Coming clean. The clock is ticking.

Mr. P and I started writing this blog when we were about six months in from D Day. By that time our thoughts were clearer and the roller coaster was slowing down. Today I think I need to go into the Way Back Machine and give those readers who are a lot closer to their own D Days a little taste of what life was like for us in the days immediately following D Day, which were much more raw and painful.

Mr P did a post awhile ago where he stresses that the sex addicted spouse, or really any cheating spouse for that matter, needs to spill his guts to his wife right away. If you don’t spill your guts, COMPLETELY, the clock will keep resetting. You’ll be taking two steps forward, and three steps back. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about. Mr P’s trickle truth-ing is a classic case of “how to screw up your healing”. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. I repeat, DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. Here was our timeline:

Late September 2015: I find out completely by accident that Mr P was going to massage parlors. How? Mr. P and I work together. I’m the telecom admin of the company responsible for all the cell phone accounts. I had signed up for admin access on a new carrier and was testing it out one night to make sure my access worked. I decided to look at Mr. P’s line of service. No reason. I never suspected anything was amiss in the marriage. I just picked his number off the list. It was then I saw he was psycho dialing a number earlier that day. Mr. P doesn’t want to talk to anyone on the phone that badly, ever. I Googled the number and it belonged to a mamasan of a massage parlor who had been arrested multiple times for prostitution. I read all the press releases about her going back to 2009. I walked over to Mr. P and said, “I really hope there’s an innocent explanation for this, because I don’t think you’re the kind of person who would do this, but can you explain to me why you’re calling an illegal massage parlor?” He gave me some stammering bullshit about how it must have been a sales rep for a computer supply company that he was talking to. But he would definitely check it out and let me know. I didn’t believe it. My stomach started sinking into my feet. No- it CAN’T be. It CAN’T be. He loves me. He would never do that to me. But by then it was late and I went to bed. We had work in the morning.

I couldn’t sleep. Luckily the next day we were both working from home. I got up early and checked his cell phone account going back another six months. More calls to more massage parlors. Now I confront him. “Tell me what’s going on NOW. No more bullshit.” The next line out of his mouth:

“Well, I haven’t been attracted to you in a long time.”

NOW, a year and a half later, I know that that wasn’t true, and Mr. P is mortified that he said it. It was an angry deflection because he was mad he got caught. But it stuck in my brain, and frankly, it’s STILL not 100 percent gone from my brain. A word of advice for those who get caught: DON’T LASH OUT AT YOUR SPOUSE AND SAY SOMETHING YOU DON’T MEAN. If you do, tack an extra year or more onto your healing journey to make up for the psychological damage you did. Or kiss the possibility of reconciliation goodbye. You’ve been warned.

At that point I ran down to the kitchen and laid on the floor screaming. I was screaming and wailing for a long, long time. I wished I could push myself through the floor and become part of the ground and just bury myself to make the pain stop. Mr P came down and held me and said, “Give me a year. Give me a year to sort this out. Please give me a year.”

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“About two years.”

TWO YEARS? I tried to push myself into the floor even harder. I wasn’t falling through it. Damn it. I wanted to disappear into that floor. This has to be a dream. When am I going to wake up from this dream? This is not a dream. But then I had to compose myself because I had a 10 am conference call. I went out for a ride in my car to make the call. I wanted to have a private conversation with my co-workers. I told them what was going on. I told them I needed a few days off to sort this out. They were very accommodating and supportive, thank God. Then I talked to a male colleague of mine that I’ve known for many, many years. His response? “Men are idiots. We just are. We do unbelievably stupid things.” Whatever I decided to do, he said, he would support me and help in any way he could.

I came home about an hour later and broke open the bottle of scotch. I needed a buzz. There was no way I was getting through this without a buzz. No, I’m not an alcoholic. I never have been an alcoholic. I’ve never even been drunk in my life. A little tipsy on a few occasions? Yes. Drunk? Never. Today I needed to be a little drunk.

