Being The Other Woman: Who we are, what every woman should know and how to avoid us (14 page)

Chapter 10
 

The Separation
 

To Blake, someone else was always responsible for my emotions. People’s opinions were always working their way about, creating chaos in my head. They were never truly my own feelings or thoughts and, therefore, they were minimized. I planned to end the relationship as a result of that email but when they returned from Aruba, he finally left Beth.

Initially, I was overwhelmed. He’d finally done it! It was what we had always wanted. We were able to spend every evening together without feeling sneaky. We were able to have fun together freely. We were very active. We went on snowmobile excursions and other regular outings. We flew to San Diego with his son and took him to Sea World, the zoo, and other tourist destinations. We drove to Mexico and ate dinner beside the sea. The three of us had a wonderful time.

We also visited his attorney again to get the divorce under way, but as time neared to serve Beth, Blake became detached from everyone and most certainly from me. He started to take off without telling anyone, flying to California to spend time with his mother or to other destinations with other friends. He would leave the house and tell me that he was meeting a friend for lunch or say he had business to attend to. Later, I would be on the phone with him as he would arrange to meet me in an hour and hear a boarding call in the background. I could not count on him for anything, could not trust a single promise that he made. From one day to the next, I never knew what I was getting from him. One moment, we would be laughing, cuddling, loving each other, discussing our interests, planning our future, and the next moment he would ruin it with his bizarre behavior. He became moody, withdrawn, closed, irritable, and hypercritical. He stopped telling me what was going on in his thoughts. I tried my best to back off and not pressure him for answers or commitments. I understood that it was impossible for him not to experience a grieving process and figured he was dealing with internal guilt. I needed to allow him this time to heal from all that had happened during the last two years and the pain of ending his marriage. But each time things began to look up, he changed again, leaving me feeling shut out and lied to about what he was feeling. I was soon depressed and exhausted.

Almost three months went by with his behavior being unpredictable. One day I noticed that he was exceptionally withdrawn and asked about it. He assured me that nothing was wrong. He was just dealing with business stress. He added that he was heading back into town that afternoon to pick up his kids and bring them back out to the lake and suggested that I go retrieve my own children from my mother so that we could all play on the water. I felt a true peace inside of me. Things were going to work, we were meant to be together, so it was all going to be all right. Then he drove off and I waited for him to come back with his children. Soon I felt that same sensation that he was no longer in the state. “He’s gone again,” I cried on the phone to my girlfriend, “I can feel it.” She didn’t believe me; she thought I was letting my thoughts get carried away. I began calling him. I received an automated message, “All circuits are busy,” which confirmed my suspicion that he had left.

I reached him the next day—in Maui. He said it was about the kids. He was missing them and didn’t feel like their spring break should be affected. He didn’t know how to tell me that he was flying away with his family. Even though I had asked him weeks before if there were any discussions between them regarding their annual trip to Hawaii. There had been, he told me, and promised that no, he would not be going.

He assured me that he and Beth had separate hotel rooms and that they had been up the night before doing the paperwork for a quick and easy dissolution of their marriage. They were dividing assets in a friendly manner instead of an ugly divorce. This would make things happen more quickly. Dissolution was what we wanted he said. It was all a strategic move.

But this time, his excuses weren’t enough for me. I phoned Beth for the truth. She gave it to me. “That’s not true,” she said to me when I told her he claimed they were sleeping in separate hotel rooms and not having sex. She didn’t answer me about the dissolution.

Blake was able to turn my upset emotions around by blaming me for reigniting the war. I stalled Beth’s willingness to sign the divorce papers and as a result of my phone call, he said, Beth had come on to him that evening as a last-ditch effort to save the marriage. She had lied to me and told me they were sharing a room because she wanted me to feel the same pain she was feeling. I was, he told me, causing more harm than good by being upset at his vanishing act. He blamed me for seeking the truth and slowing the process of the divorce.

