I just really need to vent or I think I'll explode from too much thinking. This will be a novel because I'm a writer and I don't know Reader's Digest version of anything, so grab a cup of coffee and tell me I'm wrong about this old friend's motives or if I read her correctly. I don't discuss marital issues with friends, so I hesitate to drag this up in person with one of them. I've lurked here for awhile to see if others have had similar problems and finally decided to just plunge right in and ask you guys. I feel rather petty because nothing really happened, but…..
First off, hubby and I are both around 50, married 25 yrs, met in grad school, no kids. He's a great guy, and I love him very much, but he started becoming a "jerk" about 8 yrs ago, but we didn't realize that the originating cause was a powerful SSRI (anti-depressant) he was put on for anxiety (first parent's death and lots of work stress). We didn't connect subsequent behavior changes with the med (until last year). It also caused alcohol cravings, and when we realized he was drinking too much, he put me in "charge" of the beer in the house/fridge so that kept him from drinking too much. The drug itself (generic is venlafaxine) is known to sometimes cause alcohol cravings or abuse in some. It can also "impair judgement" and "loss of the ability to inhibit oneself"—couple this with drinking, and you get the picture. Most of our arguments during these last years had that as its genesis. Even though he knew I was helping—and he wanted it because he knew he couldn't trust himself all the time about it—I know he also resented it.
And so, that's the setting…..
About the time he went on the med, an old female friend of his from junior college contacted him. He was friends with her for 1 year before they went to separate universities in different states. She liked him way more than he liked her (he said he never felt an attraction for her, and he had enough girls he WAS interested in). She'd asked him on several "dates" in hopes of something more. The last time was after they were in separate schools—she invited him to a ball game and hoped he'd stay the night (she planned to have sex with him), but he sensed something and headed back to his school after the game instead. That was the last time they saw each other, and their letters trickled to a stop within the next year as she finally started dating someone. I heard this story back when we were dating—during that time when you're getting to learn about each other's past, etc. (and heard about all his other real girl friends and "liaisons"), so I know he only considered her a friend, nothing more. Since I always had guy friends, I never thought anything about it.
Anyway, about the time he started the meds (8 yrs ago or so), he got a letter at the house from this friend (who lived about 500 miles away) who'd tracked him down via their alumni assoc. She'd just gotten a divorce. She wanted to "catch up" with him and wrote that she'd reconnected with a few of "the gang". I asked him if he was going to write her back, and he said "nope—don't have time". However, I suggested that any old friend deserved to have a reply—I know I enjoyed catching up with a few over the years, and I'd have been disappointed if someone didn't at least acknowledge a letter. I figured that's all it would be—it's all I've ever done. He wrote out a short reply, and gave it to me to mail. She wrote back, giving her email address (because that's easier than snail mail of the old days, she suggested), so this time I wrote her—to her email address—saying that he's very busy and not one who keeps in touch much with anybody, even family (truth, from all my years of witnessing it being that way) so she wouldn't be disappointed when he didn't email her. She and I exchanged a couple of emails, and in one she said she could understand why I might not like it that an old female friend wanted to correspond with my husband. She called him "the best man I've ever known." She proceeded to tell me that her own husband had been looked up by an old high school girlfriend, they emailed for awhile, later met for lunch, and it eventually developed into an affair. Oh really now!?! So, I put her on the Christmas card list and didn't encourage any further emails. Done, right?
What I didn't know is that I must've made her mad when I said hubby wasn't the type to "keep in touch", and she set out to prove me wrong. She knew the company he worked for, so she called his office and she got his business email. Now here's where I wish hubby had said something to me, but in his defense, he knew I was aware of her contact, etc. And heck, he didn't tell me things he was supposed to tell me (emails with his family, making plans, then them mad when we didn't show up—because he didn't tell me or fwd their emails).
So, moving forward about 2 yrs, and we've moved halfway across the country for his job. Very stressful time—new, harder position, his mom died, we were building a house, his drinking barely under control. His med causing a new side-effect—severe nighttime "restless legs" (more like JERKY legs, all night)….combine that with sleep apnea and unrelenting snoring, and I finally took refuge—with his approval—in the guest room. It was a horrible summer. He gets home from work, eats, heads to his home office to continue "working" on computer. One evening I sit on his desk to catch up with him, and his email is open. I glance at it, nothing registering at first—the usual work names I've seen for years. Except for one—that friend. There's 3 in his inbox. The one that caught my eye was on top and subject was "Read this first!!!" I asked him about it. He very casually said who it was from when I asked. I guess he wasn't prepared for my next question, though, "can I read it please?" Uh oh. No was his answer, then he deleted them.
