It was always there

I have been squeamish about including the term sex addiction on my blog. I preferred to think of what happened as a little slip. A one-off infidelity. Maybe I thought Neil's searches for it would bring up my blog. But now our relationship is officially over. I venture to suggest that his sex addiction never went away. Nor was it ever really a problem for him. It is a lifestyle. A real woman with hangups, domestic concerns, worries, hormones, demands is actually something he doesn't want to deal with.



I believe and acknowledge that our relationship is over, and yet for some reason I am driven to have one last snoop. And as always, it bears fruit. Sexually explicit SMS from someone we both know, which leaves me in no doubt that they are or have been intimate.

Its not as though it is the first time this has happened. Let me remind you...

1. The original No Smoke Without Fire in which I surmise that regarding an earlier row over a text message, his infidelity was not in fact in my imagination. Too bad I've had several rounds of infertility treatment and bought a house with him in the interim.

2. There was the STI scare (and he currently has another) although these things can lie dormant and don't really signify infidelity in any real sense. Disturbing for a good convent girl who knew for a fact she had not been with anyone else.

3. The second No Smoke Without Fire in which he accidentally stays logged into his email and I find quite a few leads..

"Nah" I think, "I'm imagining it. They are probably just good friends". One at least turned out to be a male colleague of his!! Lesley!! (and anyway I'm no saint myself by this time)

4. The unexplainable receipts

5. The German controversy

... and finally this. Finally there is very little doubt that he has never been faithful to me (if that matters)

I have repeatedly given him the benefit of the doubt, wondering if I am reading too much into this? Is it all in my head? Are they just good friends?

I am not particularly hurt by this, but it does give me the impetus to actually move on and start a separate life. I love my home, and I have no doubt this will be damaging to Connor, but I can't live my life as the room mate/ house keeper/ admin assistant and Connor won't look back when he's 40 and say "Gee mum, thank you for staying with someone who you didn't love, and who continually cheated on you to give me a stable home"

Silent scream

Who to tell? Thank god for my blogging friends..

I have been in a sort of personal purgatory, visiting and revisiting the events of last year and trying to make sense of them, finally resolving to talk to someone and speaking to a counsellor who says "you tell who you like!" so I agonise over to whether to tell my mother. She has always been my chief confidante. I felt sure she would see something amiss, ask a few well directed questions and I would crumble and spill the beans. It was just a matter of which, and how many beans I would spill. So I prepared my responses in increasing levels of shocking detail.

It was almost a releif to find no questions whatsoever. But then

is she interested?
is she too busy?
how much more alone I feel

I find myself impatient when my family club together and try to resolve the minutiae of my life when they know nothing of the lumbering iceberg that lies just beneath my psyche, and are apparently now unable to detect it. I feel overwhelming sadness when my family, and particularly my mother, appear to be no longer on my wavelength.

Infaithlity infertelity ??

For half of last year I was undergoing IVF treatment. I have been through this before, and I know the indignities one suffers. Including prodding probing and testing for both parties (but chiefly the woman) Often you are asked how often you have sex, or even if you are having sex successfully :) as part of the early fertility work-up. And to maintain sperm count and quality you are advised to have sex "every other day"

Had a funny thought today... If I had known what was really going on with Neil, when the Dr asked these questions I could've answered "Oh yes doc, my partner has no problem ejaculating - every other day for all I know - just not with me" What a truly insensitive man he is to let me go through that and not be 100% on board with me.

Realisation

I have come to some sort of an uneasy compromise about leaving my life as it is for the time being.

(1) The house is an investment - whatever money I put into it, I will get back- so I shouldn't sweat it. Just get a good pre-nup to ensure this happens.

(2) I have bound myself financially to Neil, but I don't need to do so via kids. No need to make that mistake again. I have a reason to embrace the menopause within the next decade - it will set me free of this decision.

(3) Home comforts and stability are best for Connor

(4) I can never rely on Neil to be faithful. That's the bottom line.

Despite all this, my gut is telling me to run. Funnily enough the last time I felt this way was as a teenager/in my early 20s the time would come, a boyfriend had done nothing wrong in particular, I just suddenly thought yeuch, I don't need this I'm going to move on. Trouble is now I have baggage.

