The Affair Continues

I explained in my last post how I didn’t demand that my wife end her contact with the other guy when I confronted her with my knowledge of the affair.  My primary rationale, as I explained, was that I wanted her to take the initiative to end that relationship as opposed to me forcing her.  I admit though that I was also quite naïve.  She told me that while the relationship was inappropriate and she had admitting to lying about it multiple times, sex wasn’t involved.  She claimed that she had never considered ending our marriage, and even if she had, it wouldn’t be with him.  At best, according to her at the time, this could be considered an emotional affair, but it certainly wasn’t a romantic one.

The ensuing three months could best be described as her pretending that the affair had ended and me pretending that I believed her.  In reality, it continued on with little change.  They still texted each other regularly, although she claimed that the volume had decreased significantly and the topics of their conversations had substantially changed. She also told me that they never saw each other and that he had essentially returned to just being a friend.  It’s not entirely accurate to say that I believed her because simple logic defied her claims.  But after going through the previous two months, I needed some normalcy, even if it was just a fantasy.

I stopped looking at phone bills and did my best to act as though her texting didn’t bother me.  When she went out with friends, I would do my best not to let my mind wander to suspicion that she might actually be meeting the other guy.  I would avoid glancing at the GPS in our car that recorded its location over the previous few days for fear that I might notice incriminating evidence.  Rather than diligently watching for evidence of the affair as I had previously been doing, I now actively avoided any information that could potentially contradict my fantasy.

I realize how strange and pathetic this sounds, and it’s difficult to explain my rationale. I obviously knew that pretending the affair was over didn’t automatically make it so, yet that’s exactly how I was acting.  While I didn’t understand it at the time, I was scared that if I actually discovered something incriminating, I would be forced to act on it. I had convinced myself that I wasn’t being completely passive and that I still had some sense of personal pride. If I found definitive evidence that she was lying, I would either have to act on it before I felt prepared, or I would have to drop my façade of confidence and admit how pathetic I was. I was simply trying to hang on until some kind of solution appeared, although I obviously had no idea whatsoever what that solution might be.

There was also a part of me that felt like I didn’t have the right to demand an abrupt end to the relationship. As my wife and I talked more about her unhappiness in the marriage, I realized that she had created a life for herself that didn’t include me because I had chosen not to be a part of it. Obviously, she had no right to conduct an affair while still maintaining a marriage, and she had no legitimate excuse for lying. While the actions she had taken in response to her unhappiness couldn’t be justified though, her unhappiness was entirely legitimate. Before I completely took away the life that she had built, I felt as if I needed to first provide her with a quality alternative.

During that time, I was more focused on maintaining the illusion of a quality marriage than in actually having one.  But I also felt like we were rehearsing for the long term marriage that we both wanted.  That was a marriage where I wasn’t paranoid about my wife’s activities and where I could trust her without spying, so that’s exactly the pretense that I adopted.  As naïve as it may sound, our relationship was actually improving. While there was obviously a considerable amount of turmoil behind the scenes, we were starting to act more like a married couple should. We spent more time together, and had regularly talks at an emotional depth that we had never before experienced. Of course, she was withholding awfully significant information, but we were nonetheless confronting the negative aspects of our marriage and communicating at an entirely new emotional depth.

But while I remained optimistic, the stress continued to take its toll on me. I still had periodic panic attacks and trouble sleeping. My weight loss continued to the point that I had to buy new clothes, something I actually embraced. While we were playing our charade of the happy couple, my physical appearance was a constant indicator of the stress that I was enduring. I could communicate that stress while I continued to play the role of the happy husband. It was my silent message to my wife that my well being came secondary to the needs of my family, and I was making it clear how much I was willing to sacrifice.

While I may have been naïve and scared though, I wasn’t completely stupid. I knew that we couldn’t continue in this manner indefinitely, and all contact with the other guy was going to eventually have to end if we were going to continue our marriage. My hope was that as our relationship steadily improved, she would lose her desire for the other guy. Rather than having to abruptly cut him loose, he would just simply fade away. In other words, my naiveté continued right up until the end.

As I’ll describe in the next post, the abrupt ending that I was trying to avoid turned out to be inevitable.