I'm still standing (literally)

Before my WW, I had practically no experience with women. A handful of dates, been kissed once. I was very naive.

We met in the middle of my college years through one of the campus student organizations for our major. One time our group was at someone's apartment, hanging out around the community hot tub. She and another girl were in the hot tub and somehow the conversation turned to an erotic dream WW had about me. This stunned me as I had low self esteem and couldn't imagine being seen in that way. I was visibly creeped out and they knew I was shy and laughed it off. Some time later she asked me out to go see Jurassic Park. Our second date she invited me to dinner at her place. Our second date I was laying on her bed and she came out in lingerie and lay next to me. Being religious I told her I couldn't do that, and asked her to drive me home (I didn't have a car at the time).

She pushed me for marriage. We got married a little over a year after we started seeing each other. The honeymoon literally ended with a car accident. We got rear-ended by a teenage girl with the last name "Hazard". After that, she wasn't in the mood for sex. we only had it once a month after that, despite my attempts to initiate.

We started having friends over at our place on the weekends, and she invited her coworker AP and his OBGF and that is where I first met AP.

November/December 1995:
Her work Christmas Party: She had set me down with a bunch of people I didn't know and told me she would be back soon. She was gone for a long time, but I was too patient for my own good. I'm sure she spent the majority of that time with AP, but I wasn't on alert yet.

OBGF called me once to try to get me suspicious of WW and AP, pointing out that they both worked late at the office. I trusted WW too much to connect the dots and OBGF didn't outright accuse them of cheating.

D-Day: WW sat me down at home and said she had something to tell me. She asked me what my worst fear was. I said that it would be her telling me she was seeing someone else. The thought had not consciously crossed my mind before, and I don't know why I said that. She then said that was true, and I asked if it was her ex. She then told me it was AP from her work.

I did the pick me dance for a month. Took her to some dinner mystery theater to spice things up and not be so "boring" as she put it. We went to a joint session with a therapist she had chosen and seen once already by herself. The one thing that stood out to me was that the therapist seemed surprised to learn WW was still in contact with AP. She told her that for the marriage to work she needed to go NC with AP.

I snooped in her address book and found his home address. One night when we had an argument about some forgettable thing, she said she had to leave to clear her head. I was sure she was going to go to his place so I waited 15 agonizing minutes (considering what happened next it may have been closer to 10) and then headed there myself to see if that is where she went. Unfortunately for me, she must have stopped somewhere to call him and let him know she was coming over, because I caught up to her at the off ramp to his place. She must have thought I followed her the whole time. We pulled over on some side street and argued some more. I then turned around and returned home and she came back hours later.

After New Years, WW asked that we go out to eat, and that she had something to tell me. On the way, she said it wasn't working out and that we needed to end things. We ended up going to Bully's East in San Diego. I remember reading sometime later that it was a popular break-up spot. How fitting. I was so upset that I threw up in the parking lot and asked to go home. When we got home, I tried to go to bed, but then WW told me I had to leave now. She was throwing me out that night. I showed up at my parent's house that night in tears.

A couple of days later I returned to the apartment while she was gone on a ski trip she had planned with her coworkers. Later I learned it was with AP. Who knows if anyone else was invited. In the process of removing my things I saw that the condoms had been moved from the bathroom to the bedroom. If she wasn't sleeping with this guy before, she wasted no time getting with him now.

I went to go see our bishop about the whole thing. At one point I told him "this can't get any worse". To which he replied, "oh yes it can. She told me you came after her with a knife." This shocked me. Why would she say that? Then it came to me. Some weeks before we were having a conversation in our apartment and it turned to the shower scene from Psycho. I was in the kitchen at the time and pulled a knife out and made stabbing motions in the air, while imitating the famous violin screech that accompianed it. She laughed or commented "oh that's creepy" or something. I returned the knife to the block and we continued our conversation like nothing happened. Some time later when a friend of her's was over, she said "do that creepy knife thing for <friend>." I said, "I don't want to, its stupid." "Come on, show her!" "No." "DO IT!" She was practically yelling at me at this point. I relented and pulled the knife out again and made a very half-hearted, eye rolling, clearly unamused display for her and her friend before returning to the block. I had been set up. She wanted a witness. I didn't bother trying to explain this to our bishop as I wouldn't have believed me were I in his place.

I turned to my parent's ward and bishop, and explained the whole thing to him. When he told me it was not my fault, I broke down and cried.

After her little ski affair fog honeymoon, I went back to the apartment for something else, when I thought she would be at work. I found the locks had been changed. I went downstairs to visit a neighbor instead and WW came home during her lunch break and saw me with the neighbor. She invited me in to collect my other things. The neighbor grabbed me and with a panicked look on her face said, "don't you go in there with her alone!" I immediately understood that if I did WW would falsely accuse me of domestic violence. I asked her to come with me so I had a witness. Grabbed my stuff and got out. This is when it dawned on me that I should really be afraid of WW.

