by leah » Tue Jan 17, 2017 12:56 pm
short version: i found out boy has been fucking my (now ex-)best friend for who knows how long -- but suffice to say it was *during* our efforts to save the marriage.
tl;dr version:
january 2016, i was visiting her in iowa. josh and i had been coasting for a while, kind of in that roommate territory that long-term couples go through. i was feeling neglected, got really really drunk, and flirted with a boy enough to bring him back to ex-bf's apartment. i was on the edge of blackout drunk, so i remember very little of what went down, other than the fact that she invited herself in to the situation and made it a three-person party. i woke up the next day feeling sick to my stomach from hangover but also from not being sure what happened. hooray.
i told josh what happened when i got home, and he instantly said "well, that's it then. we're getting a divorce." and alluded to the fact that he had been unhappy for a while, and my fuckup was what put him over the edge. no room for discussion. but i am a persistent motherfucker and i got him to agree to give me time to prove to him that i'm still the person he fell in love with. (in hindsight, i feel really sad for the person i was at the time. i shouldn't have been accepting all that blame, or letting myself think i'm unworthy of love, and he shouldn't have let me feel that way.)
so a couple months went by, things were cordial, i was slowly breaking down his walls a little... when one day i noticed a text message from ex-bf pop up on his phone that seemed awfully familiar. so then i went full crazy and checked our phone records and saw that they'd been talking for 20-30 minutes every other night for weeks. i confronted her and she told me that he started calling her to talk about our situation and what he should do next and she didn't want me to be sad so she didn't tell me. i accepted her explanation but asked her to please not keep things from me because i needed to be able to trust her. things went back to normal-ish, though the conversations nagged at the back of my mind.
fast forward another couple months, to the summer. she had started acting fully weird with me, implying that giving me emotional support was too difficult and i was asking too much of her, and that she didn't feel like our marriage was going to last so she was having a hard time supporting me when she didn't believe in it. she wrote me a big long email detailing all the ways that i was too much for her. the next day, i happened to see a facebook message from her pop up on his phone. so this time, i went a little nuts. she had given me her facebook password many many moons ago, so i logged in to read their conversation... and it was HORRIBLE. she was talking shit about me constantly, about how she needed a break from me and how she felt sorry for him for being stuck with me for so long. to his credit, he didn't say anything to her that he hadn't said to my face at some point or another, but she was acting supportive to my face and then trashing me to him for weeks/months! there were also some weird flirty messages but since it didn't seem like josh had reciprocated, i left it alone.
at that point, we had started to see leslie, our counselor. i told her about the messages i had found, and she said that if i really want to move forward with a healthy relationship, i needed to give him the trust that i was asking for from him. so i left it alone and stopped checking the messages -- but i also stopped giving ex-bf any information about how things were going with josh. leslie helped me see that i need to be better about setting boundaries in order to protect myself from constantly being a doormat. that process is ongoing.
so like i said in earlier posts, counseling was going really well. josh was starting to realize a lot of really important stuff about himself, we were communicating better, we even went on a date or two. i was so hopeful. but then, two days before thanksgiving, he informed me that he was done and wanted to move forward with a divorce. i was crushed, but at least i knew that we had given it our best shot. after that conversation, he took me home with him for thanksgiving so that we could talk to his mom together. it was really hard, but i'm glad i went.
i had been talking to ex-bf very superficially since deciding to put up boundaries, and i wasn't sure whether i wanted to tell her about the divorce, but i also wanted to know if josh had told her about it. so since we were done, i didn't see what the harm was in checking their facebook convo to see if he had told her. but oh, reader, what i found was so much worse.
i found conversations over the previous months (while we were in counseling!) about them wanting to give their relationship a real try, and how she couldn't wait around for him forever but that she had really fallen for him, and how she wished they could be together again because it had been so long since the last time, etc. etc. ...and then the last group of messages was from the day before, in which they sent each other some of the most explicit messages i had ever seen, let alone from josh. going into every sordid detail of the things they wanted to do with and to each other, about how she missed his dick and wanted to smell like him again, about how he wanted to fuck her in every room of her apartment, about how he was trying to find an opportunity to go see her in iowa. she sent pictures of herself in lingerie. i almost vomited.
that was the day i stopped talking to her forever. as for he and i, though, it's gotten even more complicated because we're still living in the same house (until we figure out who's going where, what's happening to the house, etc.) and we're also dealing with a dog with cancer and spending $7,000 on her care. every single day is painful and awkward and sickening. i haven't told him yet that i know all the things because i know when i do, it will set everything in motion and i don't feel ready for either of us to move out -- i want to get finances and divorce proceedings in order first. but i know that this has to happen soon because i'm dying inside and i'm never going to move forward until it's all out in the open.
i want to move forward feeling proud of who i am and who i was during the whole ordeal. i don't want anything left unsaid. i want to stand up for myself and let him know how deeply he hurt me. and i don't want to lose that still small voice inside me that says love is still worth the effort and i won't be alone forever and i'm worthy and deserving of being treated like the wonderful, sensitive, intelligent, giving person i am. i'm worried this ordeal is going to ruin me.
everything fucking sucks.
lolz