Today is not what I would have hoped for, nor what I imagined as recently as this past Thanksgiving. Husband and I are separating. He’s moving out after son returns to college at the end of winter break.
I found out on Nov 29 that Husband was drinking and lying to me about it. It has been going on for months. I noticed a few times that liquor was missing but he said it wasn’t him. (He is a recovering alcoholic, but I still drink alcohol and we have it in the house.) I thought I'd smelled liquor on his breath a few times, but he denied it. I noticed gum and mouthwash, but didn't put two and two together (although somewhere deep inside I must have). But I discovered a bottle of vodka in the trunk of Husband's car after he asked me to open the trunk because he thought he'd locked his keys in there. When I opened the trunk, there was a bottle of vodka, one-third full. Of course, he denied that it was his. “I haven’t had a drink in 5 years.”
"Then how did it get here?" I asked.
"I don't know," he lied.
I asked point blank if he was drinking and lying about it and he denied it. But I knew something wasn't right, and I kept digging for the evidence and he kept denying. Some of the hard-earned lessons I've learned are to trust myself and to believe that I have the right to ask and dig when thinks don't seem right to me until I'm satisfied with the answers. No more giving the benefit of the doubt, no matter how much he loves me or I love him.
"The bottle was in a holiday grocery bag, just like the other groceries you brought home today. Why is that? It doesn't make sense if you didn't buy it today."
"I don't know," he lied.
I knew he was lying and he knew he was lying. After about two hours of me giving him openings to tell the truth--while I continued to look for other explanations for the answers he was giving that didn't feel right, searching the trunk, asking more questions--he asked me what I was trying to find with all this searching. "I don't believe what you're saying, so I'm looking for a receipt." He pulled out his wallet, looked inside, and turned out his pockets. Nothing. And so I went back out to the car one last time. As he sat beside me while I looked at receipts that I picked up from the floor of his car, he said nothing. Even when I found the receipt from the day's grocery shopping that listed the bottle of vodka I'd found in the trunk, he said nothing.
"I hope it was worth it," I said as I wadded up the receipt and threw it at him. I felt cold, detached and devoid of love for him.
We had out of town guests coming to stay with us in a few days and then our son coming home from college for winter break, so we decided to white-knuckle the holidays and deal with this after Son returned to school, so as not to ruin his Christmas.
The Addict has relapsed with alcohol many times over the past years, each time but I had never thought to look at what he was doing online. This time, on Dec 28, I checked his computer and I found that, in addition to regularly buying alcohol and secretly consuming it, he has been looking at porn again for years, and that he had visited AshleyMadison where married people look for affairs and also the escort website he’d previously used to hire prostitutes. He also has looked for erotic massage, and I believe he actually had one in November because I could see his searches on the computer and withdrawals of cash near the massage parlor he was searching for. He denies that he's had any sexual contact with others. He claims that he did look for a place and did get out the cash and did go, but that he didn’t go through with it. I’ve heard that one before.
Everything I'd tried to put behind me to give him the chance change and grow, to be the person he's said he wants to be and has worked hard to be--all of the pain of betrayal came rolling back over me. I fell into a couple of days of doing lots of investigating and cross checking of website activity and bank statements and anything else I could get my hands on. I wanted to know. I wanted the truth. I can't believe what Husband says, so I was looking for supporting evidence that when he told me he hasn't has any sexual contact with anyone else over the past 14 years that at least that was true.
But what I realized is that I'll never know. I'll never know. I can't believe what he says, and there can never be enough evidence.
I’ve been crystal clear about how much pain his lying causes me and how deeply painful the sexual betrayal has been. I honestly don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. I’m incredibly sad, but, unlike 2007, I’m not annihilated. That's a win for me. I have not lost my Self with this new discovery of betrayal.
Despite everything we've been through with his addictions, after doing years of intense therapy individually and as a couple, I have been open to him being a different person and I have worked hard to put the past in the past. (And it has been hard.) Over the years, trust has grown and he has again become my best friend, the person in whom I seek comfort when I'm down or frustrated, the one I have the most amazing conversations with and the most fun with. He's my biggest supporter, always encouraging me to do the things I love in live. We enjoy many of the same things, we laugh a lot together, we hold hands when we're together, he gets me and appreciates me and loves the good and the bad of me. He makes me breakfast and dinner every day. He is a 50/50 partner in the tasks of life, and he's an amazing father. That's what makes this confusing and so painful. Being with Husband is not all bad, it's not all pain. It's mostly everything I could ask for.
It should be simple. He lied. He cheated. He's out. That was the boundary I set after the last drinking and lying relapse in 2018. But with that decision I lose SO MUCH. I feel grief over the impending loss of love and friendship and family and a future growing old with someone I love and have decades of history with. Not to mention loss of our house if we divorce and have to sell everything to split it up between us.
So much of it feels irreplaceable. I'm 57 now. There is little chance that I'm going to meet an amazing man who loves and supports me the way Husband does and build 35 years of shared history with him--history like making a child together, moving through phases of life from our 20s to our 50s and all that goes with that. Not to mention that it doesn't really feel worth the effort, considering how much effort I've put into this relationship. I feel gripped with anguish.
But that's what boundaries are for. They keep you on the path you want to be on. Sometimes, they demand that you do things that you don't want to do in the moment, when you're hurt and vulnerable and confused. I don't want to lose everything we have together, but I also know I don't want to keep going through this pain. And I don't want to lose my Self by sacrificing my boundaries.
If you want something different, you have to do something different. So I told him I want a separation. I'm heartbroken and grief-stricken and lonely. But I want something different, and there is no other way to get that. Where I find myself now is proof of that, to me at least.
Not the new beginning I'd hoped for 2022, as we enter the third year of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
A couple nights ago, after we watched a couple episodes of "Station Eleven," Husband started sleeping in the guest room. I think he thinks that makes me happier.
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