Sharing to Heal

[Galactica]

I didn't think I'd find myself writing about my personal problems on a bulletin board, but the anonymity is quite cozy. I have recently been through a lot, and I'd like your input on it. I'm still getting my thoughts together on paper (well, word processor), and have been typing this up for a day or so.

Part 1 will follow; it's all I've written so far. I'd like feedback on what I've got so far, but reserve judgement please until you've read Part II. I'll get that up here as soon as I've organized my thoughts.

I hope to get some feedback, but also hopefully allow others to recognize what goes on in the mind of the husbands whose wives cheat.

Please note, I've changed names to protect the innocent (and guilty), but everything in here is the facts.

[Galactica]

Part One

In all of this, the toughest part has been expressing how I really feel without hurting. Well, this is yet another attempt I guess to make sense of all that has happened, to find cause or not and to hopefully put my demons at rest.

It's been a long week. I've not slept much, my mind has been churning. In many ways, my life and my relationship with my wife will never be the same again. Is that a good thing? It's still a little early to tell, but I'm ever the optimist.

It all started two months ago. I had observed some things that were strange in Louise's behavior. Things that seemed out of sorts, if not completely out of character for her. She was happy, and seemed happy with me... but it was a forced and pretend happiness. Even then I could see that. I could feel there was something nagging at her, something deep inside that she was not talking to me about. This in itself was not a bad thing; I've always worked under the assumption that a woman's mind and heart are places of myriad hiding places, facets that you cannot see all at once. And if you dig, you sometimes run the risk of that which you seek being moved to a new hiding place... so steps must be carefully taken.

At the same time, an old friend came back into her life. His name is Rick, and though they had each known one another for a couple of years, they had rarely really kept up with each other as far as I knew. Still, all water under the bridge as they say. I didn't say much, though there was a nagging part of me that mistrusted him.

He's a pilot. I know all too well the kind of personalities attracted to commercial flying of the kind he does; self-assured “aero-playboys” who prefer to have a life with no ties, with no permanent connection to anything real. They're usually the kind of person who either remains single their entire lives or go through a string of marriages and divorces. Few pilots have stable relationships of any kind, and thus most of them either have strings of girlfriends or nothing at all. Even those who maintain a “healthy” marriage are usually cheating on their spouses. The only positive thing I can say about this is that the spouses are usually cheating on the pilot as well, and this is usually understood and accepted, though never spoken about. It seems ironic to refer to a pilot as “flighty”, but that's as good a description as any. Just for the record, I know a lot about pilots because I happen to be a certificated pilot myself.

I admit the lifestyle holds a certain appeal, but even when I dreamed of a career in aviation I never wanted something that would take me away from my family for three weeks out of every four. That's just not the kind of person I am. My idea of a career in aviation would be freight, the kind of job where you might be away for a few days at a time, but then home for a few days at a time. Sure that's considered the dregs of the pilot career ladder, but it's as far up that ladder as I ever wanted to climb. Maybe a corporate aviation job, flying the rich and powerful for meetings across country. Now that would be a career I could live with. Sure it'd be getting up at 4am and getting home late, but again it'd be on for a couple of days, then off again.

So I think I can say that I know pilots, and I know that they have a certain attitude toward marriage and relationships that is not compatible with my own. Hence why I no longer truly want to pursue a career in aviation unless it's going “my way”.

So anyway, she struck up this friendship with a pilot. As I said, something sat uneasily with me because of what he was... but it was what she wanted and seemed to make her happy.

A couple of weeks passed. I thought little about it because quite frankly I trusted her. A few years back we had gone through the whole rigmarole with a guy named Chris. I had been through the wringer emotionally as the job I had hoped I could turn into something wonderful had simply crumbled around me. I was already stressed to the max and working ridiculous hours trying to make sure that I didn't lose my job in what was then a really crappy economy for tech workers. The dot-com bust had put a lot of technical people on the streets... finding work was tough. My neighbor (who I really didn't like that much) got laid off about that time, and never did find his way back into a technical job. After a while he turned his attention to electrical and carpentry and actually found a job that much better suited his talents. It worked out for him, but I've never done anything other than computers and a little bar tending. Much as I'd love to, I can't make a living and feed my kids tending bar. Besides, the hours for that would suck worse than being a pilot.

