Part 10: Limbo

Thinking RFID (Photo credit: @boetter)

Late at night there was a knock on the door… It was him and he wanted to talk. He looked like shit and it made me wonder how someone who-apparently- lacks the ability to feel anything could look so bad if that were true.

“I think I do love you… I have to… Otherwise I wouldn’t feel this shit…would I? I’ve messed up… I AM messed up… I’m so confused. I think I love you but I don’t KNOW that for sure, I don’t know WHAT I feel.. Or if I feel at all. Maybe I’ve blocked things, maybe shit did happen when I was young and it really has messed me up. But I’m not sure whether I’ve felt shit for the past few hours because I don’t want to lose you – and therefore might love you or because I feel guilty knowing that you have no where to go, you’ve given up so much to be with me and now you have nothing”

I was stunned and gutted but strangely hopeful at the same time. I told him to take that thought out of the equation or imagine I had everything I wanted or needed back in my home town and to take some more time to think it over.

Caramel Latte (Photo credit: SweetOnVeg)

The next week is a blur, I literally ran on autopilot and lived on mocha and caramel lattes – I wasn’t purposely starving myself but the thought of food made me feel sick, in fact I was physically sick through the shock of it all. I wasn’t hungry and it was only when I googled the effects it would have on my body that I forced myself to have some goodness each day. I continued seeing our counsellor by myself, I asked him if HE had known something was off with us since day one… If it was just me who had been fooled… He said no. He hadn’t seen it coming, he had thought there were some issues – otherwise we wouldn’t have been there but aside from the ones we had spoken about he was as shocked as I was.

My husband had returned every night for the first few days, either to get something he had forgotten, to drop something back or – on the third night just to talk. He asked whether IF he decided to work through this with me I would still want to be with him and how it would ever be ok… I told him I would be there for him, but I wouldn’t be walked all over and that it would take a lot of work to get us back to any kind of normality. we would 100% need professional help, both together and separately, we would need to build the trust back from scratch, he would need to be honest and I would need to get to know the “real” him… I would need to live the “real” us… And only then would I know whether I could stay or not.

After he left I had some more time to think and thought you know what… Fuck therapy right now, if that’s what has scared him off and he’s not ready to face his demons today then forget it for right now. All I really needed to know was whether he loved me (thought/hoped he could/wanted to) and wanted to be with me or not… THEN we can go from there. So I text him:

=( (Photo credit: The Slushey One)

‘OK one last text and I will leave you to it, I’m not going to guilt trip you or anything but I’ve thought about what you just asked me… I think all I would need for us to sort this out is to know that you do love me. Fuck therapy and stuff right now, although I feel it would help both of us and there are definitely issues which need to be dealt with all of that can be addressed later, if I knew you loved me that would be a big enough starting point. THATS what you need to be thinking about. I love you and I always will xx’

I didn’t hear from him for the next 4 days and in that time the reality – and heartbreak- set in. Was that mornings kiss really the last time he would ever tell me he loved me? What if he came back and said no? What if this really was the end of us? I couldn’t stand it, it made me sick. I have history of attempted suicide and had vowed to never ever do that again but my god how I wished I could just curl up and literally die… Die of a broken heart and that way it wasn’t a selfish act, it wasn’t my doing… It was just proof that I couldn’t survive this heart ache.

I did survive though, and I could survive longer because if I’ve learned anything from my past it’s that even when you feel THAT low, when you feel like you can’t take any more… You do. You take it and you kick its ass! You get through it… Somehow. My “somehow” was “denial”. I refused to believe he couldn’t feel anything, he had cried at a film once, I had seen him look like shit… He has been shaking whenever I had seen him on those few days…Besides, believing it would mean I would have to accept that none of our past, none of our memories.. our special things… our wedding vows and the photos that made me so happy to look back at… None of it was real.

xBx

 

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Part 8: The truth comes out

Heartbroken (Photo credit: buckofive)

The next week was interesting, I liked the idea of teasing him and building up to the moment the ban was lifted, he however wasn’t so keen to be teased and instead impressed me with his self control. So much so that that weekend I visited a friend and trusted him alone at home with all the equipment for a bit of DIY but the promise that he wouldn’t.

The day of the ban lift arrived, we saw our counsellor and established that – like we already knew- taking sex out of the equation didn’t change anything. We were still strong regardless. That night we were excited, this time we had actually made it a whole week so this was the moment if truth… But still no joy.

I admit it was an anticlimax in more ways than one. I had been hopeful but still he felt nothing. I was annoyed that after all this time we were only figuring this out now. If he had stayed true to his word before then we could have crossed it ff the list months ago and gotten all of this disappointment out of the way. Oh well at least we knew now and we were still satisfied one way or another.

The next morning I felt better, he was at work and I mustered up the motivation to start working on my resume. I logged on and (my heart is beating so hard just thinking about it) the first thing I found was… You guessed it… Porn! For fucks sake!!

I had messaged him just moments before telling him how great the night before was, how we would figure something out and I would support him regardless… What a fucking idiot.

Shocked I stared at the screen and a message popped up from him for me telling me he loved me. Instantly I replied calling him every name under the sun. He pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about so I asked why PORN would be the first thing on my screen??!

The messages stopped.

I was devastated… What an utter wanker! … Literally! The morning after.. Less than 24 hours later and he was back at it again! Within what seemed like minutes he was banging on the front door having left work to sort this out.

“Here I am… I’m sick… I’m disgusting”
I asked him why. He said he didn’t know.
I asked him how many times he had watched it since the ban was put into place… 3!
I asked him where he did it.. And where I was. He said I didn’t want to know.
I demanded. Once at home while I was at my friends. Once this morning while I was upstairs sleeping and once in the car outside work one morning!
Shaking I asked what he used while in the car. He said nothing… just his thoughts.
I asked what he thought about. He said he thought about the last time we watched porn!

*heart sinks*

I tried to stop my head from spinning but didn’t have enough time before he dropped the next bombshell on me…

“I think we should probably get a divorce”

*heart…breaks*

He went on to tell me he can’t stop, he keeps hurting me and he can’t keep hurting me… But he will. He said he didn’t see a way past this and divorce was the only option as far as he was concerned. He would rather live alone than continue to hurt me. It was too much to take in, too many emotions running through me at once…disgust, insecurity, anger, disappointment, shock…and now heartache accompanied by sheer panic.

I didn’t want to lose him, that’s not what marriage is! You don’t just give up…HE doesn’t have the right to call time on something that he has hardly put any effort into. I’m the one who has tried so hard, whom has supported him and put myself out there for him. I’m the one on the receiving end of this shit, I’m the one who is well within their rights to hold my hands up and say I cant try any more, Besides I sure as hell wasn’t about to let porn win the battle for my marriage…THAT alone would destroy me completely !

I did the only thing I could think of right then and called our counsellor to schedule an emergency appointment, I needed a mediator in this, there MUST be something else, he cant just end us over a w*nk…I also needed someone there as a way to guarantee I wouldn’t lose control and kick the shit out of him. I’m not a violent person, I’ve never hit him but my emotions were all over the place and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to stay calm alone in a room with him.

Luckily he was free to see us so we set off to talk this out…in separate cars.

xBx

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