OK folks, I have been on this MB for a few months now and felt that I should finally share my story. For some reason I could never do it before, but I feel I can now <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> .
WARNING: THis is a long story and I apologize if it doesn't "flow very well" ,there is so much to say and I am not great with the "written word". For those of you who can stomach this, I welcome you reading this.
Well, my story starts out like most others here. I met my wife when I was a surgical resident and we married during my residency. My STBXW was my "one" true love.....or so I thought. We had a storied romance (as many here also proclaim <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" /> ). I have dated a number of women in my life BUT NO WOMAN had ever made me feel so completely and utterly "in love". I was whipped and worshipped my wife. Things were great for the first few years of our marriage. We became the "envy" of many couples and many friends (oh how that would change <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> )Our problems started like in most other marriages. I was working alot and with a change in my salary came a whole new world for us. We lived in a bigger house, drove better cars and belonged to a country club...all of the things that "we think make us happy". With many of these "things" came greater pressures. My STBXW and I grew apart as I worked harder to live a life that "we thought we deserved".
Like most infidelity acts, I felt "something wasn't right" with my wife. My wife was suddenly seeing friends that she had not seen in years, she was going to places that she had not been to in years. ALL BS "know this feeling". It is a "stab in the heart", utterly sickening feeling that we deny for as long as we can to protect our hearts. My STXW was in a very long co-dependant and dysfunational relationship with the man she was with before me. THis was the kind of relationship that was volatile and had a lot of break ups and make ups. YOu all know the type.
HOw I found out was pretty typical. We have matching cell phones and I took hers by mistake one day. Well, it doesn't take much to guess what happened next. I found a message from him to her that CLEARLY spelled out that she was AT THE VERY LEAST in a EA. I stewed about this for a few days thinking of what to do next. I was completely and uterly f'ing devestated. We had "it out" and I confronted her with the info. SHe was shocked and admitted everything...(so she said at the time <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /> )....including a PA. Well, I was shattered. I actually vomited violently when she admitted it and actually blew a blood vessel out in my eye with my retching...it looked hideous actually. Well, this all happened last spring. We went to MC and I cut way back with work. ( I was doing a Plan A of sorts without even knowing it). My love for this woman was so strong I would have done ANYTHING to save this marriage. MY MIL is a great woman who I have grown to love like my own mother. She was my rock during all of this. She always felt like I was the man who saved her daughter from a miserable life of partying, drugs and her EX boyfriend.
Well, like anybody in recovery, things were great right after D-day, but when that high "runs out", the realities of the marital probelms surface. I told my wife, that I would do anything that she ever desired to save this marriage (including quitting medicine) if she gave me her word that she would NEVER see the OM again and have no contact. IN hindsight I now know this was irrational and desperate behavior on my part. SHe did give me that promise. I told her that if she ever broke this promise to me that I could never forgive her again and I would end the marriage. She KNEW the dead seriousness of this statement from me. I was willing to forgive her affair, but she had to promise me fidelity forever from here on out.
Fast Forward one month later and I myself was in a "fog". MC was going ok, but the counselor was not that great to tell you the truth. SOmething was "not right", but I told myself that it was my paranoia. Remaining married was more paramount than my self dingity and self respect.
One night in May of this year, I was on call and sitting in my office reviewing a power point lecture that I was to give to the residents the following week. I recieved a page from the ER with 911 in front of it. IN my hospital that prefix before any page is extremely urgent and everything that you are doing should be dropped for this. IN my line of work EVERYTHING seems urgent, and as such a 911 page is EXTREMELY unusual for me to get. As I headed down to the ED, I anticpated some huge MVA with a long night of surgery ahead of me (not so bad I thought, I was rested and just had a cup of coffee). I walked into the ED and a nurse who I know well looked at me with the look of someone who had seen a ghost....I knew right then, that this HAD SOMETHING to do with my wife. I don't know why I knew, but I just knew.
I walked into the trauma bay and saw my wife lying on a gurney with a head laceration. It wasn't that bad, and she was conscious. I was kind of in a drunken daze taking all of this in. I thought, "Thank God, she is OK" Well, a curtain away I saw what the probelm was....THE OM. They had been together in a car that was hit by a bunch of teenage girls. The OM was severely injured with very unstable vital signs. My wife looked at me, and said "I'm sorry". DEspite her injuries (minor actually)I think she knew at this moment in our lives what all of this meant. For the rest of my life I will never forget this moment and the look of shear and utter sorrow in my wife's eyes. Well, the next 10 hours was kind of surreal experience for me. The OM suffered life threatning injuries. I made a decision at that moment that I sometimes truly question. I took him to emergency surgery and ended up in the OR for the next 6 hours. He suffered several serious internal injuries including a lacerated bowel and ruptured spleen. I removed a good amount of large intestine and actually had to create a pouch on his abdominal wall (colostomy bag). I also removed his spleen and sewed up a part of a lacerated liver. He should have died from his injuries with the amount of blood that he lost. It wasn't me who saved him, but I believe a higher power. I have seen patients with far less severe injuries die and yet this OM didn't.
