Almost Divorce – Part 15- PJ Part 3

This series is  published once a week on Thursday’s.  Or you can start at the beginning here

A timeline can be found here

The soundtrack for this portion of the story will come exclusively from Jimmy Eat World Bleed American Deluxe Edition.   I am keeping it simple and early.  This one is my favorite from this album.

So at the end of the last part,  it was the Monday after Mother’s  Day Weekend. The Husband sent an email to PJ telling him to stay away from me.  That went about as well as expected.  The Husband picks Monday morning to inform me that he does not really want a divorce, but he is going to get an apartment and move out, and I need to decide what I really want to do.  Unless of course I’d like to decide I’d like to get rid of  Paul and forget he ever existed and leave all of GW and everything it means behind for my family and him.  This sends  us all into 3 solid weeks of turmoil.  It made me furious, it hurt PJ and freaked him out and The Husband sank even further into desperation to keep me mode. It also opened up the actual question of divorce as an option, a choice.  A real possibility for us.  And from this moment on my role as the pushmepullyou is solidified.   I am stuck in the middle of my husband and the guy I met online that I’m having an emotional affair with, who acts and says like he wants me to be divorced so he can have me to himself free and clear.  Do I want to get a separation instead of a divorce? What will the rules be during the separation? The Husband sure isn’t going to let me separate from me so I can go do whatever I like with PJ and see if it works out while he waits.    Now that I have the choice opened up before me, do I want a divorce?  Do I want a divorce because  The Husband  and I aren’t meant to go on, or because I want  PJ.   Do I even really want PJ or is he a symptom of something else?

I was angry. Why ruin Mother’s Day weekend, break the kids hearts and then wake up on Monday morning and decide what you really want is to fight for your wife? This is May, all this crap started in November. We had been living this for 6 months and watching it get steadily worse.    The closest thing to an explanation The Husband has landed on is he was hoping the divorce card would call my bluff,  scare some sense into me. But the thing is, I. don’t. bluff. and he KNOWS this about me. By the time Mother’s Day weekend rolled around I was so tired of living with  the little bitch control freak he had morphed into, so tired of waiting for him to man up and take some control and put his foot down. Tired of asking him to be a full partner in crafting our life together and keeping it on course. I was done with the 10+ years of nagging and all of the long list of complaints I had about my marriage and my partner.   He decided to fight, finally to actually fight.  But he had waited till it was too far gone in my head.    I had already decided after a whopping 5 weeks that PJ  would make a great fuck buddy at the least and a  great boyfriend at best. That PJ had all the real traits I wanted in a mate and that if he shook out in real life like he did online  that we could have at the very least a good year or more together.  When the Husband laid the divorce card on the table things shifted, the rules changed.  PJ and I could plan to be anything we wanted, all I had to do was get divorced.   This was the talk and the plan  that wonderful night when we stayed up late, this was the plan in chat on Sunday when I  had had taken my rings off completely and stored them away.  Now that  The Husband was fighting, and hard core press fighting, things were going to get more chaotic and  more emotional.

This is what my life looked liked for those three or so weeks between  the Monday after Mother’s Day until Memorial Day weekend when he moved out. At this point I go to individual  counseling on a weekly basis, on Tuesday’s, and Marriage counseling is down to once a month.  We use our May appointment to tell  our guy we are heading toward divorce and ask how to best handle it with the kids.

I decide  I need to give myself 3 weeks to stay away from PJ and think about if I am getting a divorce because I want one, or getting a divorce for PJ.  Neither PJ, nor I want the answer to end up I am getting a divorce for him because that puts way too much pressure on whatever it is we have.  Things are very real now, there are kids involved and  he is a child of divorce. The Husband is as well, I am the only one in this  equation that isn’t.   So I tell PJ that we need to stop talking, seeing each other and playing until the end of the month when I am supposed to make my big decision.  This just about breaks both our hearts, we have been spending upwards of 5+hours a day “together” in some way.  I also attack this pragmatically and explain to PJ that I can’t make him any promises about where this is going to  go. I can’t promise I’m not going to stay with my husband now, or after a separation.

