"Good riddance" sucks

***WARNING----Explicit language - Possible triggers***

So, it's a long rant today but I gotta get it out.

Dh travels a lot for his job and has hotel rewards club memberships for a couple of different chains. I signed him up for these a while back so he could earn reward points. They emails come to me as that is what was set up as the contact email when I opened the account for him. 

So today in my inbox is an email from dh's hotel rewards club asking for a "guest satisfaction survey on your recent hotel stay".  Turns out he stayed at a local hotel Monday night (the night after I left him and moved back to my apt).  This is a hotel in a somewhat seedy part of town. Turns out there's several "gentlemen's clubs" in the area.  Knowing his history with SA, I can't help but believe he stayed at the hotel (instead of driving 20 more miles down the road to his house) because a) he was too drunk to drive home - though I doubt that because he drives drunk quite frequently; or b) he picked up some one at whatever bar he was at and took him/her/it to the hotel with him.  He's stayed at local hotels before when we were separated, and I always had a sense that it was due to him picking someone up at a bar for a sexual encounter. Though every time I've asked him if he's had sex with anyone else while we were separated, he's always adamantly said "NO" but I just never could believe him 100%.  My gut always felt like he was lying but I WANTED to believe he was innocent so I chose to do that. 

So knowing all that I know about him, and how quickly he moves on to someone else as soon as I turn my back, it should be so easy to say "good riddance".  But it still sucks that it has to be this way. I had such high hopes for us. I loved him so much, for so long, in spite of all his baggage and lies and cheating and all the crap he put me through, I still always wanted to believe in him and in us.  I told myself that he's just a hurt little boy inside that needs and wants love and assurance and affection.

For the past seven years of my life, I've made excuses for him and justified his behavior toward me...he's just been hurt so badly, he's depressed, I hurt his feelings, or made him angry, so he goes out to bars and picks up other women because he's insecure and needs a self-esteem boost. It's not that he doesn't love me.  If I would just treat him better, he wouldn't do these things. Crazy, crazy thinking, I know. 

In my mind, I drew a line at what behavior I would not tolerate, that if this behavior occurred, I couldn't live with myself if I allowed that in my life. I could excuse the emotional shut outs, the coldness, the distance when he would be upset with me. I could excuse his going out to bars and "escaping" for a while. And at first my line in the sand was "if he ever cheats on me, i'm done with him."

That line was crossed a long time ago.  I don't know that there was ever any physical infidelity, but there was definitely the porn addiction, strip clubs, bars, other women's phone numbers in his wallet and cell phone, phone calls to these women in the middle of the night when he was working out of town (I used to snoop in his things to get proof that he was doing these things) so there's no reason for me to believe that it never got physical.  He never wore a wedding ring even though we talked often about how much that meant to me and that I needed him to wear one, an outward sign to others that he was committed to me.  He wore a ring for less than 2 months after we were married, claimed he left it on the sink in a hotel room and never replaced it.

When I first left him back in May, we got back together after a couple of months. My first trip back to his house I found condoms in the nightstand drawer and women's panties that were not my size.  Yet my brain somehow managed to believe that he wasn't having sex with someone else?  I convinced myself that the panties were some he'd bought for some kind of weird fetish thing or whatever and the condom was there for future use, just in case. It didn't mean he was screwing someone else, right? When I would find the proof that he was doing all the things I swore I would not tolerate, my line would move a little further out. I would ignore the proof that was right before my eyes, and we just wouldn't talk about it. Oh we were separated when he did that stuff, or we were having problems. Didn't matter that we were still married and I should be able to expect my husband to behave in ways that reflected that, but if we were not "together" then it was just expected that all bets were off.  And after all, he never hit me, or beat me. That was my next "line", I guess.  If he EVER laid a hand on my physically, I was gone.  I can't help but wonder if that had happened, what I'd do.

I tried to walk away from this man time and time again, because his actions never matched up to his words when it came to loving me, or treating me with respect or showing his loyalty and commitment to us and our relationship/ marriage.  It seemed he could always "take me or leave me", and it was never him who pursued me.

It's always been me that's gone back, sought him out again and again. Of course he always welcomed me back, telling me how much he missed me, how much he loves me, how he wants me and our marriage. At that's what I've kept holding on to, year after year after year. I was reading Syd's blog this morning (sorry but I'm new at this blogging stuff and don't yet know how to link to a blog.) and something he wrote really hit home with me. He said:


"I listened over and over to what the alcoholics in my life told me--"I love you and won't do this again." "I am so sorry to have hurt you." "You do know that I love you." I listened to all these words and believed them. I believed them because that seemed to be so much easier than the alternative of reality."



Time after time I excused his actual behavior when he would say the words I wanted to hear. Time after time of his lies, his cheating, his coldness and defensiveness and crappy treatment of me, still I wanted to believe in him.  When things were good with us, it's been the best of times and I felt safe and happy and loved. He was so much fun to be with when we were "on".  I WANTED to believe his words of love to me, wanted to believe him when he talked about how special I was to him.  But when he would get upset or angry or become distant, it would hurt me so bad.  The first few years of the relationship, I used to spend days in the bed, depressed and crying and not wanting to go on, just because I couldn't imagine living my life without him in it.
Thank God I'm not at that point anymore.  I've been through this enough times with him to know that it's just more of the same behavior that I've come to expect from him, and I'm not going to allow it to ruin my life. He's not worth it, he will never change, he will never love me the way I want and deserve to be loved and I know I will be just fine without him.  I'm strong, I'm resilient, I have so many people that love and support me, and I have my faith in God that will get me through this to the other side, to freedom. I KNOW this in my HEAD....why can't my HEART get it?



What a fool I've been. So many wasted years. I have no choice but to cut the cord to this relationship once and for all, and somehow figure out what it is in me that allowed me to tolerate such emotional abuse from a man.  Because that's what it's been. ABUSE. Abuse that I allowed. Abuse that my children and my friends have watched me tolerate over and over again. And the pain from that goes even deeper than broken bones and wounds and scars, because they never go away.