WEll, I imagine many of you can imagine the shear and utter devestation that I felt during all of this. I still don't know looking back how I got through that first night and was able to perform. Even when I think about it know, I actually get a fast heart beat in anxiety about it. Now, many of you may question the ethics of me taking the Other Man to the OR as "my patient" knowing that my wife was/is in a extrammarital relationship with him. There are times when I wished to God, that I would have asked someone else to take him to the OR. I should have recused myself..but I didn't. YOu may all think this is very arrogant, BUT there is not a surgeon in this world that I trust more than myself. Yes, I know that the rationality of this is questionable, but it is the way I feel. AT that time I could NOT let someone else take this case. I wrestle with this decision a lot. I played a part in saving the OM who murdered my life as I knew it. Can you all understand this? I sometimes wish God would have taken that poor basttard because at least I know that his pain and suffering would have been worse than mine. Yes, this is all irrational thinking, but it is how I feel.....well I should say "felt".
MY wife put our marriage, our life, my life, her life and my career on the line for this affair. SHe put me in a situation to lose my career. If things would have gone bad in the OR that night who knows what the hell the fall out would have been. We will never know. THe OM lived......and to this day I am not sure how or why. The next day I went to my chairman and withdrew from the case and spilled the whole story. There was never any fallout from all of this, but there could have been. EVERYONE knows what the "deal" was that night, but it remains the big white elephant in the corner of the room.
I ended going to my wife the next day and staying with her and holding her while she recovered. It was my way of mourning our marriage. SHe awoke and in sobbing tears asked about the OM. It was defintely at that time that I knew that our marriage was over <img border="0" alt="[Teary]" title="" src="graemlins/teary.gif" /> I don't hold out the anger and did not end the marriage b/c of my career being placed in jeapordy. That was not it at all. My wife looked at me eye to eye and lied to me again and again and again. She placed her affair before everything else in this sacred life and for that I can never forgive her.
WHen I first came to this site I was a very angry, malcontent man. I still am at times, but am healing. I hate so much to see the BS go through what they go through for these WS. I truly think any person who commits adultery has character issues. I don't buy the argument that so many of you do who state that "it is all fog, it is all alien behavior" "it is not really them". I think many of you need to say this to rationalize to yourselves why you stay with these WS. I think AT TIMES when many of you praise a BS FOR "fighting for their marriage" through humanly intolerable behavior, it is actually weakness and cowardness that makes them stay. I don't always see it as "being strong" It is a lot easier to stay in a $hitty marriage than leave it. This is not always the case. but that is how it is a lot of the times around here. Maybe I am wrong, but that is how I see it so much.
I think self esteem PLAYS SO much a role in these situations. I think many people here think so litle of themselves that they will tolerate near anything to "stay married". Their marriage defines their life. They fear too much on being on their own. I understand we are all different but this is something that I wrestle with so much on here and it gets me in trouble a lot of the times. I don't completely buy the premise that affairs come about because of EN's or whatever not being met. There are MANY MANY men/women who cheat "just because". MANy men cheat on their wifes after a new baby comes into their lives. Many men/women continually cheat because they need the "ego" boost. This may all have NOTHING to do with the BS. I think far many people cheat becasue of character issues than people admit on here. ONce again, just my opinion.
My story is certainly not the worst on here (there are many more tragic on here including other children being born, STD's, bankruptcy, etc..). BUt to me, this has been a trajedy <img border="0" alt="[Teary]" title="" src="graemlins/teary.gif" /> , as my marriage died because of this. My love for my wife died that night in May. Many people may question me why I can't forgive my wife and try and reconcile. I can't in my heart of hearts do that. For a while I felt very guilty about this when I first came to this board, because I could see many worse trajedies than mine happen to BS and they continue on and try to "recover" their marriage (there is even a woman here who has forgiven 2 OTHER CHILDREN !!!!!!). I have since reconciled with these feelings. In this life I know that I will never have to face my maker to answer for my actions in this divorce. I know that my decision to divorce my wife is justified. I am a good man who is not defined by my marriage failing. I gave my wife everything and she betrayed our sacred marriage, she betrayed my honor and her honor. This affair and divorce has been an ego shattering, pride swallowing, sickeninig time in my life....but it is a time of spiritual awakening for me. I still contest that nothing good can ever come about b/c of an affair. It is times like this that defines one's life. I am by no means perfect and have erred more times in my life than I care to admit, but I can look at myself in the mirror and smile at what I see. I can and will survive this. As bad as things have gotten with this, I am surviving. Many of you who feel what I feel (Mschucter, Kjb23, etc..) WILL survive also.
I am sorry if this was too long, but this post probably got out f'ing hand. I feel I could type all night. There is obviously more to this story, but the meat and potatoes of it is in this post.
I sincerely thank you all for letting me be a part of this community. I may see things differently from you all and not be a MB "zealot", but I still always root for each and every one of you. I only want the best for you all in dealing with this kind of trajedy.
THank you all for taking the time out of your life's to read this.
P.S. Many of you may wonder why I have the nake "Lemonmon". Well, it is a nickname from my youth. I had a Harlem Globtrottters basketball jersey of Meadowlark Lemon growing up and always wore it when playing basketball, and the name "lemonman" has stuck with me ever since. Yeah it is cheesy I know. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />
<small>[ December 05, 2004, 10:48 PM: Message edited by: lemonman ]</small>