I had been pretty friggin’ stupid for a pretty long time, but even a total jackass has more sense than to buy what he was saying now. As I considered all the bullshit I had tolerated, my self-worth plummeted again. I became physically ill. I lost fifteen pounds in less than two weeks. I was so depressed I was almost catatonic. If anyone had told me a story like the one I am telling now, I would have called her an imbecile.

As the events rolled on and on and I continued to excuse Blake and give him chance after chance, I was creating my own living hell. Meanwhile, he lived by the adage, “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” and I tolerated it by believing that I understood things out of love for him. Now I had two humiliating choices. I could go back to the society I had cast myself out of, where I was sure to be completely alone and hated. Or I could give it one more shot and hope he really meant what he was saying this time. Maybe, if he was telling the truth, I would be able to say, “I told you so,” to those who saw my fate from the beginning.

Our relationship began to center on my having something to prove to all the people who laughed at my stupidity for believing in a positive outcome. We had been so close to things turning in our direction before he left. I knew in my heart that once he took the chance away from fear and left his marriage, we would be happy. Could I trust that his current flight was only a minor setback? I wanted to believe it. I wanted to sell my home, pack my things, and start a new life under a new name somewhere else, even more so.

I needed relief from my depression. I poured my time into researching retreat spas to escape to. I was desperate trying to get my mind back, to find balance again. I longed to put space and time between us so I could explore inside myself and find out what was real. I could not understand why there was still this battle when Blake told me he knew that I was everything he had always wanted. He kept assuring me of that. For two years, I had been listening to him say he knew for certain that his marriage was dead and that he had found all he was searching for in me. I believed that he really loved me. Why was this still going on? He was still condemning my insecurities and searching through my faults to find excuses for his behavior, but his behavior was creating my insecurities. I couldn’t get him to realize that. Every time he filled me with hope, he abruptly abandoned me. If it was his marriage he wanted, then why did he hold on to me? Why did he keep me in the fight? Beth and I were both in hell. Did he care so little for either of us that he could not put us out of our misery by sticking to a choice? I longed to know what it was like to live in a relationship where there were comfort and trust present. I wanted to know what it was like to live my life without having to be on guard, without having to watch for every sign and listen extra close to every word. I wanted to not have to rethink or second guess every word spoken from someone I loved.

I remember a daydream I had while boating one afternoon almost two years into our affair. As I was looking at the homes lining the shore, we came upon a ratty cabin. I suddenly saw myself standing on the dock of that dilapidated shack, on the arm of a man who loved me without question and surrounded by friends who were happy for us. No controversy, just freedom to be ourselves. In that moment, I knew I would rather be visiting the dump with a man who wanted me as his one and only than shacking up in Blake’s castle, posing as princess, with a man who was never sure what he wanted. Thoughts like this continued to develop in my mind as I listened to apology after apology and excuse after excuse. I realized that it must be the same for Beth. He was doing the same thing to her.

I would never be sure who he really wanted or what he really felt. I was begging for the truth from a liar. I had poured myself out to this man, but I wasn’t getting anything back from him anymore. I wondered if he could even handle a normal life. So often, I had ignored the needs of others because they came at the same time of Blake’s urgency.

Knowing that one of his biggest complaints was that Beth gave her free time to their children’s school and gave him insufficient attention, I had been afraid that if I did not put him first at all times I, too, would disappoint him. How would I live a normal life with this man? Living with him, I wouldn’t be able to commit myself to community, friends or family. I always knew he would be dissatisfied if I didn’t give him all my attention, but at the same time I could never count on him giving me his complete. What had begun as two people enveloping one another, had turned into a one-sided relationship. He became a sponge that sucked me dry emotionally.

From the beginning, I told Blake that I would never tolerate an affair like the one that had developed for my friend Sasha. Sasha’s lover Wes, dropped a bomb on her a year into their affair, saying that he would never leave his wife. When Sasha began to complain about the neglect she was feeling and her loneliness, Wes bought her a cat.

