To the brink and back again

Everyone has a limit, a breaking point.  We usually believe we know ourselves well enough that we know just where that line in the sand is, but sometimes it’s not a hard limit after all.  Sometimes that breaking point becomes something more fluid, more like that mirage that is always just at the edge of your field of view on a hot summer day driving down the highway.  It shimmers out there, but every time you think you are about to be there … it’s moved away again.  That’s how my breaking point has proven to be with this relationship.

This past weekend that breaking point was right in front of me, I could have sworn I drove right over it, but still it seems to shimmer in front of me.  The lies and deception had piled up and every time I peeled back one layer, I found a deeper level of dishonesty hiding behind the last.  For at least the third time in less than two weeks, our relationship reached the boiling point and went screaming past it.  And for at least the third time in less than two months, she recognized that the lies and deception had no place as part of this open and honest relationship we had promised to cultivate and nurture between the two of us.  For the third time in the last couple of months, she “ended” her relationship with her lover, but I knew from previous history that these endings were all too temporary so after being asked for a do-over the first time and simply told it would restart the second time, I had little hope that this ending would do much to slow down the powerful bull that was handily making a mess of our china shop.  But here it was, another chance before me to salvage things and I jumped at it like I had the first two.  More admissions of deception from both her and her lover, but she was still at a loss to explain them but there was the concept that they were lying to protect one another … from me?  How had this distorted triangle managed to twist in on itself to the point that the loyalty and protective instincts all revolved around this secondary pairing and there was none of that left for what we had at home?  I asked “do you have any secrets that you and I have that you keep from him?  Is there anything you are lying to HIM about?”  I already suspected the answer, but still the “no” that came out was still a painful slap in the face.  Completely open and honest with the man who has lied to you literally from the first moment you met, but secrets, deception and outright lies for me.

So here we are, riding around town, trying to piece back together a relationship that just a few months ago seemed to be as strong as steel but now seemed to be nothing more than an ill-assembled house of cards.  Both of us hesitant to return home because our apartment seems to harbor too much bad energy of late.  Too few good memories there and so many fights and screams and threats of the end.  We’ve even bought incense to try and chase away the bad juju that seems to have taken up residence with us.  So instead of going home, we go for a late dinner out and while we are parking, he responds to her email, and to her credit she shows me his response.  Not hours or days later, but immediately.  It’s pretty much what I suspected, pretty much what I would have done under the circumstances.  Despite the fact the he promised her months ago if this ever got to the point that she felt the need to end it he would honor her request with no questions asked and fade away, here is his response … full of “I don’t know what went wrong” and “I just want to understand” and “please let’s meet face to face.”  Exactly what you would expect from someone who has shown no hesitation to put THIS relationship in harm’s way without any sign of remorse while his investment remains zero and he slinks home to the wife and child and leaves chaos here in his wake.  I am too quick to respond, to quick to snap out verbally and tell her hell no!  Then I realize that I am still the outsider in my own relationship.  I have to remind myself that I am the guest here, just watching them play out this drama in front of me.  I have front row tickets, but all I can do is boo, jeer, heckle or applaud at what is being played out before me.  I’m not the director, not even really an actor in this production.  I retract my hasty NO! and give her the time and space to respond, asking only that the lies and coverups stop now.  I ask to be kept in the loop on her reply or any contact going forward and to know what is discussed WHEN it is discussed, not hours or days later when the mood seems right or after I’ve already figured out what happened.  With an agreement for total openness, we move forward …

A day or two passes and I inquire a few times if she has responded or even decided on what she wants to say in response to his request, but she hasn’t.  She is unsure of herself and how to reply because while she wants to keep him in her life, as a friend if nothing more, she is aware that those options come with a price because keeping him on any level means risking us.  Too much pain, too many lies and too many months of fighting and unhappiness have tainted anything that could have been there … not to mention the fact that trying to build a polyamorous relationship and a triad around one member who is a liar and the cheating half of a “monogamous” relationship is a recipe for disaster.  Foolishly, I thought that perhaps she would let the email from him be the end of things and not reply, but the weekend comes and while we are out with friends, I look up and she is gone.  Checking on her, she tells me she had to make a bathroom run, but something in my gut is twisting, it doesn’t feel right.  She is gone quite a while and when she returns, the feeling is still there.  Something nagging at me.  I ask again about the bathroom break and about how long it took and she says that’s all it was.  So I let it go.  We leave the group behind and we make our way to dinner, the conversation is a little strained and she asks me what’s on my mind, I can’t put words to it.  My suspicions are there, swirling just beneath the surface, but I’ve asked her and pressed her on the issue and she has stood firm so I let it ride for now.

