No Secrets

Soon after my divorce, in 2011 I put together three possible plans on how I might continue with future relationships. In the middle of 2016 I decided I might try to implement Plan C. Since I've not written about my three post divorce plans I guess I should now: Plan A: Stay single, travel internationally to everywhere I've ever wanted to go. Plan B: Find a girlfriend my own age and travel domestically everywhere I've every wanted to go. Plan C: Find a younger woman, fall in love, marry her, and have a second family. Plan A includes things like Machu Picchu. Plan B is Grand Canyon kind of stuff. Plan C is different, very different. I consider Plan C to be very selfish. But here in 2016 I was thinking it was what I really wanted. So what kind of woman should I be looking for? Well... a good mother obviously. But I consider my first wife a very good mother, so there had to be more to it than that. Jeanette never understood me or why I did the things I did. I desperately needed someone who could understand why I do what I do. Then I thought of Didge. My Aunt Didge was a wonderful person. Kind, gentle, loving, empathetic, smart, and stern when she needed to be. She died of cancer way too young in life. Anyone who knew her would know exactly what I meant when I would say I wanted a woman like Didge. I've actually met someone who was very Didge. Sharon Francis. She is married to Bill, a very good friend of mine, so she's off the market. My uncle Mel actually met Sharon at my daughter's wedding and independently said she reminded him of Didge. This gave me hope, if there was one woman like Didge, then I knew there were others. It turned out I found one. I worked with one in fact. Wendy (names have been changed to protect the innocent). From what I could tell she was totally Didge. I really wanted to get to know her better. It took all my courage to tell her as much. She told me she had a serious boyfriend, and also didn't date co-workers (good plan). She was so gracious in the way she treated me. I knew I had found someone with so much Didge it made me hurt. Between the time I expressed my feelings to when I learned she wasn't interested, I tend to go a bit mental. I imagine conversations Wendy and I might have. I believe this prepares me to handle interactions with people better. But in fact my imagined conversations are never even close to what really happens. One of the internal conversations I had went like this. Wendy, "Why did you get divorced?" Me, "We just grew apart. Nothing like infidelity, or alcohol. The love just faded away" Wendy, "Why did it fade away?" Me, "Well... it started when Jeanette found out I was molested as a child." Holy shit! Where did that come from? I had never thought that before. Before this thought I always knew Jeanette just grew to dislike me over time because of who I am. She's just not compatible with an introvert like me and it took 18 years to finally tire of me. But come on, 18 years to figure out something like that? I was stretching that narrative a little thin. So now I was thinking that a lie I told 26 years ago, while we were dating, was the germ that doomed my marriage. The discovery of that lie half way thru the marriage, allowed the distrust then hate to bloom. Resulting years later in a divorce. I was absolutely devastated. It was all my fault. Just like Jeanette has been telling me (and our common friends) these past five years of divorce. I could not stop this thought, pushing it away made it come back harder. Thinking it made me cry. Trying to stop crying made me sob. I was a complete wreck. We should talk about the lie. While I was dating Jeanette, she revealed to me that she was molested. A family friend had touched her. She told someone after it happened, police were called, courts were convened, sentences placed and restitution paid. All very traumatic she revealed, but I could't fully understand because I have never been molested. But that wasn't true. When I was 4 or 5, I would go see my father while he slept in his bed on Sundays. Every other day of the week he would be up early and off to work. But Sundays were the day he slept in. I enjoyed spending time with him. One Sunday he asked me to go get him a wad of toilet paper. I did as I was asked, and proceeded to watch him masturbate into it. I was tasked with throwing away the paper and that was it. This happened a few times, exactly the same. Then he asked me if I wanted to try it. So I grabbed his penis and stroked it until he ejaculated. I remember his semen dripping down my fingers. That also happened a few times. Then I stopped doing it. I would still go see him Sundays morning, but I wouldn't get the toilet paper anymore. I never told anyone. I have always had these events in my memory. They were a part of me I didn't want. So whenever I began to think about them I would involuntary jerk my head to make them stop. Jeanette even asked about this tick early in our relationship. I lied saying I had no idea why it happened. Fast forward to half-way through my marriage. Jeanette was heading out to work. Before she got into her car she decided to get the mail. I was standing in the stoop because I would be in charge of disposing of the junk mail. But this time I saw her opening up a letter. She said it was addresses to me from my sister. She started reading it aloud. "Blah, blah, blah… I saw something disturbing between my daughter and my father last Christmas. Blah, blah, blah… becuase of much therapy I have remembered some horrible acts my father committed against me. Blah, blah, blah… because of his refusal to admit what he did, I am no longer associating with my father." My wife really loved my father, and could not believe what she was reading. My father was always kind with my wife (very different from her own father). She was really getting angry with my sister for spreading such lies. And that is when, for the first time in my life, I told anyone the truth: "I don't know what happened to AJ. I never saw anything. I was too young, maybe not even born. But I do know what happened to me." Her jaw dropped. I knew I had to back this up a little, "My tick is me remembering and shaking off the memory." "I can't process this right now". She got into the car and left for work. Apparently I didn't deserve any sympathy in that moment. And I don't blame her for that. We never spoke about it again. I believe she totally lost respect for me in that moment. So now I believe I doomed my marriage because I couldn't confront the truth. She confronted a similar truth when it counted. But I was never strong enough, and thus not worthy of love or respect. Throughout our entire marriage, to end an argument she would state her desire for a divorce. It was very effective. I would shut up, feeling too hurt to continue. But one day she told me she had seen a lawyer. That was when I knew it was over. I have finally realized how it began, what I didn't do about it, and what I've should have done. But it's too late. The marriage is gone, and I'm left here knowing I'm not the man I thought I was.