(Don't start unless you have 30 minutes or so free time, you've been warned...lol)
It was 2 AM on a Tuesday in September. "Hey, are you awake?" she asked in a voice I recognized as her stoned tone. We both hit the marijuana vapes in the evenings so it isn't unusual for her to be stoned but she'd been adding in Kratom lately and was a bit extra that night. "Not really" I replied. She gave it about 5 seconds then "I really need to talk to you about something......how would you feel about an open marriage?" Having heard an obvious red flag I respond, "Well, I'm awake now".
And that's how it started. Together for 10 years, married for 7 at that point. The remainder of the conversation was a blur but to sum up, the guy she told me not to worry about is now a guy I have to worry about. For the next 2 weeks I'm buried in my feelings and trying to trust her that they have not actually physically done anything. To trust that it's only been chatting (which I was aware of as he's part of a group of mutual friends and we all chat with each other) and that they only broached the topic impulsively with each other "If I was single, would we date each other?" after many tokes on the magic vape.
At the end of the 2 weeks I had not been able to verify anything really. Her phone stayed locked having gone from PIN number I knew to thumbprint and becoming an appendage that only got put down when she showered or slept. But what I did find was completely by chance. I'm supposed to do my business expenses monthly but they'd stacked up about 6 months. In the process of getting cell phone bills pulled I noticed that while she had told me she went no-contact with Mr. You Don't Have To Worry About Him the next day after the open marriage "discussion" that there were a bunch of calls and text messages to his number. Strange, I thought, as I'd asked many times over the past few weeks "You haven't been talking to him have you?". "No, of course not, not since that night when she told him she'd crossed a boundary with me and knew she needed to cut him loose.
It kept eating at me. I had verifiable proof she'd lied. I know a lot about technology but even I can't fake phone records. Then I remembered that we share a laptop and we happen to use the same profile. A profile that had saved passwords because who wants the hassle of keeping up with your personal security? I waited for my moment and she eventually went shopping on her own. Knowing she was at least 45 minutes away I cracked open the laptop, determined to get into her Facebook account and surely discover evidence of her affair. The Facebook login page filled the screen and the username and password fields magically populated with the keys to her kingdom. In my haste I had not considered one fact, that she might have enabled multi-factor authentication. Which of course she had. So, about 2 seconds after hitting the login button the multi-factor warning displayed and my heart sank into my feet. 5 seconds later my cell rang. "Did you just try to get into my Facebook account!?!" she said in a tone honestly more demanding than accusatory. One deep breath later I confessed. I've never been a good liar. Probably why I never picked up on poker. "Pack your shit! I want you gone!!".
About 35 minutes later she arrived and we began having a heated conversation, well at first. As a very unsuccessful codependent I caved pretty quick and begged her not to divorce me. I sold out myself out and let her win. "I believe you that it was only talking and one bad decision brought on by too much THC." She continued to vent at me. Apparently I'd been ignoring her pleas for years. Pleas that apparently fell on deaf ears as I neglected her in favor of work or coaching little league (yes, she actually said me coaching my own son in little league was tantamount to neglecting her needs). I hadn't understood or believed her that she has fibromyalgia, that I think she's lying about all of it and if I really loved her I'd have known that she'd never cheat on me. That's why she was doing the "honorable" thing and asking for the open marriage.
Once we got calmed down she graciously agreed to stay together but that I was on thin ice with her. My internal fear of rejection was joyous with relief. I began smothering her with affection. We held hands for the first time in years when we were out. We cuddled during the day for no reason other than to be near her. I brought her coffee in the morning without being asked. I rubbed her back while she was sick from some bad gas station burrito as she hurled into the toilet. Every action met with a similar response...."why couldn't you have been this way the whole time? why did you wait until I screamed I wanted a divorce?" A lot of tears were shed. A lot of listening to how I'd broken her with my neglect. How I'd never made her feel important and treated her like garbage. After 10 years I'd learned to keep my mouth shut, nod my head, and agree. Yes, I must have been a shit husband right? What else could explain her feelings?
If you've made it this far know that I'm being facetious in my tone here. If you like dark comedies you'll get what's going on here.
I'll switch from Story Mode into Flashback Mode for a bit. My first marriage lasted 10 years. Married the first girl I slept with in college at the age of 20. 12 years later I'm living on my own, separated but not officially divorced, dating but not seriously, and usually with my 3 kids with me full time. Their mother, former love of my life, was always too busy to keep them. Somehow living in the house we had bought together, in the town that I grew up in, with no hobbies or steady job to speak of, she just didn't get enough "me time". I met my second wife in that 12th year. She was different in a way I didn't know I was missing. Sex, people. The best sex of my life. Sex so good it made me finalize my divorce. My ex tried to sink her hooks into my new girlfriend. First by employing the "we should all be able to get along, for the kids sake" tactic. New girlfriend played along until it turned into "he always did this one thing that drove me crazy (in a bad way), don't you hate it when he does that to you too?" Recognizing the situation turning sour we spent the next few years in constant battle with my ex who finally gave up, down to her last dime, called me and gave me an hour to pick up my youngest (6 years old at the time and the only one that willingly stayed with her still), then vanished 4 hours away to live with family.
