Sunday 7^th October 2007 

Hormones! I swore that this time I would not let them get the better of me; and I haven’t’ as much, but they have had a helping hand.

On Tuesday it came out that Danny did get a hard on with ‘her’. That he did stick his cock insider ‘her’ and then he lost his erection. So in my mind that is defined as full sex! Something that Danny swore he had not done. Something that I have based everything we have done (since the 9^th of July when he told me he could not keep an erection) on. Another lie!!

I just read back over some of my journal; read how many times I believed Danny, how I know when he is lying to me; but I obviously don’t! As he lied to me quite often and I don’t see it.

So now I am back, right back as far as Danny and I am concerned. Me on my own because I am still much stronger as an individual! I wonder whether Danny can ever face the truth: can ever stop lying because he thinks that makes things easier. From Danny’s point of view I understand why the counsellor told him that I don’t need to know everything, because Danny had told her that he was so afraid of losing me, and was afraid that if I knew everything then he would lose me.

But from my point of view it was the worst piece of advice she could have given him! It makes me wonder what it is that he is hiding from me that would make me walk away – when everything that has happened so far hasn’t!

What is the point of building us up again: only to find that that it has all been based on a lie again! Yes, my pride, my self-esteem comes into it. But that is all part of the person that I am. What is going to come and bite me on the arse in the future, like Tuesday’s revelation did? I am so afraid of that, so afraid that I will work hard to

I know that we cannot have what we had before, and it obviously wasn’t as good as I thought it was, or I would not be where I am now, so I don’t want it anyway!

But I do want to try; but to do that it must ALL be based on honesty and the truth. If Danny wants to keep me, as he says he does, then he must be honest. If one more lie comes up he will harden my heart more than he realises. Because of this these are the things that I imagine he is lying about:

How many times they had sex. He has already lied about this and said the following:

1. Ten times
2. Five times (which he actually counted on his fingers one night!)
3. Now a handful – he is not sure how many.

Why not he counted them on his fingers remember?!

 

1. How many times he met her in London; really, how long the relationship had been going on for?
2. Whether they had sex in our bed – Is that why Danny wants to get rid of the mattress?
3. Whether he did ring and text her for the whole eight months, because Danny was adamant that they were not texting each other until the March before he left.

 

Basically what is it that I don’t need to know about?

I do want us to work, I think that for us to break up would be a waste and incredibly sad; a catastrophe for Danny.

But if Danny really loves me, as he says he does, he must be honest with me now. Let this new relationship be built on the truth; lying is no good, hiding things is no good. In Shakespeare’s words “The truth will out.”

The other thing is: When Danny does not comfort me when I am upset. I have written in this journal so many times how I need him to do that, and he doesn’t. I need to know that when it comes to the crunch Danny will not let me down again – and this is a good start.

I think that it would be best for Danny to read this entry and then my emotions not being visible should make it easier.

Rosie

Reflections Here and Now

After reading this entry I had to give myself a couple of days to think about my reflection, because I thought that some people reading this would be thinking “Oh my God it is never going to get better, because she has gone back to square one!” It certainly looks that way and whilst at that moment in time I had gone backwards I did not stay there for long.

That’s the thing: I found that as each day, week and month went past the lows did not last as long; and I was able to fight my way out of them.

I hope that this entry can help the people who may be finding themselves taking three steps forward, only to find the next day that they have taken twenty steps back, understand that it happens to everyone.

Some people who haven’t experienced this type of betrayal do not understand that it is more than the immense pain of a broken heart: it is a broken life. They say things such as ‘You should be moving on by now.’ or ‘you need to start to get over it.’ Get over what? Your life is no longer the life as you knew it, you are starting again, wherever you are in this sad soap opera; and not only are you are grieving for what you have lost; but you have to build something new, in whatever format: staying or leaving. So there is nothing to ‘get over’; all there is available is acceptance: if you want to recover then you need to accept where you are and then move on from there: you can choose to move forward; or be one of the people who get stuck and remain in the spiral of bitterness and despair; in the same way as some people do after someone has died.

Stubbornness stopped me from getting caught up in that spiral: I was not going to let ‘her’ ruin my life any more than she already had. They say that stubbornness is a deadly sin, as it is linked with pride: we all know that was my deadly sin. But this was a double edged sword because if I not been stubborn enough to not let ‘her’ beat me then we would not be here today.

