The Whole Sad Story, Part 2

I think this part of the story, though the most devastating, will probably be the shortest.

He was having more and more difficulty dealing with every day life.  He would retreat to our bedroom and not interact with any of us unless we went to the bedroom to see him.  He talked about his “anxiety” quite often, including how much he hated driving.  He said even making the short drive to work was taxing on him.  He told me he didn’t think he could go on vacation with us; it was too far from home and he needed to stay close by.

As luck would have it, the same week that the kids and I left to go on vacation he supposedly had a business trip about 6 hours away.  Stupid me with all my pluckiness helped coach my darling husband through this upcoming drive.  I was right there, cheering him on, telling him how fabulous he was and how he could do this!  Great news- he made it!  He was able to get in his car and drive.   Bad news… spoiler alert… he fucked a whore.

While on vacation I found out he had sent his mom yet another $500.  He had been sending his mom money all summer long, helping her out with groceries.  It was a little frustrating to see that he had sent a huge chunk while we were on vacation but I let it go.  The day he was supposed to return home I checked on him to ask him when he was leaving.  “Oh, I have to stay an extra day.  They couldn’t get the machine to work.”  He later told me since he was so close to his mom’s he was going to go see her, especially since he had just regained his new driving skills.  “Are you mad?” he asked me.  I assured him I wasn’t and told him it was his mom and how could I say no.  In retrospect, let me count the ways!  Then I discovered a debit payment from a store in the whore’s town.  I immediately asked him why there was a charge to Whore Town.  He had no idea!  He had given his mom his card information so she could make a purchase before he got into town but she had gone to a different city.  He had no idea why it showed up as Whore Town.  Does anybody see the red flags here?  Yes, I was an absolute idiot.  I guess when you want to believe something badly enough you’ll excuse away almost anything.

He seemed a little distant once he came back home but he explained it away by saying he was having some bad days and wanted to shield me from them.  For my part I told him that I was his wife and we were a team and I wanted to be there for him.  We would work through all of this together and it was going to get better.  I told him how proud I was of him for being able to make the drive; that was such a huge step!  The plucky heroine kept insisting she was going to love him through this!  Things were going to get better!  You can drive again!  Now we’ll just tackle that social anxiety and the PTSD and we’ll be on the road to happily ever after!

About ten days after he got back he found out a cousin of his had died.  Now keep in mind this cousin is about ten-fifteen  years older and he hadn’t seen him much, if at all, in twenty years.  Nonetheless, he was determined to go to the funeral.  When I told him our daughter wanted to go with him so she could see her grandparents he immediately vetoed that idea, saying that it was no place for her to be and she didn’t need to see that.  He tells me the funeral is on Friday so he’ll leave Thursday and come back on Friday after the funeral.  Short visit, right?

Oh no!  I ask him on Friday if he’s still coming home and he proceeds to tell me how they’ve switched the day of the funeral.  He swears up and down that they told him it was one day at one time and now they’re saying it’s the next day, at a completely different time.  So he’ll be staying until Sunday.  Then Sunday comes and I ask him if he’s leaving so he’ll get home before it’s dark.  No!  He wants a new challenge so he’s going to drive home when it’s dark to see if he can do that!  I then get a text message around 11:30 telling me that he had his mom’s keys in his briefcase and he had to turn around and take them back to her so he’ll leave the next day.  He finally gets home around 5:30 the next evening.  Again, anyone else seeing the incredibly huge red flags?

Here’s another one for you.  His sister posts a picture of the two of them together.  Once again the whore is liking his picture.  To make matters even worse the whore’s sister mentions how she saw him at “the family reunion” and it had been years since she’d seen him.  I’m thinking, “What reunion?”  Darling husband never mentioned a family reunion.  She had seen him at this family reunion?  Maybe she was talking about a reunion 20 plus years ago and that damn auto correct changed ‘had’ to ‘has’.  It HAS been years since I’ve seen him.  And to add to my paranoia there was yet another charge in Whore Town.

My gut was screaming at me the entire time he was gone.  I walked around like a zombie, telling myself that I was overreacting.  I told myself that I was just hypersensitive because of what had happened before.  “He loves you!  He wouldn’t do this to you again!  You just moved here!” I told myself.  I barely ate.  At one point I went down to my daughter’s room to see if she wanted to get something to eat and she told me she was terrified that her dad and I were going to get divorced.  When I asked her why she thought that she told me it was because her dad hadn’t shown any emotion lately and I wasn’t acting like myself.

I got a message from her husband the evening that my husband got back home.  He told me that my husband had been spending the last two weekends with the whore in Whore Town and he thought I should know.  With that the bottom dropped out of my world.  I held it together though.  I asked him if they were still married and he told me my husband was paying for their divorce.  He gave me his number and we talked for about 30 minutes.

