adultery, Betrayal, cheating, Christianity, divorce, infidelity, marriage

Do angels feel pain?

My older daughter texted me from university with this question, “Angels can suffer right? Like feel pain or die or be sad?”

“Well”, I said. They were created by God but I don’t know about them dying. I don’t think they can die because they are in heaven with God. Although Satan was found to be wicked and got kicked out of heaven, but he’s still alive causing destruction on earth. I don’t know if Satan feels like he is suffering or not as a result of God casting him out. He rules the world and probably feels very successful in that sense. I am guessing they can feel. Satan is described as the most beautiful angel, esd ordained by God and believed he should be higher than God. He must be able to feel in order to be so prideful. I am guessing he can feel because he hates us and it must make him happy to hurt us or why not just follow God?”

My daughter responded, “He got kicked out because he was jealous of God’s love of humans and because of that disobeyed right?” Then she asked another totally unrelated question about coming home this weekend and we didn’t talk about it further. I followed up with her a couple of days later to see if she figured it all out and what prompted the question. It was for a debate she was working on in her Philosophy class. She had to respond in an atheist point of view.

I don’t know how you respond to a question about angels in an atheist point of view except to say they don’t exist but it got me thinking about Satan. I remembered how in Job he was “roaming in and out of the earth” and when I read it again (Job 1-6) it says in the NIV that he was “going back and forth on it.” I wonder how many times in the past few years Satan has been going back and forth over my life. I honestly don’t think there is anything he can do to me to shake my faith in God, or God’s love for me, and promised plan to prosper me (favourite scripture has always been Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future”.) but I sure don’t want to tempt Satan to bring it on! I feel like I’ve had enough.

As I write this, the song in the background repeats, “If I lose myself I lose it all.” (Naughty Boy, ‘Runnin’ ft. Beyoncé)

I remember talking to my husband about his affair in a spiritual light. I reminded him that after Satan tempted Jesus while he was in the desert for 40 days that he was unsuccessful and left until a more “opportune time.” (Matthew 4: 1 – 11) I suggested that Satan knew everything going on in Dave’s life, heart and mind–probably because he was whispering in his ear, and it was the opportune time to trip him up. I reminded him that Ephesians 4:27 commands, “…and do not give the devil a foothold.” Dave let the door open for Satan even just a crack. That was all Satan needed to stick his foot in and kick it wide open. Dave responded to me saying, “Or maybe we just did a lousy job at taking care of our marriage.” I didn’t think so.

If you think spiritually and stay spiritual and have spiritual people guiding you and supporting you in your life, there are spiritual solutions for infidelity. Not easy ones because although I can’t respond for angels I know for sure that as humans we do suffer. We do feel sadness and we do feel pain. We do die physically and can feel like we are dying of a broken heart. We can still be alive but experience spiritual death, separation from God, which for a Christian is supposed to be more painful than physical death. I think that is why as much as the bible makes it clear that God hates divorce, knowing us as humans, he allows infidelity as the only reason for divorce to be granted. How hard it would be to stay with someone who betrayed you.

Comfort on earth in all of this–angels! I have had many angels show up in various forms to me during these last 3 years. And it is confirmed in Matthew 4:11. When Satan failed to tempt Jesus, Satan went away at Jesus’ command. When Satan left Jesus, “angels came and attended him.”

Praying that we all experience the attendance of angels in our life, especially after Satan has played with our lives directly or indirectly.

adultery, Betrayal, cheating, divorce, infidelity, separation

Once Upon a Time

My daughter is home from school sick with the flu so we decided to catch up on a bunch of ‘Once Upon a Time’ episodes from last season.

In the episode that we just watched, Snow White was asking the Evil Queen to keep a secret for her. Her reasoning was this:

“Because when you betray the people you love, when you make them see the worst parts of you, what you’ve done changes everything. There’s no going back. You’ve shattered the bonds you’ve worked so hard to forge. The stronger those bonds once were, the more difficult they are to put back together. If they can be repaired at all.”

adutery, cheating, children, divorce, infidelity, Mid Life Crisis

Fun-draising

I saw my ex and talked to him for the first time since I dropped off receipts at his office more than 3 months ago. We haven’t spoken or seen each other since he hijacked my blog. This time, I was the only one who spoke. He just glared. Even behind those mirrored sunglasses I knew he was glaring. He was completely stone-faced. That in itself made me start to grin but it was the entire one minute exchange that for whatever reason I found completely comical and had me walking away in laughter.

