And they all lived happily ever after?

I started this blog just over two years ago. When I look back at what I wrote it feels like a whole other lifetime ago. I genuinely feel as if starting the blog and putting my feelings out there, then sharing them with people I know IRL was the start of my recovery journey. For such a long time I kept my ex's secret and felt like I needed to protect him but as time went on I realised that I wanted people to know that my marriage hadn't failed because of cultural differences or because I was too young or any of the other reasons people assumed had caused our problems. I wanted to explain to everyone that I didn't fail... but that I had instead found myself in an untenable situation. 

Fast forward two years and I sometimes feel a bit like I need to pinch myself sometimes because everything is going so well. There is still a part of me that is constantly waiting for something to go horribly wrong but the panic is a lot less than it used to be. Work is good, love life is amazing and I feel incredibly blessed whenever I look at my fabulous new husband and my son  is healthy and generally happy (although he is missing all the wonderful guests we had around the time of the wedding) 

This is my last ever post. I won't be deleting this blog because I like to think that one day, someone who has just found out that their husband is gay/cheating on them with men will come across it and realise that there IS life after "the gay thing" and that while it takes time, there is light at the end of the tunnel and a happy ending waiting for them if they want one. My life has gone from being something out of a soap opera to something more akin to a fairy tale (although obviously it isn't perfect as nothing is..) and I am now looking forward to the bit where we all live happily every after! 

The Happy Ending/New Beginnings

I think the story of this blog is coming to an end because I got engaged on Saturday. TGT does still crop up but I am no longer bitter and sad about the whole thing, instead I am embarking on a new adventure. I have to admit that I never thought I would want to get married again and it took me a LONG time to trust M even though I had known him since we were at Uni together but I am happy and content. I feel loved and desired and that is such a difference to where I was this time 5 years ago. To all those out there reading this and trying to decide whether to move on having found out your husband/partner is cheating on you with men/is gay, there IS life after "the gay thing". I am leading mine and I thank god every day that I had the strength to leave when I did. My life now is full of love and laughter as opposed to bitterness, resentment and regret. Not a bad place to be in really.

Where I am now: Sadness and Bitterness...

I don’t think I finished my post properly last week as I had so much more I wanted to say but I figured that it was nearly time to finish work so I was better of publishing the post and then writing more another time.

I have been overwhelmed by the love and support I have received from all corners after putting my post “out there.” To those of you who have been privy to my private blog/forum posts in the past, none of what I wrote would have been a big surprise but I think that more than anything I want to blog more openly about the whole thing (albeit anonymously unless you come to this blog knowing who I am already- if that makes sense) as a) it is probably an important part of my recovery and b) I would like my blog to help other people who find themselves in the same situation and don’t know where to look for help/how to feel. I know that when I first found out I joined an online support group based in America but it was too overwhelming and I couldn’t keep track. When I found out I was pregnant with J I decided to put TGT to the back of my mind and focus on my pregnancy/the baby and it wasn’t until I was 6 months pregnant and found more random messages on D’s phone that I realised that it wasn’t really over at all. In fact my journey was just beginning.

A lot of people have asked me why I didn’t leave my marriage sooner as sticking it out for two years after J was born must have been hard. (It was) Those of you who live in Japan will be well aware of the difficulties faced by foreign women (and men) who decide they want to leave their marriages and kept custody of their kids. For those of you who know nothing about the Japanese legal system, a very simple explanation is that no matter what the situation and who is in the right/wrong, the foreigner will always end up losing out. It was this knowledge that kept me from confronting D on numerous occasions because I knew that if at all possible I should be in the UK before I started any proper discussions about breaking up. To this day I feel bad about the web of lies I wove but it was a necessity and I think that constantly pretending that everything was ok has affected me a lot more than I realised until recently. I have a lot of regrets about the past few years but one thing I don’t regret is waiting until I was ready to leave Japan and work full-time.

I think that a lot of the time, I potter through life telling everyone I am just fine because that is what I have become accustomed to doing and obviously I have to stay strong for J, as a mother who is constantly an emotional mess isn’t good for him. It is only really during “alone time” that I allow myself to dwell, which is why it isn’t a good thing for me to have too much time on my own! ;-) Usually this isn’t a big problem but over the past couple of weeks I have had a lot of time to myself and the result has been a recognition of the fact that I really need to start to process my feelings about D and his lies properly and I need to address what has happened over the past few years without pushing it all to the back of my mind as otherwise I will never truly heal. I am hoping that blogging in this way will help.

Sadness: The list of things I feel sad about is endless. I am sad that my marriage wasn’t the happy one I thought it would be when I made that choice. I am sad that I had to give up what was essentially (apart from the shit marriage part) a happy existence in Japan and start from scratch with nothing. I am sad that I had to take my son away from his grandparents and Japanese family and that I can’t take him to see them until Japan pull their fingers out and sign the Hague Convention. On a superficial level I am sad that I had to leave my beautiful flat and all my beautiful things that I had collected over my years in Japan. I am sad that I have gone from being trusting and optimistic about life to always thinking the worst and assuming that something is going to go wrong at any minute.

