November 20, 2024
I know, I know. Everyone reading this is about to type in all caps, “How could you expect any degree of ‘integrity??’ The guy was cheating on his wife!!”
Let’s say that for many years I was proud of this guy in a lot of ways. If you are in a distant and unhappy marriage with a woman who isn’t inclined to work on things, it makes sense that you could become attracted to someone else. (Especially if you’re a guy who hasn’t had sex in over a year, not to mention eight.)
If this is you, and if you do, then the question inevitably arises: What the fuck do you do??
In curating a publication on infidelity on Medium for the last several years, I have seen over and over again the stories from crying women whose married men went ahead and started their relationship before leaving the last one.
The ones who crept, the ones who had sex, the ones who snuck around. The ones who lied. The ones who kept saying they were going to leave for years … until it became glaringly apparent they would not.
The ones who said they loved the other woman … until she became too demanding and actually needed something, herself. Then they got dismissive and reduced her to sex, body parts, and a warm place to put it if and when he wanted it, and not much else.
The ones who went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth from this home to that one. The ones crushingly paralyzed by guilt, who couldn’t make up their own minds even after they were divorced.
This guy did none of that. I have to say, I was really proud of him.
This guy realized that, if you really think you’ve met someone else you want to be with, you have to put the cart before the horse and first get the divorce, then date the other person. Don’t sleep with them while you’re still married. Don’t even talk to them much while you’re still married.
This guy actually went that route. When everyone in his family blamed him for all the problems in the marriage and threatened to stop speaking to him forever if he divorced her, and he decided he couldn’t go through with it because he would miss his family too much, he was honest about that. He decided to stay married, and he made it stick.
I may have been disappointed and sad, but I admired him for it, too.
What I didn’t understand was, why did the guy hang around on my website and read everything I wrote for seven years afterward?
I thought he must still be unhappy. I thought he must still miss me. I thought if things were that bad, perhaps one day he would rethink his decision to stay.
It isn’t often that we get multiple follow-ups with relationships that didn’t work out. Most of the time, when we leave someone, it’s forever, and we never get to reconnect and get any further perspective on what really happened in the relationship and why.
Most of us regret that. Most of us long for “closure.” Most of us sit with our heads in our hands for months after, wondering what really happened and why someone that looked like they had such potential didn’t work out.
I received the favor of multiple follow-ups, one two-and-a-half years after we said goodbye, and one nine-and-a-half years later. (After more than seven years of internet lurking.)
I have come to the conclusion that a relationship that can work, does so smoothly and within two years after the declaration of feelings.
If a relationship can’t resolve itself into something stable and safe within a two-year period, it’s because something bad is really wrong with it, and in every case your hope that problems can eventually be resolved will end with a pie in your face.
I had thought that “what was really wrong with it” was more about other people and a fear of upsetting other important relationships than anything else.
I had admired the considerable integrity in his choice not to pursue a secret relationship on the sly, thereby using me to get his needs met so he could keep on servicing other people in his “real” life — which, contrary to popular belief, is all that really happens in the extramarital affair.
People hate the “other woman,” but the fact is, she is really sacrificing herself to prop up his marriage.
Nobody sees that, but it is, indeed, the truth.
I thought the fact that the guy couldn’t treat me or others in that manner spoke well of him. I thought that meant something.
And, well, I guess in hindsight, yes, it did. It takes considerable strength of character to deny oneself that little nookie on the side to fortify you to go back and take care of all those other people again. It takes considerable strength of character to make a difficult choice and stick to it.
It takes considerable strength of character to decide you aren’t going to treat other people that way, even if in doing so, you lose.
I felt chuffed that this person was a stand-up guy in that way.
It was a good thing.
The fly in the nine-and-a-half-year follow-up, however, is that you do get to see how they did treat you instead.
I at last got the chance to ask this person why he was hanging around, and why he finally decided to speak to me after seven years, even though I had made posts to him once I figured out it was him, asking him to just please stop hanging around and speak. (Ones I noticed he came back and read over and over again, too.)
The explanation I received:
Wow, have we apparently had our wires crossed. I thought when last we spoke that you didn’t want a friendship. I couldn’t give you anything else, and I thought you wanted me to stay away.
So I stayed away, but kept reading your blogs, and it was pretty clear I’d caused you a lot of pain. I hoped that you would find somebody who could love you, and you’d find happiness, and then I could stop worrying.
When it became clear to you that I was reading your blog, I thought shit! now I’m just causing her more pain. So I tried to curtail reading as much. But then in a recent blog post you said saomething[sic] to the effect that I was no longer stopping by to read your blog, and that you figured I no longer cared. I wanted to let you know I still cared.
All I can offer is friendship. If you want to write me from time to time to just chat about work, or home improvements, or the rather dire state of the world, I’m here. If not, if you’d rather not talk/write to me from time to time, that’s fine too.
I don’t know about this.
When you make that blog post, and then you see that the person in question stayed up all night reading blog after blog after blog, posts you made years ago that they hadn’t read before, and then they came back consistently for something like two years after that and just read headlines but not the body of posts … well, that seems like a rather strong reaction. When they show up twice on Christmas (Christmas??), you get the idea that something bad must be wrong at home.