He picked up my daughter for their Thursday night dinner together. He was taking her to watch him get his haircut first. How fun for her. She has fundraising to do for the Peninsula Young Performers and she didn’t want to ask her dad to help her based on past experience. She asked me if I would ask him on her behalf.

What my daughter doesn’t know is that I already gave her dad an opportunity, at the end of last dance season, for his company to be a corporate sponsor for the Peninsula Young Performers this dance season. I offered to give the information to his partners but he said that he would handle it. He asked me to forward the details by email and I did. When I received no response I followed up again at the start of this dance year. Still no response. It is a very inexpensive marketing opportunity for them, with lots of different options from $150 to $1500, and an excellent way to glean community recognition with their company name appearing on the theatre marquis, name and logo on 60 posters displayed around the community, name and logo on a banner hanging outside the dance studio, advertisement in the programs, etc. Some of their clients were sponsors last year. Not to mention how much it would mean to our daughter to have her dad and his company support her.

I told my daughter that it was her responsibility to fundraise if she had any hope of being able to go on the US dance competition trip in Portland, Oregon in March 2016. She said that she would ask anyone else but for me to please just ask her dad for her. So when he arrived we both walked to his vehicle. She got in the back seat and I opened the front door of the passenger seat. The Bove wasn’t there. I guess she didn’t want to go watch him get his hair cut.

I held out 3 coupon books. I asked if he could sell each book for $20. I told him that $10 goes back to our dancer and the other $10 to Compassionate Warehouse Foundation. In the middle of my explanation he took the coupon books and threw them on the seat. He said nothing and just glared. Then I gave him a book of 10 tickets for the Hillside Mall “Night before late night shopping” event. I didn’t even get to explain those (he’s been to this event when we were together anyways) before he took them from me and threw them on the seat, also. I looked in the back seat at our daughter and she had a big grin on her face.

During this exchange, I became aware of my ex’s shirt. It looked like something Don Cherry, from Coach’s corner on Hockey Night in Canada, would wear. It made me smile more. It had a plain white collar but the rest of the shirt had a busy, checkered pattern of various browns, maybe purple but nothing like I had ever seen him wear before. His hair style is different from when we were together. It is shaved on the side and then long on top with some type of swoop happening. Plus he had on coloured, mirrored sunglasses. I wondered if it was all part of a mid-life crisis or if the Bove influenced his new style.

I couldn’t help but laugh. He just seemed like a cartoon character to me. His user name, “Happy” on my blog is the antithesis of his angry personality as anyone who reads his comments recognizes but it made me happy seeing how hard he was trying to be whatever he was trying to be.

As I was about to close the door to his vehicle, I looked at my daughter again who was still smiling from ear to ear. I told her to have fun and that if she was lucky she might get to come with me to my next waxing appointment.

adultery, cheating, divorce, infidelity, marriage, separation, the other woman

Getting Remarried

I attended my first wedding since separating from my husband.

It was the second wedding for both the bride and the groom. I wondered if I would be at all cynical for the exchanging of vows between 2 people promising to be faithful, for better or for worse, and until death parts them. After all, they likely spoke those same words to other people but never kept their promise.

Making it odder for me was the fact that I knew the bride’s previous husband and his new wife. There was talk by guests at the wedding, who didn’t know that I knew the bride’s ex-husband and his new wife, that he had an affair and that was what ended the marriage. I know that to be true.

I was reminded at the wedding that my husband actually stumbled over his vows during the part where he was asked to repeat, “I promise to be faithful.” Laughter came from the pews because of his stumble on our wedding day 21 years ago. My husband explained afterwards that he paused only because he thought the minister was not finished speaking. Now I wonder if he knew then that he had no intention of staying true to his vow and wonder if he cheated in the 4 years we lived together before getting married. I remember some very specific lies he told when we first started dating. Why was that not a huge red flag to me?

I had a lot of fun at the wedding. I was truly happy for the couple. They looked beautiful. They have rhyming names. They are both kind-hearted, fun, generous people who deserve a partnership full of love and respect. At this point they seem to have that in their relationship. I pray it continues for the rest of their lives.

