When She Stops Saying She Loves You Chapter 3 “What Happens Tomorrow”

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What Happens Tomorrow

My parents lived in the next town over. It was a fifteen minute drive to their Homeowner’s Association affiliated house in one of the original neighborhoods on the outskirts of the incorporated county. The zone was called Lakeside View but only, maybe, five houses actually got the lakeside view as the other side was still tree-lined and the other houses were up a small incline. It was a good thing though, as the lake was creek-fed and it liked to crest at the times where one’s flood insurance had either lapsed or thought their house was a fortress. My parents have had several “lakeside neighbors” since they first moved in.

I arrived at the house after ten o’clock and, since I knew where the key was always hidden (under a statue of Col. Reb, the old “Ole Miss” mascot); I walked in, carrying a backpack and a gym bag. The house was dark and quiet—they usually never stayed up past ten o’clock; even my younger sister who was still living with them at that time due to “issues” with school and life in general. They were all morning people; it appears I was the only one who inherited the night owl gene.

I stepped as quietly as I could through the house, though the hardwood floors tattled on me with every step. I made it to one of the extra bedrooms on the second floor. Mom has taken the remaining rooms upstairs, three of them, and ‘themed’ them: baseball, teddy bears, and seaside life. I picked the baseball one only because it was the one with less clutter. While it was decorated in such a way that only a sports nut could love it, at least it wasn’t overrun with tchotchkes, bears in tutus and seashells with googlie-eyes.
No bother to turn the lights on, nor did I choose to get undressed. I had already sent an e-mail to work that there was a death in the family and they could contact me for further information. I was sure my manager wouldn’t pry for more details; which was a good thing as I would probably laid into him on everything that had happened and how I felt about it. My boss would have to unwittingly be my counselor if he had been up to reply to that message.

My phone buzzed.
It had been buzzing for the past hour, all of them messages or calls from my wife. I had to ask myself why I was I still calling her that? How many weeks had gone by that we would lie in be and I would move my arms towards her in a subtle hint and expect her to turn to me and just touch me. Anywhere, to be honest.
But that seldom happened.

If I wanted anything between us I had to initiate it and it really snuffed out my confidence when I had to ponder if she was really even into me or sex, with me that is. It started to go as to twice a week and then once, followed by a week and a half due her period and then another week would go by and she would say she was tired.
Did I look like Brad Pitt?
No, body wasn’t chiseled.
Russell Brand?
No, hair wasn’t long enough and no believeable British accent.
An average dad-bod who once had an earring but never understood gauges?
Yes, and even with some issues with fat on certain parts of my anatomy, I didn’t think I was a complete and total lost case but she made me feel like that. I had started to believe that I was going to be, well, not ‘screwed’ as that wasn’t happening either, but thinking that I would forever live my life talking with people over a chat room or forever swiping at tinder whole thinking that no one would ever want to look at me.

I had thought about using the Ashley Madison site, but, I wasn’t going to “have an affair” as the site once boasted one to do, even if I was completely miserable. I wanted to field like maybe a marriage counselor or a couple’s retreat could help us.

But she had already retreated, or maybe that should be charged, into a new love.
The phone buzzed one more time before I turned it off. I had a thought to throw it across the room but I needed it. I needed it to keep in contact with my kids, to gather evidence on my wife’s infidelity.

Why couldn’t she just look at porn or glance at the chest of some dude on the street? Why did she have tp take it to the next level? I was there. I would lie next to her and ask her how her day was but receive one-word answers-like talking to a teenager addicted to Instagram. I would call her after work to talk about something and she she’d tell me she was busy at the moment BUT would call me back as soon as possible.
That return call never happened. I would have to be the one to call back but at times I didn’t want to as she halfway listened to me anyway.
I couldn’t deny that I was completely innocent in this-but to compare I merely jay-walked across the street compared to her committing multiple counts of matrimonial murder in the first degree.

I had to think if I had ever met him as I could barely make out his face in any of the pictures. I could have shook the guy’s hand at an open house or some social function at the realtors office and that made me angrier the more I thought about it. I would be able to find out who he was eventually and at that time—as long as my lawyer never found out—I could do a little damage to his life; it would never come up to the emotional peak that he caused me but maybe I would feel better.
He knew she was married and even worse she let it happen without even talking to me about it. We could have had a nice therapeutic session and tried to piece everything together.

