Surrendering More Ground

Jessica has told her mother. She is planning to go to stay in Anita's house (one of her friends) for two weeks while they are on holiday. Her mother thinks that the break from me will allow her to think about what she wants. My wants are pretty irrelevant as you can see! She is still in contact with James so I have the dilemma of whether to tell his wife. What do I gain? Petty revenge? Another fucked up life? What would you do? I simply don't know and, honestly, don't know what I will do. Jessica wants to be magically divorced, well separated. It is vindictive of me to tell Harriet, the b/f's wife, vindictive of me to divorce her for adultery, vindictive of me to think about custody. Why can't I be reasonable? Has she been reasonable in any of this? More impasses but at least we kept off the custody arguments tonight. I left her with an offer. We buy a new house with more bedrooms and live separate lives as far as relationships are concerned. She can fuck who she likes. She said she would think about it. Sometimes, I wonder how low I will stoop and where it will end!

I make things worse

This has been, as one might expect, an eventful week. After the stand-off on Sunday night I went to Birmingham to a conference and stayed in a hotel where I could not be online. On Wednesday, I went to granny’s funeral. Jessica and I circumnavigated each other during the wake and said very little. Towards the end, I sneaked off to the pub with the brothers in law and we all got hideously drunk. I blotted my copy book, although I laugh in retrospect, by falling into unconsciousness in the bed allocated to Jessica! She had to sleep on the floor wrapped in a duvet!

Thursday morning, more coolness. We drove home separately, me with Max and Jessica with Florence. Max and I called in to see Lucy, my daughter from my first marriage, but I was too jaded to tell her what was going on and was not really sure I wanted to anyway. I got home still in less than perfect health and Jessica started ripping into me. Why hadn’t I spoken to her? I thought that was obvious. How could she go on like this? I thought that was a cheek. Anyway, more arguing and more of that blank, slablike refusal. No, she hadn’t done anything different from what a lot of people do. No, nothing was going to change and, now, she was going to talk to our neighbour who has, one way or another, been dragged into this sorry affair. Oh, and by the way, my new Windows Messenger had popped open (I hate that programme) and opened my hotmail with a message to my friend, the angel, describing Jessica as a smug bitch. I’m not quite sure whether it was the smug or the bitch that she resented but she was cross about that as well.

I was fuzzy headed from the alcohol the night before, utterly depressed at this instant argument stirred out of nothing and the future, well there was no future. That is why I did it. Here is the email I sent to James, the boyfriend:

>I am absolutely sick of your relationship with my wife and I want it to
>stop. I don't think that is an unreasonable request.
>
>I have one sanction I can use and only one which is to tell your wife.
>If you contact Jessica again in any way I am going to send Harriet (?)
>the contacts of Jessica's Hotmail archive which includes around seven
>highly incriminating emails and a picture of your cock. If you stop all
>contacts straightaway I won't send them. I have your address and
>telephone, of course.
>
>There is no point in hoping that Jessica will find the disk. I have
>posted it to a friend.
>
>If Jessica leaves me, I will send the stuff to your wife anyway and
>divorce her for adultery citing you.
>
>Lastly, I am not the person you think I am. I am a reasonable, sociable
>human being who is possessive of his family like anyone else. I made a
>big effort to negotiate a way out of this with Jessica but she has
>simply been unable to talk about it to me.
>
>Maybe you should think about your family now and whether you fancy
>having access to your girls on alternate Saturdays. It is not a
>prospect I would wish on anyone.
>
>Send me a note to say if you agree to this but I don't want a tome.
>Then I can have a go at pulling my marriage back together.

I printed off a copy, put it in an envelope and took it next-door. Jessica answered the door and I asked her not to come back until the kids were asleep. I don’t know what I expected, I really don’t. Half of me thought she would simply leave but I simply had to do something. Within two hours I had a reply from the boyfriend. He had spoken to Jessica and they had decided to ‘call it off’. If it was that fucking easy to do, I wish they had done it a month earlier.

Well, now it is Saturday. Jessica wants a divorce and I want to keep my family and my kids. Yesterday we had another argument based on the two of us saying, you’re not having my fucking kids, alternately. Ironically, that is just where we are going.

