Betrayal

[kayc]

I don't know if I'm totally alone on this, I feel like it. For those of you who had great marriages, great spouses, you don't need to bother with this...I am just having a really hard time and I need to get some of this out...since he isn't here for me to heap this on...this is it.

I talked to his ex-girlfriend for 2 1/2 hours the other night...I wasn't going to, but she is easy to talk to and we both shared the bond of having cared about him. I know she is telling me the truth, she knows things she shouldn't know, except he stayed in touch with her and went to see her, actually quite often, after we were married. She lives two hours away from us so he went to quite a bit of trouble to do so. It really hit me that he'd gone to see her once when he told me he was going camping by himself to de-stress. Well he de-stressed all right...at her house. She hadn't been aware that his seeing her was without my knowledge or consent. In the end, it was her that told him he needed to move on, in his marriage, without her in his life. Well at least she had more brains than he did. What he hadn't told me was that her and him had once planned to be married, even had a date set, but she'd backed out because he had so many problems. I guess she knew more than I did. But she knew him a lot longer...she knew him for ten years before I met him...I only had him in my life for six and a half years. I saw what he let me see, heard what he let me hear. He paid lipservice to me. I thought we were soulmates, everything to each other, that's what he lead me to believe too...but he had this whole other life apart from me. Everywhere is evidence of our life together, pictures on the wall...I want to take them down and put them away. Our life was a lie. Not all of it...I believe he did love me in his own capacity, but that wasn't enough. He was so romantic, so good at giving me what I wanted, so good at presenting an image. But I'd much rather have honesty. It's funny how your life can lose its meaning when someone is ripped away from you...even when they weren't who you thought them to be. Ali was so much more to him than he'd ever let on to me. He lied to me about his feelings for her. I didn't tell her that, no point in making her have to go through what I am going through. She sounds very sweet. She told me he was so in love with me. Yeah...so in love with me that he lied and lied and lied to me. He protected himself at my expense. Did he really think I would never find out? It's funny about death, people will tell you things when someone dies that they would never tell you while they're alive. When he was alive no one told me about his sneaking around behind my back, about his lies, about his drug use, about his feelings for someone else. I remember watching a true story once about a man who had three different wives in three different cities, three families, children, everything. He flew a lot. He died and they figured it out. How they must have felt! How did they cope with it I wonder? The betrayal I have to deal with doesn't begin to compare with that and I have a hard enough time with dealing with it...how did they ever deal with it? I know anger fuels change, helps a person cope with something, move one...but I don't even feel anger right now. I feel kind of a numb heaviness. It's like a huge disappointment weighing on my heart. I can't even cry. I just feel so sad that what I thought we had, we didn't.

What's funny is, I have been seeing John for a year now and he has never sent me a card or written the words "I love you" and signed his name to them. But he does love me...he just isn't a flowery sort of a person. But he is true blue, he is there for me every day, day in and day out. We wake up in the morning talking to each other on the phone, just a few minutes to start our day...at 4:30 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., whenever he needs to get up to go to work. A lot of married people don't do that. We live 170 miles away from each other. We see each other nearly every weekend. Every evening when he gets off work, we talk to each other...while he's fixing dinner or whatever. We talk over our day, our concerns, everything. His day is about working, sleeping, talking to me. I was talking to my sister last night and I found myself telling her that I was happier with him than I'd ever been with anyone. That surprised me after I said it! Because I had been deliriously happy with George at one time...but that happiness was an illusion, not real and now I know that. Whatever we had wasn't what I'd thought. I may not have the same thing now, but what I do have is real and it means so much more to me for it. George knew that my exhusband's lying to me for over 20 years is what brought about the end of my marriage, he knew that honesty is important to me, the most important thing, and yet he let himself tell me lie upon lie, worse than Paul Sr. had ever thought of. Both of them tried to protect themselves at my expense, and thought their illusion more important than honesty. Well I disagree. I still prefer honesty. How can you have anything if it is built upon an illusion?

