Settling For Less Than What You Deserve

Why did I settle for so much less? I know that when I was in the situation, I really wanted to try and make it work. But looking at hind site now, I wonder what took me so long to get out of that situation. I spent countless days sneaking around his sneakiness, trying to find out what phone calls were coming in on his cell phone, I snuck out early every single morning to his van to find out what money he had hiding. I became tired of the same old thing.....and nothing helped my situation. He was cheating and I couldn't stop him. Back when they had pagers, I even took his pager from him, because I felt like he had a cell phone, why a pager too? Well, she was sending him codes on it and I couldn't figure it out. I ran up a brick wall about the whole thing and nothing helped. I sit here and wonder why I settled for so much less...why I put up with his cheating, lying and sneakiness. I was miserable and he didn't care. I now see, that I am so much better than all of this and I'm so glad that I don't have to settle for his bad behaviour anymore.

What Goes On His Side Of The Bed?

What do I do now, that I don't have him sleeping on the other side of that gigantic bed? Perhaps I need to get me a smaller bed, but not one that's too small. Actually, I could get a gigantic pillow and put on that side of the bed, so it doesn't look so bare? I totally have to re-adjust to this being on my own kind of thing. That's not easy to do, especially if you have been with your special someone for a very long time. You can learn how to do it though, because you have to learn to live alone. You an also look on the other side of things and see how you will have more room in which to move around and have more space for sleeping,. right?

What Do I Get With My New Found Freedom?

What do I get with my new "found" freedom? Well, first of all, sometimes it's hard to see the good and positive things when you are still looking back at what might have been or what went wrong. I find myself in this position way too many times. I guess it's because I never got the answers that I wanted and I know at this point, I have to accept that I may never get the answers, so I need to be strong about this, and just move my life forward. One positive thing I can now have to talk about is the fact that he is no longer cheating on me. I don't have to worry about checking his cell phone while he is in the shower. I no longer have to run out to his van before he wakes up to see how much money he has hidden in it. I no longer have to worry about hurting inside because he has called me all sorts of names. I don't have to deal with his temper tantrums or his demands for certain types of food. I can now say that I am going to worry about ME and I have finally been able to get some much needed rest. Chasing after someone who is being unfaithful is a full time position and I am finally free. I can go on from here and say that I am no longer under undo stress.

Our Wedding Rings

What do you do with the rings that you once wore together? Well, in our case, I was the ring-wearing one and his ring stayed in his top drawer because of the job he did. He just didn't wear it much, maybe some weekends, but I always wore mine. Maybe I was more sentimental with those kinds of things but it really did mean something to me. When we split up, I took the ring out of his top drawer because I felt that he didn't need it anymore. He had been out with other women and his ring was like new.....and I felt like I spent my hard earned money for something that he didn't seem to care about anyways. Later, he found out that I had taken it and asked me for it. I honestly don't know why he wanted it so badly. Why didn't he care enough while we were together to want the ring, a symbol of our love? Maybe after everything was said and done, he finally decided to care.

I Came Across Some Pictures Today...

There they were, all stacked neatly in my little covered tub, all tucked into the envelopes along with their negatives. I wasn't planning on looking at them, but I had to dig in there to find some pictures to give my son who was looking for baby pics. Tears began rolling down my face as I saw a precious memory of him standing there holding our daughter when she was just a baby. He was smiling, standing proud and it seemed like the whole world was glorious at that moment. What do you do about those old pictures ? I don't want to get rid of them, because I am sure that our daughter will want them when she's older, and rightly so, they are part of her past. Closing the top of the container, I felt a rush of hurt run through my body, but as much as I wanted to dwell on it, I just needed to drop the matter and go on with my day. I think that I will keep those pictures and not peek into the box for a long while. What a shame that those wonderful memories had to die. I thought we were a team.

