The Confab

I'm still having a hard time believing that all I learned yesterday was real life. Nothing he said was true. NOTHING HE SAID WAS TRUE. What I thought was real, was not real. What I thought my life was, was not my life. I trusted him. I believed his lies. Everything I believed was a lie.

I wonder now if anything was real. Did he love me even a little? Or is he not even capable of love? Did he ever feel anything for me? I always got the sense that what I felt for him was unrequited, but WOW, maybe he honestly never even cared about me, not even a little. I did so much for him. He did nothing for me. In any way. Why would he? He never loved me. He never cared. It wasn't real. It was all fake.

It's a lot to process, and I'm not really processing it, if I'm being honest. I'm numb. I'm not sad or angry. I feel nothing. It's too much cognitive dissonance. I simply can't wrap my brain around it. He had another relationship going while he was married to me. He fathered another child. He was living another life. Everything was a lie.

What's been at least a little bit comforting was learning that he treated his ex the exact same way. I emailed her yesterday. He has a son with a previous girlfriend. They broke up in 2010, and the last time he saw his son was 2012. At first I totally believed him that she was a horrible person, but as time went on and I learned who he really was, I began to feel nothing but sympathy for her. He left her when she was 7 months pregnant. He chose his career over her and his son, just like he did me. I knew that she and I had a lot in common, and I always wondered about her. So I emailed her.

She wrote back a lovely email. She was shocked to hear from me, but also happy. She felt guilty for not warning me, but knew that I was just as taken with him at the beginning as she had been, and knew that I wouldn't have listened anyway (totally true). She confirmed that their pattern was exactly the same as his and mine--at first it was blissful and perfect, then he began to change, and then suddenly she realized that she was stuck in a terrible relationship and pregnant. He was also angry and violent with her. He told her outright, just like he told me, that he would always choose his career over her. She paid for everything for him, just like I did. He also criticized her physically, and made her believe that she was much less than him. It took her years, she said, to realize that it was the other way around, and that SHE was the strong, talented one, and he was sick, sad man. She's now married to a "wonderful, caring man," and in addition to he son with my husband, her husband has 3 children, and she gave birth to a baby girl earlier this year. She is happy. She promised me that I would be, one day, too, and that I am too smart and too good to let him ruin me. She gave me hope.

I know it wasn't me. The problem wasn't me, it wasn't her, it wasn't his current (or now recent-ex) girlfriend. It's him. He is the sick one. He is the one who hates himself, and who is damaged beyond repair. We don't have to be. We have the capability to love and trust, which is what you are supposed to do when you're in love. People who love you aren't supposed to lie and cheat and deceive.

He's the one whose life is all a charade. Mine is real. My feelings were real. I behaved in a way that was truthful and in line with my values and with what a person does when they love another person. He did not. My life will continue. His never began.

The Hiroshima of bombshells

I don't really have words to describe the interaction I had a few hours ago, and the information I learned from it, but I'm going to try.

The other woman called me today. I emailed her an apology yesterday for a nasty email I'd sent her in anger when I first found out about the affair. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had been extremely unfair to her, and that my anger needed to be squarely directed at my husband, not at her. So I apologized and gave her my skype name, should she ever want to talk in the future.

Five minutes after hitting "send," she tried calling me.

She called me a few times, and though I answered each time, she kept hanging up. Then she signed off. I thought maybe she got cold feet, which is understandable, so I sent her a message letting her know that I'm open to talk any time that worked for her.

Today, she called. I answered. And we spoke for over an hour.

The hangups, I learned, were because my husband was there in the room with her, batting the phone out of her hand and trying to break it as she called me. So she waited until he left today to call.

They met in January, and the affair began right away. He's been living with her all year. Each time he left me, he moved in with her. She showed me his suitcases and his PS4 (that I bought him). She's close with his parents, and talk to them almost every day.

"I want to tell you everything, but I don't want you to be hurt any more than you already are. I respect you as a woman, and I don't want to hurt you," she said.
"I promise you that there is not much that would surprise me at this point. I've already lost everything, and I don't really think I can be hurt any more at this point."
"You have no idea how much I have lost. You can't imagine."
"I can, and I'm sure that he is also bleeding you dry, just like he did me. And I know that you have even more to lose financially than I did."
"It's so much more than that. I want to tell you, but I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want you to tell him."
"I promise I won't tell him. I never want to speak with him again. Can you please tell me?"
"I was pregnant. He wanted me to keep it. But I didn't want to. I didn't want that life."

Somehow, even though this was new information, I knew this in my gut. I nodded and said "I know." And I then began to cry. "I'm so sorry for you. I'm so sorry that you had to go through that."

"So that was why he left me one day in March, then? That's why you were in the hospital?" I continued.
"Yes. His parents called to let him know I was dying. I also tried to kill myself two times after that."

I cried again. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I almost killed myself too, last fall. He almost killed both of us."
She nodded.

"All I have now is my money. I have nothing else. My life is shattered," she said.
"I understand. I never had money, but he took all of it."
"I know," she said. "I told myself that he must have no money because he was sending you all of it, so I paid for everything for him."
"I knew that you paid for everything. I found the receipts for the flights. You even paid his way back to me. That was extremely kind of you."
"I paid for everything."
"I know he spent his money on child support and taxes--"
"He didn't pay any of that. I paid all of that. Because I thought he was spending all of his money on you."
I laughed. "Sweetheart, in the three years we were together, he paid for nothing. NOTHING. Not one bill. I paid for everything. We were both paying for him."

We talked about many things, most of which are a blur. But she really did seem to know all about everything. He told her as much, if not more, about his life than I knew. She knew about his exes, how he was also abusive to them. She was a victim in this just as much as I am.

"I can't imagine how you must be feeling. I promise you, I am not with him, and I will not be with him. I don't want him in my life. I want him gone. He's coming by to get his things later," she assured me.
"I don't want him either. Don't be alone. He can be so violent when he's angry. And right now, his entire web of lies has exploded on him. He must be short-circuiting. I can't imagine how angry he is. Be very careful."
"I know." She nodded.
"Call me or text me when he's gone to let me know that you're ok. I'm worried about you."

We thanked each other, and we apologized to each other again. We empathized, even though we were on opposite sides of the issue, we'd both been destroyed by the same force. She sent me love and hugs and kisses, and I sent the same back to her. She said to call any time I needed anything, and I told her to do the same.

He will not control us anymore.