She has gone to see her mother. She said that she was going to tell her but I don’t know if she will. I suggested that we carried on until August and Max’s birthday. If she promised not to fuck anyone and to keep away from Windows Messenger, and to be nice to the kids, and - then - if she still felt the same, we would have a no fault divorce. She refused.

I am in limbo. I can’t really stop her doing anything she wants and despite all my brave words I know that she would get custody of the kids. The offer is a life that I simply do not want but there does not seem to be very much I can do about it.

More tilting at windmills

Jessica was at home when I got back from my mum’s - nice to the kids but didn’t say a lot to me. Later she told me she didn’t hear the phone last night. I asked was it all worth the damage and the upset. ‘You don’t want to know,’ she answered which I took as a yes. We then had the argument which I didn’t want to have, starting off with what happens next but then going back over the same ground. Why didn’t she think about the kids, about me, about the future? Stupid questions! Because she is besotted with the lover is answer number one, two and three. I kind of skate around this one maybe because I think she will get over it (absurd wishful thinking) but really because I fear the consequences. Then, we got onto custody and who would have the kids – straight into trench warfare as you can imagine and quite pointless. Just another slanging match.

What stuns me is her utter coldness. She simply bats things away. Didn’t you think about me and the kids? – Did you when you had affairs while married to your previous wife? What are we going to do? – What do you want to do? Don’t you care about how hurt I feel? – Did you when you did it before? Her face is like a slab, white and tense. She is giving no ground at all. I need a Plan B. Plan B at the moment is a back of an envelope plan. Points a, b and c are get fucked by someone nice, d is stop caring and hurting and then it gets a bit vague. I am away for the next two nights and then it is her granny’s funeral. I need to develop Plan B, not cry uncontrollably and for all of the wrong reasons at Granny’s send off and then come back without going on about why she hurt me, the kids and fucked up ten years of marriage on a whim. I need to stop whingeing and start living. The trouble is that, inside, I still need answers to those questions.

My note to Jessica

Sometimes I think I am just such a fucking wimp... This is about draft 23! What would you have written, I wonder?

We have gone to my mum and dad's and will be back later.

I'm sorry if you got some angry texts last night. I was just so pissed off. Florence was asking where you were so I said that they could phone after tea. I put on the speakerphone, explained how to use it, dialled the number and left them to it. And, then they got your fucking voicemail. Enough said.

I've been taking stock and, at last, talking to people. I feel better for it. If you could summarise the responses in a sentence it would be an amazed, ‘Who the fuck does she think she is?’ I have felt reassured that I am not mad.

If there is any morality in all of this it is that you have to do what you have to do but so that it causes the least hurt – not the most. For example, I expect you met James on your way back from Granny’s last week – you almost passed his house. You could have booked into a Travel Lodge for the day, blamed any delay on the traffic and maybe felt less guilt as well. You didn’t have to do it the way you did. You could have simply had an affair like ordinary people do. Someone said to me that you did it how you did on purpose. The adolescent wanting to stick it to her dad. And I think these people are friends!

Anyway, I’m not going to rage and rant at you. You’ve done what you’ve done and you have to live with the consequences.

I don’t want to sleep with you for a while. I don’t want you in my bed. Can you sleep in the little room tonight? Then, I’m away for a few days.

Two of my friends have asked me if I still love you. I had to say I do otherwise none of this would have hurt half as much.

... should I have put that last bit in. I just don't fucking know!

A difficult day ahead

To say that I'm not looking forward to the rest of today is a serious understatement. There are no protocols that I know for negotiating the return of Jessica. What would you do? Get the children to make Mother's Day cards? Yes, it is Mothering Sunday today! Cook a roast dinner? Ask her if she had a good time? I just don’t know so I am copping out of the encounter by taking the children to see my own aged mum and dad. We can come home late and, hopefully, she can have done her washing and taken a bath. As usual, I am surrendering the initiative!

How much worse does it get?