As for me, I have no desire for that in my future. I will never trust anyone with my entire life again. I don’t feel sad thinking that way even though I know how much I valued and loved my marriage and my husband and how much it benefited the security, peace and well-being of our children. I think it is wisdom. Live and learn.

I want my freedom more than anything else. When I am not doing everything for my children, I want to be doing everything for me. Selfish? I thought about that but usually what I want to do benefits other people. I have so many friends: married, single, divorced, separated, male, female, working, not working, parents, no kids, etc. and I am loving my time with all of them. I keep meeting more and more people and am getting to know others who were just acquaintances before on a deeper level. My life is full. I don’t ever want my life to be about only one other person’s needs–a husband. That absolutely makes me cringe to think about it. I want to spend my life doing what I want, with who I want, when I want.

My friend said it well: “It takes a really, really great guy to be better than no guy.”

adultery, cheating, children, divorce, Father/daughter relationship, other woman, separation

Weekend Report

My daughter ended up spending Friday night, after her dance classes, with her dad. I texted her at 6:45 p.m. to see if she needed me to pick her up as she had reported being too ill to go to his place. I knew she was able to be in her dance class when she didn’t respond.

In the meantime, I was invited on a dinner date. I figured that if my daughter managed to participate in her dance classes from 3:30 – 7:45 p.m. that she was going to go to her dad’s place after all. I suspected that it was anxiety about spending the night at her dad’s. If I had picked her up after school she would have sacrificed going to dance just to avoid her dad’s place. When I put the onus back on her to let her dad know she was cancelling because she was sick and when I wasn’t able to pick her up earlier she chose to just go to dance. She could have taken the school bus that goes to our home instead of the dance studio if she was really ill.

So regarding my dinner date, there is always the history with my ex in the back of mind. What if she texted her dad saying she was sick and that I was going to pick her up earlier so she could go home instead? What if she told him she was sick and couldn’t go to his house but still needed a ride home and he told her he wouldn’t drive to the dance studio just to pick her up if she wouldn’t go back to his place? What if he received a better invitation? I wanted to see my friend, as it had been a long time since we spent any time together, so I told him my predicament and that the best I could do was fast food in case I needed to leave quickly.

My daughter texted me at 7:45 p.m. to say that she was going to go with her dad. Her symptoms were much improved because the Bove wasn’t present. She texted that she would rather be home but that it was only one night. Why only one night, I wondered? If her dad was making a change to make his child a priority wouldn’t he want to spend the whole weekend with her? Or did she set up her own plans to avoid that?

Her dad dropped her off at noon the next day back to my place. She revealed that he was on his way up to Parksville (1 1/2 hours away) for a party and was staying at the Beach Club Resort overnight. Of course he was. I knew it was impossible for him to actually manage to spend an entire weekend with his daughter. (I reported he did spend 2 Saturday nights ago with her but forgot he actually dropped her at a birthday party at 4 and didn’t see her again until noon the next day). This was “his” weekend and yet to him that means playing the dad role only if time permits in between what he really wants to do instead.

Our daughter knows that. She has lived this for more than 2 1/2 years now. It will never change. She will never be a priority in his life, ever. If he keeps his next commitment, he will see her again in 4 nights, Thursday, for 2 hours. So over a 96 hour period he will see her for 2 hours max. Then, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he will see her again in 7 days on the next Thursday for dinner, that will be a 168-hour period in which he sees her for 2 hours. The math doesn’t lie. That is a failing percentage. He is failing his daughter. He is failing as a father. Quantity time matters. If he throws the Bove into the equation that subtracts from time with his daughter. The Bove is equivalent to a big zero and my daughter is left with nothing.

He did come back Sunday night and pick up our daughter to take her to his place for dinner. Afterwards, he took her to the beach to see the lunar eclipse. Sadly, for my daughter, the Bove crashed her time with her dad and once again my ex managed to turn time with his daughter into a big negative.

Uncategorized

Hmmm, why the sudden interest in our daughter?