What Happens When You Look Back

What happens when you look back? Do you see all the bad things that happened while you were with him? In my case, it always seemed that every time I reminisced, I saw only the good things. I don't know if my mind just wanted to remember only those good times because it hurt so badly when we were going through his cheating or if it's our body's way of protecting us from reliving some of those really awful moments. Looking back, I can see many things that could have been done differently. I could have chosen to "see" and acknowledge his infidelity much sooner and then I might not have lost so much of life's precious time. Perhaps looking back, I could have discovered sooner that I really couldn't control what he was doing, that only he could. Looking back, I still wonder to this day, why did it have to happen to us!

Discovering a New Me

As I grew up from a child to an adult, I had certain likes and dislikes, hobbies and such. I soon found out that once you get with someone, alot of your likes and dislikes change. When we marry or partner with someone, we grow together and many times, that means that we change into someone different. We can be known as somebody's wife, somebody's husband, or someone's mother. I found this to be very true in my case. Somewhere along the way, I think that I lost a big part of who I was. Now that I am no longer with him, I cannot become the person I once was, but I can learn things about myself, my new likes and dislikes, form new hobbies, meet new friends. It's hard when you have to start all over again, but in the end, you discover a new you!

Splitting Up The Assets

I found that going through his cheating on me wasn't enough, I then had to deal with the fact that we were splitting up. The first time around when I found out, I ran. I was shocked, devistated to say the least and I packed up my belongings while he was still at work. But once we got back together and his cheating happened over and over again, I knew he would not move out. It was horrible because I moved out again. I felt like I had been run out of my home. What do you do about splitting up your belongings? In my case, I had certain personal things that he could not take away from me. What do you do about things you owned together? It's hard trying to split up a photo album, unless there's 2 of them and they can be split evenly. What about that wonderful puppy you got for Christmas? I suppose it's the one who is going to be able to take the best care of it. After we split the second time, he waited about 6 months, and then went to a lawyer and tried to get me to pay on his Lowe's card for the siding he had been putting on OUR house that HE was still in. I had to explain to the attorney that I also had home repairs on my home depot card. Sometimes when you try splitting things up, they can become tricky and want more back. More than likely, it's because someone else has stuck their nose into your business and given them ideas of how to come back at you. Splitting things up can be hard, but being able to talk calmly about it really helps alot.

The More I Asked, The More He Hid

I found out by trial and error, that the more that I asked him questions about the "other woman" the more he hid from me. Now, it was easy for me to discover her phone messages that was left, the letters that she sent through the mail and the longer extended periods of time he was gone, but when I started questioning things, he got better at hiding things from me. He didn't care that I knew the truth, his only care was protecting her from me. He told her to quit leaving messages openly over the cell, so she then started leaving text messages that seemed like coding. He didn't know that I confiscated the letters that she wrote at first because I knew he would deny it all. He started seeing her during his lunch hours instead so that he would come home earlier. The more I questioned, or told him that I knew what was going on, the more he went into hiding things, and became more trickier. I wished that I could have held my tongue a little longer, but honestly, I had just had enough and couldn't keep on going with the lies.

Why Is He Still Hiding Things From Me?

Here we are, been through the mill and back with his infidelity, and we are no longer together. Now that we don't see each other on a daily basis, there are still times that I have to see him. We have a child together and I see him when I have to. It's funny though because every time I see him, he acts like he's hiding something. To this day, he still hides the fact that there is or ever was "another woman". Why does he feel the need to be sneaky, even after it's over? Is he trying to hide her from me, so I won't go and ask her any questions? Is he just trying to make me believe that I was only imagining her, her phone calls and his visits to her? Did he think that her leaving messages on his cell phone were invisible to my ears? What ever the case, I am not going to obsess about it, after all, if he had wanted to be with me, he would have tried his darndest to work things out.

Will I Ever Find A Partner That Doesn't Cheat?