Bitterness: I am bitter that I have completely lost sight of who I used to be. I am a long way to regaining the confidence that got stripped away bit by bit as D took it upon himself to make himself feel better about his activities by making me feel worse about my very existence, but I have a long way to go. I am bitter that I have been forced into lying to his parents because he isn’t enough of a man to admit that HE was the one in the wrong and that we should never have gotten married in the first place. I am bitter than I had the best years of my 20s taken away from me and that I may never get to have more kids because of this whole fiasco.

BUT I should add that I do feel like I am getting better. I am getting stronger and even in my darkest moments I am able to recognise that in so many ways and despite everything that has happened, I am a very lucky woman. I have a healthy son who is very happy with his lot in life and full of sunshine and giggles. I have some wonderful friends all over the world who I know will always be there to listen and send hugs if I need them. I have a boyfriend who I love and trust, which is something I thought I would never be able to say and I have gone from feeling useless and unattractive to feeling comfortable in my own skin. I have whole days when I don’t think about the past and what happened. Obviously with the daily reminder of his existence in the form of my son, I will never be able to completely forget what happened but at least I have got to the stage now where I accept that it wasn’t my fault as there was no way I could have known that any of this would happen.

A couple of years ago I met someone amazing who put alot of things in perspective for me. (My guardian angel as I call him) He showed me that no matter what life throws at you, the best thing you can do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep living every day as it if was your last. That message is what has kept me going through all the pain of my divorce and D's subsequent refusal to have anything to do with our son. Much as I am indulging in a little bit of self-pity at the moment I know deep down that no matter what else happens, while I am healthy and alive (touch wood) and J, my parents and family are all healthy and alive then actually, life is pretty good. :-)

How I found out...

On June 6th 2004 ( a date that will remain carved into my brain forever) I had made plans to have lunch with two of my closest friends J and DW. This was quite normal and there was nothing that suggested to me that something odd might be going on. The first hint I got was when J came to my door at the expected time and refused to come in when I invited her in. She said that DW was waiting in the car and could I follow her. I asked her why they didn`t want to come in for a bit and she said that she would explain later. I grabbed my stuff and followed J, with a slight feeling of foreboding as she was acting so weirdly.

I got in the car and DW looked like he was about to cry. Then J turned to me and said "I am really sorry that we have to be the ones to tell you this but we have reason to believe that D is cheating on you.. with men." I thought she was taking the piss at first and I was slightly skeptical as DW had a bit of a reputation for being a shit-stirrer but I also knew that more than anything else, he was my friend and to say that kind of thing, there had to be some kind of reason. It turned out that D had e-mailed DW through a dating website for gay guys. D and DW have exchanged e-mails in the past so he had his e-mail address and by some bizarre twist of fate realised that it wasn`t a random guy, it was MY husband e-mailing him. He e-mailed back asking for photos etc.. and at some point my husband must have realised that it was my friend he was talking to (the details are somewhat blurry, I think I blocked alot of it) Anyway, he went into panic mode by the sounds of things and rushed round to DW`s apartment to try damage limitation. DW was obviously scared and tried to avoid him/ pretend not to be in but in the end he gave in and let him in. D tried to claim that this was the first time he had tried anything like that but DW didn`t believe him. When I talked to him, DW claimed that nothing happened between him and D, although despite everything my husband tried to seduce him. (Unforgiveable really when you think about it, it was just like the bastard though, ah well, have been rumbled, might as well try and get my end away while I am here.)

Sitting there listening to all this, I thought I was going to be sick. I had fought against alot of opposition to our marriage. My brother and Mum didn`t attend our wedding because they didn`t approve of my husband and it looked like they were right to doubt his commitment to me. To this day I wonder if it was really love or just simple pride that stopped me jacking my marriage in and coming home.

J walked back to my apartment with me (we decided against having lunch) and said that she would stay nearby while I worked out what I wanted to do/ if I would confront D/ if I was going to leave or not. My mind was a big mess and I was so incredibly angry. I couldn`t believe how stupid I had been and how much I had given up to be with someone who not only cheated on me, but cheated on me with men AND tried to seduce one of my friends. When I think back, I was foolish to stay but at the same time, I felt like I had alot to lose. Obviously D didn`t feel the same way but that is a story for another post.

I e-mailed D who was out and about somewhere for the afternoon (god knows where) and told him to get his butt home. His reply was that he was going to eat soba (Japanese noodles). I replied that I had talked to DW and thought he should come home. He was home within half an hour. I confronted him with what DW had told me and asked for his side of the story. He looked genuinely distraught at being "caught out" and I did almost feel sorry for him and I think at the end of the day, it was that pity that made me stay. I also thought that by forgiving him, we could work together to deal with his bi-sexuality and come out stronger for it. What I didn`t realise is that the whole thing would start to eat away and me and our marriage and that I would never manage to get over it/fully recover.

The day after the whole thing, my mother-in law was due to come and stay the night and watch our wedding video, which had been finished the week before. I had to sit through FIVE hours of video footage of the "happiest day of my life" and pretend everything was ok. I felt like I was dying inside that day and even 3 years later, I am amazed I managed to keep calm and not tell my MIL everything about her precious son and what he was really like.

