The Insidious Online Affair

Insidious

1. intended to entrap or beguile: an insidious plan.
2. stealthily treacherous or deceitful: an insidious enemy.
3. operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect: an insidious disease.

That is perfect for what can happen when you think you're protected by distance, anonomity and a computer screen. You are free to be anything you want, to pretend anyone you want... but even more...to be yourself.

When you connect with people online, you have a safe way to open your life to them without worry that they will expose your dark secrets. Without having to look them in the face when you give them pieces of you. However, as you intimately share yourself and your life with someone other than your spouse, it can very quickly become emotional.

And even worse, as you find yourself walking down the twisted web of internet relationship, you get closer and closer to making the surreal become real. Its a slippery slope. First innocent chatting, then secret sharing and heartfelt conversations, then not so innocent chatting, then you might progress to cyber sex or pictures or phone sex and before you know it, you find yourself in a sleezy motel between here and South Dakota to meet this "person" you are so in love with.

And you don't even see it coming! You say "Omg, he lives 400 miles away from me. And its just pretend sex, its not real. Its not like we're actually doing it." but you are. And that is how it is insidious. It gives you a false sense of safety. But I warn you all, you are not safe. You can get pulled in and sucked under and be tangled and drowning in the weeds before you even realize you fell off the boat.

I'm just saying...

I thought this picture was interesting...lets pretend "Brad" is your spouse, your therapist or a trusted friend who can talk sense into you. Reach out to help-even if you don't want to. Listen to the little voice screaming in your head and tell someone to help you before you fall off the boat.

Is There Such Thing as a Soulmate?

This was the question that vexed me during the time I was "away" (which is how I refer to the period of my affair because I didn't live in my body, I was more like a robot than anything.) Was Other my soul mate? Was there such thing? I had never thought so, I didn't think there was just one person out there for me.

A year after I was married my best friend and I went to a psychic. She didn't say anything of much consequence to my bf besides telling her that she wasn't with her soul mate, that made her angry.

But when I went in she could tell I was married even though I was only 21 and had emeralds on my wedding finger, not anything that looked like a wedding band. She seemed to know that things were very bad at home. (I had spent the whole first year of my marriage crying in the bathroom because I still loved my ex-boyfriend and not my poor husband).

She looked at me with such kind eyes and promised me that it would get better. My eyes filled with tears...then she told me that I had married my soul mate, I scoffed in my head, knowing he was not. I disregarded most of what she said after that point. But little did I know.

I've always considered myself an Empath. Not to everyone, but to people who I chose to tune to, it was like I could feel them. Even when we weren't together. Mostly this worked against me because I would tune in to people who were somehow dark and twisted. And try as I did to heal and save them, I could not. Their darkness was always too great. I need to do a blog about the dark ones, the ones that I think opened me up and put some little black seed inside me long ago that took years to burst out of me in the form of an affair. There are many things I still have to write about.

But back to my connection, my Empathy. I ended up binding myself to the Other, I couldn't help it. At first I convinced myself I was trying to help him, I wanted to make his life better. But as time went on I saw that is was more a compulsion... and then an addiction.

I don't know how much detail I want to go in to- I still try to shield my Husband from all the details that he doesn't need to know. He knows all the facts, but he doesn't need to know word for word or have more things in his head about it than he needs to. So I'll probably save detail for a time when this event is further away from us. Its still pretty fresh and raw sometimes.

But I had a few eerie moments where it seemed like we were connected in some other worldly way, some unexplainable way. And I let my train of thought go to pondering if he was my soul mate. It made it less my fault if it was some cosmic absolute that I wouldn't have been able to escape from if I wanted to. It was my way to deflect my blame and let me continue on my path with him.

After the discovery it seemed like I was instantly free and cut free from him. I quit being aware of where he was and what he was doing every minute of the day. I stopped having the conversations with him in my head like I always seemed to be doing. And I stopped feeling him.

Suddenly I was bound and feeling my husband. But not to the extent that Husband was feeling me, something that he had never experienced in his life. Here are some examples.

The first one was a few days after the discovery. I was at work and trying to purge the email address of the Other from my work computer as well as block him from emailing me. Something happened and for the briefest of moments I thought I had emailed him accidentally. I panic, my heart shot out of my chest and I was terrified.

20 seconds later I got a text message from Husband asking me what was wrong. He felt it and he was freaked out. He was in a training all day so he couldn't call me, but I was panicked to explain what happened and let him know that I didn't do anything and had not intended to anything. But... Husband felt my panic, from over 200 miles away.