I found out that he had been giving her money all summer long.  All that “grocery money” was actually going to his whore.  Wow- now all of a sudden it makes sense why he didn’t want to send a check.  Those charges to the store in Whore Town were purchases for her.  My husband was making pancakes for her kids, throwing money at them, promising to buy them a dog, promising to buy her oldest child a car.  His MOM was the one who encouraged her to call him and make contact since he was “so sad”.  Yes, encourage his former mistress to call him and cheer him up.  That sounds like a great plan.  What could possibly go wrong?  That family reunion?  That happened the first weekend he went to go see his mom.  Yes, pretty much a year to the day that our furniture was being delivered to our new house my darling husband was fucking his whore of a cousin.  The funeral?  Oh, his mother and his whore went with him.  I’m so glad he had lots of support.  I was also told that according to the whore I knew about their affair and I didn’t care.  I think my favorite part has to be the story she tells about how he would have dumped me the last time but he couldn’t “liquidate his assets” quickly enough.  Those were both things she had told her husband to rub salt in the wound.

I later found out that the phones he had purchased for his mom and stepdad weren’t for them at all. Yes, he laid that trap quite nicely.  As his mother’s birthday approached he told me he was thinking of buying her and his stepdad new phones and putting them on his plan since they only had pay as you go phones.  When a letter came in from his phone carrier letting him know he had been approved for new phones he explained that away by saying it was for his mom and stepdad.  What a good son!  It turns out he instead bought new phones for his mistress and her daughter when her husband took them off of his plan.  He’s currently paying their phone bill on his corporate card.  Again, so many things make sense now.  When he kept making reference to getting phones for his parents I asked him why he didn’t just put them on my account.  Oh, he got a discount through his work which made it more practical to go with this other provider.  Incidentally, my cell phone carrier is much less expensive- probably $100 less expensive. Nothing but the most expensive for the whore and her kid, I suppose!  I’ve also since learned that he has indeed put a deposit down on the damn dog and his whore is wearing a diamond ring.

When I dug a little deeper I discovered withdrawals from our savings account, withdrawals that occurred throughout the summer.  My husband *never* takes money out, and if he ever does it’s certainly not the maximum withdrawal amount.

He got back home on Monday, I found out he was cheating on me later that night.  On Tuesday I called around to make an appointment for a consultation and on Wednesday I met with the first lawyer to see what my options were. On Thursday I sent him a text asking him when he was planning on going to see his best friend.  Oops, he was already on his way.  He thought he had told me and he was going to say goodbye but I was gone so long he didn’t have a chance.  Mmm hmm. This turned out to be an exciting weekend.

I confirmed with her husband that my darling husband was planning on spending the weekend with her and I had him tailed to her house. Even got pictures for my lawyer.  I also found out he had cashed in the last bit of his stock and had it wired overnight.  Now that was strange because there wasn’t a deposit in OUR account. Oh, lightbulb moment- he’s got a secret, separate account.  The coup de grace though must have been when I was told he was interviewing for a job about thirty minutes away from her, which obviously meant in another state.

This whole entire time he is playing it off like he’s at his friend’s house.  He had problems with his debit card and I offered to drive it to him. Actually, what happened was I knew he had a separate account at this time and he had just received a new debit card in the mail.  I asked him if his had expired and when he said no I put on my thinking cap and said, “This must have been a mistake!  I’ll call the bank and see what’s up!”  When I later went to the bank I used his new debit card to see if there was a separate account.  Turns out once the new card was activated the old card was useless.  He had tried to buy gas and his card was declined and confiscated.  Oops!  He was pissed.  I tried to soothe things over and that’s when I offered to drive to Best Friend’s House with the new card.  Oh no!  I’m good.  I’ve got cash and I’ll use my credit card.  He actually had the audacity to try to get me to send him naked pictures!

He got back early Monday morning (like 3 am) and I met with my lawyer on Tuesday and signed the papers to set the divorce in motion.  I didn’t figure I could wait any longer.  Who knows what the hell he would do in the next few weeks?

This is the best part though.  Everyone I’ve ever told this story to has looked at me like, “WTF?”  A few have even said exactly that.  We had a large amount of money in the checking and savings accounts for the pool we had just put in.  Our contractor hadn’t been paid yet.  When my darling husband wasn’t home by 1 am after I had discovered the stock transfer and the job interview earlier in the weekend I figured I really couldn’t wait any longer to protect myself and the kids.  He had given her thousands of dollars over the summer and I didn’t want to give him the chance to take all that money and run.  As I was driving to sign the papers at my lawyer’s office he asked me if I had paid the pool off yet.  I replied that I hadn’t.  He then goes on to ask me why I transferred all the money out of the accounts, to which I replied, “Because you’re fucking the whore and giving her money.  I figured I needed to protect myself and my kids.”  Without missing a beat he says, “Ok, I understand then.”  About thirty minutes later he sends me another text.  I swear this is true; I couldn’t make this up if I tried.  He says:  Where are you?  Are we still having spaghetti for dinner or do I need to make something?

The End