Plausible Deniability in the Extramarital Affair

tags
Not my fave.
Life Lessons
Loss
July 30, 2024
 
The story so far: I actually heard from the ex-affair partner who dumped me nine years ago. I had written on my blog that he hadn’t been there in three months after many years of reading nearly everything I wrote, so clearly, he didn’t care about me anymore and had moved on, and the connection was finally over.
This was when I got an email from him in my inbox.
So, we’ve been catching up. (Partially because I want to check the accuracy of my astrology.)
After two or three days of “How ya doin’? How’s everyone?” emails, I finally asked: What prompted him to reach out now after seven years of radio silence?
The reply to this really made me feel horrible at first. It’s written as if he had always made it clear he didn’t have feelings for me and just wanted to be friends, and the only reason he was hanging around was in hope I would do better, find someone else, and be happy again.
Jesus Christ, did I feel horrible.
I thought: This entire thing was all in my head the whole time. This person never had any romantic feelings toward me at all, and I just sank my teeth into his throat, almost ruined his life, and then made up a fantasy for the next nine years. I am crazy. And I am also a horrible, horrible person. How messed up can you get?
I felt like that for half an hour or so. I was so embarrassed and so ashamed of myself.
And then I remembered: Why did I say I didn’t want a friendship in the first place?
As I recall, this was the exact conversation:
(Actually, I don’t need to recall part of this, because I saved our last Facebook chat, and there it is in black and white: I never stopped loving you. He wrote me that. Two years after he dumped me.)
Now, on to my recollection of our last phone conversation:
He wanted to return to the social group we met in, and I said no. I got a bit of pushback. Then:
Me: Do you still love me?
Him: Yes.
Me: Well, if you still love me, and I still love you, and we see each other all the time, we’re just going to have an affair, and we can’t do that.
Him: You’re probably right. (Actually, I have to amend this. Not only did we say this on the phone, but there it is in black and white, in close to the same language, in the saved Facebook chat.)
Then I observe his behavior on my website over the years (and I did make notes every time I saw him show up.) Once I realized it was him, I made a post here and there asking him to just talk to me, since he was there reading anyway.
He never did, but each time I made a post like that, he read it multiple times. (This was in the days of webs.com, which had a VERY good locator and placed him within three miles of his house, and me within three miles of the coffee shop I always wrote at.)
Then, after a few more years went by, I finally got upset with myself over how much store I set by the fact that he was there, and I asked him WTF he was doing there and to please just stop reading.
Someone stayed up all night reading tons and tons of old blogs he’d missed, and then came back on and read only headlines and not the actual blogs! (My therapist and I both laughed over that.)
And he wonders why I didn’t think this was just friendly concern.
Given the prior conversations and where we left things, who would?
I felt a little better.
I get it. The guy doesn’t want to be seen as mooning over my website. Maybe, as the years went on, he got over the romantic stuff and really was there just hoping I’d get well and move on.
But it sure didn’t start out that way. I’m trying to give this person the benefit of the doubt, here, but I don’t think I can blame myself quite so harshly for not realizing his lurking was just friendly concern.
He’s going for plausible deniability, here, but I have the notes I took from our second-to-last phone conversation around here someplace, too. I’m pretty sure when reread, they will reinforce this general impression.
As does a certain compliment on my appearance I received all of two days ago.
I don’t know, dude, you may be busted.
Not that it matters. We’ll never see each other again.
But I’m glad, tonight, that I kept some notes.
This way I know it wasn’t all my imagination.
It’s nice to know you are the ex-girlfriend, and you may even be the crazy ex-girlfriend …
… but you are not the certifiably insane ex-girlfriend! Okay, so perhaps eventually there was nothing and the person really was just riddled with guilt. I get it, and I’m sorry for that. (Really, I was the person who approached a married man, and I expected to be given a firm NO and dropped like a hot potato when it happened. I was shocked the whole thing happened to begin with.) But you have to know, when you hang about and lurk like this, what it might look like.
It looks like stalking. It looks like obsession. Given the prior conversations at the end of the relationship, what was I to think? So, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about the whole thing. I was wrong in approaching in the first place, and I brought all this on myself. It was me with the hard lessons to learn. So, I’ve done that, and I completely understand if I never see or hear from this person again. It should have happened that way nine years ago to begin with. He’s with his family where he belongs, and I wish him well. I’m very sorry for everything.