Suspicious emails

Today I was on the computer and saw something that made me take a closer look at Husband's email. I can't even remember what it was now. But I did that, and found that he started receiving emails again from an escort service at the end of May. It looked as though he hadn't received any since April of last year, and then he started getting them again about 4 weeks ago.

I've just spend the last 3 hours (when I should have been working) combing his email and other places for evidence of activity. I found one more from another site, but no evidence of correspondence.

But the fact of the matter is, anything he didn't want me to find out about he could easily hide. He could have other accounts in other names. I guess the best way I have of being sure is bank statements and pay stubs. This way I'll know exactly what's coming in and what's going out. Which would have alerted me years ago if only I'd been paying close attention. But I wasn't. Even now, I don't. Sometimes I go through the bank statement more carefully, looking for large amounts. But that's about it.

There's never going to be any way to be sure, and that's part of what I have to figure out if I can deal with I guess. I hate that my relationship will forever have this aspect to it. At this moment I hate him for bringing this into our lives.

I feel a lot of the same physical sensations I did the first time I found all this - my lips are cold, I'm tense, sick to my stomach.

The word that just popped into my mind is surrender. I'm resisting things. I have to look to see where I can surrender so I can get some peace back. Surrender to how life is, and then decide what I want to do in light of that I guess.

Husband starts his group therapy tonight.

On the benefits of staying

Tonight I was looking for files on an old computer and I came across a picture of Husband that I absolutely love. He's wearing his Superman t-shirt, standing on a stage and singing passionately into a mic. For me that picture has always been an expression something beautiful. He's in the moment, doing something he loves, an expression of his true self.

Then I realized the picture was dated November 8, 2003, just a couple weeks or so before he first had intercourse with a prostitute.

So now that picture is different for me. It represents a time in my life when I didn't know what was real. A time in his life when he was lost and unhappy. He wasn't superman. He was just a man. A man who was hiding a lot from everbody, including himself. I wanted to bring it up with him, ask him if he remembers that evening, what he was thinking and feeling that night and how it all lead to finding another woman to have sex with.

And then I caught myself. I realized that I was going down that path of trying to figure out why, when there is no good answer. Just as Husband will probably never fully understand how I've felt in the wake of his betrayal, I'll probably never understand what was going on with him such that it made sense to him do what he did.

Ahh, yes...non-duality. The shadow and the light in the same instant. Love and betrayal don't obliterate each other even though it seems to me that they would.

I wonder how many more times I'll start down this path over coming years. Will my mind ever stop asking that question?

Living with things that I don't understand and that don't make sense to me in my relationship with Husband is new, but it's something I'll have to accept to move forward. Not lies, not secrets, but the unknowable and unanswerable.

While the unexpected look back has brought up painful feelings, it's nothing compared to the searing rawness I felt in the first few months when I looked back and no longer felt anchored in any type of reality. Now, the pain of looking back is mitigated by the strength and insight I've gained while entertaining the notion of non-duality and learning how to stay present in the face of pain and impermanence.