At first I was angrier with his Affair Partner than with him. (And I don’t mean to gloss over his Affair Partner from 2008 – the online EA). I should probably differentiate between the two. I will call them PA and EA. PA was physically present. She was tangible. She was real to him, even though their relationship was pure fantasy. EA was his ideal. A neglected housewife. Everything about their relationship was pure fantasy. There was nothing tangible. There were long phone calls, time spent on Second Life and skype calls and messaging. They had amazing sex in their minds.
PA was the most damaging. She was close, willing, horribly broken and needy. She accepted the crumbs. Much like bread crumbs Hansel and Gretal dropped to find their way home, she picked up the crumbs hoping for a “real” relationship at the end. One I don’t think WH was ever willing or even able to give her. But she always held out hope. It didn’t matter how poorly he treated her, she was always willing to accept his pretty words, promises and apologies.
For a long time I was very angry with PA. She had befriended me, she watched my children, she was in my home so much, I even cleaned her kitchen once at a party at her house because I felt sorry for her. Little did I know.
I remember her standing in my kitchen waiting for WH to say goodbye to me and the kids before going out with his friends. She was always going to drop him off or she would hang out with WH and one of his friends. I remember her standing there waiting for him. After D-Day I wondered if she had a smug grin on her face because she knew they were going to have sex right after they left.
On D-Day I hated her more than I hated him. I thought she was a stupid, needy, worthless person.
Below is an excerpt from a letter to her that I will never send.
And do not think for one instant that you know the state of our marriage. You know what he told you. You were not in our marriage. You were not privy to our private conversations. You know what he told you. When I met you, you were well into your affair with him. Our marriage was completely destroyed by the time you met me. He was devoting all of his time and energy to the good feelings of his affair with you and had almost completely withdrawn from our marriage. What you witnessed was what I was receiving from my marriage. Nothing. He was distant and cold. And I did not understand why. I was hurt and I tried to mask that hurt. I was jealous of the time he spent with you and his friends. I was angry that I was left at home night after night. I was furious that I only got to spend time with the drunk that wandered home at night. Our marriage may have had problems, but he drove our marriage into the wall and your foot was on the accelerator. So please don’t tell me that I treated him poorly. Not when he was treating me horribly. Not when he was withholding affection from me and giving it to you. Not when he was giving you all of his time and his family none. If he was unhappy in our marriage, you had a direct hand in his misery. Because you are a cheap, selfish person. A better person would have told him that you would not date him until he ended his marriage. But that didn’t matter to you, because you had no intention of ending your marriage until he left me. You pushed him to divorce me. But he wouldn’t.
Writing that letter helped me get every thing out of my head. Prior to the letter I had a running dialogue of every thing I wanted to say to her IF I ever got the chance again. It clogged up my mind, put too much focus on PA, (and some focus on WH), when it should have been on me. I had to let it go. I had to get it out. I never wanted to talk to her. I never wanted to see her again. But I had things I needed to say. And in the end it didn’t matter if I said them to her directly or not. Writing the letter helped me vent the anger and hurt and betrayal, without getting into a pissing match with her.
My last real contact with her was in the wee morning hours of June 16, 2010. When I had to look at her smug, embarrassed face. Smug because WH was leaving to go be with her and embarrassed because WH had called her and told her to come talk to me. All she kept saying was that “we never meant for this to happen”. I realized pretty quickly that any conversation with her was not going to reach her that it would be a waste of breath. I told her “I hope he treats you better than he did me.” and I turned and walked back inside.
I know he treated her worse. I know she accepted his mistreatment and always came back for more. I know she was willing to abandon her kids to be with a man who had no respect for her, treated her cruelly and fed her sweet little lies to get what he wanted. Still to this day, I have no idea who the monster was that dated her. At that time my WH was just one rung above the monster.
In the end, I got better. I got the man he is capable of being. I got the man who is capable of being a kind and supportive partner. A partner who is able to balance his wants and needs and with my wants and needs. (We don’t always have equilibrium – but I see the effort).
So in the end, I am sorry for the time and effort I wasted on her or trying to out do her. She really wasn’t worth my time. These days I don’t think too much about her. She is more of an abstraction than a reality.
Ironically, I owe the discovery of WH’s earlier online EA to my ability to let go of PA. I had read that the AP could have been anyone. When I discovered the online EA and the existence of EA, I realized this was true. PA may have had a greater emotional hold over WH, but she was not the first and she certainly was not his only or even his one true love for that fact. The discovery of EA made PA that less special and I was able to finally let her go and the anger I felt.
Healing from my husband's affairs-my journey back 