I have long since given up expecting my ex to take our youngest daughter every other weekend. He has cancelled on her for the entire weekend on so many occasions. He took her one time and fed her dinner and then just went out to a party. He left her alone at his place without any phone contact. She was terrified. After that she refused to ever stay at his place overnight again. For weekend day visits, he would say he is picking her up at one time and wouldn’t show up for as much as 4 hours later. He even failed to pick her up at the dance studio. It was the last class of the night and he left me scrambling to get a ride home for her with another parent until I could get there.

So you can imagine my surprise when he told her that he was going to pick her up from dance two weekends ago at 8:00 p.m. I asked another dad to just have an eye on her when he picked up his daughter to make sure that my daughter did get picked up. My ex showed up and took her to dinner before dropping her off at home.

When she arrived home she told me that she was going with her dad the next day, Saturday. He was picking her up at noon. I was shocked and didn’t want to sound incredulous to her but I said, “Why?” She said that she didn’t know why. He picked her up and kept her for dinner before bringing her home. Then he picked her up Sunday for lunch and dropped her off at home afterwards.

He changed the night that he sees her during the week from Tuesday to Thursday. He wants to pick her up from my home for dinner and bring her back to my home afterwards. So far he has kept his last two Thursday night commitments.

He called her on her cell phone on Monday night. She looked at her phone and said, “Why is daddy calling me?” She wasn’t going to answer but I told her that she should see why he is calling her. He never calls so I was concerned that something was wrong. He called to tell her that he was watching the hockey game and her friend was singing the national anthem.

So here we are at the ‘every-other-weekend’ again. He told her that he would pick her up at 8:00 p.m. and that he wanted her to sleep over. Again, I said, “Why?” She didn’t know.

I just got a text from her just now that school is done saying that she isn’t feeling well. Not sure if this is related to her sleeping at her dad’s place or not. We’ll see what happens. I told her that she had to text her dad then to say that she wasn’t feeling well and that he could pick her up earlier. I told her that I wouldn’t be home until 7:00 p.m. Her response, “I’ll just go to dance then.”

I told her that if she couldn’t dance after attempting because she still felt sick then to make sure that she texted her dad to let him know. I told her that I would come and get her at 7 if she could hold out until then.

adultery, affairs, cheating, deceitfulness, divorce, lies, separation

Fake Coins

In Rumi’s poem, The Touchstone, Iblis asked, “Can you tell a lie from the truth, you who are filled with illusion?”

Muawiya answered, “The prophet has given a clue, a touchstone to know the base coin from the true. He has said, ‘That which is false troubles the heart, but Truth brings joyous tranquility.’ ”

When I discovered your coins were fake, I refused to accept them. You now spend your coins elsewhere. You pass your coins off to others who know you committed fraud, know you continue to commit fraud and yet they accept your forgery? Your scheme cost me almost everything. You still try to steal from me.

I examine coins more thoroughly these days. I spend them. I invest them. I melt them down. I check for seams, run tests, and scratch the surface. Then I check my heart.

Rumi says in The Masnavi:

“Fools buy base coins from their likeness to real coins.
If there were no genuine coins current in the world,
How could coiners succeed in passing false coins?
If there were no truth, how could falsehood exist?
Falsehood derives its plausibility from truth.
‘Tis the desire of right that makes men buy wrong;
Let poison be mixed with sugar and they eat it at once.
If wheat were not valued as sweet and good for food,
The cheat who shows wheat and sells barley would make no profit!”

Because of you, I know worthless currency. Because of you, I know true value.

adultery, affair, cheating, divorce, other woman, Twitter

DC@thegoalie29

Both of my children follow their dad on Twitter. He claims my blog will hurt them if they find it yet he feels it is okay to post sexual images and comment on sexual images that exploit and degrade women that the other woman, Janice Andrews, tweets.

Even his profile photo is of a banana taking advantage of another banana.

His comment on the yoga oral sex photo is “Sign me up”.

He mocks the cheating husband sign with his comment “Oh my!”

Another sexual image on his Twitter account.

If he wants our children to think more highly of him then maybe he should be less concerned with my blog and more concerned about his own words and actions.

adultery, affair, cheating, children, divorce, Sexual images, Twitter

Jannypoo@smeepsmeep

The other woman, Janice Andrews, under her user name, “Sally”, insists I should take down my blog and specifically her identifying information for “the sake of the children”. Both Janice and my ex, under his user name, “Happy” as well as the other fake followers they created, insist if my children found my blog it would do them harm.