To this day, I am not sure why I stayed. I was still working out what I wanted to do about my marriage and then my period was late. When I got the positive pregnancy test, I was torn because much as I was ecstatic that I was going to be a Mum, the reality of having a child with someone you didn`t trust/ weren`t sure that you loved anymore was hard. I made some horrible deals with god in that I would say things to myself like "If I miscarry I know it is a sign that I am supposed to leave my husband and start my live over." However, as my pregnancy progressed, I realised that I wanted the baby more than anything else so the deals stopped.

6 years on I sometimes wish I had left the day that I found out. However, if I had done that I wouldn`t have my son and I wouldn`t have met some of the amazing people I know today. I guess everything happens for a reason and while the past few years have not been easy, I don`t regret my son being born.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...

It is often said that when your spouse/partner comes out of the closet, they push you into it instead. As D is still very much in denial I can’t comment on this properly from experience but I do know that every day that passes I feel more and more trapped by the secret of his sexuality. I know for a fact that he still blames me for his current predicament (the having “lost” his wife and child thing) as he continues to convince himself that if I had only given him “one more chance” he would have been “cured” and would have been able to live life “normally” (as he sees it.) Obviously we all know that the urges he had to sleep with men would never have gone away and his obnoxious behaviour caused by the “guilt” of the situation would have continued and that I very definitely did the right thing but as time passes and J asks more and more about his Daddy and why we broke up I find it harder and harder to explain to him and I hate D for pushing me into this lie. I hate him for being stupid enough to marry me in the first place as if he had had the sense to admit to himself who he really was, I wouldn’t have found myself a divorced single mother at the age of 30.

I suppose many people are wondering why I continue to protect him. I often wonder myself but I think that more than protecting D, I am trying to protect my son. While I pride myself on being open with my son he doesn’t quite grasp the concept of sexuality and the explanation “Mummy and Daddy broke up because Daddy preferred random shags with men to Mummy” is something I feel he isn’t quite ready for so I continue to circumvent the question whenever it arises. I hate it when I explain to people that I am divorced and can’t tell them the full story (as I guess it doesn’t always seem appropriate to say to a random stranger “I didn’t fail at marriage, I just chose someone who was more interested in other men than his wife and son.”) because I feel like a total failure. Over the past 6 months I have been to FIVE weddings. Each wedding has made me sadder and sadder about how my own marriage turned out as watching all of my friends at the altar I still remember the emotions I felt and the joy I experienced when I said my vows. I am so incredibly happy for my friends but so incredibly sad that marriage and relationships in general have been tainted for me because D couldn’t be honest with himself and who he really is/was.

I guess I am bitter. Yes life is much better now than it was 3/4 years ago and I will never truly regret my relationship with D as it gave me two things- my son and kick-arse Japanese skills but there are days when I wish I could turn back time and be the person I was before it all went horribly wrong. I want to be open and trusting again and I want to go back to believing in true love and happily ever after. I am tired of hiding the real reason for my divorce from the majority of people (my own mother and D’s family especially) and I hate the fact that people think that I couldn’t make my marriage work for normal reasons (I have never been good at having people think I messed something up) and that I just gave up because of cultural reasons (or because I was too young or whatever). At the same time I hate it when people do the “poor you” face when I tell them what really happened.

Lately I have been seeing a lot of videos from the “It Gets Better” initiative that is sweeping the world at the moment. The original intention of these videos is incredibly important but every time I see one I wish I could send it onto D and show him that actually, if he was just brave enough to do it, being who he really is wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I want to send the videos to every teenager (especially those in Japan) who is trying to convince themselves that they aren’t really gay and that they will be straight when they grow up. I pray every day that increased awareness and acceptance of homosexuality will mean that in the future, fewer women (and men) find themselves in the situation I was in where they find out that their brand new husband/wife is cheating on them with a member of the same sex. I think that these videos can have a much greater and more wonderful effect than people realise.

While on the subject of media I have to say that I am SO incredibly sick and tired of how “being married/in a relationship but then realising they are gay” storylines are portrayed in soap operas. I will admit to feeling sympathy for guys who grow up in families where they feel that they can’t embrace their true sexualities. It must be horrible to not be able to be yourself and be open with your family and friends but I do think that more consideration needs to be given to the women they end up married to/in relationships with. Nobody considers how horrendous it is to not understand why your partner rebuffs yet another advance and refuses to show you any physical affection at all. Nobody portrays how your self-esteem and self-confidence disappears piece by piece as you wonder what you are doing wrong. Nobody understands how utterly devastating it is to feel like the one person who is supposed to be showering you with love is distant and refuses to spend time with you, instead choosing to do anything else but be on their own with you. It is hard to “get” it unless you have been there but while there are so many avenues of support for men/women who come out of the closet, there are very few for the women or men left behind.

I don’t really know where I am going with this post and I am not sure how best to end it... maybe the best way to end it is.. to be continued....