When my husband Charles announced to me that he was in love with someone else, my world came crashing down upon me.
My eyes burned and filled up with tears and I remember I let out this unusual, painful cry. I felt like someone had just punched me in the throat and I actully felt like I was going to pass out. I remember collapsing into a heap on the floor right then and there. I would have much rather he had told me that he had been “fucking someone else” rather than, “I’m in love with someone else”.
I can’t tell you exactly what happened next except the next couple of months to a year were all a huge blur. I went into severe depression, I attempted suicide, spoke to “the other woman” and humiliated myself, begging her to leave my husband alone, I got arrested for assaulting Charles, spent the most humiliating 36 hours of my life in jail and was then put into a strict psychiatric program for 6 weeks. I was ruined, I was a mess, I was wreck and I almost lost custody of my son. All that I had gone through all of those years with Charles, I felt, were for nothing.
Broke and broken I lived in a fog for a very long time, struggling in every way imaginable. I lost my little family life, my home and my car. I remember the hatred I had for the woman my husband had left me for. In my eyes, she had broken some kind of woman's “code” by sleeping with a married man and then not waiting for him to either work it out with his wife or to be divorced. I hated her for “backstabbing” me. I hated her for existing. She had been asked to step aside to let us work it out but refused and I vowed I would never trust another woman again.
Fortunately, for me, I didn’t have to keep that “vow”; after months of being pathetic, and seriously “fucked up”, I met a group of women. Not psychiatrists, therapists or anyone that could prescribe drugs, just normal women that became my peers to help through my hardships. Oh, it didn’t happen overnight. I fought, I kicked, I screamed and mistrusted but these women never abandoned me. They held me when I cried and helped me celebrate my successes.
These women supported me in my dreams and goals and held me accountable for my actions. I attended a women’s retreat where I learned to accept responsibility for the role I played in the end of my marriage and I learned valuable relationship tools including what made men tick.
Today, so many years after Charles made his announcement of being in love with another woman. I am no longer broke OR broken. I own my own house, new car, and business, I have a healthy, happy son and have now re-married. My new husband is a wonderful man that meets all of my relationship needs in every way and I couldn’t be the successful, happy woman that I am today if it wasn’t for his unwavering love and support for me. I made it through a divorce despite the fact that studies show divorce is often one of the most traumatic periods in a person's life. It has also been stated that it is the second-most stressful event in life, after the death of a spouse and I made it through!
I’d have to write another entire book on the lessons I learned here but I’ll give you just a few: “What goes around comes around”. The man that left his first wife was also the same man that left his second wife, me. Ouch. Some could say, I got what I had coming to me and it was my entire fault because I flirted with a married man who then left his first wife for me. Others say, he never loved me or else he wouldn’t have wanted to be with another woman. But all I have to tell you is only what I’ve learned.
One of the main reasons married men sleep with other women is because other women keep sleeping with married men! While you are out on your safari, this should be your rule #1: NO MARRIED MEN. I don’t care if he tells you he has an open relationship or that his wife is cruel, heartless and that there is no sex or love anymore. Nothing is worth it, just please, don’t date married men! There are plenty of unmarried men out there, happy to be with you. Value yourself enough to not play second best. You deserve a man all to yourself and don’t need to put another woman through heartache or pain. Not to mention their children. Some consider the trauma a child suffers through divorce as a form of child abuse. If you get in the way before a man makes his final decision on divorce you could be responsible for the man’s children to suffer greatly through their parents divorce. The percentage of adults in therapy today who come from divorced parents is overwhelmingly greater than those who came from homes where their parents remained married. He may have eventually left me for another woman but I was not innocent either. After all of the suffering I went through, I finally was able to realize and accept the role I may have played in the end of Charles’ first marriage. I then made sure I phoned Charles’ first wife and apologized to her.
Again, I can’t entirely blame Charles for falling into the arms of another woman when he left me. I used to stroke his ego and made him feel like a King. Then I became a miserable, bitter person to be around. I didn’t make him feel attractive, important or special in anyway anymore. I became depressed, didn’t do anything around the house and when he asked me to get help for my depression. I just ignored him and blamed him. Then I became that cruel, cold bitch no one wanted to be around. I nagged at him all the time. Thus, the second lesson from this particular expedition would have to be that who you are in the beginning will determine who he will fall in love with.
This is why being yourself on those first dates is SO important. Always be honest with yourself and with the man you are with. The way a man feels about himself when he is with you is what indicates to him whether or not he is in love with you. When he is with you and he feels great about himself, he thinks he’s in love. So, remember that the woman you are when your man falls in love with you is the woman he is going to want to be married to…forever. While out on the dating scene be very conscious of this because who I was when Charles met me and how I made him feel back then was definitely not the same woman he eventually left.
Finally, I learned about trust. You either confide in another woman or you do it alone and you can not do it alone. I will keep telling you this. I know now, you can’t trust all women unfortunately. My friend and I basically begged my husband’s new woman to leave him alone and let him work out his marriage, but she never did. That’s ok though because like me, you too can find women that you can trust, talk to them and then, hold on to them. That’s what I did in the end.
I was overbearing and constantly whining to Charles. I eventually wore him down with my complaining about his son and his ex wife. Men cannot just be supportive and “just listen”. It is their instinct to try and solve our problems. Women however are natural nurturers and you can only benefit by sharing your feelings with a woman you trust. When Charles got fed up with my nagging and my depression, he proposed taking a lover, having an "open" marriage. I told him this was "ok" with me because I was in severe low self-esteem and depression and terrified of having my husband leaving me. I thought if I told Charles this, he would just think I was pathetic and leave for sure. Instead of going to another woman and telling her I felt inadequate and was scared of Charles' leaving me, I kept me feelings and thoughts to myself and totally let things eat me up inside. I then got angry and became this cruel person I didn’t even know existed. I became full of anger, arrogance and bitterness. When I should have given my pain to another woman, I went and dated other men to boost my ego and not feel so inadequate instead. I thought,
" if Charles' wants to take a lover, than I can too, I'll show him!"
The only problem was Charles not only found a lover but he fell in love with her.
The best thing I learned from all of this is that the times when we feel hurt or broken are the best times to reach out to another woman and NOT a man. I made a stupid mistake and lost my husband because I didn't share any of my feelings with anyone else. I became cruel to Charles, treated him like dirt, dated other men to boost my ego and then was actually surprised when he told me he was leaving? Stupid, silly girl. When you are going through a rough time, rather than filling your ego with men, fill your heart with women...
LESSON LEARNED:Enough said.