Mr. P asked if he should leave. I told him that I have to go through this pain whether he’s here or not. If he leaves I’m still stuck with the pain. That doesn’t leave with him. No. I wanted him to stay. These are the reasons I stayed:

1. Mr. P is my best friend.

2. He gets me.

3. We have the same off-kilter sense of humor and find the same potty jokes hilarious.

4. When it comes to making a decision one can speak for the other because we think the same way.

5. There’s no one else I’d rather spend time with than him.

6. We share the exact same parenting philosophies and we have zero conflict in that department.

7. He’s smart and quick witted. After three attempts at this marriage thing I have finally found my intellectual equal.

8. And most important of all, when he holds me in his arms I still melt like butter in a microwave.

So I was willing to try and work it out. If there was a chance, even a small one, that we could fix this, then I was going to take it. I’m a gambling woman by nature and afraid of very little. If we do nothing, we’ll never put this marriage back together and my heart will still be broken. If we do something, then there’s a chance. Some chance. Even a small chance. I don’t care what kind of a chance. I’ll be brave and try it. But keep that bottle of scotch handy.

I needed to talk to someone and cry on someone’s shoulder at this point. I can’t talk to my mother. My mother has undiagnosed narcissistic personality disorder. I was too embarrassed to talk to any of my friends because I didn’t want them to know what was going on, and I live two hours away from all of them and frankly, we’re not that close anymore. I have always been close to my mother-in-law so that’s who I picked. Yes, that would be a little awkward for Mr. P but that’s too bad. I needed to cry to someone and I had no one. No one but my betrayer. So Mr P and I went to his parent’s house. I couldn’t go alone because I was in no condition to drive.

As his mother is holding me and I’m wailing, Mr. P’s parents are horrified at what he did. Mr P’s father, a mountain of wisdom…..NOT….said to his son, “Well, stop DOING that!” Oh, thank you for those pearls Big Daddy P. We didn’t know Mr P had to stop doing that before we came here, but now our path is so clear to us! LOL. But we knew we weren’t going there for sage advice. That reaction was pretty much what we expected. I just went because they’ve always been kind to me. They were like the parents I never had.

On the way back home Mr. P tells me he had an epiphany. He describes it in his post called “The Hammer Fall Event.” He realized that the problem was not me. It was him. He needed to fix himself. He wasn’t going to go to those massage parlors anymore. We both know NOW that had he not uncovered the molestation he suffered which allowed him to understand what was really wrong with him he probably wouldn’t have been able to keep that control up long term, but at least at that point during his “Hammer Fall Event” he knew he wanted to try. If only he had decided to stop lying while he was starting to fix himself. He didn’t understand that I needed a timeline.

Here’s why the betrayed spouse needs this: She needs to know which years of her marriage she can still cherish. She needs to know which years of her marriage she needs to throw away. She needs to know which old photos she can look at and which ones she needs to avoid. She needs to know exactly what her husband was doing when and with who. She needs to know why he did this to her. She needs to know what was real and what was fake. She needs to know this so she can have some solid ground to stand on. She will keep asking questions to try and find where that solid ground is. If you, the cheater, can’t give your wife any solid ground, then you are being cruel. You are STILL an abuser.

My solid ground kept crumbling beneath me as the story kept changing. Each time the story changed I trusted him less and less, because he didn’t volunteer much at all, and I had to discover the lies on my own. First it was two years and it was handjobs only. Lie #1. Then he admitted to sex, but only three times. Lie #2. Then it was sex more than that but mostly handjobs. Lie #3. By that time, all trust was gone and the detective game was on. It was ON. Out came my inner Perry Mason. Perry Mason would have stayed asleep if I had gotten the truth. Lying will guarantee that Perry Mason comes out. Perry Mason is going to nail your ass to the wall.

