Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted. ~Paul Pearshall
The blog title “Guess How Much I Love You” is the title of a kid’s book. (really though I think it’s a parent’s book). I came across this book on the shelves a few weeks ago. In case you don’t know the story, it’s about a Dad and Child rabbit “competing” to prove that they love the other more.
I used to read this book to Z frequently. Every time I did, tears would well up and I was filled with emotion.
There were a lot of lessons in this little book…all implied in this “contest”. It was always a bonding moment between us. Even when he was so young that he didn’t understand the words, he would snuggle a little tighter. When I read this to him, I was filled with a sense of completeness and content. I would think about the family that I loved…how good it all was. My daughter, then a teenager was developing her own life and on the journey to the beautiful woman she is today. My son was beginning to have his own personality. My wife, who I loved with all of my heart was my partner for life. This was my family…and it was perfect.
If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable – each segment distinct. ~Letty Cottin Pogrebin
One weekend when Z was about 15 months old, we were being bachelors. My daughter was off with her biological father. X was off on a photo expedition with J. Z and I were just being Dad and Son. I was reading the book to him on the sofa as he leaned into me….and he asked me to read it again and again. This had never happened before. At the end of the book, I looked at Z and told him I loved him more than all the stars in the sky. He looked me square in the eye and said…”i love you more”. I was a bit taken aback, Logically I knew that he did not understand this emotion, but he seemed so earnest. I thought he was just mimicking the book.
X and I had been having some tensions between us then. I did not know what was wrong, but really didn’t think it was anything except the stress of a new child and all the exponential time carving that this required.
I found out not too long after this, that while I was reading this story to Z…X was engaging in her affair with J. I was being supportive of her photography interests…and she was betraying my trust while I was home holding down the fort.
The dichotomy of emotional variance that this causes even now is tremendous. I was home, bonding with our son. Making sure that the roof was over our head. Supporting my wife in her interests….and all the while the absolute and complete trust I had in her was being betrayed as I was being duped.
This post really is not a step backward…but seeing that book and experiencing the range of emotions that it caused is a trigger to that pain.
X and I got past that first affair…and we (I thought) were on the road to recovery. The vision of my family stayed whole. Until 4 years later, when, she did it again. The betrayal was doubled, tripled… squared ad infinitum.
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being. ~Oscar Wilde
As the paperwork is processed through the system…and the divorce becomes closer to the reality of being final, I find my psyche rebelling against all of it.
I’ll get through it as we all eventually do. I have a wonderful woman in my life. My kids still love me. My daughter has lost faith in her mom’s integrity. J’s kids describe him as a douchebag. All truisms. Many of them are sad realities….but realities just the same.
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. ~G.B. Shaw, Getting Married, 1908
Dang, if you couldn’t have been writing this from my closet about a year ago!
probably a lot of us out there that could have written the same thing. the support is nice and at the same time it’s just plain sad that this is so well understood.
It’s been a while since you posted. Glad to see you are still inching forward. True happiness is a bit elusive after experiencing something devastating. Even when you’re basically happy, it’s hard to just ‘be’ there. I’ve come to terms that time and only time may heal, but you can never escape the triggers, the scars, the reminders of. You just try your best to recover quicker with each blow to the gut that manages to steal your breath every time.
yeah….being just there. been able to do that most of my life, but i’ll tell ya, this thing shook me to the core.
i’m trying to find center…
me too. something i never had to think about most my life as well. it’s been a couple of years since my divorce and still sometimes the pain feels like it was yesterday. center is a moving object, but you will find some peace eventually.
FW. After X’s first affair, it was easy to forgive her. I viewed it as a mistake. Maybe my ease in this was viewed by her as a sort of arrogance. To me it was the unbreakable love I had for her. She had such a hard time forgiving herself…..
I was able to meditate, take my pauses etc. That’ts not to say that there were not moments of intense pain and grief, but I was able to work through them.