During this whole ordeal from when I found out about the affair to when WW had thrown me out, I lost a lot of weight. It must have been about a month because I remember telling people that I lost 30 pounds in a month's time. My mom noticed. We went to a shopping mall, and she made sure to stop and point out every place that sold food. I was already skinny to begin with. I must have looked really bad then.

I found my own therapist, and had my own session with her first before I brought WW. I wanted my own perspective heard before WW could influence her. We then had a joint appointment where my therapist got to meet her and hear her side of things. At my next individual appointment, she told me that WW was a "coat changer", changing her personality to suit her needs. At one session, my therapist asked me to get a response from WW as to why she had the affair, and why she threw me out. WW wrote me a few pages that really went into how inadequate I was in several areas. When the therapist read it, she turned to me and said, "I hope you don't believe any of this." She also said how she wished she could set me up with one of her other patients but it would have gone against patient confidentiality to do so.

I got a new job, and started the divorce process through a paralegal. I actually met with the paralegal on Valentine's Day. She asked me if I wanted to file that same day and I said yes. She actually waited until the next day to file, so I wouldn't have a tainted view of Valentine's Day but I didn't care. Still don't. I remember talking to WW on the phone and when I told her I was getting the divorce, she cheered. She. Cheered. She apologized immediately after but the damage was done.

The divorce went pretty uneventful. The paralegal told me that WW asked for alimony but she shut her down pretty quick saying that she wasn't going to get any. She got the new car we had just purchased. I got the old truck, and primary responsibility for the nearly $10,000 of credit card debt we had racked up.

I tried to go back to my church's singles ward, but that bishop told me I couldn't come back until the divorce was finalized. This made me upset as WW got to sleep around with her boy toy, and I couldn't even go meet girls. It felt so unfair. I can see where that bishop was coming from now though. He didn't want some other girl getting her heart broken just in case WW and I reconciled.

I cried myself to sleep for a month after being thrown out. I would go for walks around my childhood neighborhood, very angry for the lack of answers I had and the wrongs that WW had done to me and then the perceived wrongs. Finally I had an epiphany that I was getting myself worked up about things I had no idea that WW had done or not, and that I needed to let go.

Despite trying to go no contact, I did run into WW a number of times. She found out where my new apartment was and left some mail under the windshield wiper of my truck.

As part of my 180 I started taking dance lessons through a country western bar. I would go there early before they start charging a cover for the night and dance with the other dancers before the drunks got enough liquid courage to chase us off the floor. One night, I caught sight of WW’s friend and was about to go over and say hi, but then I saw WW. By then I considered the bar my home turf and was debating just staying but ultimately decided to call the night a loss and make a run for it. WW must have saw me and chased after me as I left the bar. I saw her standing outside as I drove away.

I find that I Google stalk her whenever I am feeling bad about something, and now associate whatever bad feelings to the affair. One of these times occurred in 2014, when I was laid off from work. Google stalking revealed her obituary, a few months after she had passed. What a shock that was. I suspected lung cancer, as she was a smoker and never could kick the habit.

Since I couldn’t Google stalk her anymore, I turned my attention to AP. I didn’t learn anything new about him until I found his obituary in 2017. He’s buried in the same graveyard as my mother. So I outlived both of them. Does that mean I win?

2022 President's Day weekend: I got a call from someone who said that WW had made them the godmother of her daughter, and she was trying to piece together WW's past for her daughter's sake. Through her I learned that she never graduated from college, got addicted to pain killers which ultimately caused her death, and never worked since she left San Diego about 20 years earlier. WW had told her that she had told lies about me. I declined to know what they were, as I figured they were just going to upset me again. I told her I had forgiven WW for what she had done to me. I had kept our wedding album as one of the few things I had left of WW, and offered to send it to her to give to WW’s daughter and she accepted.

I met a girl through a e-mail pen pal site the year I was recovering from the affair. We didn’t have the right chemistry but she did introduce me to a good friend of hers, who happened to be going to San Diego for Christmas vacation. I took her to my country western bar for dancing, then to a New Years Eve party where I taught her how to Tango, and she’s been putty in my hands ever since. We have three children now, and celebrated our 26th anniversary in Hawaii.

If I had a time machine, would I go back and warn myself not to get involved with WW? I don’t know. The obvious avoiding the whole heartbreak aside, the immense pain I experienced has awakened a compassionate side to me that wasn’t there before.

So why post now, almost 30 years after the affair? I guess I still associate unrelated bad events with the affair, and I guess the recent Israeli-Gaza war is a trigger for me. I pain shop the stories of others. I love the ones were the betrayed takes the high road and karma takes the wayward.

3 comments posted: Sunday, February 25th, 2024

180 Theme Songs

I was reading the other thread about affair anthems and got to thinking about what songs I associate with my experience. What comes to mine are these:

"Blue" by LeAnn Rimes: my "OMG, somebody gets how I am feeling!" song and
"One Way Ticket" also by LeAnn Rimes: after reading about the 180 I realize this is my 180 theme song.

So, in the spirit of doing a 180 on the affair anthems thread, what is your 180 theme song?

8 comments posted: Tuesday, November 21st, 2023