Almost Divorce Part 25- July

This series is  published no less than once a week on Thursday’s.  Or you can start at the beginning here

A timeline can be found here.

The next weekend was 4th of July.  I did not have my kids and early in the week one of MiniBoobs dearest friends passed away.   I offered to ride with her up to Fort Wayne to say goodbye, it is one  of PJ’s prior home towns. The one he lived with the ex in and where  he went for his weekly counseling appointments on Thursdays.    PJ has plans to work of course, his excuse for not seeing me. But when he ins’t working he has plans for D and S to come visit.  I think maybe delusional girl was trying to worm her way into it, which would of made me furious on the inside, but was told not to come.  So I take notice that he has time and freedom to spend his actual 4th of July with his friends, but his busy work schedule and 3 hour drive to me where just too much of a burden to  overcome.  Another difference in me is that I am paying very close attention now to everything he says and does. And I am then (over) analyzing it for clues to what he is really going to do or who he really is.   I’m paying more attention to the things he does instead of the things he says, because even in the beginning the two never could seem to quite match up cleanly. MiniBoobs and I have an amazingly lovely road trip in spite of the sad circumstances.  There is something about baring your soul to a Bestie with sunshine on your face, wind in your hair and good tunes on the radio.   We both did plenty of sharing over that couple of days.  Being able to be away from PJ online and geographically closer allowed me to spend some free time thinking about things.  Why I couldn’t shake him no matter how hard I thought I was trying, why I still wanted him in my life.  Those days my actions were focused on doing what needed to be done to get better and make a new life for myself and my kids.  My thoughts were focused on PJ, and on weeks when I was kid free I tried to relish in the freedom and not let the loneliness crush me.   Getting divorced is lonely, all of your friends are still on their normal lives and schedules, yours is the one that has changed.  They try to support you but they are busy people too, and the longer your drama goes on the harder it probably is to keep hearing about.

After the 4th of July PJ and I are still talking.  We are not really together per se, but we aren’t really apart either.   It took a little while longer than previous times , but at roughly the 2-2.5 week mark we reach the point that we are going to cam up and talk to each other.   This first cam up after an absence event is NEVER sexual, it is ritualistic and the ritual is PJ  offering to show me a smile. PJ knows what I like and he knows what gets me where he wants me quickest.   I don’t recall ever turning down the visual of a smile from PJ, they were magnificent and in the hundreds of hours we spent together I have seen many of those smiles and other heart melting looks.   This first smile after an absence was always accompanied by some kind of facial hair surprise. once he had grown a full shaggy unkempt beard.  I was so broken over over you and this I was not sleeping and crying and  I couldn’t even shave was the fantasy meaning in my head.  This time before he cams up he actually asks me if I’m sitting down.  I have to warn you he says, it is just too awful, I have a porn stache.   He cams up and it is the cheesiest fullest porn stache I have ever seen in my life.  On the other side of it is PJ with this giant silly grin. I can’t stop laughing, it is just so awful. He looks like the biggest dorkiest hick ever.    Every time I try to get myself together and look at him in the camera I see it and just start laughing again.  I figured no one would want to get with me if I had this thing he tells me, I’m offering free mustache rides.   I can’t believe no one has taken you up on that I laugh, eventually I calm down enough to be be able to stare at him and see how cute he still is, even with a horrible porn stache.   Later we are simply G-chatting while we are both at work, the flirting starts. I can’t stop thinking about that porn stache. One thing is very clear this time though, when PJ finally gets me alone, naked and in a bed on cam with/for him he has worked harder to make that happen that any other time before.   I would still allow g-chat tucking in with my phone in bed. a girl has to get her tucking in from her favorite fake internet boyfriend after all.   I am not the one to push it, bring it up or start it.  Once he starts I respond, but not quite as fervently in times past.  I thought I was getting stronger and more able to leave him be.  I was, but I was also getting more emotionally attached to solving the puzzle of who he was and proving to myself I wasn’t crazy.   I guess I wanted then what I’d still appreciate now, look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me, that you never did and that it was all a lie.  It was like that knot; the more you try to loosen it the tighter it becomes.  Those darn knots can be tricky!