Anyway, I'd been through a wringer emotionally as they exchanged what could best be described as “sexually charged” emails. I wouldn't have known except that the CEO of the company had been extremely paranoid by that point (a result of doing cocaine for two years) . He had me implement filters on our sales staff to make sure they were doing their jobs. Well, I say filters... I created a method to capture their emails to a database so Mike could analyze them. I guess he felt he had time to do that. Go figure.

He bought them to my attention, even showed me some of the emails he had sent my wife and some of those she'd sent back. I felt sick, I felt betrayed... and I felt utterly alone in the world at that point.

I know now in hindsight what happened. She was alone... taking care of our infant son and preschool daughter was tough. I understand that, and still do. I really believe her when she says that it was all a game concocted by Chris and her because Chris felt his email was being monitored. He was right, but after the first one or two emails I think things changed. He really got into the idea of being with Louise... and who can blame him? She's cute, beautiful and sensual in a way I can't describe in words. The ill-conceived game to piss off Mike became something else. He started getting more lewd in his emails... and she responded in kind. In that she was wrong, and much as she'll still deny it to this day there was a part of her that enjoyed the attention.

[Galactica]

Part One (a)

We all have that part of us that craves the attentions of others, even if those attentions are not in our own best interests, or even appropriate. These things get out of control rapidly, and can often be a case of “one thing leads to another, leads to another...”. Mike bought it to my attention when the subject of him stopping by the house came up... that was when I confronted both of them. I was livid, and I was hurt, and a part of me felt that I could never trust anyone again, ever.

To make a long story short, I stayed... and made sure Louise understood that I was upset, and where it might have led had I not had the opportunity to intervene.

Shortly after all this, my job started to turn ugly. The CEO was now a certifiable cocaine addict, and I truly believe to this day that part of how we stayed in business was brokering cocaine deals. I didn't see the books, but I know I wasn't working much. With everything that happened, with Chris, with the job, with my trust in Louise shaken to the core I had what amounted to a nervous breakdown.

I left the company weeks before Louise knew about it. Probably about two weeks prior to taking a leave of absence, I had literally come into work and broken down in tears at my desk. Thankfully I was in a place where no-one could see me, but I had no-one to confide in, and no-one I felt I could trust. I cracked, and made up jobs and accounts for “on sites”. Since I was an on site engineer and able to schedule my own time, I faked them. I even faked work orders that were “errors” so that I could just get the hell away from the office for a while. I would sit in a park, sit in my car... on one occasion I even went up to the Missouri, Illinois River Confluence and sat there for 5 hours just staring at the water. I don't even remember what went through my head.

Finally, I took a leave of absence... I had cracked, and needed space to think things through. I told Mike I was leaving, and I'd be back in about a month. Unpaid leave. I couldn't afford it, but I had to.

As I left that day, I looked in the mirror in the bathroom, and realized I didn't recognize the person looking back at me. It was like I was just watching someone else leaning over the sink there.

A week later, Mike's paranoia apparently turned against me. Some network problems had come up at the office, and Mike being as paranoid as he was at that point believed I had been “hacking in” and breaking stuff remotely. He wouldn't even let me help fix the problems... instead the following week he had his lackey (Dave) talk to me and retrieve my laptop. Mike hasn't spoken to me since then.

I was out of work, and only then was the economy beginning the slow road to recovery after the dot com crash. If it hadn't been for my good networking skills, the network of friends I had built up over the years and a smattering of luck, who knows where I'd be today.

I had a hard time for a long time after that. It took a miracle to get my trust back on track... but she did. Slowly I thought less and less about the whole Chris thing, though even writing about it some four years later makes me feel a twinge of that same almost physical impact I felt when it first came to light. I did trust her after that, but it wasn't really until about a year ago now that I really let it go even as much as I did.