That's a golden question, if I will ever be able to find a partner who won't cheat on me. I want to have confidence but it's hard, especially if you've been through everything that I have been through. Trusting someone is a really important thing in a relationship, so you will need to make sure to have an open mind when you are ready to go back into the dating scene again. Make sure not to jump into the waters too soon. It's always a good idea to try and get over your past relationship before starting a new one, but honestly, it doesn't always happen that way. Finding a partner that will not cheat on you is VERY possible. Take your time with dating and getting to know someone. This can be a scarey experience, but fun too! And to answer that question about finding a partner that doesn't cheat, yes, it's possible!

Explaining Why Dad Doesn't Come

I see the look in my daughter's eye tonite as we go out to a fiesta, and she's supposed to be smiling and happy, but she's sitting there with tears rolling down her cheek. I ask her what's wrong and she turns to me and says " mom, I miss my dad". Oh, I really feel bad when she says that, because I know that there is NOTHING I can do about it. Of course, I try and explain to her that even though he doesn't come, he still loves her, but maybe he's just busy. I have repeatedly tried over and over to explain to her dad that she really needs to hear from him, at least on some type of a normal basis, but it just seems to go in one ear and out the other. What's a parent to do in this case? How do you explain to your child that her dad doesn't come to see her because he just doesn't make the time to do so? I don't understand, and neither does she. I cannot tell her anything bad about him, because I am just not that way. I want her to know her dad as he is, with all of his good traits and with his bad, but she needs to find those things out on her own. Why can't he just make a little bit of time for her? It's beyond me why he has to be this way.

What Have You Learned About Infidelity?

Seeing him now only makes me think about what could have been, and luckily, I don't see him often. We learn from our mistakes as we grow, and no matter how old we get, we still learn new things every day. I have come to learn that no matter what happened to us, his cheating on me was NOT my fault. We split up over it and divorced the first time I found out, but I came back again to work our problems out after a separation of nearly a year. I tried to the best of my ability and I have learned that no matter how hard I tried, it didn't work because HE was not willing to work out his issues.....therefore, it happened again. The second time around we had been back together not even a couple of months when I found out and then I discovered his cheating.... not only once, but with 2 women the second time around. I spent the next 3 years trying to work through it and found that I just couldn't do it. I have learned that I am not in control of anyone else's actions, but my own. I have to stand up and acknowledge that I tried with all my heart, but it just wasn't enough. Sometimes this is a hard learned lesson.

When Will I Stop Caring?

I would like to know when I am going to stop caring about what happened to us? It took so much of my time worrying about what he did to me, to our family and us, and now that it's over, I am still sitting here trying to figure out when will I stop caring about it all? Maybe it's all those years we had together that are still stuck in my mind and wondering why it was all just tossed away as though they didn't matter at all. Maybe it's that we created a bond, a family and I am still wondering why we weren't special enough for him to want to take care of us, so that we could still continue being a family. All in all, even though it's over and done with, still with no answers about the whole infidelity mess he created, I want to get over it, and I think that I am on the road to a good start about it, but when will I stop caring?

Where Did My Child Support Go?

Once you divorce, or have a separation agreement and are getting a regular child support, it helps, but it doesn't pay all the bills, at least not in our case. We are living on a measly monthly amount, thank goodness I work ! When we got our divorce, my child support gets paid by him mailing in the check to the government, and they, in turn, make record of the payment and forward the money on to me. That works, and everybody's fine with how it's done, however, for the past 3 months, there has been no child support. Granted, we don't get much, because when it was time for the amount he was to pay, I settled for a little less than what he was supposed to pay. I thought that I was being nice to him, since he is self-employed and doesn't always make the same amount each month. However, due to an accident, he was out of work for a little while. Now that he is working again, he is paying his other bills, but nothing for us. How does he think that we are supposed to make ends meet with less money? Money that we are supposed to be given. It takes both parents in this day and age to raise a child, especially with a teenager, things are a quite a bit more expensive. I am now wondering when my next child support payment will be coming in and pondering at the thought of how to proceed with this matter. I just don't understand why he thinks it's ok to pay all his bills and forget about his daughter's needs.