Almost Divorce- Part 1 And so it begins…

The Prologue for this series can be found here

You don’t just wake up one day with an internet addiction to a sex site and chat rooms, a fake internet boyfriend and a life in shambles. It takes a while and a lot of denial and delusion to get there.  Some addiction also helps this process along nicely. And addiction happens in baby steps.

By the time I found myself seriously questioning if I was happy with my life I was 7 or so years into a pretty great career, 9 or so years into what The Husband and I both thought was a seriously awesome marriage. This is Facebook’s fault.  I reconnected with an ex who is still single and leading an absolutely fabulous life traveling the freaking WORLD.  There is no animosity between this ex and I, we were both young dumb and full of.. well you know.   There is no chance that if we’d stayed together I’d really be traveling the world right now with my children and a fabulous nanny in tow.  But that is exactly where my mind went, to the loss of that potential pipe dream I didn’t even know existed.  Which of course caused me to have some sort of mental mini breakdown triggered by “loss of life I was never going to have anyway”.   I had a happy life and a happy marriage right?

You know the one with two kids  who won’t listen and love to fight and require constant stimulation of some kind. The one with the job that I like but it’s still stressful and the bills to be paid on the house I have to keep not only clean but also well decorated.  The retirement to plan ahead for and the birthday party coming up and the shoes that no longer fit and the deadline for camp and the do you want to take a vacation or plant a garden. The OH MY FUCKING GOODNESS how did my life get this way!!!!  I used to want to do things, I had goals and dreams.  I used to wear underwear and bras that  MATCHED and I used to be able to show my legs off. I used to wear make up and care that my hair looked nice.  My biggest job now is   “moving shit from one place to another around the house because NOTHING is ever where it is supposed to actually be” .  The Husband and I had been counting “sitting in same home office on separate computers” and “somewhat frequent date nights to usually dinner and or a movie” as keeping our marriage strong. And it had mostly been working. We also had fights and issues and sore spots like any marriage.

I shared my feelings of life envy and talked about old times and what if  (even tho we both know it never would of) with my ex.  But I couldn’t shake the emotional things this was causing in me.  I felt kind of empty and unsettled and unhappy and questioning.  Had I made the right choices in life with regards to the big things, colleges, careers, mates?  Maybe?     Now what I SHOULD of done is run not walk to The Husband and have that uncomfortable conversation with him.    Umm, no that is not what I did. I am a fixer and I can solve this problem myself because it is mostly my fault for even feeling this way.  This unlocked the need to be the fun, sexy, get attention and feel fabulous. I was/am good at using sexy things to solve my  feelings of emptiness or other something is wrong inside of me problems, it is a coping mechanism I discovered as a teen and abused until well into my 20’s.   It certainly had it’s silver linings, but I’m not talking about those today.  So I convince myself that what I needed was just a little excitement. I wanted to feel sexy again and for some reason didn’t think I could accomplish this with the help of The Husband. I mean it wasn’t his fault I felt this way.

In my case it took a while to come to a head because I started with the usual buy a new bra and matching undies. Start wearing some makeup again and caring what  I look like,  continue flirting as usual because I’ve ALWAYS been a flirt. It’s just that since I have been with The Husband I hadn’t yet flirted to the point of crossing the line.    I’d never wanted to cross the line.  I was also trying to work to be a better mother, wife, gardener, friend,  employee, whatever.   I was thinking about it all at that point in my life.  But I was also thinking about all the things that weren’t right about all of those areas of my life and finding myself focusing more on the lacking items rather than counting my blessings.  I was checking out of my life and my marriage via whatever Zombies vs Plants or Puzzle Quest game I was getting through or too much Farmville on Facebook or whatever for quite some time.  Watching a lot of TV shows but not really bonding with The Husband. I only have this clarity in hind sight.  In the moment I was just aware that something is very not right and was still trying to find it and fix it on my own.  I wondered how I could infuse some (more) lust and excitement into my life?  Something that makes me feel wanted, and special and needed and sexy and cool?  I wasn’t “happy”, I was questioning my  core choices in life and one of those was my choice in my  mate.   But I didn’t want to lose my life or my husband.

What I did next I still don’t know how I managed to EVER think this was a good idea.   I really have no excuse,  no one made me do this, I was not lead into, did not walk into the lions den in baby steps the way the gonewild journey would play out.  This was a calculated, processed, mulled over action. And it was STUPID.  I was being a very selfish person then and was also naive  to think I could  pull it off or that no one would get hurt.   Again what I have learned from this is that I should of RUN NOT WALKED to my husband and laid it all out on the line. I’m struggling, these are the crazy thoughts I am having, please, please I need help working on this  and we need to work on this together.  But I didn’t want to tell him. Or didn’t think I could.  Instead I placed an add on a local website for a FWB.

The next episode of this story will be published next Thursday.