tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3203538718520173522024-03-04T21:28:28.828-08:00HELL IS FOR HEARTBREAKERSYou ruined my life, broke my heart, then told me that we could be friends. Let me rip your world into little pieces, let me destroy who you thought you were, and then I'll ask you if we can be friends.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-84402733779357258282013-10-05T22:36:00.002-07:002013-10-06T08:06:44.632-07:00WRITING TO RIGHT A HEART THAT'S BEEN WRONGED<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Guess what? I'm taking my heartbreak show on the road. Well, maybe not<i> literally</i>, or on the <i>actual</i> road, but after sloughing away here in obscurity for the last six months, I've decided that it's time to bare my soul for the benefit of a wider audience and possibly even do some good in the process. Actually, the idea of publishing an e-book based on my experiences as "the other woman" in a relationship with a married man was first broached to me by a friend a few months back, but I dismissed it, telling her that I was only writing this blog because I needed an outlet for my pain, not because I thought that I had anything especially unique to say about a situation in which countless women have found themselves and will continue to find themselves as long as there are unhappily married men willing to lie to get what they want from women willing to believe their lies in exchange for promises that are just more lies in a primordial state. My friend told me that I was missing the point. It was <i>because</i> my situation was not unique, and so many other women were going through the same grieving process after being discarded by a married man that made my story worth telling, not just in the form of a blog with a limited readership, but in a more visible form...such as an <i>e-book.</i> So I thought about it. I've been thinking about it for a while now. And it's finally time to stop thinking about it and embark on the actual process of doing it. And so that's exactly what I'm going to do.<br />
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I realize that publishing an ebook about my experience as "the other woman" isn't likely to trigger a worldwide moratorium on the ages old dynamic between philandering husbands and the women who aid and abet them under the deluded notion that a man's lust and desire for sex are the same things as a woman's love. But as I so often feel compelled to remind those close to me, I'm a <i>writer</i>, and writers <i>write</i>, not just because they want to tell colorful stories, or impress readers with their literary technique, or spend beautiful summer afternoons in a hot room typing their fingers raw while all the other sane people they know are frolicking on the beach, but because writing is sometimes the only thing standing between them and the black abyss threatening to devour them whole. It's the means by which they expunge their pain, the process through which they hope to find salvation by revisiting their own sins and making peace with the sins that have been committed against them. And sometimes, while immersed in that process, they become the unwitting conduit for a wisdom greater than their own, one that they may not recognize at the time, but which will resonate for someone who reads their words later on. So, even though an ebook about the mistake I made in loving a married man may not be enough to keep most similarly-inclined women from following the same dangerous course, it just might help to keep the population of Hotel Heartbreak down by a guest or two.<br />
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As far as this blog is concerned, I'll still be posting updates here from time to time, but I'll be focusing most of my attention on getting the ebook ready for publication. I have no idea what to expect after that. No idea where this road will lead me, or whether it will lead me anywhere at all. If nothing else, the publication this ebook will at least serve as proof that what some people see as "obsession", other, more perceptive people recognize as "courage", which is what it takes to look back at the painful place you've just been so that you can free yourself from the pain and begin to move forward once again. In some of my earlier posts, I made a point of saying that I felt no remorse for having been involved with a married man, only resentment that he had duped me into believing that I was in love with a man who loved me, too. My stance regarding the subject hasn't changed. My only crime was allowing myself to believe that a man who readily admitted to having had five previous extra-marital affairs before he met me was telling the truth when he told me that I was "the one." The only regret I have is that I was too inexperienced in the role of mistress to read between the lines when he told me very early in our relationship that he thought his wife might be having an affair with her doctor and that he wished she would leave him. Everything he was, everything that he would eventually reveal himself to be...passive, indecisive, weak, and unworthy of my love...was in those words.<br />
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A man who says that he's not happy with his wife, and wishes she would leave him is a man who has no intention of ever leaving his wife, and the reason he's being so nice to you and making you feel so special is that you're the slice of cherry pie that balances out the steamed broccoli he gets at home. And no matter how delicious your cherries might be, when the time comes for him to make a choice between dinner and dessert, you'll be the one who ends up on the compost heap. It's all so clear to me now. But I would never have believed it back then. Every woman in love with a married man is convinced that her relationship is that rare gem that defies the odds, that he is the man who <i>will</i> leave his wife, and she is the other woman who <i>won't </i>get hurt in the end. I know this because I was convinced of those very same things. And that's why I'm publishing this ebook. Because I lived the cliche and want to spare other women from living it, too. And that's why I'm calling my book "He Doesn't Really Love You, He's Not Going To Leave His Wife, And You're A Fool For Wasting Your Time (...Are Just Three Of The Reasons You Should Never Get Involved With A Married Man). What do you think? Feel free to let me know.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-31252143139281712992013-10-04T01:13:00.003-07:002013-10-05T07:41:33.337-07:00AUTUMN LEAVES AND SEASONED HEARTS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I know. It's been a while. Last time I posted, I was writing about the drudgery of making lemonade (yet again) from the lemons that life keeps lobbing at you versus taking an even more pro-active stance and insisting that life take back all those stupid lemons and lob something more interesting and less tart at you instead. Seems like a long time ago. Summer's gone and it's no longer the right time of year for making lemonade. The advent of autumn triggers a taste for something stronger, something darker, something that you can drink out of a heavy ceramic mug. Am I being too cryptic? Sorry. I get carried away sometimes. My point is that a lot of things have happened since I last posted on this blog, and even though I can't share most of it with you, I feel the need to at least mark the change of seasons with a brief update on the state of my still healing heart. After all, I may have started this blog as a means of giving myself an outlet for my pain, but I know that it's served as a touchstone for others who suffer from the same affliction and who have taken comfort in the reminder that they aren't alone. And so.....<br />
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Here I am, six months after the emotional apocalypse that left me with a mangled heart, and the one thing I can tell you with complete and utter certainty is that time and distance has had an enormous effect on my perception of what happened to me last spring. Six months isn't really that long when you're recovering from a relationship that was the center of your life for two years. The friends who tell me that it's time to get over it aren't really thinking of my emotional needs as much as they are simply frustrated by the fact that I'm still struggling with my feelings for a man who they long ago dismissed as an insensitive bastard who deserves to be forgotten like a bad bout of flu that came and went and with any luck will never come again. What they don't understand is that I'm over a lot more of "it" than they realize. I am acutely aware that the man I loved so deeply and for so long was not so much a man as he was a portion of one. He was good to me when it served him to be so, and maybe, for the duration of our time together, he really did feel all the things he told me he felt. But a man who can turn off his feelings as completely and soullessly as he did when he realized that his "real world" was at risk is either a liar or simply unwilling to make sacrifices to be with someone he once professed to love. I know all that. I've even made a tentative peace with his weakness, with the lies, the broken promises, and even the fact that I gave so much of myself....the best and deepest part of myself to a man so concerned with his own situation that, following his unceremonious exit from my life, couldn't even bothered to reach back out from the superficial and formerly ignored bonds of matrimony to send me so much as an email to make sure that I was all right, for the simple reason that it's the kind of thing that people do when they care about other people, even if they can't live up to all of the promises they made back in the days when making promises brought benefits that outweighed the fact that the promises were ones that they never intended to keep.<br />
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I really have reached a sort of peace with all that. The things with which I still struggle are harder to articulate for the people who urge me to relegate the man and my association with him to the past. Such as the fact that he'll be celebrating his birthday this weekend, and I can't help thinking about the special birthday page I made for him on one of my other blogs last year, and how, this year, I won't even be able to wish him a happy birthday at all. That I would even want to do so after all of the hurt and disappointment and pain he's caused me. And that even now that I know who and what he really is and isn't, knowing it doesn't make up for the time and love I so foolishly squandered on him, or the still lingering sting of having been betrayed on so many levels by someone who was not only my lover, but my very best friend.<br />
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One interesting recent development was finding out that my younger son, who attends college, is in a class with my former lover's son. Informing me of the fact, my son went on to give me his assessment of the other kid, whom I know only from what his father used to tell me about him. Last year at this time, I would have been concerned about the new connection between our respective progeny, but now it concerns me not at all, which is somewhat freeing, but strange, too. But it's a slow, ongoing process, this broken heart recovery, and no matter what people tell you, it's not something that you can accomplish within some arbitrary time frame. I'm being wooed by other men, some more appealing than others, and I hope that I'll be ready at some point to explore new possibilities. But, unlike my erstwhile lover, I'm a person for whom love is not a convenient, retractable thing. I'm moving on. I can't help moving on. But the man really did a number on me, and it's still going to take a little time before I'm able to relegate him to that place in the past where thinking of him doesn't hurt anymore.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-43288233113205665932013-09-05T04:58:00.002-07:002013-09-05T05:15:09.349-07:00TIRED OF SQUEEZING LIFE'S LEMONS? DEMAND PASSION FRUIT<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So....remember last spring? April, May, and the first weeks of June? You do? Good. They were pleasant, all bird songs and warmer days and gamboling lambs, you say? Great. I couldn't be happier for you...or your gamboling lambs. But I was actually referring to last spring in relation to<i> this</i> blog. Remember? That's right. There were <i>no</i> lambs, gamboling or otherwise. All I could write about was how horrible I felt after the married man I had loved for two years ditched me and went back to the marriage that he had once claimed made him so miserable and had left him so emotionally and physically bankrupt that he was merely waiting for "the right time" to end it and begin a new life with me. It's all coming back to you now, isn't it? God, I cried so many tears it's a wonder my keyboard didn't float away in the deluge. Not that it would have stopped me from spilling my guts. I was possessed, literally, by a force every bit as overwhelming as the demonic one that made Linda Blair's head turn on her shoulders like an owl's before she vomited all over the movie screen and made it impossible for anyone in the early 1970s to even think of eating pea soup again.<br />
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And it didn't end there! When I wasn't writing about my pain, I was talking about it, holding my friends hostage to an endless recounting of the details that had led to my heartache--the broken promises, the self-serving lies, the devastating sense of loss, and, most of all, those cold, terse, final words my faithless lover typed into the email in which he told me good-bye. If I had a dime...hell, if I had a freaking <i>penny</i>....for every time I uttered the words, "I just feel so <i>empty</i> inside", I could probably afford to buy every single person reading this post their very own copy of 1,000 Reasons Not To Fall In Love With A Married Man, a book which may or may not actually exist, but if it doesn't, definitely should, and if it did, would almost definitely include "Because After He Dumps You, And You've Driven All Your Friends Crazy With Your Endless Self-Absorbed Ramblings, You'll Have To Relocate Just To Find Someone Willing To Meet Your For Lunch Once You've Finally Regained The Ability To Think Of Something Other Than Him, Your Pain, And Yourself" as one of the top reasons on the list. And as though writing and talking about my anguish weren't enough, there were times when, finding myself alone and too depressed to do anything even remotely industrious or marginally positive, I would while away an hour or so creating hideous self-portraits on my computer, like the one above, and fantasize about what would happen if I sent them to my ex along with a cryptic email that hinted at, but never actually stated that I was close to suicide. Luckily, I never went that far because, just as luckily, I didn't have his new email address. Looking back, I can only thank God for small favors....however ironic those small favors may have been.<br />