The other time I remember very vividly was when I journaling about the discovery. This was a few weeks after everything. I was writing the awful details and moving through a whole host of awful uncomfortable emotions.

excerpt from journal- Sept 29th, 2007

...Finally when the night came so did my tears at the thought of me sleeping separate from Husband. I finally was allowed to lay on the floor beside him and although he was filled with hurt and anger-

(Husband just called. He's not doing well. I think he picked up on what I was writing. His feelings started as I started writing... then he tried to write what he was feeling and it only made him feel worse.

He really seems to feel me now, sense me. And I worry because mostly I am numb. I think my subconscious is holding everything at bay because it knows it will crush me.)

I am skipping to the good stuff now. Just know there was tremendous hurt and I was the cause.

Then we walked into the office of our therapist, a christian counselor, and told him our troubles. Something about him, his kind face, concerned eyes and soothing voice calmed the storm in Husband.

(Husband just called again. he felt suddenly better and asked if I was writing still. I laughed and said yes but the good stuff. He said he could tell)

Weird, huh? Maybe coincidence. But get this one. This next one will freak you out.

I'm a vivid dreamer and am prone to nightmares. One night I had a dream about everyone's eyes turning black. I don't remember this dream, but Husband tells me I woke and told him about it during the night.

A few nights later I had another dream. This time I had a dream that Husband's eyes were turning black, there was an oil like darkness seeping across the pupils to blot out his sight and possess him with demons. I had to fight the blackness by repeating phrases from the bible constantly. I woke up freaked out and told husband about it.

It was probably later that day that he sat me down and told me he had to tell me something. Every time he does that I am stricken and the blood drains from my face. Even still, almost a year later.

He told me that the Other had a blog that he found and that he had been looking at it. He said that the night I had my first dream was the day he looked at the Other's blog and the picture of the Other had his eyes blacked out. He told me this had worried him, that he thought I was somehow still connected to the Other.

Then he told me the night I had my second dream was the next time he looked at the blog and that this time the eyes had black running down his face and coming out his mouth-it said the picture was horrible, dark and scary.

He said that it hadn't been a recent blog post from the Other, it had been a few days old, so he determined it wasn't the Other I was connected to, but to him and what he was seeing that was bothering him. Both times he'd looked at it, that night I dreamed about the blackness taking over the eyes. But the second time it was Husbands eyes.

This freaked me out on more than one level. But more than anything I took the warning from my dream and told him that he MUST NOT go to his blog ever again. I deeply feel it was a warning.

So in the end of all of this... perhaps there is such a thing as a soul mate. Perhaps the psychic was right about us. Regardless, I do know there is such thing as a God Intended Mate because I feel strongly that husband and I are, at the very least, that. But probably much much more. I just never opened myself to see or feel it.

p.s. to those who have emailed me, I'm a little behind. Please check your email, I am responding.

Finding Home

Through all my years of marriage, nothing ever felt like home. And even more, everything always felt temporary. In our first 10 years of marriage we lived in 11 different apartments in 6 different cities in 3 different states. I always thought I was looking for an adventure, that we needed some great cause or some great excitement in our life. But I was very wrong, I can see this now.

I now know that I could never find home anywhere because home is inside of you. The hole in my marriage left me feeling like something was always missing. I just didn't put two and two together and realize it was pointless searching for a home when I wasn't at home in my marriage.

Now that everything is different I feel very much at home, even though I know the apartment I live in is temporary. I am at home here and at home in my marriage because of my new love for my husband. My wanderlust is gone. What a relief.

LIttle Hurts: Part I

Preface: Mea Culpa

Its weird. I never set out to meet anyone, never in my life would I imagine I'd find myself in such a situation. And because of that I was not guarded, I guess.

I don't want to act like I am making excuses. I really am just trying to dissect all of this, and maybe be helpful to some people who are going through this. Maybe what I saw and went through could be helpful.

The first time I "met" the other... it was like listening myself talk. He seemed to understand a very deep seeded hurt I experienced, understood more than anyone who I'd ever talked to. That is was started it me toward a slippery slope.

Almost immediately I became very...obsessed with him. I just wanted to talk more in depth about it with him. I sort of feel like it was that hurt that made me vulnerable in the first place. And so funny (not funny "ha ha" funny strange) that the hurt was caused by a group of over zealous Christians. They thought they were doing the work of God, and all they did was damage me so spiritually that it took me over 10 years to recover.

Little hurts. Many little hurts built up over time... it begins like that. By the time you understand what is happening, you are too far gone. I think Husband would call these 'arrows' that wound your heart and soul.

The biggest hurt of my life centered around my faith. When we were newly engaged Husband was a part of a Christian group where he was in a position of leadership. I belonged to no such group and, although I had a very deep faith in God, I was private about it.

