WHEN THEY SAY WHO THEY ARE, .............BELIEVE THEM

My world changed last night.

It was very subtle. About as subtle as a cement mixer tumbling end over end. All I had to do was think of you.

It came in a flash, again. There is not even enough time to tell yourself that you should not be thinking theses destructive thoughts.

I thought of how you use to accuse me of cheating when all I was doing was coming home from work. If I was 5 minutes late, to you that meant I must be trying to make a love connection at work. That was not the case because you were my everything. I couldn’t get the smile off my face, when you were with me.

However, my wounds from that failed marriage morphed into a new shape. I took center stage and accepted the gold-medal for surviving what I went through .

I am literally worried about my heart. My dear friend told me that she developed what is called broken heart syndrome over a thing that happened in her life.

Some people literally have so much emotion that it can harm their health when it runs out of control with emotional crisis.

What I feel starts mentally , but than extends to extremely strong physically. What I feel in my chest is overpowering.

Oh, I’m sure that it starts as mental and then, when there’s the least

tiny little opportunity to jump up and become physical, it will do so.

It is a crushing feeling. There are cold chills and a sudden, almost nauseous feeling when I think certain thoughts. How do you not think certain thoughts?

By the time you realize you are thinking those thoughts, they have already been experienced. It only takes a flash for something to be a trigger.

I have nothing wrong with present life. I’m perfectly happy. I got a nice house and enough income. I am not rich, I just have enough, and that’s all I want.

I’ve got a wonderful wife. My wife loves me very much, I know this. She makes everything into memories. She tells me things that I need to hear.

If I let my mind encircle our wonderful life together and what she means to me, every minute has been filled with faithful love for me and only me.

For me, my present wife was a Godsend.

I am so terribly damaged by what my 1st wife did to me psychologically. She seriously messed up my head.

But the woman I am married to now is wonderful, and in so many ways.

She stands behind me which is not easy to do. I used to be a good-looking guy with lots of problems from a previous marriage. Now I’m just a guy with problems. Not all that and a bag of chips anymore.

It’s not a beauty contest with us. I mean, we’re not bad, we’re not mutants, and we are perfect for each other.

She has a rocksteady personality and when I start coming apart at the seams she does the perfect thing that a wife could do. She leaves me alone.

She was married before, but she was only married for 3 years. She doesn’t seem to hurt very much from what he did to her. He cheated and he lied and she divorced him. It was as simple as that. I never saw her shed a tear for her ex-husband. She openly admits that he was just a cheating ass hole.

She has nothing but anger over that short marriage.

I’m different.

Wow — that was an understatement.

Yes, I may be extremely different from anybody else that you may know. I am such an empath.

Sometimes I wonder if this is rare in men. I actually think that women exhibit more sensitivity to other people’s emotions. Perhaps this is not as common in men.

I honestly don’t know.

I think I realized that I was different from many other people because I always had such extreme emotional reactions to everything.

But I never had a chance to see this coming.

Color me naïve, but I thought my first wife was like me. I loved her and she loved me, and it was so simple as that, (or so I thought).

It was like heaven.

Keep in mind that as a knife is driven into your back, sometimes it’s so sharp you don’t feel it at first, until it gets twisted.

Oh my God, I thought, my life was perfect. She was mine and I did not want to lose her to some other guy that could see her value. I thought she was beautiful. That was further enhanced by the fact that she couldn’t keep her hands out of my pants.

We were sexual almost as soon as we met and we couldn’t stop being sexual every chance we got. For this man child that I was, it was ambrosia.

I was just a kid, you know, and my Mom and Dad were a little bit naïve.

They never talked about the birds and the bees.

Dad bought a Fiat sedan that folded down into a bed. I was 16 and got my driver's license.

I wonder if dad ever truly realized that he was basically giving me a drivable double bed with wheels.

I was 17 and naturally all I could think about was… (Use your imagination !)

I tried not to let my eyes light up when I noticed that the car I could use, had the double bed feature. I played it cool. It doesn’t pay to show too much interest in anything when you are a dumb kid.

My experience is that as soon as you show interest in something, parents might move in to take it away from you because it’s not good for you. I learned to shut my mouth.

If my mom and dad knew that I was having sex, they would break us up for sure by taking the car away.

So, I very innocently would ask Mom and Dad, may I use the car? I have a date.

Little did they know that I was gambling with being a father at my tender age.

But you don’t know what it’s like unless you’ve been there.

I can feel you sitting there judging me. You’re probably thinking, well of course you idiot. Sex is a wonderful thing. She is playing a game.

If you’re not experienced, the pull is so strong that it can be mistaken for love.

