This time is different

I am hurting—deeply—but I’m not hollow and annihilated. My heart aches with sadness and grief, but the world is not devoid of color and purpose the way it was the first time. I do not wake up dreading that I am still alive. 

And for the first time in nine years, I have the freedom to choose again, with full knowledge of what it is I’m choosing. Because I did NOT choose to be betrayed again. I did NOT choose to have sex with Husband after he fucked prostitutes (during COVID with high-risk people in our household, including me). I did NOT choose to stay with a liar. I chose someone in recovery, someone who had chosen honesty as his principle, someone who had seen me destroyed as a result of his actions, seen me in the deepest anguish, and who had worked hard to get well and be able to be in a healthy  relationship. THAT’S what I chose—or thought I chose. 

But Husband has a part of him that feels entitled, that feels he deserves to do what he wants despite the deep betrayal and the many times I’ve asked, begged for honesty and monogamy (in my mind, monogamy goes without saying because we’re married, but I did say it.) 

That entitlement is where his humanity ends. 

And that is why he treats me this way. He says he loves me, but he was not loving. Any loving acts he did were only covering up the lies he was living and forcing me to live. 

I don’t see how he could ever do do enough heal the pain and anguish that I am feeling.