What changed a year ago? Well, in my life there was a friend of mine named Sam. It was a totally platonic relationship, nothing ever happened. Nor did either of us intend for anything to happen. For a short while after the whole Chris debacle I must admit that I confided in her a lot about my feelings... but I really didn't have anyone else I'd classify as a friend at that point.

About a year ago we got together for a drink after work. Mostly we just talked about her latest love, life in general and I got the “inside scoop” about some of the goings on at the same company I had been at during the whole Chris thing. She worked in the same building, so I got to hear about a lot of the comings and goings. We'd done this before, but this time she bought a friend along; Michelle. I really thought nothing of it; Sam just told me that she'd promised to go out for a drink with Michelle that night, forgetting that we'd scheduled to go out... so she dragged Michelle along.

The three of us had drinks, and got along pretty well. Michelle was recently divorced, I was married and we were both laughing at some of the antics of “potential suitors” for our mutual friend; Sam. That was all there really was to that night... but at the end of the night I traded email addresses and cell-phone numbers with Michelle.

We emailed back and forth a few times after that. Mostly she was having trouble dealing with the aftermath of her divorce... having difficulty opening up to other guys after being hurt so badly by her ex husband and I think she enjoyed talking with someone who'd been there, even if it was from the opposite point of view.

Things took an interesting turn when I received a phone call from Michelle one afternoon. She was drunk... VERY drunk. She had gone with some friends to a game. I think it was a Cardinals game as I recall. On that call, as much alcohol as she'd consumed she started to tell me how she'd really enjoyed talking to me, and wanted to know if I wanted to get together with her really soon so she could, and I quote, “thank you properly for all you've done for me.”. Alarm bells went off in my head, but I've learned a long time ago that hurting someone's feelings by bringing them crashing down when they're drunk is a bad place to be. I've had friends who did really stupid things when they were emotionally hurt while drunk, and the last thing I wanted to see next was a report on the nightly news that evening about an unidentified 32 year old woman who had thrown herself from the Chain of Rocks Bridge. Not that it really matters, but her birthday is within about two weeks of my own... so remembering her age is easy at least. So anyway, trying to be tactful I just said that I'd like that, and to give me a call or drop me an email later.

I'll be honest, the thought of infidelity did occur to me, but I wasn't going to do that to Louise. In honesty, I was really hoping that when she got sobered up and back to her own place she'd rethink things, maybe she'd forget about what she'd said and I could just try to back away slowly. I was wrong.

That night I got home and checked my email. Louise was out at the time, I think she'd taken the kids to bible school that night. Anyway, there was an email in my in box from Michelle. I opened it, and contained therein were incredibly graphic descriptions and a couple of revealing photographs she'd taken of her self. The email itself was pages long, and contained several very graphic descriptions of what she considered “thanking me properly”. If I had gone down that road, it would've made a great letter to Penthouse if nothing else.

I read the email start to finish... and I'd be lying if I had said the temptation hadn't been there. I'm married, and was happily married... but I'm human. A momentary fantasy came and went... and I literally kicked myself on the back of the leg and asked myself what I was doing. I was tempted to at least email back in kind... to play along... but then where would that lead? Right in front of me was the same trap that had caught Chris and Louise all that time ago. Sure, it was unlikely Louise would have any way of knowing... but I'd know. I can't live a life like that, I can't live a lie. That's really one of the reasons that killed Beth and I (my ex wife). Yes, the previous history was the major factor... and Louise herself was a factor... but the straw that broke the camels back and finally kicked me to leave Beth was the fact that I couldn't live the lie.

So I drafted a long email, explaining precisely where my feelings toward her were. I had been enticed by her email, and had to admit that I had enjoyed it on some deep primal level, but there was no way I was going to cheat on my wife... not then, not ever. I went on at length about how I had enjoyed our conversations, and hoped that she was going to find happiness... hopefully with the advice I had managed to give... but I also said that we need to put a little space between us... let her rethink what she had done and what she was doing.

No more than ten minutes after I sent the email, my phone rang. It was her. She was still slightly drunk, starting to swerve over into hangover territory. She was angry and hurt by my email, and she told me about it in no uncertain terms. I kept telling her that I did care, but a physical relationship with her wasn't what I was looking for and wasn't on the cards. This just seemed to make things worse, and eventually she hung up on me. I felt terrible, and I did try to call her back... but to no avail. She wouldn't answer the phone any more.