Now I have had that part of me ripped away. I thought we were one, and now it is as if we were never even two to her.
i guess the real challenge to growth comes when life throws the unimaginable at ya and how one handles that. it just remains so saddening to me, that she “threw away the love of the best man she ever knew”. <– her words from an essay that she wrote after affair number 1. I don't know how I went from there in her eyes to where we are now.
I feel exactly the same way today. I am really missing what was, and what could have been. You articulated these feelings so well. Wishing you all the best.
Hi Sara…I know, it is hard. The lost promise, the lost opportunity, hell…..just the loss.
Interesting to hear the other side. Although I’m at least honestly telling my husband what may or may not go on during my trip. I don’t know, would it have been better or worse for you if she had told you she was interested in another man? If you don’t mind my curiosity.
knowing would have given me a choice….and that would have been better than the stabs in the back. The way X did this, the choice is from the betrayal of the marriage, the trust and the deception.
Guess How Much I love You? One of my absolute favorite books to read to my kids. It’s up there with Goodnight Moon, I Love You Forever, and all the Llama Llama books….
But damn if they don’t trigger a feeling, children’s books. They transport you right back to the sippy cup on the nightstand, the butterfly kisses and bedtime routines…
I can only imagine the piercing stab through the heart that seeing that book brought you. I’m sorry LFBA.
Bittersweet feelings are arriving for so many of us right now, so close to our final divorces…
Thinking of you.
Bittersweet feelings is so right. Missing the woman I married. In shock at who she is now….and knowing that somewhere inside her the old X resides. Knowing that my family is broken because of this, yet trying to find a different path and make this all ok. And then…I hear how “cute a couple” X and J make….from some people that know what she did, and all of that loss comes full circle. Next thing you know I see a picture of X and J ….with my son Z, as if THIS is the true family. Blood boils.
This is powerful. Feeling these strong feelings that certain triggers bring are good. When we’re feeling we’re no longer numb. Thanks.
Numb sounds great actually.
a moving story thanks for sharing.
Children books often hit at many different levels.
I still have to stretch my arms out to show youngest how much I love him
And I still have to top what ever he says by something even bigger. It is great
X still tries to top me in the game. It’s great. He’s 70 lbs and always wants to crawl in my lap and fall asleep on me when he is tired. Nothing better than that.
my 11 year old is just the same.
Just wants to snuggle up and go to sleep next to me.
when he stops wriggling that is
I can relate to so much of this post. While I was supporting my wife’s running by staying home and holding down the fort she was out having an affair. The Lama Lama kids books have been getting to me. My kids ask for them all the time. I read one to them last night, while my STBX was out having a good time and I was home taking care of the kids.
Lama misses Mama so.
Great post.
X and I used to run together…then she started coaching running, and the next thing you know, she did not have time for me anymore. She started this after affair number 1, when I thought we were healing.
It never seems to make sense to them that the reason they could do so much is because we supported them in it. I’ll never understand how that got turned around such that I was blamed for it. She cherished her “shared” experiences with J….and she only had those photo opportunities and the camping photo trips because I supported her. But because I supported her, I could not go…so then she got mad that I was not a partner that shared in this with her. it’s F’d up.
Tag you’re it!!!
Just for fun (if you want and have time)
check it out here:
http://abandonedbarns.wordpress.com/438-2/
It’s brave of you to share this raw world of yours. Thank you for your honesty and openness. More dudes could use a dose of that in their lives.
Thank you for sharing…I experienced the “double, triple…squared ad infinitum” betrayal as well and the roller coaster of pain, hope, restored trust, and absolute shock/disbelief is one I hope to never experience again. Two years later my equilibrium is mostly restored, but the triggers are still sometimes there, hiding in strange places….I guess they are a part of the process and it’s healing to acknowledge them and know they are not a “step backward.” Thanks…
I just stumbled upon this post. When I first learned that my ex-husband wanted to leave me and wouldn’t be swayed from his decision, my first thought was of our little daughter. I did massive reading and the common theme was to ensure that you told your child that they were loved. (Amongst a bunch of other things..) I tell her every chance I get.
I haven’t read this book to her in ages. However, my 5 year old still recites it daily. It’s interesting since it mentions the one thing that I try to give her and show her every day, love.