Here be dragons

His affairs were online with several webcam performers from a South American country. During the discovery phase, I found out the screen names of the two main ones he frequented and supported financially, and more recently I have been anonymously lurking on the webcam site, trying to figure out their appeal in particular and of the cam girl world in general.

One performer is easy to find; she broadcasts regularly. She has a consistent style to her public performances: brash, in your face, good time girl. Not much personal interaction with the viewers, even the regulars, beyond gasping thanks for tips. That presumably takes place during the private shows and interactions. Her following is quite large, so to stand out from the crowd has to take large frequent tips.

The other one, with whom he claimed to have fallen in love, is more elusive. Naturally she is also the one I want to study the most. I've only spotted her once, just as she was signing off. I wonder if she wears the necklace and if her daughter plays with the toys he bought and sent. I wonder if she is driving the car that I saw pictures of in his WhatsApp files that I assume he was helping fund. I wonder if her connection to him was emotional enough that it continues without the financial support. (Because I can see that he is not paying her anymore.)

The little slice of the world of webcam performers that I have been lurking in is both fascinating and frightening. Some have amazing charisma and are able to convey personal interaction in what is a generally impersonal environment. The mechanics of the tipping system are sophisticated, along the lines of Vegas gaming machines - so easy to click to tip, with lots of sensory feedback (literally bells and whistles, virtual high fives from the other viewers, and breathy call outs from the performer herself). The registered viewers who tip can become part of a community of sorts, a brotherhood who have a mutual bond in watching a woman masturbate herself and who also compete with each other to be the tip king, to be invited to be a moderator for her shows and other personal favors, and to be among her virtual protectors. It's the strangest mix of creepy and cuddly.

Does it get better?

Tomorrow will be two months since I discovered the affair(s). I really thought I was getting past the worst of the aftermath, I really did. He says he has been "good", I have no indication to the contrary, and yet I have gone completely off the rails this week.

The proximate trigger was seeing a woman who resembled the affair person. While I was with my daughter. The initial shock was manageable; the aftershocks were not. By that evening I was a basket case. The therapist warned me that there might be trigger events like this that reactivate the trauma, but I didn't really understand what that meant until experiencing one.

I feel like I am right back in the throes of the crisis. My stomach is in knots. Insomnia is back. If I do get to sleep relatively easily, I wake up in a panic in the wee hours and struggle to restrain myself from ransacking his office like I did back then in the discovery phase. I try to read the tea leaves in every interaction, inaction, statement, question, every every every. I have had hyper-realistic dreams about him changing his mind about wanting to stay in the marriage. I can push the panic to the side for a while, enough to function throughout the day, but not for long.

When does this shit stop? When do I stop punishing myself mentally for his misdeeds?

Shifting from crisis to rebuilding

I discovered his affair a little more than a month ago. He did not end it immediately; there were about two weeks of varying degrees of contact afterward. During that time, he would repeatedly tell me the he had ended it, I would sort of believe him, and then my bullshit radar would go off again. Off to the snoops I would go and each time that happened I would find that he had lied to me, again. I didn't trust much about my own judgment, or anything that came out of his mouth, but I trusted that I knew when he had resumed contact. My tangled gut knew. 

Running on adrenaline like that really did fine tune my focus on that one point. Everything else was completely out of focus, and consequently my judgment was pretty flawed in almost every other area. I confided in three people I shouldn't have, because I just had to fucking talk to someone. Those chickens are starting to come home to roost in one case (not sure yet if I did lasting damage with the other two). I'm learning that family members, both blood and in-law, can be surprisingly destructive and fickle.

The hardest thing so far though has been recalibrating my sense of judgment. Certain behaviors of his still ring alarm bells with me. His affair was online and had not (yet?) progressed to in-person activities, though his emotional and financial involvement was intense. So whenever he spends extended amounts of time on his phone - texting? browsing? chatting? - my emotional antennae crackle, and my impulse is to snoop his phone at the earliest possibility. Yet the last times I did do that, I didn't find any evidence of misbehavior, and, man, does snooping ever make me feel skeevy. How do I get used to the same activity that supported the affair the most - using his smart phone - suddenly no longer being a threatening one? How do I deal with the lingering doubt that he could be using my attempt at trusting him as a cover for more illicit activity? 

My tangled gut knew. In the throes of the crisis, it knew. Now that he and I are trying to rebuild the marriage, or start our second one together, I want to dial back my emotional wariness a bit. It is physically and emotionally debilitating to be constantly that on edge, waiting to snoop the phone and computer (though Google's "incognito" mode is pure evil there) or reading the tea leaves of his mood or whatever. I want to build a new normal that doesn't involve snooping and constant alertness to any possible misstep. I'm still afraid to let my tangled gut rest.

Welcome to the club?!!?

Almost a month ago I involuntarily joined the Lying Cheaters and the Women Who Love Them Club. Yay, me? It's hardy an exclusive club, but, shit, does it ever feel that way right now.

I'm questioning everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - I thought I knew about my marriage, my husband and myself. Esther Perel talks about how the discovery of an affair ends the marriage, and that the couple then has to decide whether or not to embark on a next new marriage together. My husband and I are attempting to move into our second marriage to each other, and I have never been as scared/hopeful/angry/in love/hurt/confused as I am now in the aftermath of discovering his infidelity.

Before, I had been absolutely certain and adamant that infidelity was an absolute deal breaker and that I would be gone, no ifs, ands or buts. (I still put our odds at about even at best, by the way, so no starry eyed optimism here.) Now, that certainty, and a few other things, have turned to myth. I'm pretty sure I know the sordid extent of his infidelity, and yet I am still here. I vacillate between feeling like a doormat and feeling hopeful, back and forth, all day, every day. It's emotional whiplash.

One of the most distressing aspects of being the wife whose husband cheated is being blamed, both directly and indirectly, by some of the few people who know. HE cheated on me; therefore I must have done, or not done, something to have CAUSED him to stray. Such bullshit! I fully own that I share in the responsibility for problems in the marriage, but I sure as hell did not make him step outside the marriage. That was a decision he made all on his own, and I do not share in that.

So, where things go from here?