Coming Soon… Marital Affairs

The ugly truth and Hollywood’s glorification of an emotionally shredding experience.

 

I wrote this on 2 November 2015… then swiftly forgot about it. Now, at nearly a year later since I wrote Broken, is as good a time as any to reflect on this. I’m going to be what only I know to be. Blunt and Honest. Yes, I don’t come off painted in the greatest of light… but I think… I think this has to be said and that is far more important than my image. Fuck image.

 

I watched Some Like It Hot. It was disgusting. But only because, for me, it was the event that broke a good man. Joe DiMaggio. I relate a lot to Marylin. She and I have been diagnosed with the same problems. Borderline Personality Disorder. I remember seeing pictures of her smiling and laughing while she stood over the infamous subway grate. I saw pictures of Joe mortified, standing by watching as men—strangers—ignored him and made sexual comments to his wife. He begged her to stop. She did what a woman with BPD aches to do: seek out approval and acceptance. The next day, Joe filed for divorce. I saw film of Marilyn crying the next day into the cameras.

“I don’t… please. I can’t talk about this.” She had a little girl’s voice and hated herself for what she did. She was ripped apart by her divorce. I have no doubt in my mind, that Marilyn loved her Joe.

Years later, when DiMaggio got the news that Marilyn was in the hospital, he screamed, “Let me see my wife!” when they wouldn’t let him in.

Desperate Housewives… Some Like It Hot… Sex and the City…

Hollywood has it all wrong.

There is an excitement… a thrill… almost of addictive quality. And you use that thrill to shut down the guilt and the pain… if you can feel the pain and the guilt at all.

You choose to be blind, to not see what your choices are doing to someone you once loved. You still love them. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so angry with them. You would have left them long ago. You are numb. You feel nothing but the thrill. And you are blind, mute, and deaf to the consequences of your choices. You are naive. With your lover you feel excitement. With your spouse, you feel hate. Hate allows you to proceed with your actions without any thought as to the consequences.

And then the marriage dies. Divorce papers are signed and we forget. What is left are the broken remnants of the man or wife we loved… once. There is too much hate to feel anything else.  A new relationship enfolds. One built on bitter resentment.

 

But there is another side to this. Why the affair?

I hate that word. Affair. It sounds like something seductively exciting. It truly deserves an uglier word that reflects something closer to the truth. Traitor. Liar. Dishonor. Shame. Regret. Venom. Poison. Still, these words don’t come close to truly reflecting what it is you do. By this article’s end, I will have the word. If you stick it out and ask yourself what it is you are truly doing… what you have done… if you allow yourself the remnants of love, then you will see… I’m rambling. I need to focus my thoughts.

…

“It doesn’t hurt him that much,” I insisted.

“Doesn’t it?”

“Well no,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because he doesn’t care!”

Now there. There is truly the topic at hand. “My choices don’t hurt him at all because in the end, I don’t believe he truly cares.”

*Smiles* That is Borderline Personality Disorder. Distorted views of one’s self worth. Believing your are less valuable than you are worth.

 

A person feels unloved. Because they don’t believe they are. They seek out that love in another and dismiss any possibility that their spouse could be hurt because… Because the choices are based solely on the thought that their spouse doesn’t care.

But!

What if…

What if you’re wrong? What if you are loved and your spouse does love you more than you think? What if your actions do hurt them far more than you know? Then what?

They react because they are hurt. You interpret their hurt as “control.” But what if they are only lashing out because you truly have hurt them that deeply? What have you done?

 

Let’s assume you’ve gone through these questions. You’ve sought out counseling and you’ve decided to save the marriage. Now… on the other side of an affair… What have you done?

On this side, there is no excitement. Only pain. Significant mounds of pain. Hurt. Distrust. Regret. A strong desire to go back and take it all back. Because in the end you realize just how much you love him… and how much you’ve hurt him.

There is a painful twinge that hits you every time you recall your lover. Regret that you started something you couldn’t finish. Regret that someone so wonderful is associated now only with something so horrifically painful. Regret that someone you love has become only a living reminder of the biggest mistake of your life. And this… this is truly the bitter bite of this sting. That someone you love reminds you every day of how very much you slaughtered… murdered the heart of someone else you love. You want to die, to curl up and kill… but all you have to blame is you. You feel vile and filth. And you want for nothing more than to take it all back.

“See!” The voices scream in my head… Who am I kidding? You all know the voices in my head are Angel, Erik, and Ian. “See!?” Angel screams. “You are worth nothing! You are useless! You are better off dead!”

Is that why I did this? To prove how horrible I am as a person? To prove to my husband exactly why he shouldn’t love me?

You and your spouse go on to repair the damage done, and you slip back into that place where you and your spouse are perfect together. As much as you can you mend the damage done between you and your spouse, you will never go back—you can’t go back—and mend the bitterness between your lover and you. That bitter poison is destined to forever sit and eat away at what little relationship… affections you may have left. Until a foul distaste encompasses that memory of you two… and you hate… you hate all that is that once hurt the spouse you love.

Affairs are as ugly as the lies told to preserve them, the murderous traitor you become, you deception and the selfishness… the complete and total lack of concern for others. Greed. That is the word. I had an affair? No. I had a vile and most murderous case of Greed that rendered the other half of me a warped remnant deformed by the poison inside him. And I am the poisoner.