The next few years were a blur of vacations, hosting parties, drinking excessively, and having lots of sex. Making up for lost time I suppose when your ex's idea of spicing up sex as leaving the light on. There were also arguments though that crept in, mostly related to how the kids treated her. My new wife had a kid of her own that was already 14 when we met. My oldest was 12 at the time so they actually got along well. But it would seem my ex had "weaponized" the children against my new wife. "She's making them hate me!" I would hear. "If those kids don't start acting the way I expect them to then they'll have to go back to live with her!". "How can you let them be so mean to me!?" Admittedly I was a bit of "Disney Dad". Professional Peacekeeper. "They're just kids" I'd say with the patience of a saint but the backbone of a wet noodle. My own childhood trauma had led me to the point where I was just "trying to break the cycle". So I was too nice. I didn't discipline enough. Years later I'd be told by my new wife that along with being a shit husband she'd also raised my kids for me because I wasn't able to discipline them or teach them respect. "I should have broken up with you the minute you moved him in", talking about my youngest who was 6 at the time (you know, the one I was given an hour to go pick up before bio-mom disappeared for a few years.
Aside from arguing about kids everything was great I thought. We were close. Years went by before we ever spent even one night apart from each other. We worked at the same job for a few years. Old bitter married people and single women hated how adorable we were, jealous that we seemed so happy. And I was. I mean, wouldn't you if your wife came to work with you every day and gave you blowjobs several days a week on lunch breaks? Even when I moved to a new job which was completely work from home we texted constantly. We ate a lot of drive thru food (dinner by numbers) and found a way each weekend to spend what little was left in our bank account. Food, sex, party (but not as often as we once did), argue about kids...rinse and repeat. Then we had to move.
We'd been renting from her parents who lived a few houses down. By this time her only child was now 19 and moving back to town after graduating high school early, getting married without inviting me or my wife (even I thought not inviting your mom was cold), moving several states away then moving back only 2 years later. Apparently we were being kicked out so that my in-laws could let their only granddaughter have the house. We found a doublewide to rent from some a nice lesbian couple that flipped houses (not that it matters but people love little details). Our credit was so poor we wouldn't have qualified for 100 percent interest to finance a Big Mac but they worked with us. I was able to get my wife hired at my new company. We were both remote. Both working side by side again being adorable to our virtual coworkers and confusing people on Zoom calls (is that your sister or your wife?).
I didn't know it at the time but it was the beginning of the (at this point most likely) end of our relationship. We were both still morbidly obese. My oldest daughter had fled to live with her bio-mom almost immediately after graduating high school. Constant arguments with my wife no doubt led to that decision. I began storing loads of resentment for my wife driving my child away out of town. I'd already been resentful of how my wife never seemed to want to do anything except sit in bed, watch tv, play on her phone, and eat. That nice work from home job was ignored until it was minutes before a meeting. Bare minimum effort around the house. No cleaning (I picked up on that the first visit to her house years before), great cook but only when she felt like it because there was something she wanted to eat. Otherwise it was drive thru or I had to come up with something. This was about the time we met our new circle of friends and the guy who would become the "one you don't have to worry about".
I didn't pay much attention to my life for years so recollecting all this in the right order gets difficult. I focused on my job which ate up 50 hours a week or so and got back into playing video games. She seemed to be happy being left alone in the bedroom to play on her phone and binge tv. One day she says she befriended a woman through a Facebook group and they were local so we made plans to attend one of their parties. They turned out to be good people. Another couple that were a few years younger than us but they were very social and hosted events a lot at their place. At one of these events is where my wife was introduced to "he who shall not be named". I need to call him something though. Can he be Mr. Dipshit?
He was very unassuming, quiet, but covered in tattoos and reeked of attention seeking behavior. If my wife has a type it is apparently this guy. I didn't pick up on any vibes, clues, signals...nothing. She didn't outwardly flirt with him either. To that point I'd never had any reason to not trust my wife. "I'm going to friend a bunch of people from that party" she told me. "Me too, everyone seemed pretty cool". Time went on. Not much later my wife would express a desire to get bariatric surgery. We'd both tried every diet and every pill but nothing stuck. I mean, nothing buries feelings like carbs. I was at first unsure of how it would affect our relationship. Would she get hot and leave me for the pool boy? (Ok, we don't have a pool but as the reader you have the benefit of foresight). I was given many reassurances that we aren't that type of couple. Nothing like that could break us up. She got the surgery then a year later I got it. We dropped weight like watching ice melt under a blow torch.
