Tag Archives: dishonesty

affairs, Betrayal, cheating, confrontation, control, deceitfulness, divorce, follow your gut, moving on

I May Run Slow but I Don’t Run Back

My ex ran with me once. We ran a 10K route around a couple of lakes near our home. It was very hot I remember. I also remember his description of my pace: “turtlish”.

We separated March 1, 2013 and on Mother’s Day that year we had a phone discussion about the possibility of reuniting. He told me, “I will have to be gone a long time.” Thinking he meant we couldn’t just go back to co-habitating after his affair I confirmed that I didn’t want him back living with me. I made it clear it would be really difficult for me to have him back at all let alone be with him intimately. He agreed that would be difficult for me but seemed far more concerned that I confirm to him that we did have a really good sex life. I found that odd since he was the one that had the affair, not me. He thanked me for talking to him and acknowledged how hard it must be for me to listen when he was acknowledging some of the lies he told me and where he was instead. We followed up our call with an email just confirming it was good to be talking.

The next evening, Monday, I was trying to get in touch with him about picking up our children on Tuesday to spend time with them. His cell phone kept going straight to voice mail and I had never experienced that before. It made me think that maybe he was talking to someone else. Would he really be talking to the other woman after our conversation the night before? Maybe he was breaking things off with her.

On a hunch, I opened the phone book and called the “Andrews” listed in the book that had an address in the area of the Starbucks where they would habitually meet. Remember I had copies of the text messages between them and one confirmed they were meeting at Starbucks and reconfirmed by my ex, “the one by your house”.

I called the first number I thought was in the area thinking I might get a busy signal. It rang, so if this was the right number my ex wasn’t on the phone with her. A man answered the phone. “Hi, Is Janice there?” I asked politely. “No she isn’t”, he said. I was shocked. “Janice Andrews lives there?” I asked. “Yes”, he replied. “The one who works for the M of S,” I asked. “Yes”, he said. “Who are you?” I asked. “I am her husband,” he replied. “Who are you?” he asked. “I am the wife of the man who is fooling around with your wife”, I said.

At around 11:00 p.m. my ex contacted me seeing that I had called his cell phone. He didn’t answer my calls because he was at a movie with Janice. Wow, I guess he felt he “needed to be gone a long time” because he thought he would spend his days and nights away from me, his home, and his kids continuing his affair. I knew then and there I would never look back again. I felt that resolve on March 1, 2013 when his response to me finding out about the affair was to walk out the door and not say a word to me and to continue on his trip to Vancouver with his friends. My gut, my decision on Day 1, my knowing in my heart and head as well, that this man was a complete fraud that I wanted nothing to do with ever again, was reaffirmed.

Since then I have made it clear to him that we will never get back together. He has sent numerous emails and texts over the last 2 years giving reasons why he thinks that I must still want him back. He did this as recently as last week, March 3, 2105. The day before that I tried to turn up the volume on expressing my feelings for him to help him get the message.

I texted on March 2, 2015: “The way you continue to live is repulsive to me. You are repulsive to me. There is nothing about you–your character, your lifestyle, your parenting, your choices, your personality, your looks, your employment, money, nothing that makes me desire you physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Say what you want; think what you want. I am not interested in you on any level. It is your narcissistic personality, your ego, your id that makes you believe I am angry and haven’t moved on emotionally. You are correct in saying you couldn’t be a good husband to me and I deserve better. I think you said that out of false humility or maybe your super ego is coming through. I don’t know if you recognize what a creep you are or what but I am so done caring.”

He is a little “turtlish” in his understanding that I do not want him back.

The divorce process for me has also been turtlish. My ex tries to manipulate and control everything even when, financially, things are so in his favour. This is my marathon. I am tired, have a lot of chafing and blisters, but all I can do is to keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward, until I cross the finish line.

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affairs, divorce, God, mediation, sin, Spiritual, worldly

What colour is this dress?

Have you seen the dress everyone is talking about? It is black and blue yet a photo of it taken in a different light shows it to many people to be gold and white. What is really interesting is that you can get a group of people around the same photo and some see it as gold and white while others see it as black and blue.

The Explanation: “Light enters the eye through the lens—different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you’re looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the “real” color of the object. “Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance,” says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. “But I’ve studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen.” (Neitz sees white-and-gold.)

Could it be the same way with our view points?

For 23 years, my ex and I seem to have seen the same view of the world reflected back to us. We have seen it through spiritual eyes and we have seen it through worldly eyes. Together, I felt, we tried to do good and contribute to the universe in a positive light. We tried to represent and stand for right. We gave sacrificially of our time and our money. We partnered together to do what was best for meeting the needs of our children, our families, our friends, our community and even strangers. It wasn’t always what we wanted to do but we put our own selfish desires aside so much of the time acting on faith and trusting in God that as long as we did what was right we believed that we too, would win in the long run, and the world would be better for it.

When did my ex start seeing the world through his own selfish eyes instead of God’s eyes? When did his visual system that was supposed to throw away false information fed to him by Satan stop extracting information about the actual reflectance of God? When did he stop being able to distinguish gold and white from black and blue?

Why does it surprise me then when his vision is so cloudy that for more than 2 years he makes decisions to only take care of his own wants and desires. Why does it surprise me that he doesn’t pay child support, spousal support or pay any percentage of his children’s activities and medical/dental expenses? Why does it surprise me that even when in mediation he agreed to pay a specific percentage of the pet expenses, he doesn’t? Why does it surprise me that he allowed his life insurance to lapse even though he agreed in mediation not to let that happen. He chooses instead to leave me and his children with a huge exposure so that if he were to die today my kids have no financial support for their future, no education money, and I am left with the burden of all of his debt? Why does it surprise me that even though in mediation he agreed to close out our joint bank account immediately he never has and I am the only one who has put money in that account to cover our joint expenses? On top of that, why does he think it is okay to access that account using my money to pay for his own personal bills? Now that I am not putting any money in there why does he think it is okay to not put back what he stole from me, pay off the overdraft so we can close the account and not incur any more wasted service charges? Why should I be surprised that he will not allow any of the funds from a property we sold together to be disbursed equally between us so I can pay my bills, the ones he isn’t contributing to and should be? And especially why am I surprised, when an oversight was made in mediation leaving me responsible for all of our pre-separation debt, why does he not acknowledge that isn’t fair and agree to pay his 50%? This would resolve our current dispute, allow us to move forward, stop the waste of legal expenses, allow for a more equitable settlement and it would be the right thing to do.

I do not recognize the person my ex has become at all. I only see black when I look him. There is definitely no gold. I concur with Neitz. This is one of the biggest individual differences I, too, have ever seen!

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