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So, what's my point in leading you down this dark and still somewhat damp (from all those tears...natch!) stretch of my personal memory lane? Well, it's been five months since I started my heartbreak blog. And as summer starts to whisper hints of the imminent shift of seasons, marking the beginning of the sixth month of my post-"him" life, I can't help being amazed at how far I've come since those awful, unspeakably bleak days of early spring. I mean, I was as emotionally flat as a cartoon coyote lying underneath a cartoon anvil that's been pushed off a cliff by a cartoon roadrunner chortling "Beep, beep!" before speeding off down a dusty desert road leading to the next cliff and <i>its</i> attendant anvil. I was in spiritual hell, man. No light in sight, no respite from the night, nowhere to flee and no heart to fight. But somehow..<i>.somehow</i>...I made it from there to here. And it's not just that I managed to survive. The real news is that I'm finally starting to feel like myself again. Not just me without him, but <i>me</i>...as <i>myself</i>...as I was <i>before</i> he showed up and let me hand him my heart on a silver platter with a little note that said, "Fragile. Handle With Care", which he apparently did not see as he proceeded to tear the aforementioned heart to pieces before dropping it on the kitchen floor and squashing it under his spotless white Nikes as he practically bolted out the door on his way back to the wife he had suddenly realized he loved when she discovered our relationship and who he now did not want to keep waiting despite the fact that he had spent the previous two years telling me how little she and he had in common and how he couldn't imagine living his life without me.<br />
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But I digress...as usual. Bottom line, I feel like Greta again. Or I'm starting to regain some sense of familiarity at least. The little things are the clue. Last spring, I couldn't bear reading anything about the Rolling Stones, or even listening to their music because <i>he</i> loves the Stones. We had entire conversations about Keith Richards that began on one side of a lovemaking session and continued on the other side. But long before Keefe talk became our secret aphrodisiac, I loved the Rolling Stones as well, and I still do, and when I heard "Sympathy For The Devil" on the radio the other day...guess what? I forgot to feel sad because a fellow Stones fan with whom I was in love for two years dumped me four weeks after I had cancer surgery and one week before my birthday. I was too busy getting off on the song. That's progress. And so is the fact that I've stopped associating certain times of the day with thoughts of my former dream man and what he might be doing instead of being with me. That's a real step forward for a sentimental sap like yours truly. I even got rid of some of the things he gave me. They weren't special things, not particularly, but I had held on to them because they were from <i>him</i>, and that made them sacred. But no more. I was cleaning out my closet, they were not things I needed anymore, and so I ditched them...just like that! See what I mean? Little things. But with huge connotations.<br />
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I must be honest. There are a few caveats. I still think about him. I still wonder whether he thinks about me, and there are times when I am overcome by a sudden sense of sadness and the accompanying desire to see him again. I miss him even now. I still wish that things had been different between us. But I know the score. I can look back and see the cracks and fissures that ran like a fault line through our love, but which I chose to ignore and even dismiss. I know now that I wasn't a victim. I was a willing aide and abettor in keeping alive a relationship that was never what I wanted to believe it was, and which could never have existed if I hadn't given him permission to take advantage of me. Yes, he lied to me, used me, and when things went belly-up and the situation no longer served his needs, he turned into a jerk of mythic proportions and tossed me away like a wad of used-up Bazooka bubble gum. <br />
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But there is such a thing as karma, and it knows his address (and his new email). Hell is for heartbreakers. That's the title of this blog, and I stand by that contention. But those who break hearts have to make their journey to that hell on their own. Those of us whose hearts have been broken have our own road to walk. We might stumble sometimes, maybe trip over the remnants of the chains we're still dragging behind us, but as long as we keep walking....no matter how slowly....we <i>will</i> reach a new destination. Will it be a better one? The one that we still dare to believe we deserve? Dunno. But what's the option? Standing still? Sorry, my friends. I've done enough of that. I spend any more time standing around contemplating the concept of sadness and how I can incorporate even more of it into my life, I might as well hire myself out as a (tall and busty) garden gnome. And let's be honest. I may have spent the last five months as a world class sad sack, but I draw the line at wearing a little pointed red hat. Not to mention that, when it comes to kitschy garden ornaments, I'm more of a pink plastic flamingo sort of person.<br />
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But I digress...again. What I'm trying to say is it all comes down to Motown. How the (insert annoyed-sounding expletive) is that, you feel compelled to ask? Well, it's like this. In one of the greatest Motown songs of all time, Jimmy Ruffin asked (well, <i>crooned</i>, actually) the musical question "What becomes of the broken-hearted?", but instead of answering it, he simply went on singing about heartache and left us to ponder the possible answers on our own. But I've done my share of pondering, and, if you ask me, the answer is pretty obvious.What becomes of the broken-hearted? We move forward. Simple as that. We just move forward...scar tissue and all...until, one day, without realizing it, we stop being the broken-hearted, and become just...people. People who have been hurt and are wiser for it, who have been disappointed and have learned to be wary, but who, despite those things, are still filled with hope, are still open to the promise of something better, and are still willing to give their love and to believe that they might be even be loved in return. <i>That's</i> what becomes of the broken-hearted. Sorry, Jimmy. It's still a great song.<br />
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And just in case, you're not a Motown fan (if that's even possible), look at it this way. Life hands you lemons, you have a couple of choices. You can, if you are so inclined and happen to own a blender, make lemonade, maybe add a little vodka for some extra <i>oomph</i>. Or, if the lemons are especially large, so large that they are almost gargantuan and it's impossible to even life them without faltering under their weight much less carry them across the room to the counter where you've set up the blender, you can simply drop them and head off down the road to look for an entirely different kind of fruit, which you haven't even thought of yet, but which will, when you find it, vanquish all thoughts of lemons from your mind forever because, as it turns out, lemons were never really what you needed after all. See what I'm saying? Well, if you don't, no biggie. Just go with the Motown metaphor. Either way, it's about moving on. And so I am...until next post.<br />
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See you at the malt shop...<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-73248958336155058342013-08-24T15:39:00.000-07:002013-08-24T15:47:35.628-07:00DEAD ICONS, DARING DENTISTS, AND A TOOTH DUST FAIRY TALE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Okay, so in case you haven't heard, a Canadian dentist by the name of Michael Zuk is trying to bring back the Beatles. Well, one Beatle anyway. But it has nothing to do with their music. Confused? Allow me to explain. Seems that Dr. Zuk is the proud owner of a discolored molar that once resided inside the mouth of John Lennon. No...seriously. It's absolutely true, not to mention extremely gross. But, again, allow me to explain. See, Zuk purchased the late Beatle's rotten molar at an auction in 2011 (I hate to think of what else was being auctioned off) for the somewhat princely sum of 19,500 pounds and is now intent on using the DNA to clone the late Mr. Lennon. According to an article in The Guardian, Zuk has already begun "sequencing" the aforementioned DNA, which is the first step in the cloning process and exactly what scientists are doing in their efforts to clone a recently discovered (dead) woolly mammoth. Wow.! And I thought I was a Beatles fan just because I own all of their albums and have watched "A Hard Day's Night" a couple hundred times, and cried the first time I visited Strawberry Fields in Central Park. But, clearly, I have nothing on Dr. Zuk.<br />
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It gets even better, though. Zuk's interest in John Lennon's icky, yellowed tooth isn't limited to a desire to clone a member of the Fab Four. Zuk is also doing his bit to promote mouth cancer awareness by hawking pendants and a sculpture created from (John Lennon's) "tooth dust", the recording of a parody song called "Love Me Tooth", and a book devoted to photographs of the insides of famous people's mouths. No...seriously. You can read the article yourself. I won't be the least bit offended. But you may find yourself more than a little freaked out by the idea that an otherwise unknown Canadian dentist is committed to "resurrecting" the late great John Lennon.<br />
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I'll spare you my in-depth thoughts on the concept of cloning human beings. No doubt you have your own thoughts on the matter. But where we might agree is in regard to Dr. Zuk's assumption that cloning John Lennon would be the same thing as "bringing back one of rock's greatest stars." Because...well....it's not the bloody same, damn it! I mean, John Lennon wasn't just a rock star. He was a person from a specific time and place, to whom certain, specific things happened while he was with certain, specific people (i.e. Aunt Mimi, Paul McCartney, Ed Sullivan...the list goes on into Beatles infinity). So, unless Dr. Zuk and his scientist friends know something I don't about cloning (which is very possible, although in no way a deterrent to my basic feelings regarding the cloning of human beings), it would be impossible to actually bring back the John Lennon who we all knew as John Lennon. I mean, I love Canada (got relatives there and love their bacon), and Montreal was the site of John and Yoko's famous "bed-in" back in 1969, but come on. John Lennon cannot be from Canada. He has to be from Liverpool. And he has to have Paul, George, and Ringo at his side (at least until he meets Yoko and the band breaks up). Does Dr. Zuk have a podiatrist friend who's hoarding a discolored toenail clipping from George Harrison's foot? And what about Sir Paul and Ringo? And Yoko? Would anyone even dare to clone Yoko? My thoughts veer decidedly to the negative side of the (long and winding) road. <br />
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Bottom line, I hope that Dr. Zuk raises lots of awareness about mouth cancer and sells enough tooth dust pendants and celebrity teeth picture books to make back the 19,500 pounds he spent buying on John Lennon's discarded molar. But as far as cloning Mr. John Winston Ono Lennon is concerned, I can only warn him to <i>Get Back</i>! And speaking of records (which we are, in a vague, disconnected way), what is it about dentists and John Lennon? You may recall that it was John Lennon's dentist who first "turned him on" to LSD back in 1966, during a dinner party which John, George, and their (at the time) wives attended at the (apparently) groovy dentist's flat in London. You don't recall? Well, suffice it to say that, after drinking the acid-laced coffee that their dentist host served up, the group decided to go out on the town, which was not a great idea, and led to some very confusing and awkward (if not downright scary) moments before the night ended and John went on to write Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and many other famous songs filled with acid trip imagery that Lennon always insisted was not acid trip imagery, but merely regular imagery that people misinterpreted as acid trip imagery. But I digress! My point was that dentists, as a group, are usually pretty nice people, but get one of them alone in a room with John Lennon or his rotten molar and....well, as I said before....<i>Get Back</i>!<br />
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And to those anonymous scientists busily working on cloning that woolly mammoth....look, guys and/or gals, I think that woolly mammoths are adorable, too, and way, way cooler than those trendy, can't throw a Canadian-cured-ham-without-hitting-one llamas (Napoleon Dynamite, remember?), but let's be honest here...what the hell are we supposed to do with a damned woolly mammoth clone? I mean, they went extinct for a reason. Albert Einstein once said, "God does not play dice with the universe." And even though he didn't come right out and say it, I'm pretty sure ol' Al was warning we lesser beings against rolling the bones as well. So, please, let the woolly mammoths rest in peace, and leave John Lennon in our hearts and in our CD players where he belongs. Besides, how can we even <i>think</i> of a reborn John Lennon walking among us when Ringo Star has yet to be knighted by the Queen? Now that's a cause some Beatles-loving dentist could really sink his or her teeth into, don't you think?<br />
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See you in the tunnels....</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-44918672240907609352013-08-07T03:49:00.001-07:002013-08-07T04:45:50.577-07:00A HEART STILL BEATING IS A HEART UNBEATEN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I know. It's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog. That doesn't mean I haven't been writing, elsewhere, about things other than heartbreak. But as I mentioned in my last post, my heartbreak saga has taken a legal turn, and although there has definitely been progress in that area, I'm not at liberty to divulge details concerning the...well...<i>details</i> of the situation. However, I <i>am</i> free to offer you an update on the emotional progress I've made since I last typed the word "heartbreak" for public consumption. So....ready? Good! Here goes...<br />
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I feel better. Not great, mind you. Not amazing. Not even what you might call <i>normal</i> (if there is such a thing). But I have definitely taken enough steps toward the light at the end of the tunnel to have reached the startling conclusion that there actually <i>is</i> life after love. (Are you listening, Cher?) It's been a hell of a long haul, though, fraught with fresh hurts along the way, not to mention the occasional step backwards toward the abyss of despair into which I plummeted after my ex ended our relationship and returned to the woman who he once claimed made him so unhappy. It's been four months since the emotional apocalypse that left me so crushed and broken-hearted that there were times when I honestly would have preferred to die (painlessly) rather than face another day draped in the sadness that I allowed to envelope me. But in those four months, in which I must have cried enough tears to fill an ocean, I learned a few things about myself which, if not original or profound, are at least as important as the fact that I gave my love to a man who accepted it, enjoyed the benefits that came with it, and then tossed it away as though it were nothing when it no longer suited his purpose. And just what are those things, you ask? Well, calm down and I'll tell you. <br />