Yet, they both have Twitter accounts that my children follow. Janice knows my older daughter follows her. They have commented back and forth to each other yet she feels it is okay to tweet images with sexual content that exploit and degrade women and contain inappropriate comments like, “Fox me real good”. She even mocks a story about 23 cheating husbands getting what they deserve and she specifically tweets all of the images to my children’s father @goalie29.

Here is a sampling of how she protects my children from harmful content on line.

adultery, affair, cheating, children, divorce, Ex, family, Residence, University

Taking my daughter to university

As many times as my oldest daughter asked my ex to take me with them so she could be with both of her parents to travel to university, he refused. She contacted me the day before she had to move into residence and told me she asked one last time but her dad said, “No!” I assured her not to worry that I would still be there. She told me that my ex booked a reservation on the 8:00 a.m. ferry so I told her that I would be on the same one.

I arrived at the ferries at 7:15 a.m. lining up with the other vehicles waiting to board. I went into the terminal to get something to eat for breakfast. When I came out and was walking back to my car, my younger daughter called my name. She was in the front passenger seat of a vehicle I didn’t recognize. It was a white pick-up truck. Both girls told me later that their dad had purchased a new vehicle.

I walked over and said “hi” to my girls. My younger daughter was so happy she spotted me. She beamed that she could see my hair in the window so she knew I was there. I confirmed with my older daughter the name of her residence house. There are 8 houses and they have some difficult First Nation names and spellings. I told them I would meet them at the university. Then I went back to my vehicle and waited to load.

On the ferry, I sat in a row of seats by a window. With it being the start of a long weekend it was very busy but I actually had a row of seats to myself. I was reading for about 30 minutes when my kids found me and sat down beside me. They had gone for breakfast first. Their dad sat down with them. We each conversed with our children but didn’t say a word to each other. It made no difference to me at all that he was there.

We returned to our cars after the 1 hour and 35 minute ferry ride and then I drove by myself for the next hour to travel to the university. I ran into them as I was walking to my daughter’s residence and they were returning to my ex’s truck. They had unloaded everything and now needed to move his vehicle to the parkade where my car was already parked. My daughter asked her dad if he would just let me walk back with them and drive with them so we could all stay together. He said that there was no room. My daughter tried to explain to me where to go and I told her not to worry about it, that I would find it, and just meet them back at her room.

I met some great people on the way to her dorm. I chatted with parents and students about where they were from, why they chose this university, which residence would be their new home, etc. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and there were tons of students dressed in bright blue shirts that were guides and question answerers to make everyone’s transition smooth. I bought my daughter a plant and then headed to her house with the personal guidance of one of the blue shirt students.

My daughter’s roommate hadn’t arrived yet. We all helped our freshman unpack and set up her room. When we were done her dad left to go back home. My younger daughter and I stayed and we all went for lunch in the residence dining hall. There was a great selection of food. Then we went back to her room and met her new roommate and mom from Winnipeg. They were so nice. They had never been to Victoria before so I invited her to come back with my daughter for Thanksgiving. They invited us to their cabin in Minnesota.

My younger daughter and I said our goodbyes and left to do some back-to-school shopping in Vancouver. Then we went to my sister’s house for dinner. Two of my nieces and their live-in boyfriends joined us. It was a whirlwind visit as the last ferry departed at 9:00 p.m. and we had at least a 40-minute drive to get there. It was so wonderful to see them. It had been almost 2 years since our last visit. We would have stayed over if I didn’t have pets to get back to and my other niece and brother-in-law were planning on visiting us the next day to go to the fair. We made it to the ferry with enough time to run into the terminal to buy an ice cream cone before being called to our vehicles to get ready to load.

My university daughter texted me just before we boarded the ferry. She thanked me for coming even though her dad tried to make it difficult for me to be there and for the “survival kit” that I left her. She had a very fun ‘Welcome BBQ’ for her house and said that she had met a ton of friends already from all over the world. She was off to play board games.

I am so excited for this new chapter in her life. I feel like we managed, for the most part, to make the day all about her.

scornedwifeblog

A wife's personal experience of infidelity

Author Archives: togetherabandonned