Oh, we had love. We had dangerous love.

We had the kind of love that can get people killed.

I remember she told me the name of a boy that wanted to walk her home from school. I wanted to kill him. How dare he mess with something I value so much.

I went over the school she was attending and I found the kid that wanted to walk her home. I scared the hell out of him because he saw the fire in my eyes. I didn’t have to kill him after-all.

He assured me that he would not even talk to her again.

I’m just a squeaky voice little 17-year-old kid, but I had murder in my heart that day and he knew it.

It didn’t take very long to realize that things could be much better without the use of a condom. Bad decision.

So, mom choked on the reality that her last son also “had” to get married because he knocked somebody up. We stood in front of the justice of the peace in Nevada.

We said meaningless words to a stranger and that made everything legal. So, there we were, living with her mom and dad, with a brand-new marriage and a baby on the way.

To my way of thinking, this was absolutely the most wonderful arrangement life could’ve given me.

I’m scared shitless, I don’t have a job and now, there will be a new little life that we created.

I managed to get a crappy job while we were living with her mother. Eventually I got a good job and we moved out of her house and got our own apartment.

Life was perfect. It was a little rough getting here because we were both under age and had to get our parents permissions to get married and start our adult life.

I’m steady as a rock. I only missed one day of high school. I’m not about to jeopardize my little piece of paradise by not showing up to work.

I went to work every day without fail. I even wore a suit when others at work did not. I wanted to advance my career, so my beautiful new family could have the things they needed.

So, there we were, I had a fairly good job. She was going to stay home and take care of the baby. Seems almost perfect, right ?

And that’s when everything changed.

When we first met, she told me that she had been with men for money. She told me that she had a large bank account filled with money that man had given her for sex. (Words cannot describe the shock I felt.)

She was actually telling me that she had been working as a 16-year-old prostitute who was also an alcoholic. I felt like I had been hit by a freight train.

That truly broke my heart.

But I thought I was in love. I thought the best thing I could do would be to forgive this poor misguided girl for her past.

This whoring was all before she met me. You can almost smell the stupidity here, right?

Now that we are a couple and you are my woman, I certainly can forgive anything.

Oh, please God, let her be mine. I’m not perfect. I too made mistakes. If only she will be with me.

I didn’t hear the sirens or see the red lights flashing. I don’t think it was true that she had been with countless men and had a huge prostitute bank account. I never saw any evidence of that. I always thought that was a lie. I thought she was being cautious about who she fell in love with and she wanted to make sure that they really were devoted to her. .

There was nothing but forgiveness in my heart even though it hurt like Hell. I never attempted to visualize that scenario, because I knew it would break my heart..

The games started immediately but I was too stupid to realize what was going on. I thought it was odd when my wife wanted to go to the neighbors apartment with me one night out of the blue. I had never met them.

He and his wife were also newlyweds and it didn’t take long before the guy asked me if I’d like to swap wives.

Well that made me excited. Strange is very exciting, but, I wanted to throw up. It was only him saying it, but the thing that got me was I didn’t hear any rejection from the other woman, and most importantly, nothing was

coming out of my wife’s mouth.

She only looked at me as if she just wanted to see what I was going to say. When I think back, she absolutely wanted to swing.

I couldn’t think of anything more horrible to me and to have another man be with my wife.

The other night, my current wife and I were talking about spouses who cheat. Her husband cheated all along in their marriage and he constantly accused my wife of cheating.

That probably is a illustration of the best defense is a good strong offense.

He was cheating so he accuses her of cheating which makes him appear

angelic in his behavior.

And then I realized something and was swept away by further feelings of betrayal in that sad marriage.

Every day I went to work by 8 o’clock and every day I came home at exactly the same time, 5 o’clock.

She frequently accused me of having a secret affair behind her back. She would examine me for traces of perfume or a strange hair or some other fictitious thing. Looking back, I kind of wished I had sprinkled myself with hairs from redheads and brunettes just for fun.

There was no cheating from me going on. I never gave her cause to think that. However, this would be a typical scenario.

I get home at 5 o’clock every day.

Sometimes it would vary by as much as 5 or 10 minutes due to traffic.

She would seize that, and accuse me of having a secret affair.

I thought she was simply feeling insecure. I did everything I could to assure her that I only loved her and no one else and I was not having a secret affair.

Little did I know that she was simply laying the groundwork for her to entertain men, all while I was at work. By accusing me, the inference was that she would never do such a thing.

Oh, but she did. She didn’t do it constantly, but she did it whenever she felt like it. I never looked for evidence of other men. Maybe I tended to want to ignore evidence at first.