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First of all, I learned that I am stronger than I thought I would ever be in a situation like this one. When my husband left me four years ago, after twenty-five years of marriage, for a woman he claimed was his "soulmate", I thought I would die. It was a total blindside, a sucker punch to the solar plexus that left me gasping for breath and so disoriented that I flew straight to England, where I had once been happy in my youth, and where I proceeded to squander nearly every penny of my divorce settlement in a misguided effort to assuage the emotional pain. When I finally returned to the States, still broken-hearted and financially <i>broke</i> as well, my friends took numbers lining up to chastise me for my foolishness while at the same time confessing that they weren't sure they could ever have survived such an emotional blow. It was a pretty dismal period in my life, and finding myself both an example of bad judgment and an object of pity didn't help matters. But I managed to pull myself together enough to go on with life. I mean, what choice did I have? And, of course, if you've read my earlier posts on this blog, you know that it was while I was stumbling around in a state of depression and acute remorse that I met and fell in love with the man who would deliver the next blow to my poor, duct-taped heart. But see, that's the thing. I recovered from that first blow, and, from where I sit at the moment, it looks as though I just might recover from this one, too. I'm not saying I'm "over it." Hell, I'll probably never be over it completely. I'm still angry, hurt, and sad, and there are days (and just as many nights) when I still can't believe that he left me the way that he did. But he <i>did</i> leave me the way that he did. Which pretty much means that I have two choices. I can waste even more time wallowing in despondency and despair over a man who was never worthy of me to begin with, or I can do my best to put him behind me and move forward into the next phase of my existence. I choose to move forward. I already have...somewhat. Believe it or not, there are days (and nights) when I actually find myself looking forward to the future...a future in which <i>his</i> figure doesn't even figure...and, for a woman who spent at least two of the last four months convinced that she would never feel anything but sadness again, that's saying something.<br />
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The second thing I've learned is that being dumped by the man I loved doesn't mean that I am unworthy of being loved. Don't get me wrong. I'm nowhere near ready for another relationship. And although I <i>did</i> agree to go out for coffee recently with a man who made it clear that he found me "interesting", I'm still too tender to even consider dating on a regular basis (not to mention that I spent the entire time rehashing the details of my heartbreak, which, despite the perfunctorily compassionate comments he offered in return, probably made me a little less "interesting" to him by the time we finished our second cup of coffee). But even so, I've started to shake off that awful sense of being "nothing" because someone I loved chose to continue his life without me. That was one of the hardest parts of being dumped so suddenly by a man who I had made the central focus of <i>my</i> life. All at once, there I was, just me, alone, unattached, a solitary entity in a world in which most people define themselves by their emotional relationships to other people. Sure, I still had my children, and my friends, but my children and my friends all have partners and significant others. The things they do, the plans they make are all colored and shaped by their attachments to those other people. To be a woman with no such attachment, with no one else's needs or desires to consider when making the daily decisions of life, no one to whom I <i>belong</i>...well, it's a little disconcerting at this stage in my life. I mean, it's one thing to be thirty-four and single. It's a whole other sticky (and slightly icky) ball of wax to be fifty-four and on your own. But alone or not, I am still the person I was when I met <i>him</i>, and that person is as worthy of love now as she was then. The twist is that next time...if there is a next time...I won't make the mistake of settling for less than I deserve.<br />
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And that brings us to the third thing I've learned since first signing my name in the over-flowing guest book at Hotel Heartbreak. Hold on to your hats. It's a biggie. It's...(cue drum roll)...the astonishing fact that hearts can't really be broken. I know! Major revelation! Not to mention one that is completely incompatible with the concept of a blog devoted to heartbreak and those who carelessly break those aforementioned hearts. But it's true. I mean, <i>sure</i>, when someone you love says good-bye and leaves you lying in the dust like yesterday's roadkill, it hurts like hell. And in the most extreme cases (like mine), it really does feel as though that vital organ beating inside your chest has been seriously compromised in a physical and possibly life-threatening way. On my worst days, I was in so much pain that it took every ounce of energy I possessed to put enough words together to form a coherent sentence. There were times when the emptiness inside of me felt so vast and overwhelming that I wasn't even sure that I possessed a heart anymore. Wracked with grief and despair, I was convinced that, even if I did still have a heart beating somewhere inside of me, it was probably so scarred and bruised and battered that it was only a matter of time until it succumbed to its wounds and gave up the ghost for good. But guess what? I was wrong. All the classic symptoms of heartbreak...the heavy, choking sensation at the base of your throat, the absence of anything even approaching an appetite, the endless flow of tears that makes you feel as though you're living through your own personal tsunami....are definitely forces with which to be reckoned. But even in the midst of all that, even when you're at your absolutely lowest point, so low that you feel as though you're crawling on your hands and knees even when you're walking upright...even <i>then</i>, your heart is still intact. It's not really cracked, it's not actually bleeding, and the duct tape you imagine covering its myriad holes is not necessary. And that's because your heart...my heart...<i>everyone's</i> heart...is stronger than than anything that life happens to throw at it. Stronger than disappointment, stronger than sadness, stronger than that wretched movie reel of memories looping endlessly inside your head. <br />
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It's your <i>heart</i>, and even if you were foolish enough, or careless enough, or trusting enough to offer it up to someone else for safekeeping, it still belongs to you. It may have been abused, it may have been neglected, disrespected, and unfairly used, and it may have come back to you in need of some extra care and attention to make up for the rough treatment it suffered prior to the transition, but it came back whole and still beating and every bit as solid as it was before. And even if you still hurt, it will keep on beating, and as long as it does, <i>you</i> will never be beaten. You've heard the song a thousand times. Probably hated it more every time you heard it (I know I did). But as corny as the lyrics are, they're true. Your heart will go on...and on...and on. And that means that you...and I...will, too.<br />
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Remember...<i>Das Beste kommt nocht!</i></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-42447030927026048702013-05-04T06:21:00.000-07:002013-05-04T12:18:36.687-07:00HEARTBREAK TAKES AN (ENFORCED) HOLIDAY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Okay, so my friends think I need to offset my tears-and-moaning heartbreak posts with something a little more upbeat. Never mind that these posts are written for a blog dedicated to chronicling my descent into and my struggles to overcome a heartbroken condition. I mean, have they not noticed that it's called "Hell is For Heartbreakers"? But at any rate, to appease them without going too far off the subject, I offer this post on five things that I would like to do if I had unlimited access to funds, time, and energy. They came up with the catagories. I'm just playing along. So, here goes...
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1.) If I could visit any city in the world...
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My gut response would be New York, London, or Copenhagen, the three cities where I have family and friends and have already spent many pleasant and exciting hours doing things that I don't have time to describe. But of course my friends want me to name a city that I haven't already visited. So in that case, I would have to go with Prague. Why? Because it has amazing old cemeteries (no, I'm not being morbid; I loved exploring old cemeteries long before I came down with broken heart disease), and its ancient streets and alleyways are so intertwined and intricately designed that invading Nazi troops got lost in them during World War II. If nothing else, I'd like to give Prague a high-five for that one.
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2.) If I could build or buy any style of house I desired...
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This is an easy one. I've lived in some nice houses, including the Elizabethan cottage-style house that my ex-husband built for us when we were first married and in which my younger son was born, but there are really only two styles of houses that I've ever considered my "dream homes": an old Victorian (painted gray, white, or possibly pink) and an 18th-century style saltbox painted revolutionary war red. I know, as designs go, they're pretty much diametrically opposed. But even though I'm drawn to both, if I had to choose (gun to my head, etc), I'd have to go with the Victorian. But only if I also had access to unlimited funds to furnish half of it with wonderful antiques and the other half with cool steampunk stuff. And it would be a definite bonus if it were haunted, but only by a ghost who limited its activity to sporadic raps and the occasional blowing out of candles. Knowing that your house is haunted is one thing, seeing the thing that haunts it is a whole other ball of ectoplasm.
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3.) If I could start my own charity...
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No brainer, this one. Dogs. I love dogs, I miss every single dog I ever had and lost, and if I could start my own charity, it would have something to do with rescuing abused and/or homeless dogs, rehabilitating them, and matching them with loving, caring owners. I would <i>like</i> to start another charity to do the same for cats and horses, but apparently I'm limited to one. So dogs it is. No bones about it.
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4.) If I could choose one completely useless item to buy...
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Again with the no brainer. As long as I can remember, I've wanted a genuine vintage carousel horse of my own, and which would serve absolutely no purpose save that of looking gorgeous and cool in my living room. If it could be black, with stars and flowers on its saddle and reins that would only add to the joy and euphoria I would feel every time I looked at it...which would be pretty damned often, I can assure you.
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5.) If I could start my own theme bar or restaurant...
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Okay...caveat. I don't want to start my own theme bar or restaurant, and if for some reason I did, it would have to be with the understanding that I never had to actually work there or be responsible for the day to day management of the place. I'm not a food service person. I write and I sing. That's the extent of my gifts. But if I could start one and hand over the daily operations to a skilled and trusted staff who would ensure that we all profited handsomely from their efforts on behalf of the place, I think it would be kind of cool to open up psuedo-Victorian bar and grill, with the waitstaff all decked out in steam punk attire, the drinks and entrees named after famous 19th century writers and poets (the house drink would be absinthe, of course), and there would be nothing but gaslight for illumination. Oh...and a stuffed raven somewhere. And No TV, no stereo. And no cell phones allowed on the floor. Just one old crank-style phone in one dim corner. Hell, I'd even stop by to hang out myself. And I'd call it "Nightmare Abbey" after the novel by Thomas Love Peacock. Or maybe "Lost Lenore's" It would depend on whether I could actually come up with that stuffed raven.
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Alright, then. This completes my concession to my friends' obsession with my need to write a post on something other than my broken heart. And now that I've done so, I can get back to my real work...and that includes writing about my broken heart...because that's how I'm getting through it, and if I can do it, then that's good news for others as well. (I may be self-absorbed when it comes to my broken heart, but I'm not selfish, damn it.)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-84960511123613513272013-05-03T18:51:00.000-07:002013-05-03T19:28:59.557-07:00IF I BURN ALL THE THINGS HE GAVE ME, WILL IT SET MY HEART FREE? (LET ME GET MY MATCHES...)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Today was another tearfest. As I said in my last post, the road back from heartbreak is one step forward, and two steps back...or, apparently, in some instances, ten backward somersaults accompanied by fresh wailing and gnashing of teeth. There <i>are</i> extenuating circumstances. I can't go into the details in this post, but it concerns a legal matter connected to my ex, and the fact that I feel I must pursue it is not making it any easier to get over the man. Today was a Friday as well, which was another of "our" days, and of course he didn't come, or write, and though I really didn't expect him to do either, I woke up at four o'clock this morning with the sense that he might. Could he have been considering it, but decided not to follow through? It's possible, I suppose. Two weeks ago...hell, even one week ago...I still believed that our connection was strong enough to allow for intermittent moments of telepathy of that sort. But more and more time wedges its way between where we are now, and what we were before the love apocalypse, I'm starting to relinquish my hold on that belief. Even as I fell prey to fresh tears this morning, and again in the afternoon, I wasn't sure just what I was crying over---that, once again, his absence on one of "our" days proved that he truly has made the emotional break from our relationship, or the frustration I felt with myself for allowing foolish sentiment to undermine the intellectual strides I've made in getting over him (i.e. all the things I know now to be true: he's gone, he's not coming back, the reasons why, and how, even if he did come back, it could never be the same). Maybe it was a little bit of both. It usually is in these situations. Our hearts beat in mysterious ways and don't always let our brains in on the chord changes.
