I’m Still Standing…yeah, yeah, yeah!

Sorry, couldn’t help myself, every time I log in, that song pops into my head and it has no bearing on why I chose that as my profile name. I chose it because after all I’ve been through in my life, I’m still standing…strong. I will preface this by saying 1) I’m a terrible writer, I ramble horribly and 2) I’m from NY so I’ll blame that for the cursing that will abound 😉

Where to begin? When I met D, I was 36 with three kids that I supported on my own – kinda sorta; my boys were receiving a penance from the government because their father was killed when I was 27 and I received child support from time to time from my daughter’s father. I was working full time at a kick ass job and had a decent home in a great neighborhood strictly for the school district. So, while I may not have had the most modern of homes on the block, and, my kids clothes came from Walmart and even Goodwill at times, I was self sufficient and quite happy eating my Hamburger Helper. I had a great circle of friends but was missing out on companionship. After trying to be set up by my best friend and failing miserably; I tried an online dating site and lasted three days due to the massive amount of pervs that were emailing me. It was nasty. But, it’s how I met D. (Who knew?)

D was active duty military and very handsome. He volunteered at the SPCA (I LOVE dogs); he volunteered at the Special Olympics (obviously I love kids). He always had perfect manners – held the door open, opened the car door, placed my order for me. Just a wonderful man. One that I felt comfortable bringing home to my dad (well my FIL from my first marriage, my dad died shortly after my first husband).

We dated; we fell in love; He asked my dad for my hand in marriage and my dad was thrilled. He even said, “L, don’t fuck this up. You got a good one here!”

We started looking at bigger homes in the area and got the engagement ring. He proposed and then shortly after got hard orders to move. Shit! Now I was leaving my home AND my friends AND my kick ass job. But, that’s the way life is in the military; I’d been through this before with my first husband. We had the normal stresses of packing but had to pack two households since he still lived in his house.

That’s when the first red flag popped up that I promptly ignored. He’d been using my computer to check his email while I was at work and had it minimized. I got home and went to check my email and lo and behold there’s some nasty ass chick spread eagle on her bed waiting to greet me. Why hello! He explained it was someone from his past that kept emailing him. I explain that it’s a simple matter of telling her to quit it. He says will do. Subject forever closed. Looking back I wonder if I had gone through his email then like I did later what I would have found. Would I have gone through with the marriage?

Fast forward because for the longest time all is great, or at least it was to me. We didn’t have sex as much as I would have liked but he has a form of ED from diabetes so I easily explained that away. He was looking at porn, but we also watched it together, no biggie there either. We communicated, my job was great, his was great, kids were great – yea for us! Best military move ever! *insert eye roll* because the shit is about to hit the fan.

I’m finding that every time I walk into the room he’s clicking out of porn. We argue about it, we sit and have long discussions about it. I express how it hurts my feelings and now it’s beginning to make me feel inadequate and at 5’2″ 125lbs – I shouldn’t feel that way. He promises he’ll stop and apologizes, blah, blah, blah. It happens countless times. He blames my Migraines, he blames stress at work, he blames me, he blames the kids. I say fuck this shit. You want porn instead of my hot bod, you can have it. See ya later bye! I give him the terms of the divorce and that’s that. I don’t need you or your house, I’m done. He cries and begs and pleads and I fall for it. We go for more counseling and I think all of our problems are solved.

By now though I’ve had to quit work due to my Migraines becoming so severe and so frequent and focus my time and energy on my health. I believe that this caused quite a bit of resentment on D’s part towards me. I think a part of him saw me as “mooching” off of him. It was during this time that his porn use escalated. We began sleeping in separate rooms because he had gained so much weight that his snoring had become so loud I couldn’t sleep, causing me more Migraines. I’d fall asleep in our bed and then thirty minutes later have to leave. I’d hear him in the middle of the night, moving around in the bedroom. I would walk in and catch him looking at porn.