I read to many blogs by vindictive, discontent divorcees. I know they write for themselves, and for comfort no doubt. Like them, I never intended to do more than share my diary, but the washing of dirty linen in public makes unsettling reading. I vow to view the world with more humor and less catharsis.

If you love him, forgive him, if you don't go

Another thing I've learnt about myself, I sit on the fence. I simply am not ready to make the decision in the title.

A part of me says "Life is an adventure, who cares what happens I will be able to deal with it when it comes"

Why is it that although we've been together over a year, I don't know him. I still have to supress beliefs that he is a sociopathic woman hater. I don't trust him, I trust the mailman more and in my darkest fears he is a predator.

I spent hours trawling the web looking up Misogyny...
Then decided it was more likely Masculism..
I identified with the experience of those married to someone with Borderline Personality Disorder...
Feeling I was undoubtedly in the clutches of a skilled Manipulator or a Narcissist....
and faced the possibility of Sociopathy....

There are elements of all of them in him, but he is not any of them specifically. Finally I look at myself, perhaps the most scary possibility.. it is just me that is Mad, over-reacting and hormonal?

Yet I choose to stand back and take and academic interest, when am I going to get that signal that is so clear, this is not my problem, I have to go? or will things improve?

How about this. Either he is telling the perfect truth, when he goes off for a drive, or works late that is precisely what he is doing, or it is an even more elaborate cover up than before, previously when I became suspicious, he became angry and swore that he could not possibly have done anything in the time/was too sick/ any woman he may have met would've been working etc. but I found this out to be untrue.

If the second turns out to be true. Why does he insist on messing with my head and lying to me? I find it to be demeaning, insulting and disrespectful.

Given his history and his addiction, it is slightly more likely that he has upped his game and is now finding better ways of covering up. If this is true how should I react to play him at his own game. Options include; Cheat myself, have him followed/track him, go with him, just leave the relationship. or disengage.

One thing is for certain, obsessing about it is not healthy for me. One article I found usefule for getting my head straight was this. But so far the best I can do if I opt to stay, is disengage.

Disloyal, Ungrateful

My dear readers. I know my last post may have seemed disloyal. Most people write vitriol about thier ex's not about their fiances.

Could it be that somehow I am projecting onto him some of the anger I feel over my divorce? My Single time between Marriage and dating again was so short, and I relished it. I wonder if I should have stayed there longer.

He could be just a decent guy, who has finally met the right woman, has some issues about sex and sexuality, but is desperately trying to clean up his act. After all, he has been single for a long time, and the way he behaved was fine for a single guy, only answerable to himself, and the women who were fool enough to be drawn in. This is the way I like to think.

Then there is the dark side I am the one being drawn in. As Meg said

There are 2 pre-requisites to being an addict or a cheater.

First, one must be an excellent liar. Secondly, they must be a master manipulator. Without these two skills, a person is unable to be either of those things for any length of time!

If you really loved someone you would not cheat on them however loudly your loins cried out for satisfaction, and for me to believe I am special or different, is just a symptom of the fact that I myself am being manipulated.

Could I be in the clutches of a predator. Neil is my fiance, he claims to adore my child, we have bought a house together (we earn the same by the way, in case you think I am a gold-digging ingrate) and so far I have put more cash into the house than he has.

I will go on living the dream, but I will protect myself.

Living the Dream

My parents are staying with Neil and I at the moment. In our, oh I have to admit it, breathtakingly beautiful home, with Neil being the soul of diplomacy, tact and affable good humour - to the point of actually overdoing it with my mother - hugging her goodbye, saying how much he looked forward to their visit ! (isn't there some law of nature about sons in law and mothers in law?). The view, the parties, the flawless diamond ring, the future plans so engagingly shared, so playful with my little boy.... Everything is, on the surface, perfect.


Anyway it occurred to me, if Neil was the man they think he is, I really would be living the dream, but they don't know in the short year we have been together he has been porking other women and lying shamelessly about it. I only found out by mistake. The only reason I stay, apart from this facade of a dream, is that he is doing everything he can to move on, and getting therapy for sex addiction :) Mind you like other addictions, the lies that have come with it over the past few months have been damaging in extreme to those close to him. I read this anonymous email on a support group web site lately.

I was married to a "sex addict" who was also very adept at hiding it...porn, prostitutes, girlfriends, you name it, he did it.

