****Sorry about the wait for this entry, my darlings! Wrapping up school, dealing with sick kids, and a pending divorce are quite time consuming. Read on.....
April 2011
After my dad's passing, life had slightly gone back to normal. My husband eventually found another job and even though it was only part time, it was something. In an attempt to save money where we could, I looked into changing our phone plan. So naturally, the best time to look into this was while I was at work. It was a particularly slow day, so I went on our mobile carrier's website to take a look at our plan. I noticed that the number of text messages my husband had sent and received was double my number. At first, I thought it was a mistake. Who the hell could a guy be texting that much?
Then, my heart sank. Was it really happening again? I tried not to jump to conclusions and wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I just HAD to look at his phone records. That's the thing about snooping. Once you start, it's really hard to stop. The possibilities of what you could find are endless in these types of situations. I almost didn't want to know the truth, but I knew that I would constantly be tempted. So I looked.
Texts between him and a phone number that I did not recognize had occurred almost daily, back and forth. The amount of messages peaked during the hours I was at work, slowed while I was at home, then peaked again during the time I would relax and try to sleep.
So I did what any psycho would have done. I googled the phone number, paid $5, and was given the name and location of the subscriber. I recognized the name. It was a girl who my husband alleged was his friend, although I had never met her and knew very little of her. She was an ex-girlfriend of an old work buddy of his. While I was away at work (with the car), my husband was honest and told me that she sometimes dropped off food or cigarettes to him, which I found a little odd. Why was she taking the time to do my husband favors? If he needed cigarettes, why wasn't he asking me to get them? The only other thing I knew of this girl was that she used to hang out at a bar where I used to work and was friendly with all of my co-workers and some of the regulars. I maaaaay have checked her Facebook page and found out that she was in her early 20's, too...... Ok, ok, I'm a stalker. Guilty. Happy now?
I began to think back to 23 year old me. Would I have felt comfortable going to a married man's house while his wife, whom I didn't know, was at work? Even if he was just a friend? Maybe I wouldn't have cared, and maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. Whether I was overreacting or not, the whole thing still bugged me, especially because he and I should have been working on regaining trust, not finding more reasons to break it down. We just couldn't see eye to eye on the whole thing. He couldn't really see where I was coming from or why I was upset. I felt that if the situation had been reversed, he would have been just as pissed off as I was. I truly didn't care if he had a female friend, but in my opinion, out of respect for the other spouse, I think the two should be introduced. He claimed he didn't want us to meet because he didn't think we would get along. This made me even more suspicious. Being with my husband made me very unsure of myself. I never knew how to feel about things. He had become really good at talking me out of being angry for something. At this point, I didn't know if I should have just let it go or continue to stand my ground. In the end, I let it go because I felt that my opinion was not being heard or respected.
The communication between my husband and this girl decreased somewhat but I was definitely still acting like crazy, jealous, psychopath. I was constantly checking our phone records for texts and calls between the two of them. I began analyzing the duration of their calls and tried to figure out what they could have possibly been talking about for 2 minutes and 36 seconds. I seriously stopped myself once and wondered what had become of me. I had never acted like this in any of my relationships before. All I kept thinking was, "This is not healthy. This is not healthy. Don't give men another reason to think all of us bitches are crazy."
But I couldn't stop. I was desperate for evidence. One night, my husband told me that he was going out with one of his guy friends. Of course, I didn't believe him, but I pretended to be cool with it. Wanting to know the truth, I told him that I lost my phone in my car and I needed to borrow his so I could call myself and find it. I grabbed his phone, went to my car and started looking through his texts. There weren't any messages from the girl, but there was one from his guy friend which said, "You can bring *Girl's Name*, if you want."
My suspicious mind interpreted that as, "You can bring that girl that you're cheating on your wife with you, if you want." Was it completely innocent? I don't know. I was a little offended because I happened to know this guy friend of my husband's and we had all hung out together several times together. Why the hell wasn't I invited? It felt like elementary school all over again.
Instead of thinking things through even more, I just simply reacted and basically went all Jerry Springer on my husband about the text. He firmly told me that they were all just friends and that he didn't tell me she was going because he was afraid this was how I was going to act. To me, that seemed counterproductive. How was I supposed to ever trust him again if he wasn't being honest with me? I still wasn't convinced that there wasn't something going on between the two of them. To this day, although I no longer care, I'm still not sure of the truth. It just goes to show how hard it is to rebuild trust after it has deteriorated.
One night, while my husband was out, I took the opportunity to watch something girly on tv without anyone around to judge me. Oprah's network had just launched so that seemed like a good place to start. There was a reality show on about cheating. No, not Cheaters, something with a little more substance and fewer ugly people. How convenient. This particular story I happened to catch was about a woman who cheated on her husband with a co-worker. Her guilt eventually led to a confession. Obviously her husband was pissed, but he chose to forgive her (Awwwwwwww). The relationship, however, was now tarnished. It was up to the wife to prove to her husband how stupid her mistake was, how sorry she was, and how important he was to her. So she had to be honest about EVERYTHING. The husband, not about to have his heart stomped on again, went as far as checking the mileage on her car to ensure that she wasn't going out if she said had to work late.
Extreme? Maybe a little. But trust is the foundation in a relationship. If it's not there, then the relationship isn't worthwhile. And that is a scientific fact.
So after watching this enlightening program on the Oprah Winfrey Network, I compared this couple's relationship to my own. Why weren't we working harder to get back to a happy place? Did we need counseling? Less stress? More alcohol? These questions remained unanswered.
Well, I can always use more alcohol in my life, so the answer to that question was a resounding YES. From me.
