I've been debating about a week how to write this, honestly more because I thought it was too good to be true (it was) than anything else. If you've been cheated on, then blamed for your spouses indiscretions...you may, somewhere down to road, expect to hear an apology. I never expected it. Once everything had hit the fan and he was no longer pretending to be my husband and everyone knew what he'd done, he flat out told me that he didn't regret his affair. There were a few late-night phone calls in the beginning full of his voice saying, "if only you'd been, done, were different..."
So, imagine my surprise when it happened. I'd always imagined myself coming up with some awesome, snarky, hurtful dig if he ever felt humble enough to apologize...so he could "feel the weight of what he'd done." What happened was, I burst into tears, became a blubbering idiot, and said nothing. Well, for a few days anyways. Thing is...he'd apologized when I found out about the affair the first time. A weekend-long sob session begging me to come home, followed with useless therapy, and half-assed attempts on his part. The second time I found out, he blamed it on me and wasn't sorry for one second. So, even though he appeared to be sincere...I had to remember that he can't be sincere. In the past for me, its been so easy to get caught up in his apologies and for a few minutes, there I was again, guard down. The next day, I waited for the typical hatefulness that would follow any of his kinder moments...yet it didn't come. Nor did it come the next day.
It came a few days later. It was sort of sneaky how he used my trust. He was casually asking me for "my" half of our car insurance. He has a truck and an SUV. I have a beat-up minivan. "My" portion is several hundred dollars less than his. He was banking on my softness, and trust, to just give it to him.
Aaaaand thats when I lost my cool. At the moment I realized what he was doing, I flipped. Granted, I flipped through email and not in person which probably didn't have the effect I was going for. However, had it been in person I probably would have gone to jail.
So what? He tried to rip me off, right? No big deal...same old story. But that moment the anger I'd been stifling for my own "best interest" bubbled up, and every reason I could think of that I hated him came flying to the surface. Dumb things really...like how he took our lawn mower (and left me with over 5 acres to mow!), how he took our shovels (which I didn't realize until I had to bury one of our cats), he took the rakes (uh...leaves), how he sends the kids back with dirty clothes on his weekends (that's 16 additional outfits for me to wash!), how he had this effing affair that has uprooted our entire damn lives and now he has the nerve to use a stupid apology to get my guard down to try and sucker me out of money when I'm already trying to make ends meet. Maybe its a stretch, but based on history, that's exactly what he did. The tears were the same as the ones he shed when I first found out and he begged me to come home...and then three days later he ran back into the arms of his girlfriend (only I didn't know it yet).
I WANT to believe he can be a better person. There is not a cell in my body that would ever ever consider taking him back, but for the sake of our children, I desperately hope he can find healing. Otherwise, his life will be full of these little games with various women. I, sadly, was reminded that he can not be trusted. However, I will enjoy the little bit of peace it has brought. He accepted my ranting email and didn't say a negative word to me. I appreciate that. Because every day that theres a positive interaction, it means theres been one less negative one.
The weird thing too is that he kept saying he apologized for "his part" of our marriage's demise. He never said he was sorry for cheating, or being abusive...just "his part." I'd be more apt to believe it if he could say it out loud. When he says his "part," it feels like he's minimizing the horror that he made our lives into. If he could verbalize how he'd scream, come at me, scare me, and torture me with his words, I might could take him seriously. His "part" just doesn't do it justice.
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