Once we are home and she is in bed, my thoughts won’t settle and a quick check of our phone carrier on-line confirms why I’ve felt the way I have all night.  During that trip to the bathroom, an 11 minute call.  Inbound, from his cell phone.   The contact I asked to know about and here it was.  My first thought is to go snap on the light and wake her from her sound sleep and confront her, but I decide to let it go for now.  I will try my best again tomorrow to press her on the missing time in the hope that she will open up and be honest about the call without forcing my hand.  Try as I might, I continue to ask about the bathroom trip, I even press on how long it was and even that I felt something strange but she continues to stand firm that it was a potty run and nothing else.  I then ask her if she knows that phone logs are available on line and still nothing, so in the end I have to call her on her lie once again.  To the bitter end she tries to deny it and play it off, just as he did with his wife even after we knew her name.  Finally she quietly admits to the call, swears that he called her out of the blue during the twenty minutes she happened to be in the bathroom (and away from me for basically the first time in three days) and says only that he was emotional and wanted to understand more of what happened and that she told him it had to end.  Of course my question then becomes why not tell me?  She can’t say.  She didn’t want me upset, didn’t want to deal with my anger, frustration or pain any more.  But she was going to tell me … eventually … she swears.

There is that mirage again.  Just on the horizon, but this time I’m gaining on it fast and this time I catch it.  The breaking point is finally within reach and I grab for it with both hands.  Another lie, another secret for them to share behind my back, another chance for them to build and for “us” to be broken down, even if the dialog on the call was what she tells me.  But how can I be sure.  How can I ever know?  If you didn’t even want to tell me the call took place, how can I trust you to recap it for me once you get caught in your bullshit once again?  An 11 minute call … a sneaky, hidden call with the lying, married man she has fallen for rated above the opportunity to rebuild trust and salvage our relationship.  This is it then, the straw that has been waiting to fall on the camel’s back for five months now.  She can only email me from the other room with an “I’m sorry” and tell me she will accept whatever decision I make at this point on how to proceed.  I reply in kind and my email makes it clear that I have no decisions to make.  I made my decisions the first, second, third, fourth, fifth times that I forgave and asked for some effort on her part, on their part, to be honest and stop the lies and the secrets.  My ability to forgive has been tapped dry and now all that is left is a deep and overwhelming sadness for the loss of what could have been.  I wish her the best in my email and leave to spend a day cleaning my car and my psyche.

The cleaning is therapeutic.  I listen to the mix-CD of hopeful love songs I made for her a few weeks ago and shed so many tears that my plan to drive around town becomes a dangerous one and I retreat to the park, to her park, the place she loves to come to decompress.  The same park we were at only days earlier when she was mourning her loss of HIM for the third time and now here I am watching the sunset.  My Oakleys covering my eyes so people who pass me on the walk don’t have to wonder about the tears welling there.  And as I watch the sunset alone, I am struck by the difference in my view.  Just days ago, while the mood was somber, there was hope in my heart.  As I watched her stare out at the water from the same perch I sat on now, I could be hurt that she was mourning the loss of someone else but still hopeful about the future, about OUR future.  But now, sitting here in the same spot, I could only look out on the sunset alone and mourn my own loss.  And the sadness that I felt was truly overwhelming.  That simple act of watching the sunset and not having her with me to share it drove home my loss like I couldn’t believe.

With my love and without.

I sent her this collage of images, the one taken days earlier as I watched her and the one I saw today.  What followed was an outpouring of emotion from both of us.  A cascade of memories of travels and adventures and laughter and fantasies and dreams imagined and fulfilled.  We revisited the first four years together and how good they were and imagined the next twenty and how good they could have been.  All of which led back to the same question.  Why?  Why were a series of stolen moments with a married man worth the loss of what we both said, even now, was everything we had waited for all our lives.  Chatting on text it seemed we were able to remove some of the noise and the anger and frustration that had clouded our communication face-to-face of late.  She found it easier to open up and be honest and I found it easier to remain calm and absorb without responding.  We broke through some walls that had been keeping us from making progress and we talked about the chemistry that the two of them shared and the passion and the heat in their lovemaking that we had allowed to cool between the two of us over the last few years.  In part because of my leaning toward oral and her desire for penetration, but also in large part because many of the bedroom joys that they shared were things that she had not been open to in the past … nipple play and biting and kissing and spanking … all things that I took pleasure in coming into this relationship and all things she had no desire for with me.  All things I had filed away because they didn’t appeal to her … but all things that she and her new love made a regular part of their repertoire, all things that helped them to elevate to the level of passion that she described as the best sex of her life.  People can change what they like she would say.

So at the end of a long day of texting, apologies and reconciliation, I decided to patch that camel up for one more trip.  I brushed some of the straw from his back and got him up and moving.  I asked her once and for all to tell me what she wanted.  She said she wanted me, she wanted this, she wanted us.  In all caps and with a few exclamation points thrown in for good measure.  And I believed her, I had to.  Because that’s what I want, it’s all I’ve wanted for many years now.  I can’t close my eyes and imagine anyone else in my life, I can’t see sharing my hopes, dreams or memories with anyone else by my side.  So I willed that breaking point to be fluid again, to be a mirage off in the distance and we worked on moving forward.  I asked her to promise me that from this point forward there would be no more lies and no more deception between the two of us.  She did.  I asked her to let me burn this relationship to the ground, the one that neither she nor her lover could seem to let go.  She said I could.  She said she was done, she didn’t want it or him any more and she had made her decision and I could do whatever I wanted.  So I told her to come find me.  I gave her hints of where I would be … one of the special spots that had meaning for us because of the role it played in some of our first dates and it was really the spot where we discussed some of the parameters of this relationship we are in and decided we could make a go of it.  She caught my hints and figured out where I would be waiting and made her way to me with a little help from my son who I had lined up to be on call for her if she decided she needed a late night ride.  Seeing her walk in was a powerful moment.  Even though we had only been separated physically for a few short hours, we had been separated emotionally more than we had since we started this relationship four and a half years ago.  For the first time we had both agreed to end something we never imagined would come to a close and certainly not so soon.  So we grabbed a late dinner, the three of us.  And she and I hugged and kissed in the booth like schoolkids with a crush and I was so happy to have her back in my arms again.