Why are there things that just fuck you off beyond measure? The kids had their tea tonight and Florence asked where her mum was. I said it was fine and when they had finished they could talk to mum. I put my telephone on speakerphone, dialled the number and slipped out of the room. I was listening in the hall to make sure it was all right when they got her voice box. What on earth do I say? How can you turn your phone off and turn off your kids? She said it would be on. Every time I have a charitable thought it is hurled back into my face.

I am visited by an Angel

This is a kind of follow-up to last night and also another piece of useful infill in building up your picture of this particular train crash. Around three years ago, something similar happened and Jessica had a one night stand with a financial consultant called Andrew who came from York. When I was away one evening, she invited him down on the spur of the moment and they slept together in the spare room. I found out – I am quite a competent detective and I’m afraid that it is one of my less endearing features, I think - and I sent a nasty e-mail to him which frightened him off. Afterwards, Jessica developed an awful - and unreasonable - fear that she had contracted AIDS from him to the extent that she went to be tested. I picked up the pieces. Why am I telling you this? Because, afterwards, I started chatting online. However, unlike Jessica, I have always drawn back from the notion of meeting someone. It has been part of the fantasy if you like but not my reality. Along the way, I have made some good friends or what appeared to be good friends insofar as the relationship with them developed. On Thursday night, very fed up, I sent an e-mail to one of them. I won't tell you her name but she is an American woman living in Switzerland at the moment.

That's the background but the link to this particular narrative is that she turned up for me last night. She had been online most of the day looking for me, waiting for me to show and she was warm, consoling and friendly. She couldn't believe how anyone could do this or how Jessica could think so little of her kids, let alone of me. She talked and shared for over an hour and I am filling up with tears of thanks when I think back to the conversation. She helped me see more of my feelings and gave me the support of another human being - something I realised I have been desperately lacking. I went to bed alone but feeling that I have a friend somewhere in the world who empathised, sympathised and gave me a cuddle from one thousand miles from here. This is to say thanks through the tears that are rolling down my face. It’s the first time.

More about the Lover

By now, the soon-to-be lover will have confirmed his presence and changed his status. He put himself into this little narrative so I make no apology for giving you some background. He's 39 years old, he lives in Wokingham, Berkshire, and his name is James. He's married to Harriet who is oblivious to all this and he has two children as well. His loopy love profile has now been removed but it was a gag making pitch and, ironically, full of stuff about how he was not seeking sexual relationships but loves to talk and share and – probably - weep at sunsets. Sorry, I made that last bit up. Rather than give him a second-hand voice, let him speak for himself. After the Saturday conversation - OK one night and let's be friends - Jessica obviously e-mails him about her doubts and what I'm feeling. One of the things, by the way, that is hard to take in all of this is the way that a picture of me has been created. My identity has been stolen. Anyway, here is James’s reply:

“I guess you have had a very confusing few days and your head is
>spinning. I am going to try and clarify a few things. You are a
>young woman and I am a wise old man, so just be quiet and listen to
>me.
>
>Sit down and have a nice cup of tea first.....? OK, here goes.
>
>This is not a shag thing. I don't do that. Apart from last time,
>LOL. You either believe me on that one, or you don't. I don't know
>what else I can say. I have already told you that when I met Cath,
>I did not feel the emotional response I had (and I am sure you had)
>when you and I met. I really do feel for you and if you want me, I
>will stick around. Cath is totally out of the picture, I should
>stop mentioning her emails and I will.
>
>In any case what kind of moron/monster/mysogynist would pursue
>someone for a shag thing when they are as vulnerable as you are?
>Give me some credit, matey.
>
>Anyway, there's the crux - if you want me. You need to think hard
>about things, and if you honestly either (a) want a shag buddy or
>(b) don't really want me at all, you must tell me now.
>
>There are big issues at play here. My family and yours. My spouse
>and yours. My home and yours. We can slow down if you want (we
>have only met twice for coffee for God's sake, it's not exactly warp
>speed) .... grin .... or we can stop. I don't want to.
>
>And ... don't confuse the Jim issue and the James issue. I don't
>think they are the same. Your text talked about there being "no
>going back" to your marriage if you have two nights with me ... but
>you are not leaving Jim for me! Are you? I think we would be great
>together, but we have to consider these things carefully and take
>our time - don't we?
>
>Arguably you should consider leaving Jim anyway but you will get no
>heavy pressure from me. I think you should do it because I think
>you are wasting your time and your relationship has largely broken
>down. I find the idea that you are hurting him and prolonging his
>pain, a bit laughable, frankly. But don't be scared - if you think
>you would be happier on your own then I am sure you will. Don't stay
>in an unhappy relationship because you cannot stand the thought of
>being on your own!”