Did you only call from your cell phone? Yes. So I checked our cash withdrawals from our checking account, which I never looked at that closely before. The withdrawals extended further back than the cell phone calls. Lie #4. I went back three years and then noticed a break in the withdrawls, so I stopped looking. Is this how long you’ve been doing this? Yes. I had to check that, so now I dug out ALL of our bank statements going back to when we combined accounts right before we got married. Yes, I had saved over 15 years’ worth of bank statements. Who does that? Mrs. Perry Mason, that’s who. The bank statements proved it had been going on since BEFORE we were married. Lie #5. Now I had to find out what kind of stuff goes down at these massage parlors and what do the “services” on the menu cost. I found out how much a handjob vs full service cost. He was buying a LOT of full service. Lie #6. I found his profile on Spa Hunters and asked if user name “JXXXX” was him. He swore he never even HEARD of SpaHunters and why would he be so stupid as to write about all his illegal activities on the internet? But “JXXXX” mentioned in a post that he worked in X city and lived in Y city and now his identity couldn’t be denied. Lie #7. What happened when you went to that Go Go Bar back in 2004? Nothing, just a lapdance. I found his profile on Utopia Guide. He wrote about his blow job. Lie #8. And then the topper of them all……”JXXXX” describes his “sessions” with hookers in our house, and in my bed. Lie #567,897,654,430. Liar, liar, pants on fire. How can I ever trust you again? And you know what the kicker was? We were in therapy this whole time and the Psych Monster already scolded him severely for lie #1. That was about the only thing the Psych Monster did right. He swore he wouldn’t lie again and I knew everything there was to know. WRONG!

But since the Psych Monster was one of those “co-dependent” models, like the Ford Pinto of Psychology, she kept yammering on about how my “needing to know” was pathological. So now I had to fight on TWO fronts: I had to battle Mr. P who was ashamed to tell me the truth, and I had to battle the Ford Pinto when she kept resisting my need to know, and she went one further and kept blocking my path telling Mr. P there was something wrong with me because I needed to know. Bitch.

Here’s the other danger the cheating spouse is going to have to deal with if they keep lying. You’re going to lose your wife. There’s a limit to what she can take and you’re going to exceed that limit. How far do you want to push it? Just one more lie and she might walk out that door and never come back. You might even lose her to a revenge affair. Oh, just think about THAT one, Mr. Cheater. Does it make your stomach turn? Welcome to your wife’s world.

In between establishing the timeline and before the molestation discovery I decided I was going to rip his heart out, because he deserved it. I was going to cheat on him in retaliation. Two can play at this game, motherfucker. I joined Ashley Madison. I’ll do whatever the hell I want with whoever the hell I want for the next 15 years and THEN we’ll have a conversation, you asshole. I’m going to bring another dude into our bedroom and have him rub his junk all over Mr. P’s pillow. ALL OVER HIS PILLOW. And watch him rest his face in it at night. Breathe deep. Ha ha ha ha ha…..breathe deep. You laugh, but I was really yelling that out loud when I was home alone, especially as I was going through those bank statements. Once I signed up for an account I couldn’t believe the onslaught of horny married men out there. I had to practically beat them off me with a stick. Talk about an ego boost. But I needed that ego boost. I needed to know that men still found me desirable, even if my husband hadn’t in 15 years. And the dick pics? Guys, don’t. Just DON’T. Anyone who sent dick pics got eliminated off the top. But I still had about 50 men to choose from, and NO MONEY INVOLVED. Yes, I had all these men clamoring at me, and I didn’t have to pay anyone. I can cheat for free! I went as far as having lunch with one of those Ashley Madison guys. He was 20 years younger than me. Twenty years younger. But did I go through with having Young Dude rub his junk all over Mr. P’s pillow? No. Why? I have a lick of sense in my head, unlike Mr. P. First, I don’t know this guy. He could be a serial killer. Or a rapist. I’m going to bring a possible serial killer or a rapist into my house where my son sleeps? No. I can’t risk that. I’m not going to be stupid like Mr. P was when he brought a heroin junkie into our house. A junkie. Into our HOUSE. Second, you know that first rule of the Sisterhood of Solidarity: “Close your legs to married men, trashbox?” I didn’t want to be trashbox. I’m not going to be some woman that ANOTHER woman now has to “get over”. Third, I didn’t actually need to go through with it, but just know that I COULD have gone through with it if I wanted to. I needed that ego boost badly after the hammering I’d just taken. Fourth, how am I going to have a firm standing at being the betrayed one in this marriage if I cheat too? No, that anger all is MINE. I own it. He had no right to it after what he’d done and no way was I letting him dilute it in any way. Leggo MY Eggo, baby.