Two days after that, I received a phone call from Sam. She was also mad at me... for hurting her friend so badly. I tried to explain to her that I had enjoyed talking to Michelle, but she had wanted something a lot more than a shoulder to cry on. Sam left me a little dumbfounded when she said that she had thought; “that's what you wanted all this time from me, I was just trying to help you be happy.” From that I surmised that it had been Sam's idea... and somewhere along the line she'd gotten the message that I wanted to cheat on my wife with her. I still to this day don't really understand where that came from other than a bit of playful banter, that she initiated... but that had been right around the time of the Chris debacle... and nothing had been said like that in years.

[Galactica]

Part One (b)

Eventually, Sam and I hashed out our differences... and we agreed not to talk about Michelle again. However, the next time we got together for a drink I did ask how Michelle was. Apparently she'd met someone... a friend of her ex actually who had just returned from the military. The two of them were talking about moving to Chicago; a town he loved and she was from originally. I've not heard if they did or not.

Sam and I? Well, we drifted apart. She apparently still harbored a little resentment for what she felt I had done to Michelle... not really listening when I told her that it had been Michelle's fault. Still, taking blame... that's one thing I've done most of my life.

So what has happened since then? Well, I admit that this all might seem a little off-track when talking about my most recent heartaches... but everything here has a bearing on what has transpired recently.

After the whole thing with Michelle, I felt terrible that I'd hurt someone... and yes for a few days I lived in fear that I'd driven her to do something dumb. Thankfully, as confirmed by Sam she had “found her way” after that, and that helped a lot.

I made a choice to spend more time with Louise... try to do better with life. Work, however didn't help on that one. All new stresses came about with a reorganization that was ill-conceived and flawed. It was also never completed, leaving my work life in a state of limbo that added to my stresses. Still, I did what I could, trying to make sure that Louise felt that I had finally managed to let the Chris debacle go in many ways. But I tried to do it by not telling her. How could I? Tell her that I had come so close to falling in the same trap she did had made me rethink stuff? That would've been a prime candidate for a BIG fight, and I was feeling more that I wanted to avoid that.

So I tried to talk, tried to listen... but with the stresses of work and life found myself getting further and further away from her. Not sure why to this day, it just seemed like she wanted me to back away, like she was pushing me away in order to protect either herself or myself. Part of it was experimentation and changing of her medication (diagnosed ADD and still having problems from a car accident some years ago)... I tried to deal with that as best I could, but sometimes no matter what medication she was taking her personality swings were violent and unpredictable.

Looking back now, I started to make dumb mistakes as well. I began to isolate myself from her, in an attempt to give her what she wanted. I didn't even do it consciously... it was as if I were on autopilot.

I guess around Christmas I got to the point where I wanted to do something wild and crazy. I started taking every spare penny I had and spend it on stuff for her and the kids... I decided work wouldn't rule my life any more and I made changes to get myself into a new role that was less “on-call” than before and required less work on my part. I started to leave later, come home earlier, and when I could I started inviting her out to lunch. I hoped I would be able to salvage something... but as it became clear that my changes in an attempt to fix things were either not being noticed or were being ignored, I started to fall into a deep depression.

I isolated myself from her, and from those who had been my friends. I started to focus my energies instead on a computer game called Eve On line. A multi player on line game that's actually quite fun and addictive, though requires a certain amount of focus and attention. It helped... helped me deal with the pressures of everyday life, and the depression of the realization that my marriage may have at that point been beyond hope. I felt the ever widening gulf between Louise and I, and I saw her friendship with Rick... but I swore to myself and to her that I'd never deliberately put a wedge between her and Rick because of my own fears. I meant it, too... I wanted to trust her and wanted her to be happy. Something nagged at me and gnawed at the back of my head about the friendship because of the type of person she had chosen as a friend, but to be honest I let it go because I wondered to myself if it was just the insecurity left over from Chris telling me not to trust the guy.