When I found out, he obviously expected me to help him "recover" from his addiction, because of course I'd have to constantly monitor him, his computer usage and his movements, telephone calls, etc.

Nope. I divorced him. After all the lying and controlling and cheating, I did not know who he really was, even though we'd been married for almost 20 years. And I had no desire to play policeman, especially since if I ever slipped up in surveillance, he'd have an excuse because I didn't watch him closely enough. Gah.

I don't think he was really an addict. I think he's narcissistic and selfish.
anon 12.02.05 - 11:44 am #

I have to fight the urge to act as this woman did. Don't tell me to move on, I'm not ready. So many other things are in the right place I need to sit this out. But I need to write it, to show myself I am doing this with my eyes open.

No smoke without fire

Just after we moved in together, Neil left his phone on the kitchen bench and I saw a text message from a girl called April. To my shame, curiosity overcame me, and when I read it, I got more than I bargained for... Thanks for the sex last week, so enjoyed f**king you, lovely memory. I forwarded it to my own phone and deleted it. I was going to play strategically get myself and my son out of the house, and then confront him with it, but in the next few hours, an argument flared up (in front of Connor). I told him it was over between him and me, because I knew he was sleeping with someone else.

He denied it, and said it was just a stupid text message - for all he knew I had sent it myself just to create a reason to leave. And, after all, how many times had I sent a message to the wrong person??? - "April", whoever she was, was probably drunk.

"you're a very good liar" I said, whereupon he took an office chair and repeatedly threw it to the ground smashing it to smithereens. I was in tears, and my dear little son was trying to comfort me by passing me a soft toy. The reason for this outburst was that he, Neil, hates one thing more than anything else in the world...being falsely accused.

My son was with his father that weekend, and I spent the weekend in a hotel trying to work out a strategy. Neil had told me I needed to give him 6 hours notice if I wanted to come back to the house - it was his home, and I had no rental agreement. He removed all the money from our joint bank account (presumably so I couldn't rip him off as well as falsely accuse him)

For some reason (probably nowhere else to go) I moved back in with him. I had made a booking for a removals van, but Neil checked my phone and confronted me with it, and I cancelled it. All the rental properties I had applied for had turned me down.

In the months that followed, he dealt with the problem by always having his mobile phone turned off when I was around. He didn't want anything as stupid as that to come in the way of us again. He told me he loved me several times a day. I gave him the benefit of the doubt - recalling that I had occasionally sent an sms to the wrong person - although doubting I would've fired one off with that sort of content without double checking it first. The topic came up a few times, usually ending with him being angry. I even asked him what he would do if I received something like that. He said he would be vigilant for a while and then let it go.

4 months later I received an email from someone I didn't know...

Dear Fiona , A friend of mine from your workplace said that you are seeing or were seeing Neil Brown. I was just wondering if this was true as I may have information that you may be interested in. kind regards, April.

Could this be the same April? and what could she have to tell me?

In a few days I got the answer.

Yes it was the same girl, yes she had bonked him in August and furthermore had been doing so ever since the last time being after the work Christmas party (December 1st) when I had left early to take my son home. She sent me dozens of (quite explicit) emails between the two of them. The timing of their liasons also shows that on the days he (oh so generously) dropped my son off at daycare, he visited her on the way back to work. And on the nights when I struggled home on public transport with my son and all our bags, he used my car to go and visit April.

In some way my whole world crumpled. In this time we had bought a dream home together, and we had been trying to have a baby together. His lies are unfathomable. He had made a huge fuss about me meeting an ex- boyfriend from 15 years ago (who happened to be in town although he now lives overseas) for a coffee, and all the time he had been carrying on with April, with his phone switched off to protect our relationship from ME, MY suspicious mind, and MY false accusations.

I haven't posted for a while because I am in shock. After all I have been through, I am so tough, very little touches me now, but this??? how am I going to uproot my son again?? I could stay and put up with it, but I am not a kept woman, and most people would say I do not have to. He has disrespected me and lied appallingly. He, despite his protestations to the contrary, is not a good man.

I have put my life savings into the house. The cost of moving there was enormous. I will suffer a huge financial loss if I try to get out.

I was already facing Christmas without my boy, since he will be with his dad and new girlfriend, I was hoping for a romantic time with Neil, but now I am frankly repulsed.

I am being strategic this time and not telling him that I know, but frankly I am at a loss as to how to proceed.