Turning the Page

[w8ing]

Ok...I need to rethink my gift. It wasn't anywhere near the frilly and lacey thinking... I wasn't thinking personal, but more practical, I guess....

Good grief, I need to get a life.

Grace - glow in the dark? I laughed at that one. Maybe I need to start shopping in other places - I have never seen frilly, lacey and glowing....

TFH - what is yours?

[Sealily]

I read through all the posts. I love the name "The Forlorn Hope.".

It's been really helpful to go through all this.
And I laughed because I have a Lab/collie mix--- so true abut their natures.

My best wishes to you in this holiday season.

[theforlornhope]

Grace, that sounds veerrrryyy interesting.

Lab/rott mix, sounds like a good dog.

Check my next posts, I've run into a spot of trouble.

[theforlornhope]

W8ing, practical is ok. Personal is more fun though. I say we take one small piece of this year and spoil ourselves just a little bit.

I don't guess I'll be thinking frilly and lacy for mine though.

I am leaning strongly towards a new rifle-scope. I know, that sounds boring, but for me it would be like a 6 year old with a train set. If only Santa would bring a new rifle to go with it.....

[w8ing]

What trouble?

[theforlornhope]

Bad news friends, it appears I'll have to change my identity on this board, my wife snooped.


I think I will have to start over with a new login name.

Dammit.

This is a gateway email address for my friends to contact so that you can find my new threads under my new login name.

[e-mail]

If I lose any of you, I'm very sorry.

Thank all of you for the support. You've kept me in the game.

[theforlornhope]

Last night,

I thought I had logged off my laptop, but I didn't.

As we were finishing dinner, my aunt, who is one of my strongest spiritual advisors, called, and I excused myself from the table at about 1902.

I went into the spare bedroom and closed the door, because I wanted to talk to my aunt about my indecision previously, and my decision to stand.

We talked until about 1946. I washed up and returned to the living room. I took the boys upstairs, and put them to bed. I told her they wanted a kiss.

I returned downstairs and turned on the TV. I wanted to rectify not watching TV with her the night before because I had been angry with her.

I opened my laptop, (on an end table in the living room,) and the password screen didn't come up. The browser screen came up, not the password screen. I almost missed this. I realized that the password screen should have come up.

I opened the 'history' panel on the web browser, and it showed the several Word Documents that were opened. (I didn't know it recorded word docs too.)

These included my journal, address book, a saved post from AmyC, and some others.

I was looking at the times these documents were opened, when W came into the room. I had the TV on showing Christmas Vacation. She said, that is one of my favorite Christmas movies. I agreed, and said "It is a really funny movie." (We have always enjoyed watching this movie together.)

She went upstairs. I checked the documents' access times and my cell phone log again and again. I finally decided that these documents were opened while I was on the telephone and in the other room.

I went upstairs and knocked on her bedroom door. She was in the master bath, so I went downstairs and waited. After a few minutes I went back up and knocked, she was still occupied. I waited in the doorway. I didn't want to be "in" the room when she came out. A few minutes later she came out.

I asked her "did you use my computer?" She said "Maggie's ball hit it." (Maggie is our dog.) I said nothing and waited. She said "yes I did look at some files on your computer." "I'm sorry that was wrong."

I said "Why did you do that."

She said "because every time you agree to something you go back on it, and I was afraid."

I believe she was talking about me agreeing not to split our retirement nest egg, and me agreeing to move into town when I thought I had no other option financially. These issues are a big beef with her since I verbally agreed to them before I knew that there was enough money for me to keep the house, and also keep a sizeable part of our nest egg.

I pointed to her phone on the dresser by the bed and asked, "Do I look in there?" (Stupid Stupid ,thing to say.)

She said "Yes, you do, you admitted it." This refers to almost 3 years ago when I did snoop in her phone which convinced me of the Affair. I divulged this during MC when I was telling her why I thought she was having an affair.

I said "That was back when you first told me you loved someone else." She said "I never said that." I said, "Yes you did,"... I got a hold of myself, and said, "that's fine,... Goodnight." I was angry, but I conducted myself very calmly.

I wanted to argue several points here, but I stopped after a few seconds, I could tell I was getting mad and not thinking about what I was saying. After I said goodnight, I left closing the door.

I came downstairs to cool down, and turned the computer back on.

Before I could begin this journal, she came down as well.

She sat down in the living room, and I sat down as well.

She said "I'm sorry I looked at your computer that was uncool."

I said "I'm sorry too."

She said "I only looked at the first page of a couple of files, and then I closed it down."

I said "you opened several files."

She said "no, I only looked at your journal and it hurt my feelings."

