How Strategically Befriending My Husband’s “Nasty Girl” Fiancé Saved Our Failing Marriage

 

Snapshots of Infidelity

A“nasty girl” is a stereotypical term that I am sure a few of you are familiar with. It may be the reason you clicked on this article.

It's a term used by military individuals to slut shame National Guard single females. It’s not without validity though many military females are not this way.

We both had our nicknames at the time, the girlfriend and the wife. We were quite the pair. I was fondly referred to as the “psycho ex-bitch.” Dehumanized a bit by my husband, we both found common ground with one another.

“Does he sleep with you often?” she stuttered into her flip phone. “I mean, once a week to once every two weeks isn’t normal for someone in his twenties, right? What is wrong with him? Am I not good enough?”

I had been talking to my husband’s fiancé for months now, almost since right after they hooked up. He kept her confused. I had been with him long enough to see the patterns within the crazy. I needed her to keep talking to find out what he’d been up to. She wasn’t accustomed to gaslighting and believed him. His acting is superb. She’s one among many that have been teased away by his pied piper song.

“Mrs. Locklear. Mrs. Locklear. MRS. LOCKLEAR.”

I couldn’t believe the nurse was referencing me this way. God, I felt old. Here I was 23, 16 years ago, giving birth to our first daughter. We'd been together  for 4 years. Six if you include dating and engagement.

“If we don’t induce you soon, your husband will deploy without seeing his child,” she paused, giving me a moment to absorb what she was saying. “Mrs. Locklear, we need your permission to go ahead with the inducement.”

I nodded in the affirmative. Anything to let my daughter see him once, even if she wouldn’t remember it. My husband was a ground pounder, an infantryman. The war was Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2007. There were no promises he would be coming home.

I had no idea I would be getting calls from random females that very weekend from clubs in upstate New York. This was the start of the end of my husband’s bipolar break, and oh, was it a dangerous roller coaster.

“I can’t get him to talk to me. Did you experience this? “ She was distraught as usual. My husband had been avoiding her. He played with her four year old daughter fine but couldn’t get my husband to stay long enough for intimate conversation.

Boo hoo, she was lonely. So, she called me.

I listened. I was empathetic with calm silence. I nodded my head and said my, “mmmm, hmms” in all the right moments. She felt considered. I would be lying if I said I didn’t care. She was, after all, human.

Before my husband, she had fallen on hard times with her ex-spouse who was also a military man. The Army feels like one big orgy of swingers. I was disgusted. Still, she had moved back home with her daughter and was trying to use her G.I. bill while serving in the National Guard to start a new life for her little family.

Enter stage right, my screwed up husband.

“He said he was Special Forces.” Her voice was young. I was guessing nineteen to twenty-one. “How could you marry someone like this? Don’t you have any self respect? How long have you been married? I mean, he seemed pretty comfortable lying.” I could picture her twirling her highlighted auburn hair, smacking her gum. Uuuuuugh.

Another female, another club, before he had met the fiance. “It’s funny you should say that. Why would you sleep with a man you hadn’t met before from a club? And why would you suddenly act righteous, search through his phone while he took a piss, and call the woman listed as his wife?”

“Honey, I was just trying to help you. If you want to be a doormat, I guess that’s your business. I feel sorry for your daughter.”

The line went dead. I was alone in our apartment again. Quiet fondled my skin making it break out in excited bumps.

Over the years, I spoke to many throw away females this way. Confidant on one hand, spurned lonely self reliant wife on the other. I was dirty, a reject. They pitied me. I pitied and hated them back.

“What do I do, Jenn? How do I find him? Something isn’t right?” Fiance nasty girl was scared again. Tim, my husband, was in Iraq. He had been in the field for weeks. Neither of us had received any calls from overseas.

The last time I had spoken to my husband, he had swung from anxious psychotic ramblings to distracted silences as though he were absorbing the sounds of my breathing, memorizing them for his last moments. He didn’t believe he was coming home alive. Was this how God was going to punish him? He wasn’t all that concerned. After all, he never imagined making it to thirty anyway.

“Liz, they won’t be at the main base for a while. Besides, if something happened, one of the high ups would give me a call.”

“You would let me know, wouldn’t you?” She thought Tim had filed to give her Power of Attorney when he had sent me the divorce papers the second time but still wasn’t confident they wouldn’t notify his actual wife first not his butty call girlfriend. They couldn’t acknowledge that he was engaged to her. He could be pulled up on adultery charges. Adultery is a no-no when you are in the military.

After he had come back to the states and I had left him for the second time, I went home to Nebraska and left him alone in New York. She visited our apartment and pet my cat. Her hand didn’t fall off to my disappointment.

I will never forget her. I am sure I left a similar impression. At times, we were able to speak without the moral weight of our adverseriality intruding on our conversation, sisters in an underdog fight since the beginning of time. Had I not spoken with her over and over again, I realize years later I may not have been able to help my husband.

If I have anything to thank her for, she kept the severed link to my husband hanging by the shreds.

This is my contrary thank you.