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Partners
Also read part One.
After allowing my ex-boyfriend to kiss me and then talking frankly and openly about my marriage for the first time ever, I realized that I was in a lot of trouble.
I confessed to him the heaviness of my marriage, how we fought constantly, and how we somehow lived past each other instead of together. I admitted that my husband’s depression had become his character. It was something I could not fix and it was something he emphatically refused to talk about.
The man who I used to make me smile had only scowls for me, and even though I knew it wasn’t really about me, it still hurt that I made no difference to his broken disposition. His bitterness soured everything.
I started to hate music. I stopped playing the piano. I stopped singing. My silly hobbies were stupid compared to the career he had made out of music, so why bother?
The worst part was that I knew our biggest problem was that I was a shadow of my husband – it was toxic that we were so alike. I didn’t want to be like we were though. I didn’t want to let bitterness and complacency consume me, but living in a house with someone who had given in to depression so fully was making it almost impossible for me to find the part of me that even wanted to get up in the morning.
In response to the story of my life, my ex offered me the world. He offered me a home and stability and children. He offered me all the things that did not seem to be on the cards for my future. They were not things that I particularly wanted, but I had to admit that the idea did seem nice. He offered me a do-over. No questions asked. It did not matter that I did not deserve it. I just had to take it.
It was sweet. It was lovely. It was terrifying.
The next few weeks threw a smorgasbord of emotions at me. The anger came. The tears came. The happiness. The flattery. The frustration.
My husband found an email from my ex in which he told me that he had not stopped thinking about me over the last five years since we had last seen each other. He confessed that he left his live-in girlfriend because he never felt about her the way he did about me.
If you put aside the fact that he was aggressively pursuing a married woman, the things he had to say were pretty nice. Not to mention how brave you have to be to put yourself out there like that. A part of me loved him for it, or felt something that I thought was love but which is possibly one of those confusing and limited emotions that has yet to be given a name.
Of course my husband was furious about the email, and he opted to confess to his betrayal of my privacy in order to confront me on the matter.
I think I was relieved that he had found it. I knew I needed to tell him what was going on in my head, but I didn’t know how. I tend to be a very honest person when it comes to what I am feeling, what I need. That sounds stupid in the face of cheating I guess. Calling myself honest. But the thing is, talking to my husband never achieved anything. It just made him grumpy.
As much as I tried to bring things up in the past, he would brush me off.
Anyway, when he confronted me I was honest with him. I told him that I hadn’t really expected that kind of confession from a man in my past, but that it had kind of opened my eyes a little. No, I didn’t want to get back together with my ex, but I was questioning our relationship.
I moved into the spare room in my folks house for a little while. I needed to get away from both of them. I knew that whatever I was feeling for my ex was something superficial, but at the same time it sort of felt like a relief.
If I was to leave my husband I wasn’t looking at a life of being single forever. Someone wanted me, and my broken self-esteem clung to that with both hands.
Unfortunately there was no one I could really talk to. I didn’t want to admit that I was cheating on my husband. It was shameful and it made me incredibly anxious. I also didn’t really have anyone to talk to.
It was weird because I had always thought that I had many friends, but in the middle of this particular situation, I realized that I had no one. The one friend I tried to talk to once was an absolute failure. As I sat there, pouring my heart out to him with tears streaming down my face, he peered over my shoulder and said “Oh my gosh, don’t look now but the guy behind you has the hottest ass I have ever seen.”
I stopped being friends with him after that, but there was no one to take his place. My other friends had moved to different towns after finishing their degrees and I was so busy being married that I had somehow neglected to make any new ones. All my friends were his friends.
I really had no one. The shame of my situation made it impossible to talk to my family. The friendships in my life at the time were so mediocre that I had no one to trust.
The only person I could turn to was my ex.
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After allowing my ex-boyfriend to kiss me and then talking frankly and openly about my marriage for the first time ever, I realized that I was in a lot of trouble.
I confessed to him the heaviness of my marriage, how we fought constantly, and how we somehow lived past each other instead of together. I admitted that my husband’s depression had become his character. It was something I could not fix and it was something he emphatically refused to talk about.
The man who I used to make me smile had only scowls for me, and even though I knew it wasn’t really about me, it still hurt that I made no difference to his broken disposition. His bitterness soured everything.
I started to hate music. I stopped playing the piano. I stopped singing. My silly hobbies were stupid compared to the career he had made out of music, so why bother?
The worst part was that I knew our biggest problem was that I was a shadow of my husband – it was toxic that we were so alike. I didn’t want to be like we were though. I didn’t want to let bitterness and complacency consume me, but living in a house with someone who had given in to depression so fully was making it almost impossible for me to find the part of me that even wanted to get up in the morning.
In response to the story of my life, my ex offered me the world. He offered me a home and stability and children. He offered me all the things that did not seem to be on the cards for my future. They were not things that I particularly wanted, but I had to admit that the idea did seem nice. He offered me a do-over. No questions asked. It did not matter that I did not deserve it. I just had to take it.
It was sweet. It was lovely. It was terrifying.
The next few weeks threw a smorgasbord of emotions at me. The anger came. The tears came. The happiness. The flattery. The frustration.
My husband found an email from my ex in which he told me that he had not stopped thinking about me over the last five years since we had last seen each other. He confessed that he left his live-in girlfriend because he never felt about her the way he did about me.
If you put aside the fact that he was aggressively pursuing a married woman, the things he had to say were pretty nice. Not to mention how brave you have to be to put yourself out there like that. A part of me loved him for it, or felt something that I thought was love but which is possibly one of those confusing and limited emotions that has yet to be given a name.
Of course my husband was furious about the email, and he opted to confess to his betrayal of my privacy in order to confront me on the matter.
I think I was relieved that he had found it. I knew I needed to tell him what was going on in my head, but I didn’t know how. I tend to be a very honest person when it comes to what I am feeling, what I need. That sounds stupid in the face of cheating I guess. Calling myself honest. But the thing is, talking to my husband never achieved anything. It just made him grumpy.
As much as I tried to bring things up in the past, he would brush me off.
Anyway, when he confronted me I was honest with him. I told him that I hadn’t really expected that kind of confession from a man in my past, but that it had kind of opened my eyes a little. No, I didn’t want to get back together with my ex, but I was questioning our relationship.
I moved into the spare room in my folks house for a little while. I needed to get away from both of them. I knew that whatever I was feeling for my ex was something superficial, but at the same time it sort of felt like a relief.
If I was to leave my husband I wasn’t looking at a life of being single forever. Someone wanted me, and my broken self-esteem clung to that with both hands.
Unfortunately there was no one I could really talk to. I didn’t want to admit that I was cheating on my husband. It was shameful and it made me incredibly anxious. I also didn’t really have anyone to talk to.
It was weird because I had always thought that I had many friends, but in the middle of this particular situation, I realized that I had no one. The one friend I tried to talk to once was an absolute failure. As I sat there, pouring my heart out to him with tears streaming down my face, he peered over my shoulder and said “Oh my gosh, don’t look now but the guy behind you has the hottest ass I have ever seen.”
I stopped being friends with him after that, but there was no one to take his place. My other friends had moved to different towns after finishing their degrees and I was so busy being married that I had somehow neglected to make any new ones. All my friends were his friends.
I really had no one. The shame of my situation made it impossible to talk to my family. The friendships in my life at the time were so mediocre that I had no one to trust.
The only person I could turn to was my ex.
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