You would think this posting doesn't fit...everyone else is having a hard time getting rid of clothes, rings, pictures, cologne...I am having a hard time getting rid of falsehoods. But this posting does fit. I am grieving too...I am grieving the death of a marriage that I had believed in wholeheartedly, the death of what I had thought...that wasn't. I thought we would grow old together...the song that I had loved was "Just Look At Us"...after all these years together...I thought that was us, that would be us. It leaves me feeling like, why am I not good enough? Why can everyone else have a good marriage but me? Why am I the one left with an illusion? Why don't I own up? Why is it me that is left holding the bag, each time? Other people manage to have a marriage that lasts 50 years. Other people manage to have someone that means what they say. I have been married three times...once to a drug addicted abuser who cheated on me right and left...he definitely qualifies to be one of the "top ten worst husbands in America". The second time to a wonderful man that I had my children with...a man who was stable, respectable, hard working, but emotionally non-giving (a Vietnam vet), and he couldn't open up to me or get real with me. The third time to George...a man that I thought was the most loving man in the world...but full of illusion...a man that did drugs, stole me blind, lied to me continuously, and snuck around behind my back to visit his ex girlfriend until she cut him off. A man that went to his deathbed lying to me. And that is the man I grieve for. The man that I felt safest in the world when I laid my head on his chest, felt so loved and protected with his arms around me...a man that I loved his smell, I used to tell him he could bottle it and sell it and make a fortune. A man that looked at me with his beautiful blue eyes and told me the eyes never lie. Ha! A man that sat in church with me and had devotions with me every morning at 4:30 before going to work...until he worked at night and no longer came home during the week. A man that broke my heart and left me on my own. Some people might wonder why I am even here, why do I go to this site, why don't I just move on? I have a good man in my life now, why am I even bothered about George? Why indeed? Well all I know is, betrayal doesn't make you get over the person, but rather it complicates grief. And this is all a process, one that doesn't happen overnight, and I still have to go through it. I will move on, eventually, into my new life, but it will take time and a part of me will still always grieve and be affected. That's how it is. Because troubled or not, I know he loved me and I loved him, messed up as he was, there was something between us, and for that I still grieve and have to deal with this...for the man that I cared about still existed, and one day I will see him and he won't be messed up any more. I knew he'd had a horrible background, I knew he'd changed a lot, and he had, yet even so, one's background does come home to roost, and it does affect a person...you couldn't go through what he went through in life without being affected. I was very naive when I met him, sweetly so, I'm not any more. I pray that God doesn't let this affect me too adversely. I pray for His protection.

Edited September 30, 2006 by kayc

[dpodesta]

Kay,

I found myself reading this even tho you said it wasn't for those that were happily married. I disagree with your request in that. Even tho my marrige was a happy one, I can still be there for you to listen to your thoughts, to pray for you when you are having such a horrible time with this. I may not be able to relate to how you feel, but sometimes just knowing that there is someone, or in this case several people on this site that care for you and want to be there for you as you go through the rough time period of your life. My God grant you peace and carry you through this terrible time.

[kayc]

Derek,

Thank you. My interview for tomorrow was cancelled too...they hired someone else. Sometimes it's the darkest before the dawn???

[dpodesta]

Kay,

You are right, it is darkest before the dawn. God gives us these trials in order to bring us closer to him. He will provide the job for you where you will be able to give him the most glory.

[MartyT]

Derek and Kay, my heart aches for both of you. Please know that you are being held in gentle thought and prayer tonight, and when each of you retires for the night, I wish you peaceful sleep, with roses on your pillow .

[STARKISS]

Dear Kay and Derek,

I am also sending you the wishes for peaceful sleeps and I will keep you both in my prayers and Ask God to give you both the strength you both need to continue your grief journeys.... Take Care and Wishing you both peace and sending you both a big hug Shelley

[Roy]

KayC

When my same-sex partner died 14 months ago, many seemed wanting to share secrets with me that they knew would hurt me. I cut them off at every pass and I'm glad I did. First, they seemed needing to feel that they had been of greater importance to him than had been apparent to them through his present life with me. In this they were surely deceiving themselves while imposing the particulars of their grief upon me - making me feel that I had been lied to, (where they by themselves, then me by Paul). Second, there will be at least one future love in my own life beyond Paul. Of others in Paul's life, I am thankful. I just don't feel that hurting a person's grieving loved ones is something people do out of love.

