Should Auld Aquaintance Be Forgot

Well, 2013 is definitely not ending as I expected it to.  After a year of renovations and family ups and downs, as the year was drawing to a close, I expected a little calm. A regrouping and recouping of energy.  A refocussing of our lives to normality and enjoying our newly spiffed up home. Turns out my marriage was drawing to a close without my knowledge or consent.

How does this happen, you ask.  Or I did.  Selfishness, laziness, egotistical narcissistic arrogance. To name but a few.

My husband of 28 years reconnected on Linked In with an old friend from high school. With my full knowledge and support.  Hey, I'm a progressive woman of the 21st century.  Men can have friendships with the opposite sex and they can remain just friends, right?  We're all grownups here.  Especially if said female friend is a devout Christian of the Anglican faith, who is raising 3 kids on her own after being divorced and escaping an abusive marriage.  Adultery is a sin, after all, and she works for the Diocese.  She must be an observant Christian whose only interest in my husband is....what was it I was thinking exactly?

I should mention here that this is not the first time he has been unfaithful.  The first time was when we had been married two years.  In fact it occurred during the week of our second anniversary.  He had a deliberate one-night stand, just because he wanted to, with a woman he picked up in a bar.  I found out about it because he was acting weird.  Going for walks in the middle of the night.  I asked, half joking, are you having an affair or what?  Riddled with guilt, he confessed all.  You can imagine my surprise.  I was pregnant with our first child at the time I found out, and was devastated.  In the end we went for marriage counselling and stayed together.  The counsellors and others convinced me to chalk it up to youthful stupidity, and afterall, it had only been once. So I forgave him and learned to live with it.  As far as I know, that was the only indiscretion until now.  But I could be wrong.  I have been before.  I know.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice...

I have recently wished for a time machine.  To go back in time and absolutely forbid that this friendship be renewed.  My youngest daughter wisely set me straight...you can't change stupid, she said.  And she's right.  The players in this little farce were always destined to make terrible, cowardly decisions, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

What gets me is all the plotting and planning.  All of the opportunities to examine their choices and stop before they reached the point of no return.  The mistress, whom I'm referring to in my head as Sandy Sinner, insisted that condoms be used.  So, condoms had to be purchased.  Apparently on both occasions (because my husband assures me it was only a couple of times, and he wouldn't lie...right?)  Anyway, on both occasions, condoms had to be bought.  Because he threw away the extras in between.  He helpfully informs me that you don't have to buy a big box, they have small ones.  Why do I know this?  I asked, and he told me.  I was in a weepy cycle, and I needed to get mad.  So I asked a question of which I was curious, knowing full well I was not going to like the answer.  Mission accomplished.  Anger enough to push back the tears for a little while again.

So, this discussion had to happen, and then - each time - a trip to the condom store had to happen.  Find the aisle with the fun stuff, then select the raincoat of choice, take it up to the bored young person at the counter, and pay.  Then trek back to the hotel, which is being paid for by his employer - because he is working out of town, providing for his family - and then commence with the adultery portion of the program.  Lots of time to think "wait a minute, this may be the wrong decision."  People may get hurt.  People like the wife who supported me without question through a military career of 27 years and 6 overseas tours in theatres of war. People like the two daughters - grown now - that said-wife raised mostly on her own due to the frequent absences innate in a military career.

I am informed that it is all my fault.  That our marriage was broken and had been for a long time.  I hadn't been aware that marriage had been added to the growing list of things in the world that are just so much cheaper to simply replace than go to the effort of restoration and repair.

It was apparently my fault because I chose not to meet his psychologist.  The psychologist he is seeing to help him with his PTSD.  He's right, I did decline to meet his psychologist.   It was presented to me as exactly that.  Come meet my psychologist, she's really nice, you'll like her.  I was quite distracted at the time, with the full time job, our youngest daughter dealing with Narcolepsy, our oldest daughter in therapy for an anxiety disorder.  He & I were trying to get ready to go on vacation together to Cuba, and the house was in an uproar because the renovations that had started almost 2 months previously, were not finished yet. We were both up for 40 hours straight before we arrived in Cuba, just trying to wrap everything up to go. It's true, I was a little busy with all of that. 

Had he said to me, "I would like you to come talk with my therapist and me, because I think our marriage is in trouble."  I would have dropped everything and moved heaven and earth to be there.  But it was presented to me as a meet & greet.  Not a final ultimatum of which I was not included.  He never asked again.  He had already started his "friendship" with Sandy Sinner, and I, and our marriage, were no longer important. Auld aquaintances best forgotten indeed.