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I've been thinking that it might be helpful to get rid of some of the things that remind me of him. Because we communicated solely in person and through email, I don't have any love letters to burn, but there are a number of little things that I've held onto simply because he gave them to me. True, he gave me a lot of things, including the laptop on which I'm writing this post, my microwave, and my bed, but I'm not getting rid of those, not even as an exercise in letting go. But there's a certain little semi-antique oval box with the name "Georgette" on the lid that was the very first gift he ever gave me. He told me that he'd had it in his antique shop for a while, and wasn't sure why he had kept it, but when he met me, he realized that it was supposed to be mine. And there's an antique plumb bob that he gave me because, for some reason I have a thing about plumb bobs, and I wanted one, and he made a special effort to find this particular one and bring it to me. If I burned the "Georgette" box in the fire that my friend (the one with the caustic tongue) plans to have tonight, would my stubborn sense of connection to a man who no longer wants me disappear in the same smoke? The plumb bob wouldn't burn because it's metal, but it would at least be disfigured by the flames, and that would be <i>something</i>. As I said in my last post, I wasn't one of those spoiled mistresses dripping expensive jewelry and clutching a lap dog, but there are a few pairs of earrings and some necklaces and bracelets he picked up at yard sales for me. Should I commit those to the flames as well? Would it change anything, make it easier to disconnect?
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In my heart, I think that, as symbolic as the burning of his gifts might be, it wouldn't really make the job of getting over him any easier. What would make it easier would be not knowing his schedule, and that, since tomorrow is Saturday, he'll be driving around scouting out yard sales and looking for antiques and other interesting items to buy and re-sell. I wish I didn't know his bedtime, or what he likes to eat, or which news stories he's most likely following (and the links to which I still have to remind myself I no longer need to copy and send to him). I wish I didn't know that he suffers from a severe case of arthritis for which he takes medication, and which I still find myself worrying about, despite the fact that I was only four weeks past cancer surgery when he left me, and that didn't slow him down one bit. And I wish like hell that I didn't keep wondering how successful he's been in reingratiating himself to the wife with whom he claimed to be totally incompatible, in a sexual, emotional, <i>and</i> intellectual sense until she discovered that he and I were seeing one another, and that simple and unexpected fact triggered his sudden epiphany that he actually did love her and our relationship was "wrong". Maybe things are working out for them after all. Maybe, after twenty years of marriage, during the last half of which they spent almost no time together (according to him), the outside threat that I presented was the catalyst they needed to tighten up those flabby bonds of matrimony. In which case, it makes sense that he hasn't even checked in to see if doing all right, since it would be "wrong" for a newly content and faithful husband to revisit the scene of his extramarital crime, not to mention the woman who was his accessory in committing it (never mind that she was duped into doing so by his professions of love). Then again, maybe his return to the fold has been a struggle, and his hold on the status quo is so tenuous that, despite the fact that some part of him still misses me and wishes he could make contact, he's afraid to taint his efforts with the rekindling of old feelings and desires. Who knows? I sure as hell don't. And to waste any more time thinking about it would be ridiculous and self-defeating and pointless. And yet...
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I don't know how to make it all stop...the knowing, and the wondering, and the memories and feelings triggered by certain days of the week, and certain hours of the day, and all the other mundane things that wouldn't even matter except for their connection to a man who is no longer connected to me. If I could throw it all into my friend's backyard fire tonight, it probably <i>would</i> set me free. But some things just can't be burned away. And until I find another method of expunging them from my heart and head and soul, I'm guess I'm just going to have to keep up the skewed dance...one step forward, two leaps back, half a step sideways, one tuck and roll into the ditch, and then two steps forward again....indefinitely. But at least I'm committed to the dance. I might still cry, but I don't cry all day anymore. I might still be sad, but I don't wear my sadness like an emblem when I'm in public. And I might still be angry, but I am working very hard to channel that anger into something constructive that I might not otherwise have the courage to do (more about that in a future post). So, I'm not dead in the water yet. I'm still a contender in the heartbreak vs me prize fight of this or any other decade. And maybe if I keep my eye on the prize and refuse to give in, all that other stuff...the knowing and the wondering and the residual feelings connected to an outmoded reality...will just disappate on their own. Like a semi-antique oval box with the name "Georgette" on the lid going up in red-orange flames in my friend's backyard on an otherwise quiet and uneventful Friday night in early spring.
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-9394425759103170032013-04-20T14:46:00.001-07:002013-04-20T19:07:58.975-07:00GOOD MORNING, I LOVE YOU/NITEY NITE...I'M STARTING TO HATE YOU, TOO<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yesterday, it was anger. But yesterday is gone (just ask Lenny Kravitz), and today, I'm back in the salt (tear) mines, with that same old lump back inside my throat, making it impossible to swallow the slice of toast that was my sorry attempt at making breakfast and poisoning what's left of the slightly elevated mood swing that had me looking forward to a brave new post-"him" reality. If I wanted to think semi-positive, I could blame it on the fact that it's raining where I am, but that would be an easy out, as well as untrue, because I've never really minded rain, especially in the spring, as long as it's not too cold (it isn't) and doesn't last too long (we'll see). No, it's not the rain. If I had to blame anything (without a consciousness or the ability to have an actual agenda), it would be my computer clock and the new "Hello Kitty" watch I got for my birthday last week (also known as one of the worst nights of my life, but I'm still working up to posting the details of that one.)
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See, before the break-up that broke my heart, bruised my spirit, and befuddled my sense of self-esteem, the former love of my life and I adhered to a very specific schedule when it came to our personal interactions. On those days when I actually got to see him in person, he would always come to me in the morning, usually around nine-thirty or ten, and always leave by one or one-thirty. I know. It was a pretty tight window of opportunity. But those few hours between late morning and early afternoon just happened to be the ones that fit best with his own work schedule. They were never enough, of course. No matter how well we took advantage of those two or three (sometimes four) hours in which we were free to touch and hold and kiss and make love and look into each other's eyes the way that other couples do, when it was time for him to go, I would feel my stomach sink and have to bite my tongue to keep myself from pleading with him to stay. On those occasions when I did give voice to my frustration, he would respond by telling me, in an equally frustrated tone, that he was doing the best that he could.
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I think he really he was, too. He had a whole other life that went on before and after those brief, bittersweet hours that he spent with me. And like a good mistress, I did my best to seem grateful that he was able to fit me into his life at all. He never came to see me without some useful item in tow...an economy pack of paper towels or toilet paper, vodka, a box of unopened spices that he'd come across at a yard sale while scouting out antiques. Sitting at my computer right now and looking around the room, it's impossible not to see something that he either bought for me, gave to me, or handed me the money to buy. I was in such bad financial shape when I met him. I'm not much better off now. But even though I told him that my friends sometimes referred to him as my "sugar daddy" (which I found amusing since he's five years younger than me), I never took his financial help for granted. I appreciated it, I was happy to take advantage of it, but if he had lost all of his money in some unforseen personal catastrophe, it wouldn't have changed my feelings for him. He never came to see me without slipping me some extra cash before he left, but even though I was always able to find a very good use for the money he gave me, it was his time that I wanted more.
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Because we spent so little actual time together in a physical sense, I became almost pathological about not wanting to miss out on any of our email conversations. My friends found it extremely annoying when they wanted me to go somewhere with them and had to wait until I had completed my nightly discourse with my absent lover. One of my closest friends, who's particulary adept when it comes to caustic rejoinders, was so irritated at one point by my slavish devotion to my keyboard that she said, "You don't have a boyfriend, you have a pen pal. So, say good-night to your pen pal and let's get the hell out of here." I knew what she meant. But I didn't care. In a normal relationship (i.e. the socially sanctioned kind, like the one he had with his wife), the people involved can talk to each other any damned time they want. But we didn't have a normal relationship (hell, as it turns out, we didn't even have the non-normal relationship that I thought we had), and in the two years that we were together, he and I never once spoke on the phone. He refused to carry a cell phone, and since I could never call him at home or at his shop, there was simply never an opportunity for it to happen. The lack of phone access to the man I loved never really bothered me. But, not surprisingly, it bothered my friends, who told me that I was insane not to insist that he come up with some way for me to reach him without having to rely on email. But I never insisted, and even if I had, it wouldn't have mattered. He was good to me in many different ways, and until that awful night two weeks ago, I honestly believed that he was on the short list of the kindest, most caring men in the world. But he could be stubborn about certain things, and the way in which we communicated was one of them. No cell phones, no Skype, no Chat...no anything but email. I spent so much time writing to that man that we might as well have lived in the freaking 19th century.
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In the mornings, whether we had plans to see each other or not, he always sent me an email with "good morning" in the subject line, and at night, even if we had just seen one another, I would check my inbox at restless intervals, holding my breath as I scanned the screen for his first email of the night which usually arrived by six or seven o'clock under the simple heading "hi, greta." As soon as it arrived, I would fire off my reply, and then we'd write back and forth to each other until eight thirty or nine, which was when he usually announced the fact that he was going to bed by sending me an email headed with the single word "nite." At the end of the message, he would expand it to "nitey nite", followed by the little flourishes of endearment that we reserved for our final missives of the evening. It was one of his quirks that he always wrote to me in lowercase letters. In the initial days of our email correspondence, I was aghast, as any former English major would be, at his complete disregard for capital letters. But a few months into the relationship, I had not only made peace with the lack of caps, but had discarded them from my own emails. Of the hundreds of emails he and I exchanged, and which I still have, all but the first twenty or so of mine are typed in our signature <i>sans caps</i> style, and every time I reread one of them (which I always regret doing because it just make the lack of any news ones more glaring), it's as though I'm actually listening to his voice as he says outloud the things that I'm reading on the screen. Writers tend to write the way that people are supposed to talk, but he wasn't a writer, and so he wrote the way he talked, and I found it comforting...before he left me anyway. Now it just hurts. And the only comfort I get from reading his old emails is the thought that, despite the way he treated me in the end, and the ongoing anguish that is my anti-consolation prize for losing my heart <i>and</i> the man to whom I gave it, maybe...just possibly...he misses our lowercase communucations as much as I do.
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Yes, I'm angry at him for making me believe things that he didn't mean and then discarding me like used Kleenex. Thank God I am, too, because from what I've seen so far, anger might turn out to be the only available ticket out of this heartbroken hell. But I couldn't be this angry if I hadn't loved him so much. That's the Catch-22. You can't love someone the way that I loved him without giving away not only your heart, but parts of your soul and spirit as well. And when you love someone enough to do that, and they leave you in the cruel, cold way that he left me, you can't help but feel anger along with the hurt. But even though the anger that you're feeling might be the thing that carries you past the pain, it's also the thing that keeps you chained to the memory of what he did to cause you all that pain. See what I mean? Catch-22...only nowhere near as funny as the book or the movie.
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And the two years I spent tied to his schedule like a puppy to a fence? I never thought it was so bad. My friends hate to hear me say it, but its true. It's not a matter of whether I deserved better or more from a relationship. There's always going to be some kind of schedule hanging over your head, and you always end up making sacrifices for the people you love. I followed his schedule and made the sacrifices I made because I loved him. And if he had loved me in equal measure, I wouldn't have minded at all. But he didn't. And so now all I have is a bunch of old emails filled with lowercase letters, ten to twenty of them for nearly every day for the last two years. That's a lot of emails. A lot of "good mornings." And it's way, way too many "nitey nites" that I never even got to say back to him without typing it on my keyboard.
