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Hey B....

I wanted to give you more than the Readers Digest, short answer to this....

BTW, the short answer is, until I was ready, which obviously doesn't have a timeframe. Yet for me there was a path to it...which ultimately lead to the short answer...


The much more verbose version is....

I was bombed in late Summer of 07. And much like every story you have read here, I was a complete mess. The loss of the marriage was a complete devastation for me. I found the DB boards after about two weeks, and even though I could read them, the firewall at work wouldn't allow me to register and log in so that I could post.

I LIVED here, reading along with everything that was posted, followed along with stories that resembled mine, and spent a ton of time in the archives. I spent the first few months trying to "fix" everything, and failed miserably. So after the first of the year 2008, I realized that nothing I was doing was working, and I really hadn't been fully embracing all of the things that I was reading here.

So I stopped ...

I stopped everything that remotely looked like I was trying to fix anything and just let it all go. I made myself a promise that I would give myself 2 years ( on something that I read that said a good guideline was a month for every year of marriage) to just heal and work on myself. That I could live with that timeline, and walk away with zero regrets knowing that I did everything that I could do, as long as I gave it my best effort. Dig in and really find out who I was so that I could possibly be something for the future.

Around May of 08, I was having one of those really bad moments when my Ex took our kiddos away for the weekend to where we were both from, about 6 hours away. I came home from work and the quiet hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember breaking down in tears, and eventually standing on my back porch screaming at God to take me now if that is what my life is going to look like in the future, or give me everything that he had so that I could find my breaking point....

The next morning I was at work, reading here, and somehow I came across a post from J3B that said if anyone wanted to talk to him off the boards, that his email was J3B@y.cmo..... I think I read all of his threads that day...

Anywoo...


After I sent that email, I was quickly introduced to the backside of the boards. Everyone that I had been reading now were at a finger tip to work around my work firewall. My DB board was my email.

Which was a good thing, however there was bad too. The email circle evolved into Facebook toward the fall of 08. Which included group chats and flirting amongst the many people.

Late Fall of 2008, J3B and Jim had convinced to me to register and post after I found that we had loosened the firewall. I had friended a couple DB peeps that I didn't know too well from here and friendships started forming probably way too fast for someone still so emotionally raw. My off the board words and actions didn't match what I was posting here, and what started as support, ended kind of abruptly around spring of 2009 with an text from AmyC that read...

What does it mean for you to be "Above Reproach" ?

And I gotta admit, that shook me to my core reading that. Although nobody will ever be above reproach, it's the effort that matters. I was approaching my self imposed timeline and I was still working on who I was, and when I really thought about my actions, I was admittingly having an EA with a person who did not deserve the feelings that were forming. (unbeknownst during that time) Let alone, I was being the same person that my Ex was being, just without the physical side of things.

What I realized was, that I was hearing all the words that I had been longing to hear, just not from the person that I wanted to be saying them.

Saying goodbye to her was extremely difficult, because I knew this person didn't deserve what I had done. And they deserved to be treated way better than what was happening.

So I cut that cord and refocused on me. Spring into Summer then Fall.

On the second anniversary of my "bomb", I had been thinking hard about my timeline, and asked for a sign to help guide me on what to do.

It was a Friday. J3B, Fisherman, Jimbo and I had been horsing around here all morning and attacking each other with Zombies on FB, when a person that worked here brought me an envelope with just my name on it. When I opened it, it was an inter-department email from the Dr's office that my Ex worked at, that had been printed out describing that my Ex was involved in a relationship with Dr #3, and that they would not forego their new relationship, and that if anyone should be fired over it, it should be him, not her. The strange part is that it was brought here by affair Dr #1.

As Bill Engvall says.....here's your sign...

It was a sign, yet it was also MY answer. More lies from her, more deception, and although it rattled me deeply, I knew within an hour that what I was feeling was more because I was supposed to feel that way, not because I actually did feel that way. I had been done with this for a couple months now, and it just took a while for my head and my heart to sync up with each other. The perpetual lies ended up being the hill that I would die on, or rather the marriage did die on.

Within a few days, I felt free. I felt a calmness come over me, and suddenly all of my fear turned into excitement for what the future held.

Late fall 09, (Turns out, Jimbo lives like 45 minutes from me and he and I would plan a trip out of town once a month, just to get the hell out of dodge for a couple days. ) Jim mentioned that he wanted to meet up a few hours from here with a couple people that he knew. So we headed out of town for a weekend excursion. When we got there, I saw this girl......

She and I had talked a couple times, yet I knew very little about her other than a superficial level. We were actually pretty chill that weekend, yet we started talking a little more, and really took the time to get to know each other. We were both coming from bad situations, and both had done a lot of internal healing and reflection. We met up a couple times after that, just to see if what each of was feeling was true or rebound stuff. We had a couple rules regarding each other. One was that IF our spouses would ask, then we HAD to listen, just to hear what they might say. The other was, Kids come first, no matter what.....

By the time we decided to define "us", I would say it had been about 3 years.

We were just having fun, and enjoying being with each other. Looking back, yes we were dating probably around my 2 and a half year mark. By the time we labeled it, we were pretty entrenched into each others lives.

So my previous answer, when I was ready, isn't quite as simple as it sounds.

Yet it is that simple.

I was at a point where I was ready for whatever happened, yet I was wasn't looking for anything ...

The LAST thing I expected that weekend, was to find her...

So when I say I met a girl......

I met a girl, and I felt things that I hadn't felt before. And I needed to find out what they were, and what they meant. If she were here, she would tell you the same thing.



....and we spent the next almost 13 years trying to figure out what it was.


none of that would have happened if I wasn't ready for it...


You'll know B....when the time comes, you will know...


I don't know if that answers your question or not...