So what was the next thing that changed? Well, I noticed an increase in the volume of phone calls she made to him, and he made to her. Some of them started coming in late at night, especially at times when I was either unavailable or just not home. The temptation hit me to go trawling through her email to find out what the two of them discussed, but I thought better of that thankfully. I had been far from the perfect husband to her, but I knew I was better than that.

So finally, about a month ago now I received a notification that a possible virus was caught in my virus trap at home. This is not unusual; when a mail is sent out from my server, it goes through a virus scanner. It scans for known viruses, and uses an heuristic algorithm to ascertain if something is likely to be a virus and stops it. Why scan outgoing? Well, I consider it my way of being a good net citizen; even if we get infected with a virus no need to infect all of our friends with it.

However, every now and then an email with an attachment gets caught up because of some inconsistency that triggers the alarm. Sometimes it might be an invalid file size in the header, sometimes it's just because it's a filename that the scanner finds suspicious. What it does when it catches these is it delays delivery, waiting for manual intervention. This way, if I can see it's a virus I can just click “Delete” and kill the email before it infects anyone. Similarly, if it's valid email, I can click “Send” to go ahead and send the email regardless of the errors it encountered. Not a perfect system, but given that stuff only gets caught like this maybe twice a week it's not a big deal. Most of the time neither Louise nor I send attachments.

So this one day I get a notification (by email, oh the irony) that a mail is caught up in the filter. I make some time to go in there and see what the mail is and I'm frankly a little shocked by what I see at first. There's an email that contains a few pictures attached, all of them of Louise. Most of them are pretty average, just pictures of her hair-dye job and a few other bits and pieces. The last picture attached is one she took recently that I had already seen; a picture of her naked from the waist up. It was taken by her, and I think it's quite a nice picture.

Now, understand here that Louise's a very self-conscious and shy person. The has always felt that she's not beautiful because she has small breasts. Me personally I've never really cared, it's a minor thing to me that I don't really think about and I still find her attractive. Nonetheless, it's something that many women have a problem with just as many men have a neurosis about the size of their penis. Note that I am not stating this as anything negative, just stating the facts.

As a result of this, it seemed highly unusual that Louise would send out pictures of herself naked from the waist up to anyone. It seemed so against her personality that I felt it was highly unusual. However, on thinking for a moment I thought perhaps she was being a little playful. It wouldn't be the first time she'd sent slightly risque pictures to me... though these would be an extreme example of that playful side of her personality. I just smiled at the thought of her playfulness and clicked the button to “send anyway”. I figured if she wanted to play, I'd play along. Nothing wrong with a little harmless fun, is there?

Another reason I felt perhaps she was being playful is because we'd been talking for a few days to a week prior to that event about her possible getting augmentation surgery. This is something she's always said she wanted, but it has never financially been in the cards. I had made another attempt a couple of weeks prior to make things work again, and had tried to find a way to show her I was being sensitive to her needs and desires... as a result I broached the conversation with her about getting augmentation surgery, and said that if she still wanted it, I'd support it to the extent that I would even go to the first consultation appointment with her. When she bought up the money, I just said that we'd work it out, and I meant it. In fact, I was already planning to sell my car (I have one I don't drive any more... a throwback to my “roaring 20's”) to help pay for it.

So I waited... checked my email. I waited again. 30 minutes later when I'd received nothing I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I jumped onto the server through a secure shell session and ran a “grep” (UNIX search command to search text files) on the log files. What I found was that the email sent out of the system at the precise time I had released that email from my queue was sent to Rick... not me.

This hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like someone had literally punched me in the gut. Right there, in my mind was a sign of betrayal, a sign that something was horribly amiss. Louise had never even sent me a picture of herself naked from the waist up... sure she'd shown me the picture on the camera and I'd seen it when it was downloaded to our picture archive, but she'd never sent me a picture like that. True, it wasn't a “sexy” shot, but it was playful. Suddenly I felt I was being replaced.

