Can Living Through the Hurt of Cheating Make a Marriage Stronger?

 

As I write this, my six beautiful children are watching the goodbye party scene in the Sound of Music.

“So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night.”

The chipper notes tap into my aging child memory. It feels like I’m a spoiled kid lying in bed through Saturday morning cartoons 35 years ago. Everything’s in its place, safe and snug. My husband of 19 years is sleeping in after a hard night of jiu jitsu. And we, you and I, are about to have a conversation about adultery, cheating, porn, butty calls. How quaint!

It’s taken a long road to get us here. My husband is the bravest man I know. This is coming from a woman whose father left after all but one of his children were out of the house. My youngest brother was in high school when my father hit my mother for the last time. Soon after, he decided to try separation and moved into an apartment in the same neighborhood a month or two later. The official filing for divorce occurred within the next 6 months.

Perspectives are funny things. I’m sure my father thought he was being responsible or practical by staying all those years he didn’t want to be with us. 27 years. He saved money by avoiding alimony and child support. He was taking care of responsibilities. My parents were first pregnant at 18; married at 19.

I, on the other hand, view his behavior as cowardice. How many years was he lying? How many of my memories are misconstrued? What’s real? Why did he have to include me in the facade?

by Timothy Locklear

Both of my parents were cheaters. It’s complicated, right? Cheating can happen to you whether your parents cheated on eachother or not. Though, I will say, the conditioning process of watching your parents emulate all the habits that cheaters possess doesn’t help. You become desensitized to your horizon being off kilter. You begin to respond to things as if the offset mentality is reality as a means of survival thereby validating the ill thought processes.

When I met my husband, he was 17 and worked with me at a local grocery store. I was 19, had been to college and was taking a break. I didn’t like the school I had picked, was frustrated with the social climate of the school, and wanted to think through things. Peace Corps, perhaps? I’d have to raise money. Either way, it’s easier to steer a moving ship, so I worked while I thought. I loved earning money.

I was trying to date another gentleman when my coworker friend invited said guy to her apartment one night after work, something I would not do. She was a single mom a few years older than the both of us, struggling with her military career and part time job. He was a steady working younger man and began averting his eyes when he saw me. These things happen. Many would have you believe that women are angels. We are not.

I was two years older than my husband. His Lumbee Cherokee genes give him a tanned leather hue, in contrast with his smudgy blue-green eyes, six foot 2 frame, and hilarious personality, I didn’t stand a chance. With my attention averted from the other love interest, I was able to become friends with my future husband guilt free. Thankfully, his lanky boyishness kept me from considering him for another couple of years. He grew on me. We became regulars at one another’s homes, had a pager code we used to “text” one another messages when we couldn’t get to a landline, and he was the last person I spoke to every night after I bought my cell phone.

We had good times. But, good times or not, I could tell my future husband didn’t close his options to other possibilities. He is a flirt and battled the narcissistic insecurity of needing others to validate his void of self worth. Confirming a narcissist is like scooping water out of an old row boat that’s sinking and the blessed buckets have holes in them.

By now, he’s nineteen. I had said, “yes” when he asked me to marry him in front of his family, rose and ring in hand. roses stink but the consideration spoke measures.

I felt uneasy. I knew my husband didn’t exhibit behaviors of someone who was faithful. I had been getting strange looks as certain young girls passed me at work. His eyes saw everything when we were in public together. He didn’t even try to lie or hide it. I was the paranoid one. I couldn’t tell him what he was or wasn’t looking at. How could I think that? And, you can’t control someone’s eyes. Who’s being controlling now?

Fine, then why did you have to get cheeky with that forty something waitress or stare at the barely over legal age bartender?

After we married and lived together, late nights started with lame excuses and text messages from random females. Apparently, it’s easier to try to set up a hook up with a married man if you don’t say the words out loud.

This was the start of years of lying. I had lived through this before. When your parents are lying to one another, you figure out the patterns in their lies and discover that they lie to you all the time. You will never have a mentor. All humans are fallible. The only person you can depend on is yourself. If this is you, you may have experienced trauma or severe forms of gaslighting at an early age. I can empathize.

I knew he headed in the direction of sleeping with someone other than me but hoped he wouldn’t go off the deep end. Love is tricky. It isn’t rational. After you’ve had a couple of crushes reciprocate, you can decipher the real deal from a flirty toy your heart wants to play with.

Loyalty can be argued as not being a virtue. It has many downsides. Isn’t that the way with virtues?

I found a pearl. I had dove deep, plucked it up, and was not about to let go. Sure, I could keep diving, but this one was special. Special as every other human, not to my heart though. This was going to be painful. I decided that even if he didn’t stay with me, he needed my help.

He lied about everything. He had groups of people he interacted with that knew him by alter ego names he came up with. Was this borderline personality disorder?

He seemed to have no compulsion control much like a toddler. He saw it, I could see, but couldn’t control himself. Was he a sociopath? Psychopath? They were more calculating and controlled according to the DSM.

His behaviors were turning on him. Friends left. He couldn’t hold down a job. I had to leave the tech school I had started because we couldn’t pay all the bills. I wished I’d gone to that massage school I had opted out for because technology was on the rise. I would at least have knowledge I enjoyed knocking around in my head.

The next four years were full of finding porn numbers on our landline with my daily habit of dialing *69 when I came home from one of my 3 jobs. You see, my husband is undiagnosed bipolar. Money having limitations for someone in a manic state is inconsequential. Everyone told me to leave him. I knew something was wrong, and no one wants to help an asshole. Besides, you have to wait for the asshole to hurt themselves and the ones around them enough before they realize, “huh, this isn’t fun anymore. I need to stop.”

Going into the Army was the beginning of the end. His drinking and sleeping around spiked. Cocaine and other drugs were introduced. No one seemed to reach him because he pushed everyone to the brink, as if to say, “Will you love me now? Do you really unconditionally love me? What about now?”

Yes, the behavior was taunting. It felt sadistic. After our daughter was born, I held to boundaries much better. I discovered that having a direct action for hurtful behavior was a quiet and impacting way to set boundaries when it was clear he wasn’t listening. I wasn’t going to reason anymore. I had never begged. Only a few things will push me to my knees and this wasn’t one of them.

He left his fiance. He took off his wedding ring at a work office party. The ring around the rosey was dizzying. Just when I thought I had things figured out, he would hit me with a left. I didn’t always see the south paul’s coming.

He couldn’t make me say I didn’t love him. I hated what he was doing, sure, but I found room to remember my best friend. My hatred gave me energy but I wouldn’t let it burn everything away. Those of us who stay or still remember that one person long ago, know this feeling. We look crazy.

My husband hasn’t cheated on me in over 15 years. We went on to have 5 more children. He’s still my best friend. He can look me in the face without shame. I can give him the gift he always wanted all along, for me to be able to say the words, “I love you. And, I am happy with you.”

I am not suggesting being delusional. My husband could go into another hypomanic state and detach from reality. I am choosing to not hold back anything. I may not have him tomorrow. If we only have one life, I want him to know that he is and always will be my one and only. Some things are worth looking a little crazy for. I hated living through the infidelity but if that was the means by which I figured out what real love is, then that’s the road I take . . . every single day.

Tim, you make me psycho.