I hear my husband Dave in the kitchen. There’s a clink of ice, a slosh of something liquid, and I look over to see him with a glass in his hand. Scotch on the rocks. It’s not his habit to have a drink alone. In fact, we don’t usually have alcohol in the house.
He sets the drink down carefully on the dining room table. I turn back to the TV.
“Is your show almost done?” Dave asks. “Can you come sit at the table?”
“Why?” I say.
He doesn’t answer. I get up, flip off the TV, and move to join him at the table. As I sit I see that he has his drink and a pad of paper in front of him.
“I have to tell you something and I want you to let me get through it without interrupting me because it will be hard for me.”
My mouth goes dry, but I nod. He’s been fired! And right before Christmas! But in that nano-second way thoughts have of firing, that one is instantly rejected. Dave was a freelance writer for many years, and would not be worried to be back on his own.
“Number one,” he says, looking down at his paper, “About 10 years ago, when we’d been married a couple of years, I had an affair. It was someone in radio, someone I knew from being in the band, and I ended it pretty quickly.”
My heart thuds. Not Dave! He’s not the type! I cling to the words 10 years ago, and I ended it. Ok, a youthful mistake. I can take it! Plenty of couples get through this. But Dave goes on.
“Number two: I’ve been using escorts on my business trips.” A sound rises in me, a roar that sounds like no, no, no. Flashes of soulless, transactional sex assault me but I refuse to look at them. I stare straight ahead, not blinking, not breathing.
“You know what escorts are, don’t you?” he adds, and here a rabbit hole opens and swallows me. I feel myself sinking to the floor, reaching for the hardwood, but it seems to slide away from me. The surreality of his confession combined with the absurdity of the question short circuit something in my brain. Do I know what escorts are?!!
Waves of heat and nausea wash over me. “I’m going to be sick.” I begin peeling off my sweatshirt. Dave doesn’t move and I know there’s more.
“Say it! Just say it!” I cry, not meaning it. I have to get away! I consider crawling under the table but feel too dizzy to move. I stay on my knees, gripping my thighs.
“Three weeks ago,” he says, “when I was in Las Vegas, I met someone…”
But I’m undone. Unloosed. Unhinged. Have you ever felt the sky fall? It’s unbearably heavy when it breaks. You feel the weight of the air, every molecule of it, pressing down. I scramble on the floor in a sort of stunned crab-crawl. I can’t get up. I’m being crushed, suffocated. White-hot, blinding terror envelops me like a blanket and I’m sure I’m going to die. Dave does nothing to help me and that’s when I know I’m already gone, that I must never have existed.
When I come back into my body (Moments later? Minutes?) Dave is talking, saying something about moving upstairs. I hear the words committed father. I don’t understand. How could he move upstairs? Our tenant lives there. What is he talking about? What about me?
His explanations, like blades, whiz toward me, each one pinning me to a wall. He throws again and again: He spent 12 hours with a woman named Allison in Las Vegas. He’s in love. She lives in Texas. He wants to visit her. He will ask our tenant to leave. He will move upstairs. He would like to wrap things up with me in four weeks. He is going to leave the house right now because he needs to call Allison. She’s waiting to hear from him.
I watch him walk out the door and panic overtakes me. I’m up now, pacing and flailing my arms, trying to feel my body. I have to stay present. I’m alone in the house and my children are sleeping in their beds and I cannot faint or scream or lose it. I begin to cry but it’s more of a moan. Someone help me! I grab my phone and call my friend and neighbor Abigail. No answer. I try my college friend. No answer. My brother. No answer. I consider calling my mother but know she’ll be sleeping and this news will keep her up all night. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how much time passes, but finally I realize I have no one to call but Dave.
“You have to come home,” I say when he finally answers. “Please come home. Don’t leave me here alone.”
By the time he gets back I’ve pulled myself together. I’ve found a way to frame this. Dave is having a crisis and it’s up to me to pull him back from the ledge.
I will be our rock. And like a rock, I will not think. I will not feel.
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I understand your pain, and although my husband of 34 years left me on Sept. 16th 2013, not for another woman (than I know about) but because he couldn’t cope with his emotions, and the fact he ruined not only his life, but mine too.
By ruined I mean he dragged me all over the U.S. during our married life toether, and I supported all ove his careers and goals, from his obtaining his bachelor’s and masters’ degrees to his becoming a Naval Officer from being enlisted, to his coroorate life, to fracnhise owner to his real estate brokerage too.
Yes, it is so hurtful what some people do to others, and when he left me suddenly, I asked myself ‘why”? How can another human being, one you loved with your whole heart and soul, inflict so much pain on another? What did I ever do to deserve this treatment? How will I ever trust another human again?