But if one of YOU decide you’re going gung ho for that revenge affair? You won’t get any judgement from me, that’s for damned sure. I’ll tell you, “You go, girl” and I’ll tell your husband to “suck it up, buttercup. That’s the kind of shit you should have thought about BEFORE you did what you did.” There’s plenty of other blogs who hold the cheater’s hand and coddle to his “toxic shame”. Well, this one’s mine. I don’t play that here.

However, I would have never even ENTERTAINED the idea if Mr. P had not taken so long to come clean. You know what kind of answers I used to get to my questions? “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember.” Then I’d dig up some evidence. Does THIS refresh your memory? Oh, yeah, I guess so. Husbands, that’s a total asshole move. Don’t make your wife go through that. I repeat: DON’T MAKE YOUR WIFE GO THROUGH THAT. Your personal shame is of ZERO importance right now. Do you want your wife back? Do you love her? Then do the right thing and put her first. Now, did I tell Mr. P right away about the Ashley Madison thing? No. Why? Because two can play at this game. And I was going to WIN. I was going to get my power back.

So now imagine one of those balloon race games at a carnival….the ones where you shoot the water into the clowns’ mouth until the balloon pops. I was racing for two things at the same time: The truth, including an answer to the question “why?” and revenge. Which way I was going to go depended on which balloon popped first. Husbands, you’d better get hopping on the balloon that you have some control over and win the race, because if the “revenge cheating” or “leave his ass” balloon pops first, you’re toast. Snap to it. The clock is ticking. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

What finally turned the tide for us? The TRUTH coming out. The whole truth. Every last bit of it. You see, the truth does not impede your healing. It SPEEDS your healing. I’m going to say that again. THE TRUTH DOES NOT IMPEDE YOUR HEALING. IT SPEEDS YOUR HEALING.

Husbands, forget about the whole idea of “I don’t want to tell my wife X, Y & Z because then she’ll think I’m a sicko and will leave my ass.” That’s only going to get you in more trouble and make this harder for her. Examples:

1. I don’t want her to know how long I’ve been doing this, because then she’ll leave my ass.

2. I don’t want her to know exactly what I did with these women because then she’ll leave my ass.

3. I don’t want her to know how much money I spent because then she’ll leave my ass.

4. I don’t want to remember how I was molested because she’ll be ashamed of me and then leave my ass.

5. I don’t want her to know I’m drawn to hookers that looked like my teacher, because then she’ll leave my ass.

6. I don’t want her to know that I used to get off on watching “chloroform porn” because she’ll think I’m a sick fuck and leave my ass.

7. I don’t want her to know how I wanted to use and abuse these hookers because she’ll think I’m a sick fuck and leave my ass.

8. I don’t want her to know how I used to pull these hooker’s hair and push them around and say nasty degrading things to them because she’ll think I’m a sick fuck and leave my ass.

9. I don’t want her to know that when I make love to her now I’m reminded of what a sick fuck I was, and I feel like a pervert when I’m with her. But if I can’t perform, she might leave my ass.

Now, if Mr. P had lead off with the TRUTH…the whole thing….without the fear of me leaving his ass, then this whole thing would have been easier for me to get through. First, the story of what happened to him would have made a lot more sense a lot earlier. I wouldn’t have had those intrusive thoughts in my head saying things like, “Oh, so you can get all freaky with every whore in the area but not with ME?” I would have known right away that his hooker reviews were bullshit. It would have spared me so much pain and torture.

But what did I get from Mr. P in the beginning? I got lies. I got omissions. I got a whole lot of “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember.” What does that get you? It gets your wife onto Ashley Madison, that’s what it gets you. Or out the door to never look back. Yes, you may really want to change. You’re facing your demons. You’re willing to do the work. But until you tell the whole truth and not the watered down truth? You’re not trying hard enough. Get the truth out there, and get it out fast. The clock is ticking. Tick tock, tick tock. Hurry the fuck up.