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-78631623037784688012013-04-19T15:34:00.003-07:002013-04-20T19:07:07.933-07:00TO HELL WITH DIAMONDS...ANGER IS THIS GIRL'S (NEW) BEST FRIEND<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I started this blog because I needed an outlet for the pain and anger I've been struggling with ever since my married boyfriend of two years dumped me two weeks ago. If you read my first two posts, you know that the break-up took place after his wife found out that we were seeing each other, confronted him, and he was suddenly overcome with the realization that he loved her more than he loved me and that saving the marriage he had left to flounder for years was "the right thing to do", even if it meant breaking every promise he had ever made to me, completely rewriting our emotional history in order to cast himself in a more favorable light, and agreeing to never see or speak to me again. And if you <i>haven't</i> read my first two posts, I suggest that you do so before you continue reading this one, otherwise I'll probably just come off like a raving, ranting lunatic. But pain and anger don't just well up inside a person for no reason. Heartbreak doesn't just happen. Someone has to actually reach inside your chest, rip out your most vital and delicate organ, and then crack it like an eggshell while you stand there and watch. And then turn and walk out the door as you stagger around in a daze trying to remember where you put the duct tape.
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In my last post I wrote about the five chambers (i.e. stages) of heartbreak. One of them was anger. For the last two weeks, I've been enmeshed in a grieving process, so paralyzed and overwhelmed by pain that my friends keep calling me just to make sure that I'm still alive and in pain, and not swinging at the end of a rope. That's one of the unfortunate side effects of heartbreak. You may be the one whose heart is hurting, but the hurt colors everything you do and, if it stays around long enough, it starts to affect the people around you as well. The people who really care about you, the ones who are closest to you, do their best to understand what you're going through and try as hard as they can to support you in your (extended) moment of despair. But no matter how many times they hug you and say, "Now, remmber, <i>call</i> me if you need to talk. I'm here for you", you still feel guilty for having dragged them into your personal hell pit of misery and making them worry about you when they already have more than enough worries of their own. And because neither I nor my friends have access to a heartbreak handbook that can tell us how long this acute stage of pain can be expected to last, I've started to become very self-conscious about verbalizing what I'm feeling. Two weeks is nowhere near enough time to get over the loss of a man who was such a huge part of my life for two years, but it's much too long to hold my friends hostage to endless recountings of what he did to me, spontaneous rants that would be better directed at him in person, and sorrowful sighs followed by a fresh flow of tears.
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That's why I was heartened when I awoke this morning with a vague awareness of something new stirring beneath the cloak of despair I had worn to bed. After a moment or two of introspection I realized that it was...anger! Yes, I'm still sad and wish with everything in me that I could just cease to exist without actually committing suicide, but now I'm starting to get pissed-off as well. This isn't the first time I've felt anger in regard to the situation. I felt it on the day he made his selfish, unmanly exit from my life, but it was only a fleeting emotion, no match for the all encompassing sense of personal devastation that has characterized most of my waking moments since then. But this new version definitely has some punch to it. Instead of tearing up whenever I picture him, I've started thinking of how undeserving he was of the time and love and unfailing devotion I lavished on him for the last two years. One thing in particular that sets off my newfound sense of rage is the memory of him telling me that his wife had made him promise not to write to me ever again and that he had agreed to the injunction.
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For the past two weeks, I've done nothing but mourn my loss, obsess over how much I miss him, and weep in despair at the thought of never seeing him again. But I swear to you, right here, right now, with God is my witness, that if he actually had enough manhood in him to walk through my door and attempt to make amends with me in a face to face kind of way, my first instinct would <i>not</i> be to fling myself into his arms and plead with him to make me feel loved and desired again. Not even close. My <i>first</i> instinct would be to walk up to him, jab my finger into his chest and tilt my head back so that I was looking directly into his eyes (he's very tall), and tell him that as much as it hurts to have a broken heart, it hurts even more to realize that the man who broke it is a gutless, self-serving coward who was so desperate to assuage his wife's anger when she found out about our relationship, that when she demanded that he promise to never see me or even write to me ever again, he simply nodded his head and promised. And the reason he did it was that he wasn't man enough to tell her that even if he was willing to never see me again, after two years of writing to one another for two to three hours nearly every single night, he was at least going to do me the courtesy of sending an email explaining what had happened so that I wouldn't lie awake all night wondering if he was sick, or dead, or had been abducted by aliens. But he was too focused on making things easier on himself to remember that in the two years we had been together, we only saw each other once or twice, occasionally three times a week, and for only a few hours at a time, which meant that the bulk of our relationship had actually been spent online, exchanging emails, sending one another links, and watching Patriots games "together" during football season. If he truly cared about me as much as he let me believe he did, he would have told her all of this, sent the email, and <i>then</i> gone back to groveling his way out of guilt. He <i>should</i> have told her because it was the right and manly thing to do. But he didn't. He just stood there and let everything that had been important and precious between us wither and die and become nothing. And of all the things he did or didn't do that contributed to the gigantic fissure that broke my heart in two and turned my love for him into the pain that I am still trying yo get through, it was <i>this</i> one that made me so angry that the sheer force of it had pushed aside the mist-coated memories of our aborted love and allowed me to finally see the stark, ugly truth that I should have seen all along.
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And as for his wife...well, if she was so utterly devoid of even the tiniest shred of compassion it would take to understand that despite my technical status as the "other woman", I was still a flesh and blood human being with feelings that were every bit as important and genuine as hers, then maybe he and she deserved each other and <i>should</i> spend the rest of their lives working on a marriage that they could have been working on all along instead of letting it lie there like an old rug that they had forgotten to even notice until someone happened to mention to her that they'd seen her husband in the company of another woman, which sent her into a territorial tizzy, which led to the confrontation, which, in turn, set off his long-dormant sense of commitment to their marriage and the concept of fidelity in general, as well as the sudden awareness that his relationship with me had been "wrong", even though its alleged "wrongness" had never bothered him before she found out about it. But now, faced with the possible disintergration of his comfortable home life and familiar daily routine, the wrongness of othe relationship that had until that night been the best and most cherished aspect of my existence became the driving force behind the equally sudden awareness that he was hopelessly and irrevocably in love with the wife whom he been ignoring every night for the past two years, if not longer, just as she had been ignorning him, but instead of attempting to bridge the gap which had led to their mutual ignorning of one another, he had preferred to spend his evenings enjoying extended email conversations with me. (And being the sentimental idiot that I am, I still have every single email.)
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<i>That's</i> what I would tell him <i>if</i> he were man enough to acknowledge that there are two women who have been "wronged" in this situation and that it was his responsibility to assuage my pain as well as hers. But all I got for my trouble was a quick Saturday morning kiss off, a follow-up email in which he "wished me well", and a heart that will never beat quite the same way again. In recompense for the time she spent living in oblivion, <i>she</i> got the man she never even knew she'd almost lost without having to work anywhere near as hard as I did to try to hold onto him. But that's the way the man-shaped cookie crumbles. And there's no more sense in crying over crumbled cookies than there is in crying over spilled Heineken (<i>see first post</i>). Of course, knowing that doesn't necessarily mean I'm past the tears and banshee wails quite yet, but I think being pissed off at the unjust way he's treated me since that night is a good sign and may even be the harbinger of a time in the not too <i>too</i> distant future when I'll get up one morning and not feel that awful sensation of tightness in my chest and throat. And maybe, after that, I'll start to have an appetite again and won't have to force myself to eat a slice of bread or a handful of M & M's every eight hours or so just to take the burn off the emptiness in my stomach. I feel almost giddy just thinking of it. Imagine! A day without tears and anguish as my constant companions. A week without the image of his face blocking out the sunlight and the echo of his crushing final words reverberating like the buzz of a killer bee inside my brain. Who knows? Maybe, if this anger thing sticks around a while, I'll even be able to sleep for more than a few hours before waking up all alone in the bed where we used to make love and where...no matter how many times I change the sheets...I can still sometimes catch the scent of his stupid patchouli soap.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-40822071713232915042013-04-18T06:31:00.002-07:002013-04-19T19:37:04.359-07:00THE FIVE CHAMBERS OF HEARTBREAK AND WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THEM SO FAR<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yes, I know there are only four chambers. In our hearts, that is. Our <i>real</i> hearts that beat behind our rib cages and pump blood and oxygen to all of the places those things need to go in order for us to keep on living. But death has five stages, as does grief, according to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who wrote best-selling books about both, and as I see it, heartbreak has more to do with death and grief than it does the actual heart. We call it "heartbreak" because our emotions are involved, and emotions are associated with the heart, but it's only in a figurative sense. I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know, of course. Big revelation! Broken hearts aren't really broken! The person is just incredibly, unbelievably hurt and sad! But even if having a broken heart doesn't mean that you're walking around with duct tape wrapped around the organ itself, it sure as hell can affect you in physical <i>and</i> emotional ways. This is what I know so far about the five chambers of heartbreak.
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CHAMBER 1: ABJECT SADNESS AND CEASELESS CRYING
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When you're in love with someone, and that person tells you that it's over, and he's never going to see or speak to you again, your first reaction is most likely to cry. Except, in a situation like the aforementioned one, the word "cry" doesn't even come close to describing the calvacade of tears, lightning bolt of pain, and the accompanying sense of despair that overtake you as your beloved turns and walks out the door and leaves you all alone to deal with the aftermath of his decision. I don't know how many tears a human being is capable of shedding at any given time, but I <i>do</i> know that when my man left me almost two weeks ago now, I cried so much that my cheeks started to feel sore to the touch and my eyes looked like slits underneath my swollen eyelids. And still the tears refused to stop coming. There were occasional intervals, but even the mere thought of what had just happened was enough to trigger a fresh round of waterworks. The worst part was that no matter how much I cried, it didn't make me feel any better. Crying is supposed to be cathartic. That may be true in some cases, but not in the case of full-blown, mind-numbing heartbreak. For two days straight, I was either crying or trying not to cry, but no matter which mode I was in, the sadness and pain levels were the same. The shedding of tears did subside somewhat on the third day, but it didn't stop completely, and almost two weeks later, I'm still prone to crying jags that come out of nowhere and can last for periods of up to half an hour or more. The sense of loss and despair are so great that I can't think of anything, look at anything, or listen to anything without being reminded of the man I loved, the fact that he's gone, and the horrible emptiness that he has left in his wake. I've been told that it won't hurt like this forever. That the tears will eventually dry up and the sun will shine down on me once again. But "eventually" is a pretty vague designation as far as time is concerned, and even the most brilliant, warming ray of sunshine couldn't penetrate the dark pit of desolation that swallowed me whole on the day he left and seems determined to keep me here indefinitely.
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CHAMBER 2. SENSE OF REJECTION
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The sense of rejection you feel after the person you love ends the relationship, for whatever reason, comes parallel with the tears, but based on my one previous experience with heartbreak (i.e. the end of my twenty-five year marriage), it lasts much longer. In fact, to be completely honest, I <i>still</i> feel rejected by my ex-husband. To have been dumped by a man with whom you've had children and who was the focal point of your existence for a quarter of a century (even if he <i>did</i> refuse to have sex with you for the last five years of the marriage because he thought you were fat) is bound to make you feel like a dishrag that's been wrung out, tossed into the trash, and left to dry out and harden next to all of the frozen food wrappers and uneaten dog food. And then, when the man who helped you reclaim your sense of self-esteem turns around and does the same thing to you, albeit after a much shorter amount of time, it hits you like a stunning, merciless blow that takes your breath away and leaves a lingering sensation in your throat that makes it hard to eat, talk, or even swallow your own saliva. Getting dumped is a wretched experience in any case, but when you've been dumped because the man you love has decided he would rather be with another woman than with you, it's almost impossible to envision a time when you will ever feel desirable or loved or wanted by anyone again. Friends and acquaintances can spout all of the annoying platitudes they can come up with ("Oh, you'll find someone else", or "Let her have him", and "he's not worth crying over"), but platitudes and well wishes are no match for the pain of knowing that he had a choice between two women, and the woman he chose was not you.