I believe you summed it up best on your own when you said "She wasn't what he needed and he knew that."

Roy

[kayc]

Roy,

Thank you for your caring response. It's amazing the affinity we feel for each other as we go through this very difficult phase of our lives. There always seems to be a person to lend an ear, offer sympathy, give advice, admonish, encourage, share their own experience, whatever we seem to need at the time.

You are right that it isn't loving or kind to want to hurt the grief stricken person. I don't want to second guess her intent, she may truly have not known the level of my awareness, or she could just be dumb...she didn't sound mean spirited, but who knows? I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, yet I realize we have to be on guard and protect ourselves too. I haven't had contact with her since we talked.

Most of my and George's "friends" have disappeared so most of them aren't an issue any more. He would truly be shocked if he could see what happened after his death.

I wish you the best in your road to healing and adjustment. God be with you.

[kellymarie]

Kay, I know we have moved away from this thread... but some of the nasty lies that Josh feed me have reared their nasty heads up again. The overwhelming ANGER for Josh is back. Sunday will be 8 months. I am so sick of dealing with all of this drama. I am so so so mad at Josh for lying and doing the horrible betraying things that he did. And what makes me so angry is that I have worked so HARD to deal with them and forgive him. But new things have come up that I have no control over that are a result of his betrayal. I AM SO ANGRY AT HIM!!!! And I hate being mad at a dead person... it gets you no where! I can discuss this with my friends but they have no clue what it's like to have someone you love die and find out how the horrid things they did while they were alive will continue to adversely affect your life. You're stuck living with the consequences. In the mist of my horrid day atleast I felt like I could come here and be understood. Kay, thank you for sharing your story here. I hate going through this feeling so alone.

[STOO]

Kelly, I don't know what to say except that I am so very sorry for the pain you are feeling right now. Its OK to be angry when you have reasons for feeling that way. I know that you love Josh, despite the feelings of anger right now. I hope that your friends will continue to listen, and we here on this forum, though we don't all share a similar experience, are here to listen and support you. ~Stoo~

[Laurie]

It's ironic that I came back on and saw this topic. This is the first I knew of this thread, but I went back and read the whole thing. I can definitley relate, although my story is a little different. A few years back, I had found out that Sean had an ongoing thing with his ex girlfriend. It was the first time he was in the hospital with his pancreatitis. I had spent all day with him there, even climbing into the bed to snuggle with him. I didn't think anything at the time, of his worrying about me getting him his cell phone. Well I got home that day, signed onto my computer, and noticed that he had never signed off. I looked at his mail and saw several love letters. I called him at the hospital, and he tried to lie about it, called to warn her I'd be calling blah blah blah. Turns out they hadn't physically been together since he'd been with me, but not for his lack of trying. She refused to meet with him because he was with me. But they did talk on the phone and computer with lots of love and sex talk. This devastated me so much I thought I'd die of heartbreak. Every time he was hospitalized after that, it all came back to me... visiting him throughout those first few days of finding out, making him call her in front of me, wanting to scream at him-- but it was a hospital room (with a roommate) Anyway, (I know, this is very long) I feel like I need to get it out. So I didn't want to lose him, and I remember I kept saying, "It's just you and me right?" And although it was hard and I was so hurt and sad and mad, I tried to forgive him...

Five months later, he was having an online affair with a 22 yr. old girl. (He lied about his age) I threw him out, took him back, over and over. I actually broke my thumb by punching him. I never forgave him after that. I always loved him, but I never trusted or believed him again. It hurt him so much. He begged for my forgiveness, but I said, "I can't."

We had some happy loving times after that and he tried so hard to get things back to the way they were before. But once in a while, it would hit me out of the blue, and I'd go off on him again. Just a few weeks before he died, I told him he had totally misrepresented himself when we met, that he made himself out to be looking for this commited relationship with a Mom of three and a mortgage, when really he was still just fooling around, flirting with lots of women, and saying whatever would get him what he wanted. I told him our whole relationship was a lie. He told me he was so sorry and never meant to hurt me.

