Love, Believe, Be Happy

This is my new mantra. You may have noticed I haven't written in a month. I have been ALL over the place....I mean EVERYWHERE. Sad, happy, angry, scared, tired, enraged, sobbing, screaming and thinking I had finally figured out how to live with this (and being wrong more than once). It's only been days since my recent "meltdown" but this time feels different (only time will tell). I truly hope there are no more meltdowns. They have to be really bad for me physically. My blood pressure goes up so high that I can feel my head getting lighter, like I will pass out. My heart races so fast I am sure it will just explode and I am so out of control that I have hurt Dave (accidentally, grabbing his face too hard and jarring his neck as he tries to dodge me). I stamp my feet and scream like a madwoman. It is terrifying for me and I can't even imagine what Dave must feel like.

This latest time I realized I need to really just make up my mind-- am I staying or going? Can I do THIS? If not I need to admit it before I kill one or both us from the stress of being in between.

I have been telling myself there were 2 options. Love him and stay or love him and leave. But there's really 3. Love him and stay and continue not believing him or love him and stay and believe him.
Only one way ends with the possibility of being happy. If I leave him there is a possibility of happiness..but not WITH him. So if I want to be with him the only way to be happy is to believe.

I do believe that right now he thinks he loves me. The problem is -- is he lying to himself? And his answer is "Why would I do that? This is hard, why wouldn't I just leave?" And my answer is because it hurts to admit that he doesn't love me. It took me 3 months to convince him that when he said "I wanted to end it" Ending it was NOT the same as "I didn't want to be with her". What he meant was I didn't want to keep living 2 lives. THAT was what was killing him. The lying, the cheating. But he didn't want to end it WITH HER...just wanted to end IT. We will never know how it would have played out. Would he have chosen her? Would he have dragged it out so long that either she got tired of waiting or I got tired of being treated like shit? Would he have ever fell out of love with her? I don't know. But in none of those scenarios would he just start loving me again. Even if he did leave her, he would have still loved her and kept his secret always wondering what could have been. Continuing to live a lie with me and still not really wanting me. I believe IF he really does love me now it's only because he got scared when he realized he could have lost me and it opened his eyes and the only way that happened was me finding out. At the same time I believe that there is a reason he reached out nearly 5 years ago to another woman and then again almost a year ago to this woman. Something is missing. For him. Three months for him to admit that it hurt too bad to admit he had no idea who he wanted to end it with. Three months of lying to himself to protect himself. Is it not possible he's lying about how he feels about me? Of course it is.

My self confidence has improved so much that I really don't believe it's me. Unless it's because  he felt I didn't need him and this is about saving women to make himself feel good. And if that's the case, well I guess he could still love me, just have this stupid savior problem. I know I have my issues but I have always had issues and he stuck with me through all of that...years of depression and neediness. I am now a much more loving wife. There is no reason he shouldn't want to be with me. He loved me at my worst. He should love me at my best. So I want to believe this was just him being really fucking stupid. I want to believe that is what he realized and not that he's clinging to our relationship because "we have history".

I asked him for reasons why he thinks he wouldn't have chose her. They were so lame and that's when I realized he had never decided not to chose her. He still had no idea of where he wanted to be, just didn't want to be in the middle anymore. Here's the list, you decide: She has kids, (I had a BABY when he decided to be with me-her youngest is 10), He was worried she would go back to her husband (he felt the same about me), She was really bad with money (I am sure being in love he would have told himself he could help her learn to budget better), she probably has a gross body from having 4 kids (this from a guy who has dated fat chicks...super lame excuse), She was controlling (not sure how he could tell that from what was essentially a text relationship but again I was super fucking crazy and that didn't stop him from starting a life with me).

I am sure he now realizes it wouldn't have lasted with her but with the freshness of new love there is no way any of those reasons would have stopped him from leaving me. And what was the reason he gave for not wanting to leave me? He loved me (and I pointed out you don't CHEAT on someone you love) and our history (that to me sounds like obligation not desire to be here). When he would compare us...there's no way I would win over being in love, if history is all he could come up with as a reason to stay. So that's why I have a hard time believing that in less than a minute he decided with any accuracy on where he wanted to be. And I think it's possible that over time he may realize he jumped the gun and impulsively decided he MUST love me because he instantly stopped loving her, so that wasn't real, so our love must be real...well...one doesn't equal the other. It is within the realm of possibility that he doesn't love either of us.

But we are back to my choices. I love him. And god knows I have tried everything to stop that. I have pleaded with myself to just stop loving him and move on. Save my heart from breaking again. Three and a half months and I can't make myself not love him.

I have given serious consideration to just leaving. I decided I don't want to live in this house without him, too many memories that would cause too much pain. I have thought of draining my savings and going away..Africa, Australia....become the next Jane Goodall. I am serious. No more men, No more heartache. But I would still love him and want to be with him and want to share our love of animals and think of him way too much.

So I came up with the mantra. Love him, Believe Him and possibly Be Happy. Too long to chant to myself and so it became simply: Love Believe Happy.

I have felt my heart start healing and wrote it in a note to him and within minutes as I drove to work I regretted writing it. So afraid that that confession would give him permission to hurt me again. "Oh she believes me again, I'm free to do what I want, she'll forgive me again...she always does". I went into panic mode, my brain reminding me of everything he did, how well he lied, how he never showed an ounce of remorse while doing it, covering so well. It took me 2 hours to get back to Love Believe Happy, but I did it. On my own. I fought my brain and I won.

I know there will always be a part of me that will never allow myself to be shocked if it turns out I am right (that he is fooling himself into believing he loves me). My gut tells me he's lying to himself. And I know I SHOULD listen to my gut, but I just can't. I am actively choosing to disregard it's warnings and I am well aware of the consequences. I am hoping that he can lie to himself for the rest of our lives if that's what it takes. I know I should want him to be truly happy and part of me does but just like he was selfish for choosing to be with her just because it "felt good" well I am doing the same thing....I am being selfish...I want him even if he really doesn't want me. As long as continues to believe he loves me then I will believe it too. I know now that I can survive if it turns out that it isn't true and maybe I will have some happy years in the interim. Or maybe my gut will be wrong and we will be truly happy and never take each other for granted and grow old together, just like I always wanted.

Love Believe Happy