It never dawned on me that she would cheat. So far I had no suspicions about her behavior which appeared odd to me.

We would go to parties and such, and she was pretty bold about showing admiration to pretty boys, but she came home with me. Sex began to dry up for me. It happened rather slowly.

Eventually, her giving me sex dried up completely. This went on and on for the majority of our marriage, and almost drove me insane. Why was she behaving like this? This is something new.

When she was accusing me of cheating, that was when we first got married. That means that she was cheating almost immediately after we said “I do”.

Evidence of other men being there while I was at work kept piling up. If I discovered stranger evidence in our house. If something was out of place and I asked her about it, she would just say oh a friend drop by to say hi.. Really, who is this friend? Why did I never met him. No, I didn’t ask questions like that. I was dumb as hell. Love means trust.

I mean evidence is right in my face and I refuse to see it because I’m in love. (What a stupid ass.)

I was with her probably a total of 15 years. I was talking with an old friend who knew me back in the day and knew my wife. I told him that I suspected my ex-wife of cheating on me with a guy named Steve.

My friend told me that he didn’t want to tell me this at the time but, “Dude, she was sleeping with all of your friends.

(He probably meant himself too.)

I honestly did not know all of that for sure, that she cheated.

He protected me from that information back in the day, but now he said it.

I thought it was simply a sexless marriage. The cheating part was new to me, as before they were only suspicions.

So, as I think back, she would let me have sex with her at all. She seemed to be okay with it if I stole it while she pretended to be sleeping, but

that made me want to throw up and cry and run away from home all at the same time. A husband should never be made to feel like that in a loving marriage.

I know exactly what she was doing. Like every prostitute, there are certain parts of your body that you save for the one you love.

All I can say is, her “area” was off limits and I was too stupid to realize why.

It was a turbulent love affair. Years of punishment and reward, punishment and reward, punishment and reward. That has done deep psychological damage to my happy life. But through writing, I am healing as much as that is possible.

I would love to shove it into the past and forget about it. That was a horrible part of my life. But, repressing it doesn’t do any good.

It just bubbles to the surface as violent rage against innocent people. I feel like don’t get in my way or I will crush you. I am not going to take any crap from another human being for the rest of my life. I took all I can take from that woman and I can’t take anymore.

(But if you’re a friend to me, I will be a faithful friend to you. But please don’t do me wrong or you will see the fury of an angry pack of wolves.))

I have no happy music for that long marriage.

Every broken hearted love song from that period, was the only thing I listened to. All I have is music that I cried to almost daily that came from that time.

What I find validating for all the emotion that I’m feeling, is that each song is just as poignant as it was back in the day. Maybe even more so because now there’s the curtain of time.

By immersing myself in the music of that time, it’s my hope to desensitize myself to the trauma of that marriage. It is working to a certain extent.

I’m beginning to see what a naïve fool I was.

She was so wrong for me. It wasn’t her fault. She told me who she was immediately. I didn’t believe her.

I fallen into that same trap several times in my life. People tell me who they are and I don’t believe them, and then I end up getting hurt.

Whose fault is that anyway?

MINE!

I shouldn’t hate my first wife. I think she loved me tremendously even though she cheated. I didn’t know how to deal with that before. I can’t even deal with it now.

I know I shouldn’t do this to myself. I’m making myself so sad thinking about how it used to be. But, I have never gotten over the trauma of that marriage.

I have severe PTSD. I’ve only touched the surface of what was wrong between us in that wretched union. I’m sure psychiatrist could have a field day with this case.

Ours was not a typical divorce. I had to cut ties completely.

I absolutely lost my mind. I went insane in my little apartment. The lowest point in my life. Complete separation was necessary to keep myself sane.

I know she loved me because she begged me to come back home. She said maybe we could just live together and not be married. But in my mind,

I knew that meant that I would be watching men be with her and that it would be a race to see which would hurt the worst, my broken heart or my fractured mind.

I wish I could go to the doctor and have that part of my mind cut out, but things don’t work that way. She still living with me. She still in my head every day.

She is affecting my present marriage all the time. My sweet wife, I guess she’s beginning to understand why sometimes I snap, or cry for hours.

I love her so, but she certainly married a handful with me. I feel like she saved my life by giving me her love when I needed it the most. As I think about how lucky I am to have her, the tears are rolling down my face. She saved my life from the direction it was headed. She is still saving my life every day… every single day.

Thank you for listening. I just wanted to share a piece of my heart with you, dear reader. It appears catharsis reigns supreme. May meditative peace and love be yours this beautiful Monday morning.