[Galactica]

Part One (c)

While it's true that it's her body to do with as she wants, she had made a promise to me when we walked down the aisle, and it looked for all the world at that moment that the promise in question had been ignored or forgotten from her side. For years, she had held over my head a woman named Marie who had been a friend of mine when I was still married to my ex wife. Louise's problem with her had always been that she felt Marie had a crush on me. She was right in a way, and I can't deny that it is possible. Marie and I had been close when I was married to my ex. She had been my confidant in many ways because she was someone who could listen without judging. She didn't know Beth, but she still helped me put things in perspective. Sure, Louise and I had been friends back then too, but she was too close; her and her ex were friends of Beth and I and as such I never really knew where her loyalties lay when it came to Beth. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 on that one.

What had happened was that Marie and I fell out out touch while she was doing a bit of “job hopping”, and right around the time I got married came back into my life trying to help me find a job where she worked. She had thought of me because she knew I could do the job, and because she knew I had been unhappy at my previous job when she knew me before. Anyway, shortly afterward Louise and I had gone to the Missouri Botanical Gardens with Marie, and Louise got the impression that Marie was trying to drive a wedge between us so she could steal me away.

In hindsight, this is understandable from Louise's point of view. We were newly married and still “getting used to each other”. There were a lot of trials in our marriage at the time, and to be honest her insecurity over this was quite understandable. Honestly, I still didn't and don't to this day see that Marie was actively trying to “get” me. God knows, we worked together; she had a lot more opportunity to steal me away actively and passively than just the trip to the botanical gardens. However, this document isn't about her.

I bring her up because I can draw a lot of parallels. However, while I had no interest in Marie beyond friendship, I still to this day can't speak to Marie's intentions because she never mentioned them. I draw the parallel that had I sent Marie pictures of myself naked from the waist down (or completely naked) then I would fully expect the same reaction from Louise had she seen it that I had at that moment. I will admit that I cared about Marie, because she had been my friend and shoulder to cry on when I had no one else, but beyond that I had never wanted anything more.

You see, even before that I suspected that Rick had more than innocent intentions toward my wife. I hadn't said much to Louise because I considered it a part of my own insecurities and fears rather than something that was really a problem. I had seen the escalation of phone calls by that point, seeing that she was spending a lot of time on the phone. I also noticed that when she was working on her laptop that I bought her earlier this year, if I walked up she'd hurriedly minimize or close windows. If I went to use her laptop, even just to install patches or use it temporarily so I could administer the system through secure shell, she'd be looking at me like she was expecting me to see something on her screen she didn't want me to see. She never said anything, but she didn't have to; it was written all over her face. It wasn't the look of someone who doesn't trust another, it was the look of someone with something to hide, and so had a touch of fear.

Seeing that email, seeing that picture had been sent to him was a gut-shot to me because to me it was a confirmation of my secondary fear I refused to admit to myself; that Louise returned his feelings... maybe even returned his desires... and at that point I had no idea if she'd actually acted on those desires or not.

I went home that night feeling numb, distant and isolated. Honestly I can't remember what I did that night, I was numb on the surface and boiling over with rage underneath. I also felt embarrassed by the gross breach of our marriage vows and the unshakable and erroneous feeling that I some private part of me had been in that picture. I actually felt humiliated. I still can't think what I did with that night... I just draw a blank.

My anger carried into the next day. I had gone from full blow anger though to wondering what had gone wrong and where. Louise was in a playful mood that morning for some reason... she started trying to get me to “play hooky” from work. I must admit that a part of me was extremely attracted to the idea; she's a very beautiful and sexy woman, and part of me would love to spend every waking moment finding new ways to pleasure her. But today it wasn't in the cards. Despite the fact that I had important meetings at work that day (which I told her, which was the truth), my heart and mind had taken an enormous blow the previous day. My ego was bruised, my heart was aching, my stomach was churning, my head was pounding and I honestly hadn't slept a wink.

So what do to? I went to work. She told me as I left that she wanted me to play hooky some day, to call in sick and spend the day with her. I told her I'd like that as I left, and honestly I meant it. She was nicely dressed up, very sexy in her demeanor and definitely in the “right mood to play”. But I wasn't... not at that moment. I had a lot to do that day.