My research into this truama took me to finding a book that truly saved my life called “Runaway Husband’s” by Dr. Vicki Stark, whose husband of 21 years announced one day it was over. Dr. Stark thought her husband no longer wanted to eat fish anymore. that she was preparing. No, he said I am leaving you for my girl friend of 6 years, and living a double life she knew nothing about.
Dr. Stark calls this abandonment “Sudden Wife Abandonment Syndrome” meaning death by a thousand cuts, which leaves the spouse feeling totally bewildered, and empty. In one chapter, Dr. Stark relates this behavior as “Amputation without Anesthesia” because those who it happns to are totally blind-sided, and unprepared for the upsoming onslaught, and feelings.
It took me only 4 months after my husband of 34 years of leaving me suddenly, without talking to me about how he was feeling in the marriage, for me to realize that I not only stayed much too long, but I was really only a “roommate with benefits” and not treated like someone he really loved, but I did him. The cold hard reality set in, and that was my awakening of myself, who gave up too much of me throughout the entire marriage. I always loved people, but I married an introvert, who was socially and emotionally stunted all his life, but I either never saw it, or was blind to those traits about him.
My husband now drives a big rig truck, and lives in it too, another sign that he is emotionally damaged. A loner all his life, but one who fed on my energy and sucked up my life into his, another benefit to him. When speaking to my therapist, i told her that I didn’t look for someone to marry like my father, who also was a loner, and had no friends near him, and her respoinse to me was ” they find you”, meaning these types of people are drawn to people like me, because they want and admire characteristics of those who are bubbly, happy, love people, are outgoing, etc.
Dr. Vicki Stark has many women who have gone through what she and I have, and through time, and the love of friends, and family, and learning again what makes us happy, we have endured hardship, pain, and sorrow, and come out better on the other side too, a new me, a new you too.
Wow Deborah, what a story! You found the gift in your experience and reclaimed your happiness. That’s inspiring. I’ll check ou that book. It sounds amazing! I found a lot of peace early on from reading “Broken Open” (Elizabeth Lessing) and “Loving What Is” (Byron Katie). Blessings! Tammy
An OBTW moment. After discussing with several of my girl friends, one of whom was a long term friend and Navy wife like me, and whose husband was on the same Naval submarine as my husband astationed in VA Beach, VA, , we came to the same conclusion— my husband of now 34 years left me suddenly because — he is gay! Yes, and that explains a lot about our physical relationship, because he threw me out of our marriage bed in March 2013,, without touching me physcially for 6 months, forcing me to go sleep on the couch, while he slept in our bedroom with our dog, Jo Jo.
Many men, around my husband’s age of 55/56 years old, go through male menopause, called andropuase, and yes, he might have these symptoms too, but I think it goes much deeper than that. I always knew “something: was wrong, and was constantly asking my husband “when are we going to do it”? Do I have to make an appointment with you?” And his answer was always to blame it on our dogs sleeping in our bedroom or our sons still living at home, or something. Looking back now, our sex life was more mechanical, than deep affection, passion and love. For me it was, but not for him.
In August 2013, our two sons were going fishing one day with some friends of theirs, and went out into our carpot to get the small cooler so they could put their bait into it, and there they found a “massive pocket vagina” male toy, with lubricants too. Disqusting I thought and so did they, because I was still sleeping on the couch and I was still my husband’s wife. he just turned me off, but I was still doing everything for him: cooking from scratch, cleaning, even rubbing his tired feet, but he abused me emtionally, but until he left, I wasn’t aware of it, nor myself, because I was still in love with him,.
My Navy wife girl friend discussed my husband’s behavior with him and he also thinks that my husband might have been a “closet gay” who tried to fit into normal heterosexual life, marrying, having children too, but then it all came crashing in on him, and he ran away.
My husband has a Bachelors Degree in Business, and a Master’s Degree in Information Technology from the Naval Psot Grad School in Monterey, CA, but he chose a new career– driving Big Rig Trucks–and lives in his truck too. Anothere “aha’ moment because I kept thinking about what types of people are at these truck stops all over the country– drug addicts, prostitutes and gay men, who tap their feet under bathroom stalls, initiating sexual favors from other men.
Not that I give a rats about my soon-to-be ex, because I don’t but it definitely explains his weird behavior then and now. and know in my heart, I was the best woman and wife a man could have ever had. Our youngest son just turned 24 years old on March 10th, but he hasn’t heard one word from his father. We both know he never will, and that’s OK because he knows he is loved by me, his mom.