PJ is going to weekly counseling and one things becomes painfully clear.  He is NOT spending any time talking about us or me in these sessions.  There are times when Tab has me do homework that involves asking PJ to answer a question. When that happens I bring it up, he says something pleasant and non-committal, and then it never comes up again in the coming weeks.   His therapist tells him he has to go talk to the ex and tell her how he feels/felt about everything, including the potentially fake dead baby.   He tells me that  his Mom is still trying to talk to him and that he told her if she wants to see him and talk she has to come up to him, so far she has refused to do so.  I push once and he replies that he is so focused on the past right now that he can’t even think about the future.   The Middle of July brings the weekend of PJ’s canceled wedding.   He is getting out of town and says he has a cell  phone in case of an emergency.  He is still claiming not to own a cell phone and he still hasn’t created a new real life email addy.   His therapist made him tell where he will be for the weekend and I am worried.  I don’t know what kind of mental state he is going to be in while he is gone and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he chooses this weekend to kill himself.   He  not only tells me where he is going but he also assures he is taking no firearms and that he will be fine, he promises. It is the 2nd or 3rd time we have discussed suicide and his response has never wavered, I’d never go out like that doll.   I am relieved.  It is someplace I can totally see him  spending a weekend, but  his account of how long it should take him driving doesn’t add up.  He is about 2-4 hours off from where he says he lives right now to where he says he is going. Is he talking round trip?   I let it go without mentioning this and the weekend is bitter sweet. He spends lot of time online checking in with me.  He tells me about his arrival and his day and his Saturday night.  He checks in both before and after dinner.  PJ always suits up for dinner and I just love that about him.  We talk about how he felt while he was there and some of the things he went through.   He just kind of wandered around the city looking at things and thinking.  We even talk about how he went out and flirted but that sex was the farthest thing from his mind.   It is the weekend he should be getting married, and when he isn’t spending it alone in another state he is spending it reaching out to and talking with me.    The wedding weekend was over July 17, 2010.  When he returns home  on  Sunday the loving and tender vibe is still there. It may have been one of the times he chose to stop  at his old apartment and hang out for a bit. Those trips into that place always reminded him of me and us and our earlier days.  I would agree he had some of the best days of our relationship while he was in that apartment.  I’m pretty sure he was in it when we ended as well.  His wife was probably there too.

Good  things are going on with The Husband as well, he seems to be moving past his anger stage.  I no longer have to yell into my phone while in the grocery line that I’m going to hang up now because I refuse to listen to more of the ways he hates me.    He  knows I am dating but we don’t discuss it. He knows I am still talking to Paul but that I am trying not to and occasionally we still discuss that. At one point I tell him that there is no hope for us if he continues to refuse to get his own counseling.  He still thinks this is all my fault and that he has no issues and I am adamant that he needs to go.  He reluctantly starts going and it starts helping him.    During the rest of that summer he sometimes asks me to go out on a date with him, and I almost always go. These dates usually end up in me crying the whole way back from wherever we went because he is asking for another chance for us and I can’t see how he could ever forgive me for everything that I have done.  I don’t see how I can forgive myself at this point but I hadn’t yet spent much time on that topic. The list of other things to work on was still too long.   These dates usually end in him making it a battle between him and PJ and asking me why I can’t just leave him totally behind and try to go back to a life with him and the kids.   I have learned that our marriage problems were so much bigger than PJ, but The Husband wasn’t there yet.   There are also plenty of booty calls,  I use them less because I am dating more.

Interesting things are going on in the match.com world.  One guy gets into a rhythm of starting to sext me from the moment  he gets to work at 7:30. I remember poking PJ with this one morning.   I was getting sexts and made some comment about texting starting to wake me up these days at 7:30.  I later make some other comment and he goes, Oh, I don’t think that is who I thought was texting you.  I don’t recall saying,  was my reply.  Once I was late to an event because I had spent too much time that  Saturday afternoon chatting with PJ  and didn’t get pretty quickly enough. It may have been his wedding weekend.    I sent PJ an email that “Big Daddy doesn’t like it when I am late”  Big Daddy was my running joke for the fictitious 55 or older Sugar Daddy I was going to choose to settle down with rather than 13 years my younger boy toy PJ.  It was not a joke he was fond of.  Ironically the reality from my experiences on match.com are that those two demographic dichotomies were my most viable choices in men.  The reality is that no matter how you seek to eliminate drama from life, if you are my age seeking a potential new mate they are likely to come with their own set of drama.  And in the end you will be in the same place you started, only with more drama because your ex is going to add layer to this new dynamic as well.   As far as the sex goes I can tell you that none of the additional notches I put in my bed post that summer were PJ material emotionally and none of them were as good as The Husband sexually.   I didn’t sample that much additional grass, but I took more than one trip around the block to take a look and I am telling you NONE of it is greener.

More to come soon Lovies.