The Big D

Dear journal,

I am writing to you because I and my husband's marriage counselor says it will help us work through our problems. So I am going to give this a try tonight.

I've been married to my husband now for over thirty years. We were very close and very much in love when we were young and just starting out.

We had a nice affordable house, two wonderful kids, a golden retriever, and while we weren't upper class or rich we had everything we needed to live comfortably. We still have all those things to this day. But it doesn't help the heartache.

It all ended and changed the night I found out he was having an affair behind my back. I caught him in the office one night while I decided to bring him his dinner early as a surprise since he was working such a late shift. I won't go into the details. Not just yet. I don't feel I am prepared to take that descriptive plunge this early on in my therapy.

The separate counseling is going great so far. Well for me, but... Henry refuses to show up for his appointments. The therapist is always calling wondering when he will show up. When I ask Henry why he won't go he just ignores me. What a vein and prideful man he is.

Fortunately, the kids were already grown up and out of the house before this mess happened. So I'm thankful they did not have to go through all of this at a younger and much more impressionable age. I haven't had the heart to tell them yet, not even now. It would have torn them apart a lot more if they found out about his infidelity while they were still living in this house.

Henry and I fight too much as it is, I don't need any further disruptions in this house. It upsets the dog and makes him bark like crazy so that I constantly have to calm him down. He's just been so lost and angry being forced to live in the broken home his betrayal has caused.

I still to this day don't even understand why he did what he did or how he could have justified it in his mind. We had such an amazing connection. Like we were truly soul mates to the point that we were finishing each others sentences and calling one another whenever we thought about each other. We could just feel what the other was feeling. We still can even if there is a stain on our home. A mark that never fades.

Divorce is such an ugly word. I never ascribed to it or believed in it and neither did my mother before me. I also didn't want to set a bad example for our kids that would make them think love like what their stable parents had could just fizzle out and end.

Even now the thought of the big D and that maybe I should have done it is swirling around in my head. All the implications of it. I packed his things up recently and set them at the door. To send a clear message to him of how I felt. That I want him gone and out of this house. He just put all his things back. Henry always was a stubborn man.

I know he feels it though. Sometimes I hear him crying softly in other rooms when he thinks I'm not around. He gets angry a lot and sometimes he throws things too and makes a mess. He's put holes in the walls I have had to repair. Especially if I invite our long time male friends over for a casual visit. He projects his affair on to me as if I am the one guilty of adultery.

So I just clean up the messes and carry on as if nothing happened. I think he knows we are in two different worlds now and have drifted apart. Like he can sense he is losing me more and more each day. Things have changed for us irrevocably now and we are just too different where once before we were both on the same wavelength.

It makes me mad that he cannot seem to get the point or understand that I don't want him touching me. He tries to some nights but I just roll over and ignore him. I can't even look him in the eyes most days when he confronts me. It's too late for all that now. What's done is done. I can't change what I have done to isolate myself from him in my own emotional self defense.

I mean, it's just flat out unacceptable for him to keep making me feel like this. I'm not the guilty one, HE is!

After all, he's been dead for over a month now. I hid the body very well and they will never find it. If you'll excuse me, I have to go feed our dog, Baxter. He's very hungry. :)