I was the other side of the coin in this story. If anyone is interested in hearing the story – email me at cllist2014 at yahoodotcom
I did almost everything that the writer’s husband did and a lot more.
I feel like there is more to this story? He is not in crisis, he is cheating. What happened when he came back??
And, like a rock, you will sink if you don’t snap out of it.
“Because it will be very hard for me”? No compassion whatsoever for you and what he was about to inflict on you, everything is about him. Me me me me me me me.
He had an affair, was using escorts regularly, and how he’s leaving wife and children abruptly for some piece of popo he just met three weeks ago? He sounds like he’s got a windmill instead of a heart, as his new paramour will find out soon. Since that woman obviously had no problem being part and party to some homewrecking, I don’t feel sorry for her at all. The two of them deserve each other.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. It seems like the rat you were married to was extremely deceitful and very good at keeping up appearances and you had no way of seeing the blow coming. Nobody’s a mind-reader.
He could be one of those non-criminal sociopaths – those are very good at having a double life, nobody suspects a thing. And that’s because, having no conscience, no guilt and no remorse, they have no problem with lying repeatedly, doesn’t make them nervous at all. They’ll pass a lie-detector test with flying colours.
One thing for sure, he never was committed to you. And to think that a man like that had no problem producing children with a woman he wasn’t committed to in spite of being married, and obviously never loved… What a rat.
But I understand that you’re hearbroken even though he is not worth it, and I can understand thatb you do not see that now. You think you can salvage your marriage if you are loving, giving and patient enough. You can’t – he is not interested. Your only salvation right now lies in going over what he’s done to you, and getting stinkingly mad about it. Snap out of your denial, he is not coming back, and even if he did, considering his past history, you could never trust him again.
Go see a lawyer and, for the sake of your children, make sure you extract everything you can out of him. Good luck.
X
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT????????
I found your post via Huffington Post and your blog. My questions to you: is your ex husband still involved in his children’s life? Is he a good father?
It’s incredibly unnerving when I read women writing about their one-sided divorce accounts when children are involved. Do you think it is beneficial to your children to learn the intricacies of your relationship and divorce, to see you cast their father in a negative light, to play the role of a pathetic victim instead of showing strength by overcoming your past and moving on, rather than dwelling and airing your dirty laundry in a book? Because it reads as bitter, irrational, and disgusting.
Leah,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I understand your reaction. That’s the danger in posting an excerpt from a book. This is the “hook” that gets attention, but the real story is of course much more complex. Dave certainly plays a role, but the book is about my own journey back to myself. It’s a spiritual memoir, and necessarily shows how we all begin in victim stage (he’s doing this TO me) and evolve into a higher stage of understanding that life (God) operates THROUGH me, and I am responsible for all events that occur, even the devastating ones like this that look “bad.”
Dave is in fact a wonderful father. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the entire story. The best place to do that is through my website or FB page. And btw…future posts will make it clear that this is merely an excerpt.
Thanks for your response, Tammy. I’m glad to hear Dave is still a positive influence in the children’s lives.
But even if it is an excerpt, are your children old enough to potentially stumble upon this article, or your personal website, and see what you are writing? This is pretty heavy stuff for a child to learn about his or her father, and while I respect that you want to share your journey and what you’ve overcome, I hope you are thinking about the potential consequence it can have on influential little eyes and ears. You are sharing a very personal struggle as a hook to get readers’ attention at the possible expense of damaging security, reputations, and relationships. Why?
Forgive me if I sound confrontational; I’m glad to hear the book is about how you overcame tragedy, and it sounds like you are in a good place now spiritually. I am sure you are an excellent mother, I just hope this is kept far, far away from your children until they are adults and have a solid understanding of the challenges involved in any adult relationship, let alone one that involves their father.
Your husband’s mistakes will come to light. This is something he accepted when he made his choices. It is not your job to lie for him, but it is your job to be pure to your children. I am sure you considered all your options when you sat down and thought about it. In fact, that is being a good parent. Cheating on a spouse is cheating on your children. I am sure many parents can learn from your story. Bravo to you for having the strength to share it.
Leah,
Get some self esteem and stop making excuses for a sex addict. If one commits the crime, they should be accountable for its consequences, including it becoming public knowledge. Our society needs to stop penalizing women who are victimized and traumatized for having the courage to speak out.
If this man remotely cared about his children in its truest sense, he would not jeopardize their existence by visiting escorts during the entire duration of his marriage and family life.
I hope for a society where women empower other women rather than displace their own lack of worth onto others. I hope she kicked the toxic prick out of her life!
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