Again, I never cheated on my wife, at least not in the physical sense.
Perhaps I have looked at other women, a parting glance and a not so subtle fantasy to go along with the fleeting memory as I would forget about her a few minutes later. Did that make me guilty? At times. There were times when I would see a dress or mini skirt and wonder if I could ever convince my wife to wear one.

Then, she started to.

I thought, hey, wish fulfilled and I didn’t have to say anything.

Except to see that dress or that skirt flung at the got of a bed in a scandalously depressing jpeg. Scandalous because it was someone else taking it off of her.
Depressing that I actually found out about it.

Maybe I could have lived as a cuckold husband who actually had no idea. The picket fence, the family barbecues, the perfect Norman Rockwell home. I needed to only get a pipe and slippers to complete the fantasy. She would be out, with him, over and over again and I would have been none the wiser, having fun with my kids and feeling that the love of my life had a bit of a wall put up but maybe it was just work.

She would turn away at night and in the morning and ignore and form of foreplay; okay...just tired I guess.
Yes, tired from the night before at some hotel or at this guys house, or at our house.
We once thought about installing a security system—complete with cameras—but she stopped suggesting it ; it has been almost two years since we last talked about a 360-degree color camera system to protect the kids.
No, not having it protected her secret and my sanity.
So much for both.

My eyes wanted to close; they wanted to cry and I kept them looking up at the ceiling what was barely visible in the dull light from a street lamp that leaked through the the window shades.
My heart wanted to just shut down, to stop beating and if I took my phone charger and plugged one end into he socket as I bit down on the other end, it would cease to beat until an EMT could get to me to shock it back to life.
My brain just said that life really sucked at that moment and I had to agree with it. We had to think about she was going to do next; what would she tell the kids about me? Would she take any blame in this? Could I afford the therapy they were going to need after all of this?

I kind of wanted a drink but couldn’t feel the drive to get up and go out to a bar, plus, the only ones opened at that late of an hour were in the parts of Memphis where only one who had a death wish would want to go. I kind of had a death wish, but the thought that by offing myself then she would win brought out even more anger. It was a vicious cycle and was going to get worse unless I drank a lot and passed out of spilled my guts to someone else, anyone.
“No. Friggin. Way.”
While not the best person to vent to, my sister had opened her door and walked past the room to see my lonely shadow on the bed. I laid everything out that had occurred earlier in the day.
“You should have waited and gotten more proof and nailed the bitch.”
“I think several pages of text and pictures is good enough.”
“Yeah,” she replied as she took a step back. “Sorry, that came out a bit rude.”
Normally, I would have yelled back at anyone who insulted any member of my family, but at that moment I brushed it off. I had thought of worse to call her.
“Are you going to stay here form a while?”
“A few days, until I can look for someplace to call my own.”
“Why not have her move out? I mean, it’s your damn house too.”
“The kids.”
“Your kids too.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s best if they stay where they are.”
“But you don’t know what she’s telling them. I mean, they’re teenagers, they’ve heard of all this stuff from television.”
“I’m hoping they could tell that it wasn’t all my fault and that, for the most part, I took the high ground. Sure, I said a few things I shouldn’t have said, but, in that moment...What was I supposed to?”
“Sorry, bro.”

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Comments

Very good story.

Very good story.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well written it is.

This.......... this hurts to read.

D. Eden's picture

It brings up too many of my own nightmares and worries about the woman I love. The woman who tells me she still loves me, but misses her husband terribly. The woman who refuses to have sex with me because she isn’t a lesbian - a pretty shitty and left handed compliment if there ever was one. She sees me as a woman, which is what I want from the world - but because of that she can’t be intimate with me. I can’t hold her hand, or put my arm around her. I can’t touch her, or kiss her, or show her how I feel about her because she is afraid the world will think her a lesbian.

She tells me that even though she knows that I am still the person she fell in love with, she can’t - because I have changed. She tells me that I can’t possibly understand how she feels, how much she misses her husband. Everyone tells her that I must be out looking for a man because I am now a woman.

She doesn’t understand that the person that I love is still right there in front of me and I am desperately, irrevocably in love with her. Like a swan, I mated for life.

The irony here is that the person who has a reason to worry in our relationship is me. I am no longer what she wants or desires, yet she is exactly what I want. Which one of us is more likely to find some else???

Seems like my nightmares are more likely to come true.

And yeah, this hurts to read because it is like my worst fears put down on paper.

D

D. Eden

Dum Vivimus, Vivamus

It is always the same thing

The person with the least interest in the relationship controls it.