Hi everyone,
Been sitting with this for the last couple of weeks, and wasn’t gonna post it but I am not needing to go back to therapy and in my real life I can’t think of a single soul that I feel like bouncing this off of.
One of the rules of our reconciliation is no lying about anything. Truly our marriage has not been fraught with lies or anything like that outside of the affair activities. I consider my husband an honest person, he considers me one generally speaking.
So, as you know we have moved back from being on the road. We had sold most of our stuff prior but I had kept some keepsake boxes in one of our kids basement. We just picked those up and I had been going through them and came across one of my husbands journals from when he was traveling abroad early in our relationship.
I had read it before. When we first started dating, he had been off and on with someone else that was pretty much toying with his head. Well, when we got together she wanted to come back in and he had become confused. There wasn’t any lying about it, we had been very close a long time before becoming an actual couple and all this happened like a month into that exclusivity agreement. This journal though was a point of contention because it said hiking out is a great person who deserves a lot of happiness, but "ms. Tramp" is my soulmate. Yeah, spoiler alert we know she wasn’t.
Anyway, we broke up briefly, and within a week he changed his mind. I think he saw the truth and came back. At the time this hurt. Lot, but like I said we might have been dating like a month and I knew him well, I took him back. It was rocky though as you can imagine at first. I asked him if he slept with her while we were broken up and he said no.
Well, anyway, coming across this journal I decided to ask again. This time I got the answer "yes, once".
I don’t know why this ancient history bothers me so much, I mean at the time even I understood that he just thought he wanted her because of the head games. I have had no doubt over the years that had he really ended up with her it would not have worked.
BUT- one I never thought he had lied to me. The other is we said throw down anything here and now that the other doesn’t know before we said okay after this no more lies, we both feel it would be grounds for divorce.
So I asked him why he didn’t disclose back when we said that, he said he just didn’t remember. This is entirely feasible with what I know and understand about him, but on the other hand like that’s a pretty big lie to not have thought about that over the years at all especially in light of the infidelity.
So now, I don’t know how to proceed. Do I want a divorce over this? No. However do I also feel bound to my word? Yes. And if I let this go what message does it send to him?
Truth? I am bothered by it, yes. I am realizing I don’t have gas in the tank here so much that I wish I hadn’t even asked. This happened nearly 30 years ago, it wasn’t cheating, it was stupid.
But the lie. I consider it part of my integrity to keep contracts with myself. But for this to be the thing that takes everything down seemed heavy handed when you consider the much deeper shit we have already waded through. I already know he is more flawed than I once believed.
I am sort of mostly pissed that now this brings up more questions and confusion. I am torn on what makes sense versus living my values. I know I could be okay divorced but when push comes to shove I also know that isn’t what I want.
[This message edited by hikingout at 3:38 PM, Thursday, October 10th]