Now, up until this time, I had no reason to really worry about my husband (except for the drinking and general sometimes "jerkiness"). I also knew that right then, he was under a ton of work pressure (which I guess is why there were several emails from her left in inbox because he hadn't been able to get to them). He had a huge deadline to make the next few days in preparation for an overseas meeting. I knew I had to let him get through that before we talked more. I was pretty cool to him that evening and next day, then he left for his trip, and all was "back to usual." A few days after he got back, I brought it up and reminded him of how her husband had gotten caught up with an old friend and ended in an affair and that he'd better think twice if he didn't think she wanted something from him. His eyebrows went up—he didn't remember that detail of her divorce. Anyway, 2 months later and it's Christmas. I asked him if we were still sending her a Christmas card, and he gave me an adamant NO. I asked if he still emailed with her, and he said no—that she emailed too much and he usually deleted them anyway.
Over a year later, and he changes companies (and therefore email addresses). He gets up on LinkedIn with the job change. A few months after that, she sends him a LinkedIn request and very short "hope you're well" message. I see it about 2 weeks later. I mentioned it, and he said he just ignored it (not technically—so I "ignored" it for him by clicking the ignore button). I then asked him if he'd given her his new contact info when he changed jobs, and he said no. I "bet" him he'd be getting an email from her soon—to his personal email that he had listed on LinkedIn, and sure enough she did another week later. It was totally innocent and short; I think the subject line was "not interested" and the rest was something like: "not interested in messing with your life, never was. Just hoping everything is going well in your career and your personal life." I took that to mean that it had crossed her mind that the reason he dropped their correspondence was because he thought she was messing in his life. I figured maybe that meant he talked about our marriage and she was offering up "advice".
During the time of their apparent emailing, he'd made a comment that floored me and hurt my feelings—he told me that I didn't love him anymore and that I'd already pulled away from the marriage….because I no longer slept in the same bed with him. Whaaat? I thought he knew why—he DID know why. Anyway, I stripped the guest room so it wouldn't be convenient for me and went back to our bed, but it was impossible to sleep there with the thrashing about—I still ended up on the sofa. But, I had an idea and filmed him with my phone of his jerks, kicks, and SNORING and showed it to him. He couldn't believe how bad it was (and realized why he never felt refreshed in the mornings). I always wondered where he'd come up with that—I now figured it had to be her!
The LinkedIn message and email sparked a bit more discussion about her, and he said that at first he hadn't thought anything about it—she was just an old friend, and it was fun catching up and talking about old times, but that in the end, he realized she "might've" wanted more. He told me she'd told him that she'd planned on losing her virginity to him after that football game he attended at her school—she had it all planned that he'd stay in her room with her, absent roommate, but he drove back to his school instead. Why would this come up in conversation now?
I overreacted and was all upset—and he was mad that this was from so long ago, and that he "hadn't done anything", but my menopausal hormones were in full swing, and I guess I got a bit paranoid, so I wrote her and told her to stop trying to contact my husband—to take the hint that since he hadn't given her his new contact info and hadn't responded to her LinkedIn request, note, and later email that he didn't want contact with her anymore. I "told her off"—that I knew exactly what she had hoped to gain by reconnecting with him. And a bit more. I worried she might be the type to keep trying with him. She wrote back, and instead of instantly saying something like she was soooo sorry and never in a million years would she have wanted to cause problems in his marriage and is horrified that I thought that of her (and thereby making ME feel bad). Instead, she jumped all over me, being "insulted" for both of them and on and on. One GOOD thing she said was "what I don't get is, how you don't know how committed he is to you and your marriage". (Whew!). Hubby doesn't know I wrote.