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CHAMBER 3: ANGER
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Like the sense of rejection you can't help feeling, anger co-exists with the tears, but it comes and goes at intervals, which not only makes you even more of a basket case, but causes the people around you to worry that you might go off and do something crazy to get back at the man who hurt you. Even in the midst of all those tears of sadness on the day he left, I felt enough occasional bursts of anger to say things like "He's not going to get away with this!" and "I hope he doesn't think I'm going to just <i>take</i> this!" If I hadn't been so paralyzed by pain and grief, I might have actually put my words into action. I might not go so far as to sneak into his house while he and his family are out and boil their pet rabbit to death on the stove and leave it there for them to find, but I <i>did</i>...and still <i>am</i>...entertaining random fantasies of confronting him in public places and demanding an account of his sniveling manhood in front of people who would be shocked to learn of our relationship. And even though my status as "the other woman" who has been rejected because he decided to return to his wife would probably curtail any spontaneous outpouring of sympathy on the part of his friends and family members, I like to think that they would at least find themselves moderately disgusted by the callous manner in which he treated my heart. "You pursued <i>me</i>!" I imagine myself yelling at him. "I hid in the bathroom and wouldn't answer the door for weeks, but you kept coming to see me, and the only reason I finally allowed myself to become involved with you was that you told me how unhappy and unfufilled you were at home! I felt sorry for you, but I ended up falling in love, and now you're avoiding me like a goddamned disease!" No, anger is not pretty. And giving into it could, quite possibly, end with someone calling the police, but feeling it, even in isolated spurts, is better than feeling <i>only</i> sadness and despair.
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CHAMBER 4: REGRET
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This one seems to get all bunged up with the first three chambers, and from my present point of view, it looks to be a lifelong proposition. The best you can probably hope for is that the regret you feel over all those things you never had a chance to do before the relationship ended will lessen as it gets buried beneath the crush of all the other regrets that are sure to come your way in the future. Regrets are stupid things, of course. You wanted to do something, you didn't do it, so you sit there regretting that fact. But when it comes to relationships, the regret you feel over the things you never had a chance to do take on an acuteness that makes them almost as painful as the memories of the things you actually <i>did</i>. The trip he promised to take you on, that you were looking forward to, but which will never happen because he broke up with you and now not only has no intention of carrying through with your carefully laid plans, but has made himself unavailable for a rain date. That garden he was going to help you start, that was <i>his</i> idea, and the absence of which will now haunt you as fervently as it would have if he'd actually stuck around to wield a spade. That off-the-cuff promise he made to "make it up to you sometime" after some other thing you planned fell through and you were sad and he felt bad about disappointing you. But now he'll never make it up to you because he's gone, and the only bright spot is that his departure has left you ten times more depressed than anything else he did or didn't do, and so the pain that comes from that at least helps to keep the sadness from your regrets at bay. But they still manage to work their way into your thoughts every now and then. And they probably always will. In one of her most famous songs, Edith Piaf sings, "<i>Non, Je ne regrette rien</i>!"..."I regret nothing!"...and sounds as though she means it. I wish I could see it from her point of view. Because the worst thing about having regrets is that, even though you know it's pointless to wallow in them, they'll always be there, no matter what Edith Piaf tells you.
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CHAMBER 5: ACCEPTANCE/MOVING ON
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I don't know this one yet. I'm still too sad, too angry, and feeling too rejected to even think about accepting what he did to me and how little it seems to bother him. On the other hand, I have no problem admitting that I made a conscious decision to become involved with him and for that reason must take some of the responsibility for the situation in which I now find myself. What I can't imagine <i>ever</i> being able to accept is the fact that I gave up so much of myself to someone who not only did not deserve even a tiny portion of what I gave him, but made it clear from the outset that he was a liar and a philanderer who had been with five other women before me and felt no qualms whatsoever about admitting it. That was the reason I resisted him for so long. It was for the same reason that I never felt totally secure even after he told me he was in love with me, promised that he would never leave me, and assured me that our relationship was "different." Sure, it was different. I wasn't just in it for the sex. I <i>loved</i> him. And even though I'll never be able to prove it, if an applicable situation had arisen at any point during the course of our two years together, I would have taken a bullet for him without a second thought. Maybe that says more about my sense of self-worth than it does about the amount of love I felt for him. I can't be sure. But I am sure as hell about one thing: if accepting what happened is the key to moving past the pain enveloping me right now, I want to accept it, accept it again, and then accept it some more. But I haven't reached the point where I'm anywhere close to doing that. He lied to me, he used me, he hurt me, and when he was forced to choose between throwing me into the abyss of despair and maintaining a solid grip on his own comfort zone, he discarded me like an old pair of shoes without even going through the pretense of agonizing over the choice. Call me stubborn, but that's pretty damned hard to accept. There <i>is</i> one thing I can accept, though. And it's an acceptance that comes without any real effort at all. For all the pain and heartache that has rained down on me since he broke things off almost two weeks ago, I can totally, absolutely, and completely accept the fact that the man I loved for two years and for whom there was nothing I would not have done in order to make him happy never really existed outside of my head. The man I loved and who I believed loved me was a figment of my imagination. The man who broke my heart so coldly and unceremoniously to concentrate on saving his own skin...<i>that</i> man is real. And I accept that fact. If nothing else...as much as it still hurts...I accept that one horrible truth.
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The Heartbreaker Special. Served cold with hard roll,
wilted garden salad, side of crushed artichoke hearts,
and complimentary slice of Devil's Food Cake. Eat at
your own risk. No refunds. Management cannot be held
responsible for any adverse reactions. In the event of
illness or death, please exit the dining area and
seek help from a physician. Do not complain directly
to the chef. He has better things to do than listen
to you prattle on about your physical discomfort.
We thank you for your patronage. Enjoy!
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320353871852017352.post-50048072891331479332013-04-17T21:44:00.001-07:002013-04-18T14:17:28.346-07:00WHEN A FOOL MEETS A LIAR (A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO AVOID A BROKEN HEART)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For the last two years, I have been in love with a married man who not only claimed that he loved me as well, but promised that he would <i>always</i> love me and, "when the time was right", leave his wife to be with me. Please don't waste the energy it would take to even <i>think</i> about telling me what a fool I've been. The worst part isn't that I have squandered the last two years making this man the center of my current existence and the glowing, guiding orb leading me toward my future one, it's that when his wife found out about us last week and he broke up with me to return to her, I actually thought....oh, my God, I can hardly say it...I actually thought that he was going to <i>miss</i> me. But why wouldn't I? As he was leaving, the man-tears still glistening in his eyes, he told me that it was going to be "hell" to live without me. So, he should have opted for the alternative, wouldn't you say? Except he didn't. His wife found out that he'd been seeing another woman, confronted him and asked him what he was going to do, and he said, "End it, of course." <i>Of course.</i> That's an actual quote from the man himself. Two short words that pretty much sum up what I should have known all along. Even though he and I were in the same relationship, we had completely different perceptions of what it was, where it was headed, and how long it would last. My perception was the standard one: we were deeply in love, we were heading toward the "right time" when he would leave his wife (i.e. the woman who didn't make him happy and hated sex), and it would end when one of us died. His perception? I was the outlet he needed to get the intellectual stimulation and sex he couldn't get at home, we were heading in a circle like two gerbils in a cage, and it would go on as long as his wife didn't find out, and when she did, it was going to be over...like <i>that</i>.
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Is there a hierarchy for stupidity in these situations? There should be. I'm just not sure at what point I ascended to the highest level of that hierarchy and how I managed to remain so oblivious to the ascent. I <i>am</i> cutting myself some slack for being easy prey. When I met the "married man" two years ago, I was still recovering from the divorce I had gone through a year before. The end of a twenty-five year marriage is not something a person recovers from quickly, no matter how unhappy the actual relationship has been, and I was still struggling to accept the fact my husband had left me for another woman. Not only was I depressed, angry, and hurt, my sense of self-esteem had taken a huge hit to the point where I couldn't even imagine ever becoming involved with another man again. It was, quite literally, the last thing on my mind. So when "Married Man" showed up at my yard sale one hot summer day and seemed to linger longer than was necessary to sift through the few items that I had advertised as "antiques", I didn't think twice about it. My Danish daughter-in-law was staying with me at the time, and, if anything, I thought that he was flirting with her. Why not? She was attractive and had a sexy Scandinavian acccent that must have seemed exotic in our otherwise ordinary little neighborhood. As for him...well, I remember thinking only that he was quite tall and that his brown hair was a little on the shaggy side for a man who looked to be somewhere in his late thirties or forties, but that was it. He was reasonably good-looking, but certainly not drop-dead handsome or anything of that sort. Even if he had been, it wouldn't have mattered. I simply wasn't in the market for a new man. He made an offer on one of my "antique" plates, I declined it, and he went on his way. Then, for some reason, as he was leaving, I stopped him and mentioned that I had some depressionware plates and bowls in storage and asked if he would be be interested in seeing them. He told me that he would like very much to see them, and that if I got them out and put them aside, he would make a point of returning the following day to take a look at them. And that was that. He got in his truck, drove away, and I forgot all about it.
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It was around two o'clock the next day, and I was writing at my desk, when my daughter-in-law came up to me and announced, "That antiques guy is here to see you." I stared at her, trying to make sense of the words. "Antiques guy?" She smiled. "You know, the one who was here for the yard sale yesterday." she said. "Oh...okay," I replied,starting to remember. "Well, tell him to come in...I guess."
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I wasn't particularly pleased that he had come back. Not only had I forgotten all about him after he had left the day before, I hadn't even bothered to dig out the depressionware dinner set that I had promised to show him. I wasn't in the mood to do it now, either. In fact, the whole yard sale had been my daugher-in-law's idea. She wanted to make some extra money before she went back to Denmark. But I tried to put on a friendly face as she ushered him into the living room. He was carrying a six-pack of Heinekin. I offered him a seat. He offered me a beer. I told him that I had forgotten to look for the depressionware.
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"That's all right," he said. "I just thought it might be nice to talk for a while."
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I had two thoughts. He had seen something in the yard sale that was worth a lot more than I realized and was trying to butter me up so that I would sell it to him, or he was after my daughter-in-law. Not for one second did it occur to me that he was there because he actually wanted to just sit and talk to me for a while. But that was what he did. We talked for well over an hour, while he drank five beers to my one and appeared to be absolutely riveted by everything that came out of my mouth. We talked about my elder son's drug issues, our mutual interest in music (I've been the lead singer in a succession of bands; he plays guitar), religion, and writing. I told him that I had squandered all of my divorce settlement money in Europe, trying to get over my depression. He told me that my husband must have been an idiot to leave me, and that it was time to put him in the past and move on. Even though we had only met the previous day, we were surprisingly comfortable in one another's company, with no awkward lulls marring the conversation. I think it would have gone on for as long as I chose to sit there and continue it with him, but as he finished his last beer, I decided it was time to end it so that I could return to my writing. So I told him that I needed to get back to work, which he seemed to understand, and then walked him to the door. As I started to say good-bye, he reached out to hug me. I was a little taken aback. I mean, I barely knew him. Now we're hugging good-bye like old school chums? But I let the unexpected gesture pass and he left...once again...and I went back to my writing.