The other important thing from this entry is for those who are trying to make it work: you need to consider what you want your new relationship to be based on. The truth was important to me as you can see in this entry; but over time I realised that there are so many facets to ‘the truth’.

I used to say to Danny that if I ever found out that he had lied to me about how long it had been going on for; or how long they had been making a fool of me:  then, irrespective of what we had or where we had got to in our relationship, irrespective of how good it was, I would leave because it would all have been based on a bed of lies. I probably said this for about the first six years after we had got back together. But now?

Now I know that I have to make my mind up about what I believe to have been the truth and go with that: because I will never know the truth. It doesn’t matter what Danny says I will never fully believe him. If ‘she’ should come back out from under a stone to say  that they had flown to the moon and back on a fucking unicorn I won’t know whether it is the truth or not!(perhaps the unicorn bit!)

I made up my mind to believe that the ‘worst thing’ was the truth: the things that I found so painful (that they had been seeing each other and having sex for well over a year before I found out.)

I learnt that the only truth was what was here in front of me now. I would never really know what had happened in the past; and looking back there are some things that I didn’t need to know. (It took me a long while to get to that realisation). But don’t get me wrong I also learned that if I thought something: if all my instincts were screaming at me about something then I would listen to them irrespective of how painful it was, or how much Danny may deny it. It was a lesson I learned that I use even now: I never to lie to myself again.

If we’re talking’ the truth’ I was angry with myself for believing what was obviously a heap of bullshit. Oh come on, they never had full sex? They rented a house together for fucks sake! But I had to come to that realisation over time: I could not do it at the beginning because I knew that I would leave and I did not want to leave: I loved him, and I wanted to stay. So I lied to myself: just like I lied to myself during the affair, because I was afraid.

As I got stronger I could then look after myself and be honest with myself; it was a hard lesson to learn. This entry was the start of that lesson: I had to let go of whatever little candyfloss story I had told myself. So I went with the cold hard crappy worst case scenario after this episode and by doing that I was able to get to where I am today.

Can you see where I am going with this? Our future could only be built on what we started to build after we got back together, and whilst whatever happened in the past was significant, future honesty about the here and now was the most important thing. In addition where the truth was concerned understanding was an equally important thing:

Understanding how hurtful it is to continue to lie when you are asked. How will you gain the trust of someone if you continue to lie to them as you did before?

Understanding that sometimes people who have made such terrible mistakes and hurt someone so badly just don’t want to hurt them anymore: so they lie about the things that they cannot change.

Understanding that if you have lied already and are being asked to tell the truth now then you need to face all your fears and tell the truth.

Understanding that sometimes people are afraid of what they have done: So they try to bury their head in the sand and pretend that it never happened.

Understanding that no matter what you are told you will never know if it is true.

Understanding that sometimes the truth will hurt you more; and asking yourself if you really want to know and what you will do with that information.

As time went on I learnt that it didn’t matter how much of ‘the past’ I wanted to know about it was not important for our future: what Danny was doing here and now was going to forge the way ahead. So perhaps that is why in the ‘here and now’ I am blunt and honest when I think Danny is lying.

I now know why the counsellor told Danny I did not need to know everything: because I didn’t. As the old proverb says: ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you’; but at that time my bruised ego did not agree with it.

Now I understand that the information would have probably destroyed us. If Danny had been honest and told me everything, it would have led to us splitting up. I would question if I would feel better today? Would that information have made a wonderful difference to my life or a catastrophic one? What would I have gained? In addition would I still be wondering if it all was true anyway?

The counsellor knew that as time passed I would be able to deal with information more rationally than I could at the beginning. Although I could be more rational as I got stronger and became my own person, it did not mean that I would still not leave. Only the actions that Danny took after we got back together kept me there when I found out more and more. But I believe that the counsellor knew that if Danny put in the work then that would be the outcome: I would stay. I have to say that it was a clever tactic.

Over time as I became stronger and my own person I decided that I was not going to let someone else’s mistake define my life. I got to a point where I just didn’t fucking care anymore, I was me and that was all I really needed.

Rosie

Making This Better the book is now available including the journal entries for the first 5 years of our recovery & the whole 21 days of ‘The War’. Available internationally in paperback and ebook  at Amazon and Barnes & Noble also available at Xlibris and Apple Books for iPad and Waterstones Bookstores for click & collect

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