I wrote her back, explaining why I'd thought what I did—about them both. That if everything was above-board, then he shouldn't have deleted those emails I asked to see (which he much later said was because I'd have misconstrued them but no explanation as to what was actually in them); that if he was so busy with work and had little time for anything / anyone, then he should've been spending it doing something with me instead of emailing with her; that it shouldn't have been behind my back (in her Christmas notes to us, she acted like it was the only time in the year she was in contact—or so it seemed to me). I wrote that it was a stress-filled time that can be critical in marriages: major relocation, death of his last parent, end time of my last parent, job stress, building a house, heavy drinking, etc. He didn't need to be "seeking counsel" with someone who wasn't a friend of the marriage, someone who might've had ulterior motives of her own, someone who could remind him about their teen years, etc. I ended it with an apology in case this was just menopausal hormonal paranoia and to look me up on Facebook or send us a Christmas card if she really wanted to be friends…..
Anyway, a few months after all that was all over, he had a health crisis and it was finally figured out that his med had been causing quite a few problems over the years (including the restless legs that miraculously disappeared after the first med decrease). He started weening very slowly off it, and when he was about 50% off the med, he said he could feel a fog lifting from his brain and said some of the things I'd been upset about in the previous year simply "hadn't been him". He also couldn't remember a lot of our disagreements nor could he remember the family drama we'd gone through with his siblings when he mom was dying (that was a big eye-opener).
All was (is) good……then last week I came across a book in our bookcase that I didn't buy—he'd brought it home from his old job. He'd said someone had given it to him (he's not a reader, so he gave it to me, and I'd put in the bookcase). I was tossing books in a box to go to Goodwill the other day, and I thumbed through it before tossing it and noticed a note tucked inside. A typed letter from the friend. The book was a gift on his birthday, the letter was platonic but flowery, dripping with compliments (written the year BEFORE I knew about the emails of last year). She twice called him an "amazing man" and commented on his amazing qualities; she said she was proud of him. That his friendship was one of the biggest gifts in her life; she was so grateful for him. From the letter, I realized that they'd been in contact since the very beginning and that she'd been calling him at his office, AND sending him presents to his work address. It's like she'd studied "The Other Woman 101: Top things to say to your married man because he might not be hearing them at home after 25 yrs of marriage"; send a book that could spark discussion about the path taken in life (she just didn't know he's not a reader). He said he honestly doesn't remember getting the book from her, never looked at it, and never saw the letter. I believe him—the book was pristine with unbroken spine.
I'm just unreasonably mad right now. Hubby doesn't get it—that seeing that book is like it's just now happening, even though I know it's from 2-3 yrs ago. I'm mad that another woman thinks her long-suffering friend (from whatever woes he might've told her—the med made him feel "stuck in a miserable existence" at times with no real feelings for much of anything) really is married to a witch because where the friend got to see an amazing man, she thinks I saw a man in the middle of a mid-life crisis (from my letter, description of our then situation) and that I don't appreciate what I have, etc. I want her to know she didn't fool me (or could I have totally misread her motives?).
I have a vivid imagination and I toyed with the idea of sending the book and note back to her with another note from me, this time with me knowing MORE of the story.
In her reply to me last year, she said she didn't need this kind of drama in her life, so she was "finished with both of us"….that her marriage had been filled with drama and she wanted peace. I find myself wanting to tell her that if she hadn't wanted drama in her life, then she shouldn't have set out to have a secret relationship with a married man behind his wife's back. Hubby said during our last discussion he kind of felt like she was a hypocrite—it'd happened to her marriage, and yet here she was, trying to do it to someone else's. I want her to know that. But that's mean. I know it's over and in the past, but reading that note, it was RIGHT NOW in my heart. I also worry about what she might write back to me if I did that. What if one of those times he was writing to her, he was drinking? Loss of inhibition, etc. He could've said something to make her think she might could get more….who knows. Anyway, that's why I'm here, venting. Hoping that's enough for me—to discuss her motives, to realize I'd read them right and that I'm not a bad person for suspecting it and putting a stop to it.
If you've read this far, thanks! I feel better….I think. I just know I need to get her out of my head, one way or another. Hubby doesn't understand why I feel the need to discuss it. He's the type who won't dwell in the past—sure wish I were that way! It's just that I never felt my curiosity was satisfied about those "secret emails". I know he didn't do anything (physical with her, nor do I believe he would have), and he quit writing her without me having to insist on it—I just made sure he knew how she'd said her marriage ended and told him I thought she looked him up in hopes she'd have it work out for her—like it had for the "other woman" in her own marriage. So what's my problem? Finding the note in that book has just taken me to a level of anger that I've never known before.
Anyway, thanks for listening.
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