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"What do you think that was all about?" I asked my daughter-in-law when she came back into the room a short time later.
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"I think he's interested in you," she replied, matter-of-factly.
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"Oh, please," I said. "Besides, I distinctly remembering him mentioning that he was married."
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"That doesn't mean he isn't interested," she insisted, with the same matter-of-factness.
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As it turned out, she was right. The next day, he sent me an email in which he told me how much he had enjoyed our conversation and how much he would enjoy seeing me again. I decided it was probably best not to respond. I had enjoyed our conversation as well, but so what? He was <i>married</i>. Having played the role of "the scorned wife" such a short time ago, I had no desire to take on the opposite role of "the other woman." Besides, I simply wasn't attracted to him in "that way." It didn't matter that he was cute and that we clearly had things in common. I had never been involved with a married man before, and I had very strong feelings about women who did become involved with them. Those feelings were not positive. I hoped that, by ignoring his email, I would be able to make that point without having to explain it to him in person. I was wrong. He came back to see me a few days later, and this time, he laid his cards right out on the table.
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He told me that he wanted to see me (there was no question as to what he meant by "see" me), but there was only one problem---he was married. He disclosed the information as though he were telling me that he wanted to go to the movies with me that night, but, unfortunately, had to work. There was no sense of guilt or discomfort attached to it. No sense that he knew it was wrong, but just couldn't help being attracted to me. He didn't seem to be bothered by the fact all at, except as it might deter me from agreeing to see him again. And I <i>was</i> deterred.
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"I could never get involved with a married man," I told him. "I mean, I like you, but...well...don't you love your wife?"
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"Yes, but she's a red-head, and you know how red-headed people are always angry?" He shrugged and gave me a smile....a lop-sided, boyish smile that I would come to know well. "She's always angry, and all we do is fight, and I was really excited about our conversation the other day."
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"Okay, well, I have nothing against you stopping by to talk sometimes," I told him. "But anything more than that..." I paused, studying his brown eyes. "Have you been with other women outside of your marriage?"
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He confessed that he had. He'd been with five other women since he had married his wife nineteen years before. None of the relationships had been serious, he explained, and they had all ended when the woman started to feel guilty or began to develop feelings for him. I was astounded. If I had been as intelligent as most people seemed to think I am, I would have put the kabash on the situation right then and there. To this day, I have no idea why I didn't just shake my head in disbelief and tell him that I wished him luck in finding his next mistress but that it sure as hell wasn't going to be me. Instead, I asked him if he had kept in touch with any of these "other women."
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"No, I just go back to my wife and I'm good for a while," he said.
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"And now you've decided it's time to take a another break from being good?" I asked.
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"I don't <i>decide</i>. It just happens. And I was just really excited by our conversation the other day," he replied, treating me to another flash of that boyish smile.
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I'm honestly not sure what I said next. I only remember that, at some point, he suggested that we just go on being "friends" and enjoying one another's company for the time being, and I agreed to the arrangement. While I was completely adverse to the idea of a sexual relationship with a married man, I had to admit that I <i>did</i> enjoy the intellectual connection we shared, and it had been a long time since I had met someone who seemed so interested in what I had to say. Still, that nagging little sense of discomfort over his marital status just would not go away. It bothered me so much that, for the next several weeks, whenever I saw him pull his truck into the driveway, I ran and hid in the bathroom and pretended not to be home. If there was someone in the house with me, I begged them to answer the door and tell him I wasn't home. In the meantime, he sent me emails that I didn't answer, as well as a "friend request" on Facebook. When I checked out his page, it turned out that I was the only "friend" on it. It was like accepting an invitation to a party, going there, and discovering that you were the only one around to sample the cheese fondue. And yet I couldn't help being flattered by his relentless pursuit. I had been dumped by my husband after twenty-five years of marriage because my husband met a woman who he believed was his soulmate. Never mind that I was the mother of his two children, or that we had exchanged wedding vows that were supposed to have precluded running off with newly met soulmates. He met her, and I became past tense. Now, a year and a half later, I found myself an object of desire once again. It was a conundrum that tormented me. Considering my recent marital history, I had a hard time with the idea of playing the role of "the other woman." Then again, it was clear that this "married man" was not getting what he needed at home, and as long as we didn't allow the relationship to becomes sexual, it wasn't really wrong, was it? Finally, after weeks of avoiding him, during which I was alternately annoyed and impressed by his undaunted efforts to re-connect with me, I sent him an email and told him to stop by the next day. He did. And that was when it all began to change.
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I can't remember the moment in which I actually decided to sleep with him. Yes, I liked him...very much. And there was no question that I enjoyed and even looked forward to his company. We discussed sex frequently, mainly as it pertained to us, and he had told me that one of the reasons that he had ventured outside of his marriage in pursuit of female companionship was that his wife disliked having sex. When they did have it, he said, it was "boring" and that he didn't think that his wife was even capable of having an orgasm. When I asked him why, if sex was so important to him, he remained married to her, he told me that he hated the idea of ending his marriage because of how it might affect his son, who was in his very late teens, but apparently somewhat sheltered. By that time, the idea of having sex with him was still a "take it or leave it" proposition for me. It wasn't that I didn't find him attractive, it was just that I hadn't had sex with anyone but my husband for twenty-five years, and I was terrified of discovering that I was incapable of pleasing yet another man. But I had lost forty pounds since my divorce (mostly because I was just too damned depressed to have much of an appetite), and he made it clear that he found <i>me</i> very attractive. So, one day, after several visits during which we had done nothing but talk (although he had held my hand and always hugged me good-bye), we crossed the fateful line. It was so strange to see him naked, to realize that I was touching and being touched by someone other than my former husband. Despite the emotional difficulties that had "killed" the sexual interaction in my marriage, I had always been very comfortable with my sexuality, and I wasn't shy when it came to the sex act itself. He was the same way. We had sex for the first time on the couch in my living room, with the late summer sunlight pouring in through the windows, and the sound of traffic providing a backdrop. At one point, when an ice cream truck went by playing "Pop Goes The Weasel" at an obnoxiously loud volume, we burst into laughter. We were comfortable with one another on every level, it seemed, as people, as friends, and as sexual partners. It was what I had always wanted in a relationship. It would have been perfect...except he was married.
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But that part of it...the "married" part...was not something that I could forget easily. He mentioned his wife frequently, making casual references to her as he told me about his work or something he had done at home or plans they had made. For the first month or so of our relationship, I felt no jealousy when he spoke of her. I had entered into the situation of my own volition and with full awareness of his legal connection to another woman. It was enough to know that I was able to give him something that she couldn't, that it made him happy, and that he was grateful for it. He was, by nature, a "fixer of things", and made endless efforts to help me out in my own everyday life, which was fraught with problems. I was beset with monetary concerns, and he eased my burden with a sweet generosity that made me want to please him even more. He loved to solve other kinds of problems as well, and spent a great deal of time helping me figure out how to deal with personal issues and offering what usually turned out to be excellent advice on how to improve my familial difficulties, many of which centered around my elder son' drug use. Looking back, I think it was his interest and involvement in my personal situation that made me fall in love with him. If it had just been sex, I doubt our relationship would have lasted very long. Even <i>with</i> the mutual satisfaction we both got from our conversations, which were always a huge component of our time together. But he was so helpful, so supportive, and even when he was not with me, so concerned about my state of mind regarding one crisis or another, that I started to forget that he didn't just belong to me. We exchanged copious emails every night, spending hours online as we shared the details of what we had been doing while we'd been apart. Although I only saw him physically two or three times a week, and only for three to four hours at a time, it felt like a real relationship. So much so that, by the time fall began to shift into winter and the holiday season, I found myself becoming jealous whenever he mentioned his wife. At one point, after a particularly enjoyable conversation following sex, he told me that he wished he could talk to his wife the way he did to me. I started to cry. He was completely thrown off guard and asked me why I was so upset.
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"Because you come here and we have this perfect time together doing all the things you can't do with her, but you're still with her and not with me," I blubbered. Then, against my better judgment, I confessed that I had fallen in love with him. He went silent. I cried some more. Then he put his arms around me and said, "You mean a great deal to me. I'm doing the best that I can."
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It wasn't even close to what I had wanted him to say, but it was better than nothing, I decided. And for the next year, it was the most I ever got from him when it came to discussing his feelings for me. We didn't discuss them very often. It was the one thing he hated to talk about. But my feelings for him continued to expand to the point where I actually asked him not to mention his wife anymore. He agreed to the moritorium. And even though he still wouldn't confess to anything more than "caring deeply" for me, it was obvious that he was just as invested in the relationship as I was. He told me that it would bother him if I saw other men. I responded by telling him that I had no intention of seeing other men because I belonged to him. "I belong to you, too," he told me, and I felt that my heart would burst from my sense of joy. He brought me presents that he had picked up at the various sales that he scoured in search of antiques, and I treasured each one as though it were made of gold. Our email exchanges continued to take up the earlier portion of every evening, and although I enjoyed them, it was always heart-wrenching when he would abruptly end the conversation by telling me that he was going to bed. I wondered if he would be having "terrible" sex with his wife that night. When he was too busy to write to me, I felt sad and left out, thinking about how much we shared, and how, despite that, he had a family who knew nothing about me and had no idea that he and I belonged to each other, too.
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It was in February, nearly seven months after we had first met, that we experienced what I would come to refer to as the "Valentine's Day Massacre." My issues with my son had grown increasingly worse, and on the day after Valentine's Day, my man arrived to find me in the midst of an argument. When we were finally alone, he told me that he "just couldn't do this anymore." I asked him what he meant. He said that things were so volatile that it was starting ti make him tense, and he was always worried about my state of mind, and it was having an effect on him even when he wasn't with me. "And there are always so many people coming and going around here," he added. "Someone is bound to tell my wife." I was devastated. For the next two weeks, I was in a new kind of hell, one that felt even worse than the emotional abyss that had swallowed me up after my divorce. To have given my heart to another man, after being rejected by the one who had vowed to love me forever, and to find myself rejected yet again left me paralyzed with depression. But then, amazingly, he came back to me. He said that he had missed me. I reminded him of what he had said about my problems being too much for him. He told me that it was just that he felt overwhelmed because he knew I was in love with him. "So if I tell you I'm not in love with you..."I began. "We can be together," he finished. And so I told him what he wanted to hear. It was ridiculous. We both knew it was a lie. But neither of us cared.
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The following spring was as idyllic as could be expected in our particular circumstances. We continued seeing each other as often as we could, kept up our nightly email exchanges, and even enjoyed a sort of psuedo-social life comprised of a few trusted friends who thought of us a couple. He never seemed concerned that he would be "outed", telling me that if I trusted these friends, then he did as well. They were all incredibly supportive of our relationship, although, in private, some of them did tell me that they worried about me getting hurt. "It's obvious he really cares about you," they would say, "but if he's not happy at home, he should do something about it and not make you wait around for him." In truth, I was beginning to have some concerns about that myself. Since I had made my tearful request that he not mention his wife anymore, he had kept his references to her very sparse, but at the same time, I had come to know him well enough to sense that he wasn't quite as unhappy with his homelife as he had been when we first met. And I didn't need a relationship counselor to tell me the reason. In providing the intellectual stimulation, emotional support, and sex that he didn't recieve at home, I had blunted the irritation and resentment he had felt toward his wife. He had never made any bones about the fact that he didn't want to break up his family, but I had clung to the hope that his feelings for me would eventually compel him to disregard the stigma of divorce in order to be with me for real. But I had made it too easy for him. He was having it both ways. I was too much in love with him to make demands or to even think about breaking it off, but I knew that in showering him with love and adoration and doing my best not to complain about the small windows of time in which we were together, I had, in essence, sealed my own fate.