Just after he'd proposed, Husband and I had one discussion about faith that ended with me crying when he said I couldn't know God because my relationship with Jesus wasn't what "they" thought it should be. These words from his mouth, to say that my prayers and the works I'd seen from God in my life weren't real, hurt terribly.

He never brought up faith again, and so when he was asked by his Christian Leader (aka Bad Man) if I was a Christian, he said no.

No.

No...

So Bad Man told Husband that he must either leave me or convert me, and if he did neither he would lose his position in their meaningless inconsequential little campus ministry. Bastards. Yes, I am still a tad angry. But just a little.

Husband chose to come to me and forceably convert me. He had a chart even. I wept, I cried, it was awful. I couldn't believe that these people were telling me I wasn't good enough for God. And because I didn't have much experience with organized religion, I thougth they were considered to be an authority on the matter. At the end he was like, "Oh, you are a Christian...Hmmmm." and went back and told Bad Man.

It hurt that I wasn't good enough, but it also hurt that Husband couldn't understand why it hurt me so much.

This time in our life has come to be known as November. Because, the entire month I was subject to collapsing spells of grief and sorrow that would often cause me to fall to the ground weeping. In the grass, on the way from the dining hall, in my dorm room, wherever I happen to be.

All this hurt was more painful because Husband couldn't understand why I was so upset. He thought I was being silly. He had no comprehension about why this hurt me so much. Finally I came up with an analogy that hit close enough to one of his insecurities that he finally understood, understood and cried because he felt badly.

But the bigger hurt was that he didn't stand up for me.

For so many many years I put the blame on the Bad Man, he was the leader. But Husband should have stood up for me. At that point in our relationship I hadn't fallen in love with Husband yet (clearly, it took me about 11 years to do that), I was still of the camp that love would come. Had he stood up for me, his shining eyes protecting me, I have no doubt my love would have come shortly after.

But he failed me. When it mattered most, he failed me. And that wound ate at me for nearly 10 years. I couldn't talk about the experience without crying. That experience took God away from me, I didn't have the closeness anymore. I couldn't feel him like I did and it left a huge hole inside me that I didn't even begin to know how to fill.

So when the Other spoke of his darkness and hole left by where God had once been... it struck a chord with me. Finally someone understood what it meant to have something so special and lose it.

Stupid.

I think that hurt caused a huge rift that kept me from ever falling in love with Husband. It was the first time I learned I couldn't trust him, even though he was seemingly doing the right thing in his eyes. Turns out he couldn't trust me either, I guess.

Husband has said that I could write Bad Man a letter telling him the hurt he caused me, he's said that all along. But I want him to do it. I want him to stand up for me, even if it is too late to protect me from that hurt. And I think he will. He's been standing up a lot lately.

Husband is so amazing, the man he has become. The boy who failed me doesn't even exist anymore. And the woman who failed him, she is gone as well. We are both new and very blessed for it.

Mea Culpa

My fault or my own fault. I just want to put this out there because I could spend the first half of almost every post I write, saying Mea Culpa. And rather than do that, I'll just write this one post and then link to it every time I feel like I'm going to say something that might sound like a cop out.

So... it was my fault. Everything was my choice. I was an adult and I did a very awful thing. I never once want to diminish what I did as being a small thing, I never want it to seem like I ever think it was ok or no big deal.

The pain I might feel or have gone through pales in comparison to what Husband must have gone through. I know this. My pain is small to what he felt.

So... Mea Culpa.

...remember this great song?

Forgiving the Unforgivable: Forgiving Yourself After Adultery

Below was one of my first posts on my not secret blog... I suppose you may be able to kick me of out hiding, but ... I'm getting sick of hiding and if I keep hiding it means this thing still has some power over me.

I decided to move this post over, because I feel in order for a couple to move past the incident, its important for the transgressors to forgive one another, but even more so, forgive themselves. I know for myself, making a real mistake was unthinkable, to sin was impossible! When I had to face what had happened I didn't know how to deal with it. I think I put a protective bubble around me to keep it from crashing down on me. Sometimes it would threaten to fall on me, the full extent... I'd start to hyperventilate and Husband would grab hold of my face and say, "It will not crush you, I will not let this crush you."

For so much of my marriage I never felt taken care of by him, and here he is, in his most turbulent time, having been betrayed by me, and he is protecting me. But I think his protecting me, and protecting our family helped give him purpose and helped to him to heal.

And now for Crappy Little Gods, written shortly after the New Year. J, if you're reading, this one is for you :)

Crappy Little Gods

Right now I'm going to talk about redemption. I'm not talking about redemption from someone you've committed a wrong against but about forgiveness and redemption of yourself. I don't know about you but I've made mistakes and caused grave damage to people I love. I've done things and made mistakes throughout my whole life and I still beat myself up over them. As stupid as some of them are. Like the stupid tirade I went on during H.S. theater practice because I was angry how the cast was treating someone. I handled it badly and to this day I feel stupid about it. But I was 17!

