on.  I could only really leave when I knew there was no hope for a future with him.  As long as I had that I stayed. Yesterday, I felt the little last bit of hope I had for he and I extinguished.

My dad has been asking lots of questions about W over the past several weeks.  He knows he is married. He has noticed his abscense from my life in the recent months and the fact I don’t speak about him, and he has noticed my quiet sadness.  He said to me recently,”Babe from the outside looking in it doesn’t seem to me that he is that interested in you anymore.  I think this has run its course. And to be honest I don’t think he is ever going to get divorced.” All I could say is,”Yeah dad, I think you are right.” Quiet truths from my father that really hit home with me.

Since writing this three more texts from him have come in and I have not found the courage to open them.  There is just a huge pit in my stomach at the moment.

Sorry, if I am all over the place, my head is.  I am a mixture of  lots of anger, sadness and anxiety today.  Maybe I can post more later when I am feeling more eloquent.