It has been an unbelievable last week or so. It has passed by in 5 seconds; it has passed by in 5 years.
Wednesday night was ugly: my WF (Wayward Fiancée) phoned and told me that under no circumstances would she be moving out. I told her that she would be, and said that if she did not that I would be sharing the photos with her family. Ugly words between us. Little sleep for me that night.
Thursday morning, I receive the sweetest texts in the world from her: she says she is so sorry for last night, that she will move her stuff out and stay the weekend at a girlfriend’s, and that could I please not tell anyone about this. That we can fix things and make things right. I asked, ‘Why should I not tell others the real reason our wedding is off?’ She said that would ruin any chance of us getting back together.
I returned to my place Thursday night. It was very difficult to be there. My first post mentioned the symbolism of a break-in. This too felt that way, but in a twisted key – where you know your house has been burgled, but your eyes aren’t providing proof. Her stuff was mostly gone; she had not left the engagement ring, though.
Something inside me made me reach out to my WF’s ex-boyfriend. I found him easily through Facebook. I wrote him and said that I had something he would be interested in knowing, and could he phone me. He phoned within 45 minutes.
It was a brief but powerful call. I learned, crucially, that his engagement to my WF was broken off due to … her being repeatedly unfaithful. He had to go to an event that night, but invited me to have dinner with him the next night.
The next day, as I drove the 3+ hours to his town, I finally had the time to reflect properly on an unbelievable 100 hours or so in my life. The revelation that my WF had done the same to the previous man filled me with such a mixture of emotions: anger, relief, sadness, bewilderment, embarrassment – many others as well.
About an hour away from his place, something more courageous in me made me pull to the side at a very scenic rest stop. I phoned the OBS. I had no expectation she would answer. She did. There were long tearful silences on her part. She said that he had cheated on her before their wedding and when she was 6 months pregnant with their second child; but that they had worked on things and that as far as she knew, all was better.
Troublingly, despite her husband’s (POSOM’s) multiple infidelities, the narrative she was locked onto was that my WF was the aggressor and her husband the victim of a predatory woman. What she said next shocked me: she said that many people KNEW that my WF had been unfaithful to her ex-fiance, but that it had been kept from me ‘to protect my feelings’.
Finally, when I asked her what she was planning to do, she said that he said that he was totally done with my WF and would undergo any type of counseling, transparency, etc etc that she required for him to rededicate himself to her. So she said, for those reasons and a few more, that she is staying with him. The most valuable detail she shared was something that, maybe for her, was a passing remark right at the end of the chat. She said she was looking forward to ‘starting again’ with him after Easter weekend – as he had an unexpected business trip over the weekend, leaving Friday and back yesterday (Monday).
Given the fogs that were previously blinding me to my WF’s treachery were finally lifting, my senses were on maximum alert and I phoned my (utterly excellent) private detective and told him about this. After the initial exposure of the A, he had told me that I should retain his services for a little while longer since it is so common, apparently, for exposed APs to take things deep underground, continue the A, but simply become more careful about concealing it. I therefore approved more investigative work on his part.
I met with my WF’s Ex and we went to a steakhouse. The first 30 minutes were incredibly difficult to navigate: two men, both betrayed by the same woman, both with many swirling emotions. But it got better. He told me about my WF’s multiple infidelities (that he knew of) during their relationship and his bitter, bitter regret for taking her back again and again. Amazingly, what ‘sold’ him was her comparing him favourably to her APs and saying, ‘How could I be so dumb to be with an inferior man when I have you?!’
I could tell he had such a mixture of emotion when he learned what happened to me. Part of him was clearly angry and sad on my behalf. But part of him, I could tell, was, at some more primitive level, delighted that his worst thoughts about her had been confirmed. I understood this. I didn’t see it as him taking pleasure in my suffering – but rather that he finally had some closure on the fact that it wasn’t really about him or his failings with her, at any level.
I suppose my ability to understand that (partially thanks to this incredible community) was liberating for me, too.
As good as Friday ended up being, Saturday was hideous. I awoke to a poison bomb on my private Facebook group dedicated to the (now, never-to-be) wedding – which was composed of the groomsmen, the bridesmaids and our two primary families. To keep it simple: my WF wrote a simple message saying that sadly the wedding was off and that while ‘he (Absolon) might wish to spin it, that she had been suffering from emotional abuse from him in the last few years of our relationship and that despite our attempts to work on it, he couldn’t break his negative patterns’.
I was … dumbfounded. But then again, I suppose I wasn’t. Many people here warned me about this.
I don’t wish to delve into my emotions that day or actions. I did nothing I would regret. In fact I kept a total silence – from her, from the group. Obviously my own family knows. But I am so curious why she reversed on her Thursday morning texts, saying she wanted to reconcile things between us. Was the power of being with her AP so intoxicating? I am really puzzled by her doing that. You would think she would want to keep me around whilst enjoying the secret thrills of her A. She must really, truly, despise me if she could have written a note like that -- knowing I will basically never speak to her again. Just disgusting. Just amazing.
What made it all ‘better’, if that is the right word, was learning later that day that my WF and the POSOM had checked into a fancy spa about 90 minutes outside of town that Friday night!
More photos. More proof. There is a very nice restaurant in the spa / resort, and it was apparently quite easy to capture many photos of a couple in love (!) sitting beside each other at a romantic retreat.
I am now running out of steam in this update, so I will cut the conclusion as short as I can. By yesterday afternoon, armed with two affair weekends’-worth of photographic proof, I selected the six most powerful photos and sent them to our Facebook wedding group. I apologized for my delay in responding to my WF’s deceitful Saturday message: I explained that I had been visiting her Ex-ex fiancé and had been disappointed, though not surprised, to see that she had done this before. I asked the group to truly ask themselves whether any part of me has ever seemed even remotely emotionally abusive. I asked the group whether my WF had ever, before her A was exposed, mentioned to ANY of them that I was emotionally abusive. I felt that if any of them were honest in answering these questions, they would have their Truth – aside from the damning photos. I have received several supportive messages from most of the group. Somehow the ones from the bridesmaids have cheered me even more. Her father has asked me to go for coffee with him this week. He really adores me. I am not sure I want to go, really, despite my close relationship with him.
Finally: as liberating as it has been to escape this crazy person with whom I shared a bed, a house, a life for 5 years, most of me is broken beyond belief. Not only do I question, deeply, my supposed powers of observation and intuition to have lived beside someone for 5 years whom I so clearly did not even know; but it is just the … extreme damage this will, undoubtedly, cause all my future relationships.
I am free: sure. But I will never trust again.