How common is it for us to hold these stupid little moments inside us and go play with them during moments of sadness and despair? "Come here bad little thought, come dwell in my heart and make me feel stupid, like a failure, ugly, clumsy, what have you". And how many times have you been forgiven by others but not been able to forgive yourself for your own trespasses? I know this is my problem and I think I probably got this from my church of origin. I must be punished punished punished forever. But I've been trying to rethink this thought process. With the help of my Sage and Authors like John Eldridge I'm learning how it is God's greatest desire for us to live our life to the full.

John 10:10 "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full"

Eternal guilt and self-flagellation cannot co-exist with this, and if we truly believe we are forgiven of our sins once we repent, then who are we to not forgive ourselves? My Sage would say that we are being "crappy little gods" because we act as though we should be perfect and make no mistakes; yet that is impossible because of the nature of us. Only God can be perfect.


The awful tapes we play in our head, He would say that those words and thoughts are from "the thief" and are there to keep us from living up to our full potential. If we hold on to our dirt, our self-loathing and hatred, we give those events power over us and cannot move past them. They become what defines us. So it's time for me to clean house and find redemption somehow. This need for constant penance is so deep seeded that I think this will be a very hard process, but it must be done for me to ever be the person I'm meant to be and to live my life to the full.

For help try reading John Eldridge's book Waking the Dead, he gives such a different perspective on things...it's like washing your brain. :)

Nearly a Year Ago: It Does Get Easier

This is from my journal from almost a year ago. It's sad, but it made me happy to read it on Sunday, because, it is a year from now!

(this is to show that it does get better)

Day 3: Post discovery

I am a sinner... :(
I will never give myself penance again...well, as long as Husband loves me I guess. If he went away and I have nothing but to gaze at myself remembering what I did...that would be not worth breathing for.

I want it to be a year from now.

I hate myself

Hate myself

Hate HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE

I don't deserve to feel better about myself. Husband, take me back, repossess me, erase any claim, memory or moment that is associated with the Other. Don't let him have me, don't let him have me.~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I felt that each time I was attacked by a memory and the shame that came, was like him owning me. I wanted so badly for it all not to be real, to make it go away, to fix it. But I couldn't. And its ok :) because we're ok and the Other has no power over me.

The Story of Us: Part I

If this sounds familiar...well, then I guess you know :)

But I met Husband Freshman year of college. He was very tall, thin and slightly nerdy in that church boy comb over, goes to bed at 11 kind of way. Me, I'm small, barely 5 ft, long dyed red hair, black/green/blue finger nails and a style that hovered between hippy, goth and grunge. Looking and knowing the two of us you never would have put us together.

I went off to college in love with a boy. The people on my dorm floor were used to me talking constantly about Boyfriend. How wonderful he was, beautiful he was and how he was everything good in the world.

As the year progressed Boyfriend seemed to forget about me. He stopped saying he loved me, then he told me he thought perhaps we should see other people. I consented and went on my very unmerry way. But there was this boy other boy on the floor, Deagon. He was dark and full of something not quite right. He was malice and pain and self indulgence. In my pain for the loss of Boyfriend I went to him and handed myself over.

It was like cutting, only I was cutting my soul. I had lost everything good in the world, what else did I have to lose?

Then, as I spiraled downward into this reckless and painful relationship, I reached out to Boyfriend for help. I stood in the dark shower pleading over the phone with him about how I felt dark and scared and alone. He didn't understand, he told me he loved me and that caused something inside me to break. I didn't think he loved me anymore, if I had been with Deagon while he loved me, what did that make me??

I freaked out, I told Boyfriend I was scared and sinking. He called me crazy and he said didn't think he even wanted to be friends with me. And then I forgot how to breath. A big hole opened up in me and I wanted to break into little tiny pieces.

I don't remember how the conversation end. I hung up and I slowly walked down the hallway. I went into Husband's room, walked past him and Deagon without saying a word and sat in their closet. I wanted to avoid my Rainbow Bright on Crack roommate while I was hovering near total breakdown.

Husband came in and crouched beside me. He didn't say a word, he put his arms around me and the sobs just poured out. But as his arms circled me, they held me together and kept me from falling apart. All of my anguish melted from me while I was held in his embrace. That is what planted the seed in me. The comfort and safety I felt in his arms.

At some point I left the closet and fell asleep with my head in his lap, until he had to leave me to sleep at 11pm (rumor has it that he was afraid of turning into a pumpkin). That was the whisper of our beginning, although nothing romantic came about till much later.

to be continued...