So I threw myself into my work for the day. While I sat in my 8am Systems Meeting I tried to push it down below the surface. Even as I hosted and ran the 9am Tiger Team Meeting I put on a brave face and just did my job to the best of my ability. After the Tiger Team I was busy with a conference call with our Columbia, MD staff, and so I came up to 30 minutes before my usual lunch time. I usually take lunch at 11:30 in the morning, usually because I have conference calls in the afternoon that eat up a lot of my time. So it was 11am, and while I was checking my email a sudden urge to go poking around in Louise's email account hit me like a ton of bricks. Thankfully, once again I resisted, but then the nagging questions of what she was up to while I was at work and the kids were at school started gnawing at me again. Something in me started to crack, so I picked up the phone and called Louise. I asked her out to lunch, knowing full well that my intentions were to show my hand, put things on the line and ask her what the hell was going on.

I have to admit I chickened out a little. Given the seriousness of the situation I felt that it was only prudent to hold a few cards back. There was a deep logical part of myself that said that we could try to work things out just like we had with Chris, but by keeping some things back I could test her dedication to the process of fixing things. So I put things on the line, I told her that I felt things were wrong between us (which was true, I did feel that way), but I didn't tell her about the email filter and the picture... not then. I also felt it would be unfair to slam her with everything at once... better to let her think things through and work on her own feelings before we discussed specifics.

We ate a light lunch; I had a salad. God knows, there's no way I could have eaten anything heaver. We talked a lot, I think she realized quickly that I was deadly serious. I asked her flat-out if she wanted to leave, and I told her flat out that if we didn't change things quickly then we weren't going to last out the rest of the year. Hell, we would've been lucky to make it to fall.

It was the longest lunch hour of my life, and I went back to the office feeling like I'd been shot in the gut all over again. I didn't get anything done at work that afternoon; I was in too much pain and felt like too much had been said and done. I felt for all the world like my world was crashing down around me and there was nothing left I could do but just wait for the other shoe to drop.

I picked up the phone and dialed an attorney. I got part of the way through making an appointment to discuss things when I decided to give things a chance, to see how Louise would respond now. I said thank you and hung up.

The rest of the afternoon was a haze. I remember getting home that evening and we got the kids off to bed early. Often in the evenings, we would sit on the couch together and watch Dr. Who or House... not today. This day; my daughter's birthday we spent talking. And not of good things. I never did get into specifics, the time wasn't right; Louise was upset, I was upset and quite frankly it would've really just wounded the situation worse had I laid my full hand down on the table. I knew more rounds were coming, and some of the cards I needed to hold onto.

[Galactica]

Part One (d)
Last bit of part One... Promise!!!

The next few days, things remained much the same. I put on a brave face, went to work, came home and we talked some more. Sometimes I felt we made progress, sometimes I felt as though we'd taken yet another step backward. The following weekend was tough; I had already committed myself to working at my second job that Saturday. I did, but again it passed in that haze of hurt feelings and mistrust. Yes, my trust in her had been destroyed utterly... only a little remained. Enough to work with, enough to continue with... but not much remained.

I felt as though my entire world was ending, and I began to wonder what I would do next. Would I stay here in St. Louis if we went our own way? I didn't have a good answer. Logically, both had their merits and problems. The UK is a tough place to make a living, especially if you haven't been there in 10 or more years like me. Besides, my kids would still be here and I am as devoted to them as I am to my marriage... though at the time I felt the only thing I had remaining was my kids.

On the following Monday, I had an emotional crisis. I broke down at work and just found a quiet corner of the office to sit and reflect. I had been through so much emotionally that I felt I couldn't feel worse... well I was wrong. That day I felt like the entire world was on top of me, that nothing I could say or do would improve things... for the first time in my life I actually felt suicidal. Oh sure, I've been through depression before... I've even grieved hard when friends have passed away. Even once I've seen one of my closest friends die right in front of me, and I've both grieved and blamed myself for it. But never have I felt like I did that day; emotionally the weight was so intense I could barely breathe. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest I felt it would explode. My face felt hot, flushed. Nothing could calm me, nothing could fix things, and something deep and dark in my psyche began a morbid mantra: “The world would be better without you in it.”