Arriving home we talked for hours more sitting in my truck outside our apartment.  Both of us afraid to break the spell and go back into the apartment and allow the negative energy there to drag us down, but it was almost 4 am by this time so we came inside and if the negativity was there waiting for us, we overcame it.  We seemed to be back on solid ground, rebuilding needed to be done certainly, but at least we had a place to start from.

So the next day, I wanted to reach out to her lover and make sure he understood our decision.  I wanted to be certain that he didn’t call again out of the blue and prove a continuing thorn in our side.  When I mentioned making the call, however, she talked me out of it.  She was certain that the last call was in fact the last call.  She felt that she had expressed her decision to him and that he would now understand it was over and they both had to move on, even though she acknowledged that they both ended the call with their “I love you” sentiments for one another.  Something nagged at me about this sudden about face after she gave me the green light the night before, but I was floating too high on cloud 9 to give it much thought.  Perhaps she was right and there was no reason to even look down that hallway if the door had truly been closed.

But it wasn’t closed.  Clearly it wasn’t.  Because the next day, I got a text.  A text from her lover asking for a meeting with me, instead of me taking the power and pushing for us to connect to clear the air and end things once and for all, now I was back on my heels and the power was his once again.  He wanted to meet because he couldn’t understand why this couldn’t work.  Not a problem I said to myself but I could see instantly on her face that she had prayed for this moment not to come.  Despite promising me two things to convince me to give this another try … complete honesty and allowing me to close this door with her lover on my own terms … she hadn’t meant either of those.  Two more lies and more to be revealed in the moments to come as she finally came clean about the Saturday phone call.  As I suspected, the timing of the call was no coincidence nor was it initiated by him.  The call had been incoming, but only because SHE had reached out to HIM and asked him to call!  How many lies?  Too many to count.  More lies than truth between us for five months now, that much I do know.  So here she was, now professing this was the last of the lies!  Another one she had no reason to keep from me and yet she did.  Another secret for the two of them to share and the reason she had no intention of letting me reach out to him … because the first words I would have spoken would have been to ask why he called and then her lies would once again have been laid bare.  At this moment I have the revelation that she has lost the basic ability to be honest with me.  It is no longer within her power to tell me anything truthful about herself and this man, even when she claims it’s over, even when she claims she doesn’t want him, she still can’t keep herself from building a fortress of secrets around the two of them and what they share.  I can never trust anything she says to me about herself and this married man she has fallen head-over-heels in love with.   If I can ever trust her again in any way remains to be seen, but where he is concerned, certainly I cannot.  It has been proven time and again that they will both lie to protect one another from me as I am the real or perceived enemy that stands between them and whatever future they plan to build in their world of secrecy, lies and infidelity.  Once again that breaking point is clearly in view.  All of the outpouring of heartfelt emotion only days before is now tainted.  How much of it was real?  How much of what she says can I believe any more?  The love scavenger hunt to find me and start “us” over again … it seemed like a way for me to put a bookmark in our story.  A touchstone in our history together that could help us overlook the chapter before and the five sad months where our ship was blown off course, but now she has effectively shit all over that noble attempt and made it just another inside joke between the two of them.

So here I am.  That shimmering breaking point is just off in the distance.  If it’s a mirage this time or the real thing, tangible and final, I can’t say just yet.  Once again she has given him all of the power in our relationship, once again they have secrets that only they will ever know and I will have to let them decide what happens from here.  I know that there is nothing either of them can say to me that I can trust.  I want to say that the only person who has been honest with me these last five months is me … but that isn’t reality.  I have lied to myself almost as much as the two of them have.  I’ve lied to myself all along the way, telling myself this was his last lie, her last betrayal, their last secret and yet I knew every time I knew in my heart that it wasn’t the case.  But even if I have lied to myself, I am still the only one I can put any trust in here and all I can base the next few days on is what I want.  I want her in my life more than I have wanted anything I can ever remember.  Despite the lies and the broken trust, no one else brings me the joy that she does, no one else knows me for who I really am like she does and there is no one else in the world I would rather share the rest of my life with.  But having said all that, there is absolutely no way I can be in this relationship if he is friend, lover, confidant, Facebook buddy or any other connection with her.  So now we will see what the future holds and as I told her on Saturday, she has once again taken my ability to make a decision away from me.  Whatever the future holds now is not in my hands.  Whatever is ahead is just over the next hill and I won’t know if it’s a mirage, a breaking point or a brick wall until it’s too late to do anything about it.