I still remember sitting in her living room silent and dumbfounded as we stared at the little grey, out of control fur ball that was climbing and scratching Sasha’s new designer couch. “Well, what the hell should we name her?” she finally said in surrender. I looked up at her equally bewildered and said flatly “Jezebel” and that was that, it stuck. From that day forward the Biblically named whore evoked the feeling of an evil presence every time she crept into the room. One night, Sasha and I were baking cookies in her kitchen. Right in the middle of a humorous story and while in hysterical laughter, Jezebel suddenly jumped up on the counter. We stopped cold and just stared at her wide eyed and on guard as she prowled about. The cat seemed to smirk at our notice of her bringing a demonic presence into the room as if to say “That’s right girl’s, you’re destined to become The Cat Lady.” Sasha and I looked at each other trying to pretend that neither of us felt the hair stand up on our arms and cookie baking became a very serious and fixated task. It was down right freaky the way that cat could sober us.

Sasha’s lover had been divorced before and refused to fail at marriage again. He had a child he refused to share in joint custody, and as a successful businessman, he would not give up half of his assets, which had taken him a great portion of his life to accumulate. Thus I showed my cards by telling Blake about all of these things with Wes and Sasha. Blake knew that he could always promise a “future” for us until I was at the bottom of the rabbit hole, searching for the magic door, and so lost that nothing was as it seemed. Only then, did he begin to make comments like, “I don’t know if I can do it.” The division of assets would ruin him, he started saying, in ways that I would not understand. Now the pile of excuses grew into mountains. Every time the “clutch was pushed,” it was my fault that he could not shift gears properly. More and more, he was finding fault with my words or actions or my failure to “roll” with things as he implemented “the plan.” Time and again, I had to prove myself worthy of all the trouble he would endure if he divorced her for me.

Vacations seemed to always save our relationship, so after each dramatic or traumatic occurrence, Blake would plan a trip away for us. The scales made a substantial tip, however, when he booked a trip for us to Las Vegas and I declined to go. I had spent far too much time away from home, away from my children and (worse) away from my business. My finances were beginning to suffer greatly from my inability to consistently be available for clients and to market my business. My friends began to say, “He expects you to jaunt off at the drop of a dime, but he’s not supporting you and your children.” Or, “Beth can do whatever she wants because she has him to pay for everything. You don’t have that luxury.” And, “If things don’t work out for the two of you, they will be financially OK, but you will be ruined. You have to take better care of yourself.”

They were right. Reality smacked me upside the head. I was going broke while attempting to keep up with him, to meet all of his needs, and never failing to be there for him while neglecting my own responsibilities. I was exhausted. I was stretched to the limits in my struggle to make ends meet, balance my children and obligations, but still drive hours at a time to meet him and comfort him, as he always seemed to need me. When I had scheduling conflicts, Blake would win. If not, I’d be like Beth, who made everything else more important than he was. I had spent so much time and energy fighting to keep everyone else happy that I no longer was capable of determining what it was that made me happy, or if I was even happy at all. Further, when I expressed my financial fears, Blake always assured me that I had nothing to worry about. He said I was fretting over little things. He added that if I wanted to remain active in business, then we would build a powerful team and I wouldn’t really have to work after his divorce. My need to support myself and his inability to help me financially was only temporary. What I really wanted, however, was to be encouraged to grow and succeed myself before we built the fabled partnership. In the meantime, I was fighting to make my car payments and buy groceries, even as the public perception was that I was a gold digger and with him only because he was successful. I had less financial security than I had ever before even as I was being assured that my sacrifices would pay off later. Except for the trips (which were quite grand, I will say), I received less from Blake, by way of gifts, than I had from any man I had ever previously dated. What I did receive for a greater part of the relationship, was more emotional attention and connection then I had ever experienced before. The memory of that connection is what aided me in living the life of a willing prisoner.