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We endured our second crisis that August. My son's drug problems had turned my home into a beleagured sanctuary in which I spent most of my time either fighting with him or trying to beat back the incessant tide of fellow druggies who came to see him at all hours. I would often awake in the mornings to find one or two of them passed out in my living room. They stole from me as well, to the point where I was afraid to leave anything of even marginal value out where it could be seen. My married man did his best to help by changing my lock several times, but there wasn't much he could do on a day to day basis except worry. When he wrote to me at night, and I was slow in responding, he would follow up the initial email with a flurry of "are you okay?" queries and always expressed great relief when I finally wrote back. Then things reached a crisis point. Without going into too much detail, one of my son's friends threatened to "out" my man to his wife if he didn't pay a certain sum of money. It was too much...again. This time, though, he seemed as devastated as I did. He came to see me, told me that he had to end it, and proceeded to sob for the next half hour. I was sobbing, too, but I was more concerned about him. As sad and upset as I was, I couldn't bear to see him in so much pain. Even though the situation made clear how much he wanted to hold on to his marriage, my most compelling desire at that moment was to make his departure as uncomplicated as possible. I forced myself to say reassuring things, told him how much I loved him, and even tried to bolster his spirits by telling him that I would always remain his friend. He had brought along an old conch shell that had once belonged to my grandmother, so old that it was almost bone instead of shell, that I had asked him to hold on to so that it would not be stolen by the druggie scourge. I refused to take it back. "Keep it," I told him. "And if you ever feel yourself really, really missing me, just put it to your ear and you'll hear me whispering, 'I love you.'" As a writer, I knew it was a great line, and it had come out of nowhere. It made him cry even harder. As he was leaving, he turned to me and said, "If she and I break up, I'm coming back for you, you can believe that." Then we kissed and he drove away. I took no comfort in his parting words. When you wiped them free of the tears, they said what he had been saying and showing me all along. I was still his second choice.
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As it turned out, our second break-up lasted even less time than the first one. We maintained our email correpondence, with me writing encouraging things and sending links to "how to repair your marriage" websites, and him gushing about how hard he was going to work to make things up to his wife, but how he still needed my "loving support" even though we were no longer going to be lovers. He told me that he was going away for a few days with his wife and son, and even though I made him promise not to write to me while he was gone, he insisted on sending me "secret messages" via YouTube videos. One of them was "You're The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me" by Gladys Knight and the Pip. He followed it up the next day with a brief email in which he told me that he missed me and needed me to make him happy. I was numb. After what we had just gone through, he still wanted me? It had to mean that he was finally beginning to see the light. He <i>did</i> love me. Just as much as I loved him. I had loved him enough to give him up without struggle when it seemed to be what he wanted, and now, with time and distance separating him from the crisis that had precipitated his departure, he had decided that I was worth all of the trouble. In the end, the scumbag who made the threat never followed through and eventually ended up in a mental health facility. And when my man returned, it was with a new, unabashedly possessive attitude toward our relationship. No...he still had no plans to leave his wife, but he was at least ready to finally tell me that he loved me. Hearing him actually say the words that I had imagined him saying so many times, I felt as though I had passed some test set out by the universe and was now being given my reward. If he loved me, and was no longer afraid to tell me that he did, it must mean that it would be only a matter of time until we would be able to claim our relationship in the eyes of the world.
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I had already made him the center of my existence, more concerned with being available for him whenever he had the time for me than I was with my writing or anything else that I could have been doing instead. But now the sheer thrill of knowing that he <i>loved</i> me became the driving force that carried me through each and every moment of the day. He reciprocated by confessing that he "thought of me all the damned time." The crisis we had endured seemed to have done nothing but push us closer. Pre-crisis, he had always done his best to offer advice and lend support when I needed it, but now he began to behave as though my happiness and peace of mind were his number one priorities. When I finally found a new job a few weeks after our reunion, he put me on a budget and made me show him a list of all the expenditures I had made in his absence. He helped me move from the house I had been sharing with my son, and when I agonized over some of the things he wanted me to leave behind, he promised to replace them, telling me that they were just things and it was best to just walk away and start over again. I did as he suggested, happy enough just knowing that we were together, secure in his love for me. My friends got tired of hearing me rhapsodize about him. One friend, in particular, told me that she was disgusted by the way I let him control me. I told her that she simply didn't understand. It wasn't that he was controlling me, I explained, it was just that he wanted to help me improve the way I dealt with practical matters. And, best of all, he was doing it because he loved me.
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He helped me find a tiny new place that I could afford on my own, and, as he had promised, replaced the things that I had left behind. He continued to help me when I had trouble paying some of my bills, but was unrelenting when it came to unneccessary purchases. One of the things that my ex-husband and I had fought most about was my spendthrift ways, but, now that I had met the love of my life...the only man who I believed had ever really understood me and who preferred to "teach" me better money skills than to berate me for having lousy ones...I took great pleasure in trying to make him proud of me. Our relationship had deepened and grown into something that we both admitted it would be hard to live without. "Do I make you happy?" I would ask him over and over again." And he would reply, "Yes, you make me happy." On a few occasions, after I had had a little too much to drink, I brought up the matter of his marriage, pushing him to tell me if he really did intend to leave his wife. He told me that he loved his wife...but he loved me, too...and even though he knew it was hard on me, he needed us both right now. "Someday, though," he added, "when the time is right..." He didn't finish the sentence. I didn't push for more. I wanted to believe that I knew what he meant. He seemed content to let me believe it. He showed me over and over again what I took as proof of his absolute commitment to me. And despite the fact that he hated to talk in "absolutes", as he called them, when I asked him if there was anything that would ever make him go away again, he told me there wasn't. "Just don't pressure me," he said. "I won't," I told him. "As long as I know that you're not going to leave me." He smiled. "I'm not going to leave you," he said. "I promise."
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In March of this year, I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. He was as worried as I was, but did his best to be reassuring. After my surgery, which turned out well, he actually left work one day to come and take my temperature after I sent him an email telling him that I was hot. "I was worried that you had a fever from some kind of infection," he explained. Because we were banned from having sex for six weeks following the surgery, I tried to make up for it by pleasuring him, which seemed to bring us even closer. "Tell me something really special to help me get through this," I commanded playfully after one of our "it's all about him" sessions. "I'll always love you," he said. For a man who hated to talk in absolutes, it was a huge admission. It meant everything to me. I had lost so much since my divorce, endured so many disappointments and worked through what seemed to be more than my share of uncertanties, but despite all of that, I was happier than I had been in years. I knew what was important now. It wasn't things, or money, or social acceptance...it was love. And I had finally found my piece of it. I would wait for as long as it took for that love to bring him to me on a permanent basis. It wouldn't be easy, but I could do it. He was worth it. It was what I had tried to explain to my friends over and over again. It was no longer a matter of whether I deserved to have a man who was willing to be with just me without making me waait until the "time was right." For me, the world was now divided into only two types of men: him and not-him. I wanted him.
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This Friday, it will be two weeks since I logged onto my computer at the usual time and found an email that said, "Nitey nite. Will write in the morning." A cold shot of fear went through me as I read it. Was he sick? Had someone died? It wasn't like him at all. He was a total creature of habit, always beginning and ending his nightly emails the same way: "Hi, I hope all is well...I miss you, I love you..." I spent the whole night worrying about him. In the morning, he came to see me, just as we had planned, but I knew the moment I saw the grim expression on his face that there was something wrong and it had nothing to do with him being sick. We went inside and he cut right to the chase. His wife had found out about us, she had confronted him, and he had told her that he would end it. Just like that. He hadn't told her that he was sorry that he had hurt her, but now that she knew, it was time to come clean about his unhappiess in their marriage and how he really wanted to be with me. He hadn't even told her that he needed time to think about what he was going to do. He just admitted that he had been seeing me and promised to never see or write to me again. Just like...fucking...<i>that</i>. He started crying, just like the last time he had dumped me, but he seemed more scared than sad. "I can't leave her," he told me. "I look at her face...and I just can't do it." No mention of my face. I'm pretty sure it was wearing an expression similar to the one that had been on his wife's, but, apparently, it didn't move him in quite the same way. He <i>did</i> afford me the courtesy of claiming that his life would be hell without me. When I reminded him that he was in love with me, and that he had promised to never leave me, he mumbled something about "another time and place" before asserting, without even a hint of uncertainty, that "this is the right thing to do." Then he left. I had been crying, too, but not as much as he had. To be honest, I was too numb to cry. Twenty-four hours before, we had exchanged emails in which we had made joking references to how much we were looking forward to being able to have sex again soon. And of course how much we loved and missed each other. But now it was all over. His wife had found out. He had to end it. Everything he had said to me, everything he had promised and let me believe had only stood as truth as long as she didn't know. Now that she knew, the only thing that mattered was saving his marriage to the woman who had supposedly left him so unhappy and unfufilled that he had sought me out, pursued me until I finally gave in to his needs and desires, and then...in a twist so cliche that it causes me pain to even write it...allowed me to give him my heart knowing all the while that it was only a matter of time until he gave it back to me...broken.
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He didn't write to me for three days after I last saw him. But I kept writing to him, demanding closure, insisting that he at least show me the respect of answering some of my questions: Did he ever really love me? Why were his promises to her more important than the ones he had made to me...the woman he claimed had made him so happy? He finally wrote back and told me that he had really loved me, but when his wife confronted him, he realized that he loved her more and that, after twenty years together, he felt he owed their marriage another shot. Yes, I had made him happy. I had made him greedy with my generous compliments and efforts to please, and he had shed a lot of tears since he last saw me thinking about our "times" and wondering how I would make out. Most of all, he wanted me to know that he was never going to seek out another woman again. "I promise you that," he wrote, as though <i>that</i> promise would make me feel better about all of the other ones he'd never had any intention of keeping. The ones he now admitted he had made simply because wanted me to be happy. We exchanged a few more emails, and I told him I loved him enough to try to be supportive of him even though he had decided to return to his wife. He told me that he appreciated my support and still loved me as a friend. But I got a little too upset when he started describing how he and his wife were working at being closer. My less than accepting attitude made him angry. He sent a final email in which he stated, flatly, that he could not take the drama anymore, and..."I'm closing this email address. I wish you well. Take care. Good-bye. Love..." And that was it.
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My email inbox has never looked so empty. I have never cried so many tears without knowing exactly what it is I'm crying about. Is it my own pain and sense of loss? Or is it the fact that he lied to me, knew he was lying, and didn't even seem to think it had been wrong? I suspect that at least some of my tears are for the hurt I felt when I read that final email. So cold, so terse, so completely devoid of even a shred of compassion for the woman who made him her life for two years, not just because she was stupid, but because he allowed her to believe that he wanted her to do it. No...wait. That's not fair. He didn't just allow me to <i>believe</i> he wanted me to do it. He really <i>did</i> want me to do it. He enjoyed it, he found comfort in it, and it made him feel all the things he never felt at home. And he would still be allowing me to do it if his wife hadn't found out and his sense of guilt hadn't driven him to cast me aside so that he could give his marriage another shot. In one of his last emails to me, he wrote that "in the back of our minds, we both knew this was wrong." Well, perhaps it was, technically. But one of the worst things that I've had to deal with in the aftermath of his sudden and seemingly effortless departure is that he had no problem at all doing something he now calls "wrong" as long as he could get away with it. It was only when he had to answer for it that he discovered his new religion. And in the end, what it comes down to is that all he's lost is the part of his life he was willing to share with a compatible partner who did her best to please him on every single level. But me? I've lost the man who <i>was</i> my life....and one more huge piece of my foolish, battered heart.
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That's <i>my</i> tale of heartbreak. I'd be interested in hearing yours.
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13009438773953100294noreply@blogger.com1