(My journal isn’t rage and hate, it's as close to a narrative of events as I can remember, but I'm sure that the viewpoint difference still sucks.)

I was quiet for a few minutes; I was trying to decide what a constructive thing to say or do was. I was pretty hurt and angry. (I'm pretty sure I won't ever snoop now.)

She said "You have been mad at me for several days now, what are you mad about?"

I was angry with her Wednesday night over her treatment of the boys, but I had tried to swallow that and ignore it. I'm sure she noticed it though.

I was trying to compose a response when she said "I only saw a couple of files, and that is all."

I said "you didn't look at the file named AmyC?," (this was one of the later opened files, a saved post.)

She said "I didn't look at the Amy file, I assumed it was a letter to Amy. (My stepsister is named Amy,) I only opened those to cover my tracks. I didn't look at anything else."

I started to lose composure a little, and I said "I talk to people on there who help me get through this, who help me deal with what is going on. Now I can't talk to those people anymore. Now my support network is gone."

She said "I am sorry, I didn't look at that, I swear, I only looked at a couple of files."

I realized that my anger was getting the best of me, (Yay, I caught it way quicker than I used to.) so I said, "that's OK, I can fix that and email my friends. It's no big deal."


(Everything else aside, I'm damn proud I caught myself. I've been a lot better about anger lately, but this really pissed me off. I'm proud I stopped it here.)


She asked "why have you been mad at me, what did I do? You have seemed angry since Monday." I don't remember being or acting angry on Monday or Tuesday, so I was trying to think about my response. I couldn't think of any incidents that she could be referring to besides a short one last night. (Wednesday.) I couldn't come up with anything I acted angry about.

She asked me again, "why are you angry with me, have I done something else?"

Having no idea what she was talking about, I fell back on a response that I had been planning to use with her over the D sit. (THANKS JACK!) I said;

"I understand that what you are doing is the best thing for you. I don't fully understand why, but I believe you that it is the best thing for you. I disagree that this is the best thing for the boys. Also, it is not what I want or the best thing for me. Sometimes I get angry about that. Please bear with me if I sometimes seem angry about that. I think I am doing a damn good job of not getting angry about it. I started having anger and resentment problems when you first told me you loved someone else. I was an ass for the first 5 or 6 months after that. I am not blaming you for that, I should have acted better, but I didn't. Compared to that, I think I have done a damn good job of not acting angry about this for the past couple of months. Please bear with me as we go through this."

She nodded and was quiet for a few minutes.

She said, "I'm sorry I broke your trust, I would have been furious if you had done that to me. I won't do it again."

I said "that's Ok. I'm sorry that I tried to make you feel bad about my support group. I was just angry about it. I can fix that easily. It's really Ok."

We then went through several repetitions of her saying "I'm sorry, I broke your trust, I'd be furious with you, (etc.), and me saying "it's really Ok."

At one point I said to her, "I keep a journal to remind me of events that happened. Some people keep a journal to vent frustrations and anger. I don't do that. When I want to vent frustrations, I write letters expressing my anger, and I come back and look for reasons for my anger, and I edit them until I get the anger out of them. Then I delete them. I'm sorry if you saw one of those. I usually delete them as I go."

She said she hadn't seen anything like that, (thank God.)

Finally, after one of the repetitions, she said "but I'm the one who has to live with it," and went upstairs.

It is what it is.

I have no idea what I should have done here.

[Grace_O]

You handled it much better than I would have. You were able to see when your anger was rearing it's head and back off fom it. That's really a major thing. You should be proud of yourself.

I find it interesting that with her behavior she's the one that felt compelled to snoop. I don't think I would have told her "it's ok". It isn't. One think I've (finally) learned is that if someone apologizes to me I can just say "I understand" or "thank you". Somehow, it's ok seems to minimize the damage they've done.

Her "but I'm the one who has to live with it" just p!sses me off. It's selfish and she isn't looking and what the cost was to you. It's BS. You really have no idea what she got into and whether or not she's lying. I told you you did better than I would.

You're right that is is what it is. If you log on under a new name....we'll find you.

HUGS

[AmyC]

Sounds like you did okay to me.

[Jack_Three_Beans]

You have my email man...
and no offense, I'm glad if you change your name.
Something a little less...predestined for glorious failure.

You did amazingly fine.
When you look back at how you handled yourself, weeks, months or years, you'll see how well you did.

"but I'm the one who has to live with it,"

I'm not sure that I want to put this in your head...
when my wife said stuff like this, I would correct her, the manner of how is important, no yelling or crying, but a simple fact:

"We both live with it.

Anything more and it become guilt, not fact.