She'd always craved attention but now she was on a new level. I was meant to somehow notice each pound as it disappeared and write sonnets in her honor, crying out to the world how remarkably beautiful she was. I wasn't raised that way though. I'd never learned from my parents and step parents how to really love someone and show affection. I provided. I made sure we had shelter, food, and clothes. I didn't complain that she lived in bed like one of the old folks on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the original of course, remake was ok but come on...Gene Wilder am I right?). I didn't complain that she always had fibromyalgia issues that kept her from vacuuming or generally doing anything related to cleaning except on paydays where she magically had the energy to go shopping before I was even awake and aware the debit card was not in my wallet.
I was blissfully ignorant that everything was not as it seemed. We were never the type to hide our phones and we knew each others passwords and pin numbers for everything. I honestly don't know when the attraction between her and Mr. Dipshit (I'm sticking with it) moved into a new gear. Over the next 3 years we continued to hang out with our new couple friends but Mr. Dipshit lived too far away to attend. In the past 4 years I've seen him at two of the friends events and once to tour him through our current home we just moved into 18 months ago. This wasn't unusual because we toured a lot of family and friends through our new home. A house on 2 acres is a far cry from a doublewide in a trailer park (but it was a nice retirement kind of trailer park that people vacationed at, not the kind with permanent police presence). We had good reason to want to be proud of it.
When we moved in though something changed for me. We both had physically changed with the weight loss to the point we didn't recognize ourselves in old pictures or in new mirrors. We were both working but the mortgage hurts. Paycheck to paycheck. The house was bought at the height of the Covid craze in real estate so we paid top dollar and the budget is still trying to snap like an over stretched rubber band. I fell into a depression. I didn't want to hang out with our new friends as much. I was quiet and stand-offish when I did. She was having the time of her life and I just worried about paying bills and keeping the peace. I still had my two sons at home and we still had plenty of arguments over how the youngest was still being mean to her. Ultimatums were thrown my way but in reality I would never move that child back in with his bio-mom who had still kept herself out of the picture. Not even a birthday card. I chose poorly on that one.
My wife continued to hang out over there when I wasn't. I had no reason not to trust her. I had no reason to suspect anything. Even 8 or 9 years later we'd only spent maybe days apart. Both working from home we were still together every waking hour. She was accounted for. I just didn't feel like being around people. She did. She even got a matching tattoo with the wife of our couple friend. I have no tattoos. I have no trouble getting married for sex, but tattoos, those are permanent right? (Ok, so sex wasn't the only reason. She did make me happy more than she made me resentful so I guess that's on me). She wants to get tattoos with all her friends all of a sudden. Her and a childhood friend get matching roses one weekend. Then the ask, "Me and Mr. Dipshit want to get matching tattoos also! That's ok right? He's your friend too so it's fine right?" All said with the excitement of a child talking about the new puppy they're going to get.
It didn't sit well, of course. But being the trusting, codependent peacekeeper that I am I eventually ok'd it. After all "we're just friends and we just talk about his ex's and how bad his dates are and our trauma bond". Yuck. But he showed up one weeknight a few months after we'd moved in and off they went to the local tattoo shop and came back a few hours later with matching wildflower tattoos on their forearms. I agreed they looked cool, showed him around the house while my wife's feet were barely touching the floor, then he left and I haven't seen him since. To my knowledge neither has my wife.
Life resumed. Tv was binged. Naps were had. She continued to put in bare minimum all while complaining about my kids yet praising herself at the same time for being such an awesome mom to them since their mom abandoned them and I didn't have the guts to be the disciplinarian or teach them to respect her. "Shit husband" as she said recently. We had our first holiday season in this new to us house in '22 then in January '23 she was let go in a "rightsizing" event at our company. I was retained and still work at the same company. She was visibly depressed for a long time. Somewhere around March last year her daughter (who eventually had moved out of the house we were kicked out of only to move about 4 hours away from us) broke an ankle at work. My wife took the opportunity to go stay with her daughter while she was on the mend. My step-daughter had at some point broke up with the guy she'd left town with and was now living with a guy that was a roommate. They downsized to a one bedroom and started being a couple. Got sidetracked, sorry.