He replies  in writing.  “You are making the right choice, that it won’t be fun for either of us, that I need this as well so I can be sure I  can be happy in the future with or without you . I’ve been alone for a while now and I can spend 3 more weeks alone in the hopes of something more.  And if the day never comes then you have given me  a reassurance of myself that I haven’t had in years and I thank you for that.  It isn’t goodbye but see you later doll.”   I reply ” I really hope so because this is killing me”  PJ replies  “just remember same sky”.

It was killing me.  I was torn between my overwhelming desire to be able to spend time with him, my inkling that I had big issues going on inside myself,  honestly not knowing if I really loved my husband, wanting to think I truly had because I didn’t want to rip my family apart. And I certainly didn’t want to rip my family apart for what was really nothing more than  8″ of thick penis attached to a way behind me in the life game,  adorable Greek boy with Mommy/abandonment/trust/running away and potential anger issues.

Let’s be honest, if you look at that list  I have all of those same issues.  These are pretty common themes as far as humans and  issues go.  I can’t remember when PJ and I got to the bottom of divulging our long list of issues and comparing and contrasting them.  I do know that when I discovered the mommy issue that my first inkling was to run the fuck away from him and never look back.  He was 25 at the time and I was a 39 year Mommy with kids at about the same age as he and his younger sister when his Mom left his dad and took them with her to another town 3+ hours away.   He said once that his younger sister was the only person in life life that never let him down.   I know now, that I am a fixer.  My  natural inclination is to give more than I should in a relationship in an effort to fix the broken portions of my partner.   But I’m getting ahead of myself.

PJ and I were both still going to chat, only, when I would enter a room he would leave it, or one of us would lurk under and obvious pseudonym like adoremore or ponddreams or some other such  nick with inside meaning for both of us.   We would still send PM’s back and forth about how much we missed each other, but that we knew it had to be done.  This was  while we were both still going to public and GWP and the Lola, PJ and Lola’s husband love triangle drama was enough to feed the voracious masses in their need for gossip and drama.   Girls were flocking to poor PJ, who had his nick as PJ day #1, PJ Day #2 and so on.   He was getting questions and sympathy I was getting questions and sympathy.   At least we finally had the respite of The Husband not coming into chat and spying on us.   But he was still watching me while I sat in the home office. We would try not to talk on chat or  IM. But we would leave status message updates to each other, or broadcast what songs we were listening to.  Music with PJ and me started early and often.  It was ingrained in our relationship, and to some degree it has influenced my general tastes in music.

By the end of the week  one I was boarding a plane and on the plane ride PJ and I chatted on g-chat .  It felt amazing to just be able to talk, he was supposed to be gone most of the weekend at a bachelor party but we made plans in the air to hook up later and cam before we each got on with our weekends.   I don’t remember if we enjoyed any of that time together or not.  The Husband had installed something on my laptop that allowed him to watch my chats in the air, had tried to sabotage the  date and then had told me he knew what was up.   This is the man that doesn’t want me to divorce him.   I made the fatal error of telling  PJ, and he responded with ” Maybe I’ll just go ahead and go to Arizona”. As in, “Maybe I will just run away from this .”   Not the response I was looking for out of the guy who had  less than a week ago relished in  the wonderful possibility of being together free and clear.   I was angry as hell and I let  him have it on cam.  I let him have it via  email throughout the night (he half heartily tried at one point to make up)  and I really kicked hard at his soft, sore  ego spots around 3 in the morning.  Except I didn’t actually mean to hit send on my wasted, drunken, angry, frustrated  email rant I was drafting at 3am.    Protip:  Don’t address the email.  It also helps to be able to actually read the pop ups trying to keep you from acting like a drunken dumb ass as well.   Bestie and I had some much needed fun that night out on the town.  Under best night ever category ( a few Sat night’s ago also best night ever  ).

I woke up in the morning to find an absolutely wasted, still at home because he didn’t go to the bach party, angry, sullen looking awful PJ.    Now I’d see PJ get upset and drink a lot before.    In the history of our short relationship I’d seen him drunk because his mom called, drunk because his ex called, drunk because my husband sent him and email, and drunk because he had to stay away from me.   For all I know he was drinking water, calling it vodka/absynthe ( PJ claimed to have spent some time in Italy before he started college where they paint the helmets gold each year ) and acting devastated while working his other 3 chicks on the side and keeping his wife/fiance/girlfriend out of his business.

That’s enough for now lovies, more next Thursday