The hits just keep on coming...

And the chlorine water from the gym pool fails to cleanse me off.  After what started as a rather harmless, productive day, there is turmoil.

The family went for a workout and swim last night and drama followed.  The trust questions arise again.  The systematic lying that has defined me for several months draws suspicion.  Tears on the treadmill.  Somehow, after N is asleep, revealtions abound.

I had always known and suspected T had a few affairs.  The one 5 years ago is well documented.  Drunk and resentful she laid down with someone who could get her ahead in business.  Great, she had to be fall down inebriated for anything to happen.  Still stings like a mother fucker but I had moved on, sort of.

Last night, after running in circles and discussing everything from what hotel I used to why I was so intent on hurting...  a confession.

The affair I thought was one night mere months after we were married, was in fact far more than that.  Her business colleague, about 15 years her senior w/ wife and two kids, was a year long liason.  And Phil (name change to protect the innocent) had fallen in love with her.  Hampton Inn meetings and drunken sex far more than the one time I knew about.  And he was good looking.  And he tried to present her with diamond earrrings.  And it was all very adult for a newly married 25 year old.  Overnighters when I was in Houston watching my beloved Astros open the new Enron Field.  A true and genuine fuck you to me.

And I was relieved to hear it all.  12 years or so keeping it to herself must have been brutal.  What an unrelenting propensity to hurt one another we have.  Yet, here we stand today.  We smile and try to make it through another weekend.  And, more each day I am optimistic it might just work. 

So, when I tell her of the difficulties in reconciling the dual lives...  the lies...  the feelings...  she knows all about it.  Which, in large part explains her pain and suffering.  It is beyond difficult to be the one who has wronged someone.  But, given a choice, you take that over being wronged.

As the dust settles we find out we are more alike than first thought.  And, as she told me earlier, "I am actually a little relieved to see I am not the only one fucked up.  However, you did not have to go so over the top."

Maybe, but I was never given a rule book and certainly never came to grips with all the pain inflicted on me for years.  "Get over it big boy," I said to myself.  Perhaps not the best way to handle all this.  Real self examination is required.  We agreed last night that this is worth being patient for without any real answers.  It is a process.  There are hard days ahead and so many unresolved issues.

But at least the honesty is coming...  for better or worse.