I finally got to a point that I just didn’t care and neither did he. It was me trying to catch him but doing nothing except degrading him and him getting mad at me for sneaking up on him. Eventually, we grew apart but still held hands in front of the kids. But if he touched me, I flinched. He bought me expensive gifts one year, just of the blue and then would turn around and tell me he felt utterly detached from me. It made my head spin with confusion.

I lost myself that year. Literally. I understand how they say the addict can forget certain behaviors because there are things from that particular year that I can’t quite piece together. Timelines and dates and things that were said…I don’t remember all of it.

But, the thing I remember the most, of course, is the car. He bought me a car for my visit home to NY. The day he gave it to me he said, “I hope you’ll always know how much I love you, L. You are my heart and my soul.” I’ll always remember that because I knew he meant it. But, it was also a consultation prize. A way of saying – here, I royally fucked up this marriage, but look, I got you this nifty car to make up for it. (I now have a new car LOL) Because once I got up to NY, he called and told me to stay as long as I wanted, there was no rush to come back….ouch.

So, I come home a few weeks later, start the divorce, again, but ask to stay on his insurance for a medical procedure and for the kids to finish out school until Christmas break. He agrees.

We live like roommates for the next few months, which really isn’t that much of a change but we’re both miserable. He finally tells me that I’m much more important than porn and that we’ll only look at it together like before – like a dumbass, I agree. And this is where I became someone I despise. I looked at porn that grossed me out but never said I was offended. I bought more and more lingerie in hopes to compete with the whores in porn. Barf. And, for eight fucking months I did this.

Then I found the naked pictures of him on his computer along with over 200,000 porn images. Completely by accident and I was utterly surprised! Okay, porn…but this?? He disclosed one online affair. I was devastated and left for home to sort things out in my head. I decided I could remain married to him if he sought help. Again, we went to marriage counseling….but my trust had been shattered and my gut was screaming. So, I began keeping an eye on him.

Finally, I had the gut instinct I needed and installed a keylogger on his computer. I didn’t have a password yet, but I’d get it soon enough. I got on his computer, did some digging and found dozens of porn pics from the day before. I left every picture open on his screen. He came home, I freak out and I left. Me digging around on his computer froze it and he had to reboot – ha ha – KL activated.

They say be careful what you wish for….it’s true, I now have the proof I need for a quick divorce but I wish I never had to see it. Thankfully, he only opened a few emails and then just deleted all of them so the KL didn’t get them all, but it got enough.
***trigger alert**
In the end, he had dozens of online affairs both sexual and non sexual. He visited several adult sites (some he doesn’t even recall). He web camed with some of them. He invited one of his whores into my home and then compared shave jobs with her and felt how smooth they were while I waited for him to come to bed. The week his Nan died, he went home for the funeral and got a blowjob from some skank from cyber friends and a blowjob from his child hood friend’s wife. My only consultation is this is that he was totally selfish and didn’t do anything for them. He took a shower with a co-worker but she was running late for work and he couldn’t get hard (she wouldn’t even turn around to face him during the shower-not sure why, but I get a sense of satisfaction from this). His last attempt at acting out physically was with another co-worker. He took a shower at her house while she waited for him downstairs. He flashed her, she got pissed and told him to get the fuck out of her house before she reported him. 😉 All but the first physical acting out happened within a few months of each other.

It was then that he knew he was out of control and tried to stop everything himself and couldn’t. He was to scared to tell me anything (duh) and kept slipping with porn. Once I finally flipped out – I’m not proud of the things I said to him that day, but now I know what seeing red means – something clicked in his head. When I left to cool down, he got on Candeo and he’s been sober since January. He sees a CSAT every three weeks and attends SAA although keeps talking about switching over to SA.

My biggest frustration is that he isn’t working a healthy recovery and he knows it. He has until December to find a sponsor and start working on his steps or, at the very least, working his workbook- that will be a year since Dday 3.

If you read this whole thing – thanks – I know it’s long!!