I think part of the reason I am having such a hard time is the memories of all these fights. I said such mean things to him. I tried to hurt him as much as he had hurt me, I told him he'd ruined my life. He looked so hurt when I did this, he wanted my forgiveness so much. I wish so much that I'd given it to him. I hope he hears me now when I talk to him, and tell him how sorry I am and that I do forgive him. Love, Laurie

[cyndy]

KayC

I hope you can get over that feeling. I know it so well! Other military wives, wanting to believe that it couldn't happen to them, were telling stories about what a bitch I was (they had never even met me) and that the baby I was carrying was not my husband's. I left that man with a 4 year old, while I was 6 months pregnant, and OUR children are now 20 and 15. He has not spoken to them or seen them since the divorce.

The pain of being a scapegoat is hard to get over. Was I a victim or a scapegoat? Does it matter?

No, it doesn't. My husband now is not a scapegoat, he loves me and knows that I loved another and I still mourne for him.

Now my sister has died, so I am a total mess.

But all we ever have are our memories. NEVER let anyone take away your memories of George, or how much you loved him!

[kellymarie]

Laurie, I am so sorry to hear of all of your troubles too. I think having a difficult relationship with our loved one makes our grief so much more complicated. I, too, remember the horrible fights. I, too, never forgave Josh for all the horrible things he did while he was alive. I was up all night in anxiety thinking about one of Josh's betrayals that has resufaced. It's such a disaster to be angry at someone who's dead, who deserves our anger for the things they did but to also remember that we loved that person. It's so so so hard. (I also wrote about it in Anger thread.) One moment I want to hate him, the next moment I realize hating a dead person gets you nowhere. I can say that over the past 8 months I have really worked hard at forgiving Josh. I had gotten to a great point where I had forgiven him for everything I KNEW about but now that new stuff has resurfaced, I will know have to work at forgiving him for this too. I think that we can tell them now that we forgive and can also seek their forgiveness. Our relationships continues... I think it is so important to remember our loved one as a whole person, their good and bad qualities, which is often hard because most people want to glorify the dead.

There's a quote from Healing after Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman that I can't find right now but has helped me alot. It goes something like this... Our loved one has forgiven us as we have forgiven them.

This is HARD work!!!!

Cyndy, We haven't heard from you in awhile and I am so so sorry to hear about your sister. How are you doing?? We're here whenever you need to talk, vent, or give hugs.

Kelly

[Laurie]

KellyMarie, You're right, this stuff does seem to make grief much harder. I can't help thinking how different things might have been... if I hadn't been so tough, so stubborn and bitter. Boy I really made it hard on him. It's amazing he stuck around for all my rants and insults. I was really awful sometimes, but he never gave up hope that we'd get over the past and be happy again. My engagement ring is a 3 stone past, present, future ring. And I can remember telling him that he should just get me a 2 stone ring, because I didn't want to remember our past. It takes alot to make me mad, but when I get there--- I can be a real bitch! I just never stopped punishing him for hurting me. I guess there's no sense dwelling on that now, all I can do is learn how to be a better person. To be more understanding, forgiving, sympathetic. I wish I could have known these feelings then.

Speaking of my ring... Every night from my deck, I always notice a star constellation above my house. It's 3 stars straight in a row, and it always makes me think of "past, present, future" like my ring. Last night I noticed the sky was full of clouds, but I could still see those 3 stars. Those were the only ones not covered by the clouds. I like to think it was Sean's way of letting me know that he knows I'm wearing his ring again. I hope so... Love, Laurie

[kellymarie]

Laurie, This stuff is so hard! Having our loved one die has really forced us to face head on all the issues. One of the biggest lessons I am learning is forgiveness and to realize that we are all human, which means we all make mistakes and are not perfect. I think Sean probably realizes this now. (Atleast that what I like to think about Josh... I had a dream where he came to me saying if he knew then what he knows now, he wouldn't have done all the things he did.) So I think they do realize us as humans that are not perfect and that we are forgiven for these things that weren't great in our relationship. I love your story about your engagement ring and the stars in the night sky. I definately think it was Sean sending you a message. It's these special moments that really help us get through. Many hugs, Kelly