That doesn’t strike me as someone who just feels sorry for someone they had to dump, who’s hoping she will just move on and find someone else. Unless the person is just completely eaten up with guilt, maybe? (He is an ACoA.)
But that’s taking too much responsibility. To follow that closely someone you dumped years ago is just way too much guilt.
People get dumped all the time. It’s part of life. It’s their job to get over it. Let them.
Which is the whole point. If you don’t hang about, you’re making it clear you have no intentions or lingering feelings toward the person and the door is closed forever.
If you do hang about that persistently, then you must either have intentions or lingering feelings toward the person. Otherwise, why would you visit every two or three days for years, even twice on, yes, Christmas?
How can anyone see visits like that and not think, This person must be having a really bad time.
So, I called him on it. I didn’t even do it that pointedly. I just asked him a question. What on earth had made him decide to finally speak to me after seven years, when I had asked him to repeatedly years prior?
It would have been most helpful and least injurious to me if he could at least have been honest. I could see from the view pattern that there was some kind of emotional investment there. It looked like a strong one to me, especially since our last words in 2017, even though he was telling me then that he wished I’d find someone else, had been “I love you.”
When someone says that and then lurks with such dedication for seven more years, and then palms you off with a “Wow, we sure got our wires crossed,” it feels like a slap in the face.
I really did, I felt as if I had been slapped. Not only did it feel like, Oh, sorry, I fell out of love with you years ago and I just never told you, but also, And I’m lying about that, because I also just called you beautiful and I obsessively kept up with you that long, only I don’t think you saw all that/am trying to pretend you didn’t see all that.
And, I’m willing to deny it, thus implying that you’re imagining it, you’re delusional, and that all the attachment is in you and not me. And, I’m implying I’m offended by it.
Ouch.
I have to say, I never expected this person would treat me like that. And that hurts.
At last, the person I admired many years for their integrity, has shown me a breach of integrity.
I never forced this person to read anything I had to say to or about him. I wrote it. It was his choice to read it or not. Apparently, he wanted to read it.
Quite a bit, it would seem.
A person with complete integrity would have owned that. At least we could have talked about it. I would have felt a lot better with a, Yes, I still have feelings for you, and I wish it could have worked out, but I still just can’t leave my family, and I never will, so let’s just leave it here.
Before, the guy was always honest. He did what he considered to be the right thing, but he was honest about his feelings when he did it.
Now, I don’t believe he was honest about his feelings. He was willing to say not only, No, I don’t have any feelings for you anymore, but, And you’re crazy for thinking so.
And thus, the person I had always respected so much because he never treated me that way … finally did.
That’s the thing that really hurts, here. I can handle the fact that the guy chose his family. Anyone would agree that’s the right thing to do, and while rejection is never pleasant, if it’s done with respect for your feelings, you can’t fault a person who does this.
I could even handle the idea that I really did misunderstand what he was doing there all this time. He really doesn’t love me anymore. Wish I had known that sooner. Okay, I will just roll up the red carpet and take it on in.
The problem comes when I have my doubts that he’s telling the truth about that.
I had always been happy that he was honest with me. Now, he’s not only going to remove honesty, which we always had, but also encourage me to doubt myself in a way that invites shame and embarrassment.
I had never dreamed this person of all people would ever treat me like that.
I hope he really did fall out of love with me years ago and just really was that clueless about how his behavior looked, because that is preferable to his sudden revocation of honesty and his apparent willingness to hurt me now.
In going back to his family, he was only rejecting me because he had to, because there was no other possible outcome.
In palming me off with a Wow, you sure did get your wires crossed, which is what he’s really saying, he’s actively hurting me in order to save face, which I thought this person of all people would never do to me.
I’ve been alone eleven years now. I’ll be fine without him. This here? This is what smarts. (Actually, it’s the thing that makes it impossible ever to have a relationship. Of any sort.)
I would have done anything for this guy, once upon a time. But, he’s willing to lie to me and call me crazy when I call him on the truth.
I can only be grateful this outcome wasn’t much, much worse. In most extramarital affairs, the outcomes are much, much worse. The wife got a chance to repair her marriage in counseling, which she ultimately refused, but hey, that’s her prerogative. She never found out; the adult children and grandchildren never knew a thing. There were no years of ugly-crying and back-and-forthing. Really, the person who got hurt the most was me.
I guess now I can lose the fantasy that I had anything special with this person. Because in the end, honesty and respect for all truths are worth more than a roll in the hay or romantic promises of a future.
You can have the first two without the second two, but the second two without the first two will never go well even if you go through with them.
I’m just sorry he finally fell off the wagon and treated me that way at long last. But I will say, if he wanted me gone, that was a good way to go.
Actually, I already was gone. All he had to do was stay gone, himself.
You can, as it turns out, fall in love with someone other than your spouse, especially when the marriage is distant and your spouse refuses to work on it, and still handle it with integrity, but you lose your integrity when you can no longer be honest about what your feelings really are/were.
It wasn’t the fact that we didn’t end up together that made our attachment to one another ultimately sad and hurtful. It was the fact that, in the end, he was willing to lie, and to push me to doubt myself.
Note to self: In any relationship that doesn’t work smoothly and become reciprocal and safe within the period of the first two years, you always get that pie in the face. Eventually.
Slap!