For the 4-6 weeks my wife was there with her daughter having their make up bonding time I barely talked to her. I didn't want to interrupt their time together since it had been years since any meaningful time was spent between them. Also, there just wasn't anything at home to talk about. She'd already stopped wanting to hear about my job a while back. Other than that I don't have hobbies other than gaming (which I quit about 4 months ago completely) and nothing really happened that was conversation worthy. I missed her but looking back I think I missed the routine we had. This time period is the only one I can't account for her whereabouts. And ol' Mr. Dipshit was now only 2 hours away for that time period. This was probably the actual event that triggered the escalation of her attention seeking behavior with Mr. Dipshit. I wouldn't know, I mean its not like I have access to her messages (or do I?....oooh, cliffhanger).
Nothing remarkable occurred for the next few months between her visit with her daughter and the open marriage conversation last September. She collected unemployment and TikTok viewing time. I worked. She was content to let us stay paycheck to paycheck because "focusing on a career or education right now just isn't what she's interested in". That and she "hates money because it's all her parents ever talked about". Also, I was reminded many times about how upset she was that I basically ignored her while she was gone and I must not have missed her at all and she's completely broken because of it. Ok, could I have put in more effort to communicate? Absolutely. The fact that I didn't was for the reasons I already stated. I didn't want to interrupt and there was nothing to talk about.
So now we've come full circle. About that cliffhanger. I couldn't let it go. I pulled the dashcam several times after she'd been out on her own and heard her telling everyone she could that she's going to leave me. Interestingly, if she was being truthful, she told one friend that she could tell Mr. Dipshit wanted her to leave me and move towards him so they could date but it was only hints. I hid voice recorders and caught more conversations saying the same things over and over. I had been a shit husband and she was going to leave, just as soon as she can get a job and her own vehicle. She won't break down and get a job in town as a cashier or anything because "that is just so humiliating that she has all this experience to waste it on being a cashier". She has a GED, 2 semesters of online school, and about 3 years experience in project management. Yeah, she wasn't exactly climbing the corporate ladder. "Would you rather be homeless?" I'd ask. That would at least get me a "Ok, tomorrow I'll look into it". You already can tell tomorrow never came.
I couldn't give up on the Facebook account either. I was determined. She was confident. Her phone started being left around when she showered. I'm not brave enough to touch it while she's sleeping. I've seen her go from full snore to up and moving to the bathroom without warning. Just too risky. But, I timed her shower routine. I studied her movements. I knew I had 5-7 good solid minutes when that curtain closed. So I plotted and schemed. How do I defeat a fingerprint scanner on a cell phone though? Turns out I didn't have to. I noticed my phone (also an Android) had a PIN option even if you enable fingerprints. You just have to swipe a different direction. Now I knew what I had to do. Try every single 4 digit combination that exists without locking her phone and somehow in the 5-7 minutes she showers. But it didn't take thousands of attempts. In the end it only took two. First was the same PIN she'd always used. My finger shook so bad from nerves that I waited a whole other day or two to try a different number. It was her birthday. Now I had her where I wanted her.
Over the next week or two I managed 2 solid sessions of recording her phone with my phone pointed at her screen while my finger scrolled through the message history with Mr. Dipshit. I could care less what she might be talking to her mom or anyone else about or if she was dragging me through the mud. But I didn't find what I wanted to find or expected to. The recent messages had the same stuff she was telling everyone else about her big plans to move out and work remotely and just "work on herself". Where was the sexting? The nudes, the weiner pics? Granted I could only scroll so far back in 5 minutes. But it was a lot of one-sided conversation where she sends memes and "oh woe is me" messages about how stupid I am and his responses of either "nice" or "that sucks".
So now what? Where's the betrayal? Was she really being honest with me that nothing had in fact happened and that they really were just good friends? If they'd hooked up then surely she'd still be talking about it or at least still sexting him. Maybe the no-contact requirement I put on her that night in September didn't work but maybe it at least woke her up to where she was headed. But I looked at my little videos closer and more carefully. I found something finally. "I don't even consider what we did cheating". Now, I could only go back to just a little before the September event. To this point today that's all I've got. Knowing my wife as well as I do I can see her making the old argument "well you weren't giving me any attention so I found someone who would so its your fault". I'm sure plenty of people here have heard that one. Oh, and there was one other one. You know those text messages she switched to after saying she was going no-contact? The first one she sent "I've decided to leave my husband. I'm single now. Show me your weiner. lol".
So, the morning after we have our argument and no-contact discussion she dropped conversations on Facebook (where she had shown me she was blocking him) and moved to text messaging and that's the first thing out of her fingers? Then I pulled out a few other messages like how he'd say something about not feeling great and she'd say she wished she was there to take care of him and run fingers through his hair, or ask if a blowjob would make his day better. You know, stuff everyone says to their "just a friend".
Ok readers, its late and I'm dog tired. I'll write some more tomorrow. If you made it this far....congrats??