[Laurie]

Yea Kelly, It is these special moments, like the stars that help so much. It makes me feel like we still have a connection. Thanks, Love Laurie

[kayc]

kelliemarie and laurie,

I think you hit it right when you said, "I think having a difficult relationship with our loved one makes our grief so much more complicated." That is for sure. Another important comment you made was that we need to remember them as a WHOLE person, good and bad, and that we are all human. Someone who seeks another person's adoration when they already have someone...it is a problem within themselves...it's not that you weren't great enough for him as you are, and it's not that he didn't love you, but rather that he had some serious self-esteem issues. And of course, when we discover yet something else, it is so hard because we have to go through the whole painful process again of forgiving and letting go of the wrong. I feel I have forgiven George, but it has taken me immense work...it started three weeks before he died when I first learned of his drug use...it heightened after he died when I cleaned out his car and discovered he'd lied to me about money AFTER "coming clean" with me...it continued over the next 15 months as I learned about more deceit and broken promises/vows...it hurt tremendously, and of course, we don't have them here to confront. A lot of people don't understand and think this means we should just "be over them", as if that were possible just like that. But the fact is, when you love someone, you love them, even with their problems. It doesn't make us sick or deserving of bad treatment, it means we are big people with big hearts that try very hard to forgive and get past the "stuff". And the fact that we told them a thing or two that they needed to hear doesn't mean we should feel guilty or bad for it...we are very understanding loving women that didn't deserve ill treatment. We loved flawed men that for all their flaws, loved us. I think perhaps George would have made it (off drugs) but it might have taken in-house treatment, maybe selling our home, a lot of pain, a lot of work, but I do know that he loved me and whether he would have made it or not, that love existed and does still. The thing we need to do now is to forgive, to not let the bad experiences poison us, but to learn from them. I am so glad you are here too and that none of us need go through these things alone. As varied as our situations are, there is always someone on this site to understand, to care, to encourage. You guys are beautiful...be very gentle with yourselves, you've been through way too much. I love you!

[kayc]

kelliemarie and laurie,

I think you hit it right when you said, "I think having a difficult relationship with our loved one makes our grief so much more complicated." That is for sure. Another important comment you made was that we need to remember them as a WHOLE person, good and bad, and that we are all human. Someone who seeks another person's adoration when they already have someone...it is a problem within themselves...it's not that you weren't great enough for him as you are, and it's not that he didn't love you, but rather that he had some serious self-esteem issues. And of course, when we discover yet something else, it is so hard because we have to go through the whole painful process again of forgiving and letting go of the wrong. I feel I have forgiven George, but it has taken me immense work...it started three weeks before he died when I first learned of his drug use...it heightened after he died when I cleaned out his car and discovered he'd lied to me about money AFTER "coming clean" with me...it continued over the next 15 months as I learned about more deceit and broken promises/vows...it hurt tremendously, and of course, we don't have them here to confront. A lot of people don't understand and think this means we should just "be over them", as if that were possible just like that. But the fact is, when you love someone, you love them, even with their problems. It doesn't make us sick or deserving of bad treatment, it means we are big people with big hearts that try very hard to forgive and get past the "stuff". And the fact that we told them a thing or two that they needed to hear doesn't mean we should feel guilty or bad for it...we are very understanding loving women that didn't deserve ill treatment. We loved flawed men that for all their flaws, loved us. I think perhaps George would have made it (off drugs) but it might have taken in-house treatment, maybe selling our home, a lot of pain, a lot of work, but I do know that he loved me and whether he would have made it or not, that love existed and does still. The thing we need to do now is to forgive, to not let the bad experiences poison us, but to learn from them. I am so glad you are here too and that none of us need go through these things alone. As varied as our situations are, there is always someone on this site to understand, to care, to encourage. You guys are beautiful...be very gentle with yourselves, you've been through way too much. I love you!