I went home a little early that day; around 4pm. I couldn't concentrate on work. I could barely concentrate on breathing in and out to be honest, and more than once on the drive home I began to wonder if I shouldn't just find a secluded spot, fill myself with alcohol and sleeping pills and just let myself drift into an endless sleep. Honestly the only thing that pulled me back was the psychological impact it would have on my kids; to think the man they had grown up with and loved had taken his own life. That would be a bitter and hard pill to swallow. Besides, there was a rebellious part of me at that moment beginning to assert itself that screamed that it'd be damned if it was going to let her get the better of me.

I went home and told Louise that I had an emotional crisis. I told her what I was going through, and while she understood on one level, she never really grasped the depths to which I had fallen in my own heart and mind. I guess it's lucky I took the scenic route home that day; the drive gave me time to think about what I was going to say. All the stuff I've written in the last two paragraphs... I summarized as saying “I don't know if I can trust you again. I'm hurt, and I continue to hurt and I don't know what it's going to take to put it all back together again.”

A cop out? Maybe... but what would all of that really said to her? It would've sounded then like I was trying to manipulate her, and I didn't want that. I didn't want either of us to manipulate the other at all... I wanted truth, honesty and coming forth to one another with questions and things we needed to say. Only in this way would we have a hope in hell... so I opened up.

It was that night that we swore to one another that we'd try to work things out, and that anything that happened before the 1st would be left there in the past. I truly wanted it that way, and I truly wanted to work things out.

The next day was the Tuesday. Again, my day was much like the others, except that I admitted to my boss I was having problems at home... that my work for the next couple of weeks might not be up to par because I was going through huge emotional trauma. He asked if I wanted time off work... and I told him honestly no. Staying home would give me too much time to think, too much time to stew on the details... and besides, talking every night with Louise was feeling good, but it was wearing us both down. We had to have separation, even if only during the day while I was at work. To go full-speed and headlong into talking things through would have left us in a worse state than we were before. I honestly feared that if I were to take the time off, then within days we would have worn each other down to the point that there'd be no energy left to work on things. I decided to keep working despite the pain.

It was while at lunch that day that I remembered about the whole thing with Michelle. Honestly, Sam and I hadn't really spoken since before the new year, and as the human mind tends to do, I had forgotten about the whole thing. It seemed somewhat irrelevant, but I hoped that by telling Louise about the whole thing with Michelle I could show that (a) we were all human and (b) I actually understood her situation better than she might think. I could see it was a risk, but since I was asking for 100% honesty, it seemed hypocritical of me to not give 100% honesty in return. That night I told her all about Michelle. I told her most of the details except for the specifics of the badly executed let-down at the end. That didn't seem relevant, and frankly I was a little embarrassed of the way I had handled that one.

She listened, and she got a little mad. She didn't fly off the handle though, and when I asked her how she felt she said honestly she didn't know. I could accept that, I didn't expect an answer out of her right away, but I did tell her that I felt showing truth and honesty was my way of showing that I was serious about working things out. I also told her again that I felt that bi-directional honesty was the only way we were going to make things work at all. I hoped that by reiterating things I'd start to get the truth out of her.

I knew she was holding back, even then. I knew there were things she wasn't telling me. Sure, there was the pictures... but one look at the cellphone logs showed that the pace of phone calls between her and Rick hadn't subsided. I let it go in part because I knew that right now she needed a friend to lean on... I had no one, I have to admit that. I don't keep friends that close; a part of me has always mistrusted people as a whole and as such I keep almost everyone at arms length. That's part of how I was raised... how every kid raised in Northern Ireland learned to grow up: Keep everyone at arm's length except the “other side”; keep them on the opposite side of the street. Some might view that as a pretty crappy way to grow up, to me it was normal. The only people who got into your “inner circle” are your family. Everyone else, keep out. That's why families in Northern Ireland and other embattled locations forge strong and lasting family dynasties. That's also part of the reason that the hate never really subsides. It's a double-edged sword.

Still, I understood the need. I felt it, too but still to this day have no one to talk to except my word processor. It's not a great conversationalist, but it listens well.