Well, dear reader, what do you think? Is there a subtext at work here? And, what is the agenda? I'll leave you to do the analysis of the ebb and flow of the argument. I think that James is a smarmy shit but you may see him otherwise. A narrative like this gives you the choice. I also have to confess that I obtained this e-mail in a devious yet accidental way. I installed a Mozilla Browser and then discovered that it saves passwords so I was able to access Jessica's Hotmail account. I don't feel good about that but, in wartime, morality gets compromised. And, of course, you are entitled to the 360 degree view!

Wallowing in Misery

Today was an unusually shitty day. To understand it, I have to go back to last weekend. I think that unravelling the past is the only way to understand the present. Jessica and I had a full-scale row with reference to the soon-to-be lover. We ended in an impasse. She was going to go away for the weekend and I could lump it or I could stop her from going and face the consequences of eternal hatred. Eventually, perhaps foolishly, I did the decent thing. I said that I wanted us to be friends and we shook hands and had a hug. I asked her to do one thing which was to only go away for one night. You are probably wondering, dear reader, why one night of adultery is any different from two. I find that hard to explain but it seemed that it would be less of an ordeal and also Jessica and myself have not had two nights away together on our own since our son was born five years ago. So, it seemed to have some symbolic purpose as well. She agreed and we agreed that we would be friends and see how this all panned out in the future.

Last night came the bombshell. She was still going for two nights. I felt lied to and deceived. The reason of course is that James, the boyfriend and soon-to-be lover, has lied to his wife that he is going to a two-day conference. More of her later but he cannot unravel his arrangements and has persuaded Jessica that my requests are worthless. That is what made today so difficult. Eventually, I told her that she had lied (she told me last weekend that she had not met him already but she has), and that she had deceived me (about the status of the relationship), and that she had broken a promise to me. For whatever reason, I feel this last - probably worthless -element the worst. It seemed so contemptuous of me. She had a week to make other arrangements and simply didn't bother.

I think that some of you are beginning to suspect that I am simply wallowing in self-pity. Maybe I am at the moment but that is not the purpose of this account which is more purgative in purpose. I realise now that I must have neglected her and will say more about that later. Maybe, also, I missed the vital signs. But, perhaps also you can feel for me. This evening the soon-to-be lover will become the actual lover and will possess the wife who until eight weeks ago I thought I had a reasonable relationship with. With additional cruelty, I live the hours of what they are doing. It is not hard to work out the time of the greeting, the icebreaking gin and tonics and, because I have to encounter the darkest elements of all this, the first penetration.

Why do we make so much of this? Why can't we be more like animals? What is the absurd drive which makes that so hard to write? She is simply fucking a man she is friendly with yet it breaks my heart. I wish I knew why that moment of intimacy undoes ten years and two children together. But, at the moment, it has.

Today is the first day of the end of my marriage

Tomorrow Jessica is going to go away for the weekend with a man called James who she met on loopy love - an internet dating site. I tried begging her not to but she says that her life is boring, that she only lives to serve her kids, that she wants some excitement. If I stop her from going - I threatened to tell the soon-to-be-lover's wife - she will be unhappy for ever and the subtext is that she will hate me accordingly. I have no options. I tried rage but she pointed out that I had affairs before I married her. I tried to offer to make things better but they cannot be better than the thought of her weekend away. I threatened to lock her out on her return and leave her clothes in the garden in bin bags but she knows I dare not risk losing my kids and becoming one of those sad men you meet in parks and cinemas on Sundays. So, I am beaten down. My options few as they were look increasingly unattractive. I am bereft today.