It's A Jungle Out There

 

Entry 1   12:05 a.m.

I have to keep reminding myself that the calm is the eye of the storm. The calm is the eye of the storm. I forget, frequently.  

This evening was joint therapy.  It isn't couples therapy, because we aren't working on fixing the relationship.  It was pretty low key, we seemed to be struggling to find a topic. We talked about this and that, but nothing really much for the first few minutes.  I was enjoying this, usually these sessions turn into a shit show. Jenny offers we cut back to twice a month  sessions. Then, I had to open my big mouth and volunteer that we are buying a home. The therapist asked about our feelings about this.  It was fine, we talked about moving from the center to the periphery of the City.  It will be an adjustment.  We talked about the impact on the kids.  But the therapist--the one who understands we aren't working on rebuilding the goddamned relationship but are only trying to maintain life together without too much strife, is looking for something else. I could feel it. Jenny could too. I held my breath praying she wouldn't take the bait.  But, it was shiny, and she couldn't resist striking.  

Jenny started talking about the new home.  The therapist asked how I felt about it, and I noted that I am not going to be sleeping on the sectional anymore, because I will have a bedroom of my own. Did I say Jenny swallowed the hook?  Well, it didn't set.  Clearly, I was the dumb fish that swallowed the lure.  The therapist started reeling it in.  She asked me how I felt about it,

and I said I am good with moving from the couch.  She asked Jenny, who started talking about how hard it is going to be.  She wants intimacy, she wants me in the master bedroom.  I rolled my eyes so hard I must have looked like a walleye.  I should have my response memorized by now, and her answers.  I explained that we are where we are because she refuses to stop.  She starts getting agitated.  She is going to die, she says.  "You won't stop seeing this guy, I say."  "I can't see him," she says.  I ask, "because of his wife?"  "No, because you get angry when I see him. So I can't see him." "I have never stopped you from seeing him. You are an adult and can make your own choices."  This back and forth goes on and on, with her never denying my accusation that she talks and texts with him every day.  She only claims she can't see him because I will get mad, not understanding how ridiculously awful that statement is.  She would, but for my anger is her answer.  Some months ago, documented in this journal to be sure, I made it clear to her that I would not stand in the way if she saw him.  When she complained about me being pissed in joint therapy, the therapist actually took my side and said that such anger is understandable.  

Jenny laments that we aren't intimate. I point out that I make every effort to care for her, that I spend every moment with her. We go everywhere together, looking for houses, shopping, running errands, going to appointments.  Her response, "I never leave the couch." I swear to god. Why that didn't make me angry, I don't know, given that I do just about everything.  It is true that I sleep on the sectional and use it as my office. But, what the actual?  I am about as intimate as I can be with someone actively carrying on with someone else. 

Now, I am pissed at this point.  This has been going on for a year.  We have clearly delineated boundaries. I have been clear I keep all of her affair shit in a box, because she won't swear him off, and I have thus nothing to work on.  She asks me what it will take to get me back in the bed, to be emotionally intimate with her.  I respond, this issue is moot, because she long ago refused to cease contact with him--in fact she has said repeatedly in therapy she isn't willing to risk losing him to fix us. She is asking me again, in essence, to pretend the affair isn't happening.  Ok.  So, no recant there today. Instead she begins to blather that it would be impossible to have no contact with him (I actually never requested that) because he is among her circle of friends at work.  This is such horseshit.  I made that clear.  The therapist points out to us that months ago she told Jenny that if we were going to work on the relationship, she would have to do certain things, like no contact with el pinché motherfucker, for starters. Jenny starts screaming that I am a hypocrite. Two years after my fling in 2012, the woman I had started seeing when Jenny and I were separated after her first affair, called and told me she was pregnant. Her boyfriend had been beating her up, and she didn't want him to know he had gotten her pregnant. Her family devoutly Catholic, and she had no one to which she could turn. I hadn't seen her outside of work since August of 2012, until she called me out of the blue.  I took her to Planned Parenthood and brought her back to my apartment to care for her after the procedure. I told Jenny about that last fall, when we were having a moment.  I thought it a good idea at the time, total honesty, but I'm an idiot. Any suggestion that Jenny cut off contact with el pinché motherfucker, and she says, you kept in contact with Sonia after you saw her.  .  .  Uhuh. Its not untrue, but its about the same as apples and road apples.  Then, Jenny shifts gears. 

She begins to lament that she can't see Sheila and Jennifer. They are the two people who facilitated the affair. I point out that she sees Jennifer all the time and can see Sheila anytime she wants.  She says they aren't allowed at the house.  This is true, sort of. I told Jenny, as a condition of me staying last fall, that those two were never to step foot in my house--I never want to see them again.  But Jenny regularly sees Jennifer, and she has been to the house on several occasions. I have never made an issue of it. I point this out.  But I also make clear that Sheila, who was my friend for 30 years and provided cover for Jenny when she went to Vegas for a week with el pinché motherfucker in 2019. Jennifer hosted the two of them when he shaved her head at the start of chemo and she snapped pictures of them holding one another. I hate them both, find this unforgivable, but have been easier about Jennifer.  Then, the other shoe drops.  

Jenny tells me and the therapist that this is going to be a problem because they will be at her mother's memorial .(delayed because of COVID)  I am so fucking hot, I say, "They can come, I won't be there."  I am hot. I tell her I never want to see Sheila again, ever. Nor Jennifer Murray for that matter. Jenny tells me, in front of the therapist, that this constitutes abuse.  Seriously.  My anger constitutes abuse.  She has said this in the past, and I just can't. 

I leave for a few moments to deal with barking dogs.  I cool off on the way back, and realize my response in anger was unreasonable.  I sit back down on the bed, we were meeting in her bedroom, and tell her that I didn't mean it when I said I wouldn't come if they attended the memorial. I said they would not be welcome to speak to me, and to make it clear to me.  The therapist, often behind the 8-ball, says she didn't realize that I wasn't allowing these people to come to the home.  I reminded her that I made it clear as a condition of me not leaving last fall that they were not welcome at the house and Jenny agreed. They are dead to me.

The therapist wanted to probe this area--seriously.  Just want to remind people.  Jenny was diagnosed with stage IV terminal pancreatic cancer last July. I discovered she was having an affair the weekend of my birthday last fall.  It took weeks, countless hours of gathering evidence, and tearing through her constant lies, to determine she had been carrying on the affair since at least 2018--maybe longer. It was in that digging that I found the involvement of Jennifer Murray and Sheila in facilitating the affair. Jenny refused to stop the affair, saying she wasn't willing to risk the one thing that brought her joy (kids, friends, family?) to engage in any rapprochement with me. And the therapist wants to probe my anger with her friends.

I actually recited the above synopsis, making the same points, and then saying I will never forgive them, nor do I ever want to see them ever again.  I admitted that I am less angry with Jennifer Murray, but that Sheila is dead to me. 

My mother told me that her grandmother and her sister didn't speak for decades over a disagreement. It hasn't been a year yet, and Jenny is lamenting that I haven't forgiven them. In therapy she said to me I shouldn't be angry with them, that my claim that they orchestrated the affair was wrong. I corrected her, noting what they did was facilitate the affair.

My anger is abated for now.  Jenny hasn't spoken to me since therapy, really.  I didn't get any long screed texts, but then again she isn't feeling well.