Screw “cheating”, is “STAYING” ever justified?

A twist on a popular, monotonous subject here in Medium. And, before you get your panties in a bunch, allow me to point out, these are MY opinions. Not gospel…well, maybe to me, but I realize there are as many opinions as there are stars in the night sky. So…MY views…my opinions…period.

I read a LOT about “cheating”. If you’ve ever read anything I have ever written, you then know that my opinions on cheating are strong and opinionated. Just once, I would like to see the scenario reversed. Instead of, “my boyfriend/husband/girlfriend/wife cheated on me!”, I would LOVE to read, “I cheated my boyfriend/husband/girlfriend/wife out of love, intimacy, sex, and life”.

We have discussed it. It is so easy, and asinine, moronic to vomit the phrase, “just get a divorce!”. There are SO many reasons why people stay. Most, if not all in the long run, are invalid. But when you are in that frame of mind, they ARE valid…if only to you.

In my ex’s family, there was nothing more disgraceful than divorce. They were good at hiding feelings…and secrets. They seemed happy, my in-laws. But they never showed any signs of affection toward one another. They never argued, but also never showed any signs of love. You could mistake them for brother and sister had you not known.

But they would had rather aired other dirty laundry like family mental health issues, drug or alcohol issues, trouble with the law, abuse, etc…(all of which they hid effectively for the most part). A secret would be revealed now and then and the entire family, immediate and extended, set out to do damage control. But…BUT…divorce…above all…divorce was THE single most disgraceful thing any of them could imagine. Relatives who’d had several marriages and divorces, were not talked about…except behind their backs. They were the “black sheep”. Never mind Uncle Guido who was in prison or cousin Tony who had a drug problem. Cousin Beth who was pregnant out of wedlock, took a back seat to Joey, whose house was a revolving door for wives.

So…the many reasons I STAYED. That was a big one. She considered divorce worse than death. In fact, she admitted to friends and family, that she would rather be a widow than a divorcee.

You’ve read my essays before…she threatened me constantly. She promised to ruin me financially and socially if I ever attempted to divorce her. She promised to turn family and friends against me. And if and when we had children, she promised to make sure I had no relationship with them should I ever leave. And THAT was before I was making big money and when I had little to offer other than myself.

I know you have to take my word for this. I have no way of proving what I am saying, but it’s the absolute truth. I never once mistreated that woman. I never struck her. Never screamed and yelled…never belittled her. Never criticized her. Never made demands. Never once treated her like property. I learned what NOT to do to a wife from my abusive, alcoholic father. I simply submitted. Because I felt like anything else was “abusive” and I suddenly became my father…minus the booze.

In our tiny house before financial success, I slept in the spare room. Until kids. The tiny two bedroom house had a kid’s room with bunk beds, and a small master bedroom. The spare room was no longer “spare”. So, I started sleeping on the couch. That is, until our son was old enough to leave his room. She would NOT have our children seeing daddy sleeping on the couch. I was ordered to return to the bedroom. But…on the floor. When my son came in one morning and asked why daddy was sleeping on the floor, she explained it away as daddy’s back was sore and felt better lying on the floor. That was the end of that. I was ordered back to bed…but…on MY side, and I was NOT allowed on HER side.

That was ok by me, by then. I had already started having affairs and I preferred other women to her anyway. THEY trimmed their pussy hair…they loved sucking my cock and me eating their pussies. They loved to fuck. They loved sex. They WERE sexy, and this waste of oxygen lying next to me was about the least sexy woman I had ever met. By that time, we had had sex only about a dozen times…and most of those times were to get pregnant. After our second child, we never had sex again. And she thought I’d stay faithful…WHY?

Once we built and moved into a huge new house, I immediately moved into the guest suite. I spent the next eighteen years in that room, never to step foot into “HER room”, (the master suite), again, except as a maintenance man.

Now…again, have written about this before…I was at the lowest I had ever been. She treated me like garbage. Nothing I ever did was right or acceptable. I was a failure, and she let me know in no uncertain terms what she thought. I was ugly and hideous…and my pride in my body (it was justifiable pride back then) was a sin…and a sickness that I should be seeking professional help for.

She would brag to her friends how she had the life she had always dreamed of, and never had to “do the “nasty” with me in order to get it”. Funny too, some of those supposed friends she bragged to, ended up approaching me and became affairs for me.

When you feel so low about yourself, you look for any, ANY validation, any attention, any attraction, any acceptance…anything that will go contrary to what you are experiencing. And the ONLY times I felt any emotion other than loneliness, was when some woman wanted to fuck me. And yes, after many years of abuse, I started taking those women up on their offers. I had many, many affairs. For me, it was either affairs or suicide. That, she made clear. She refused me a divorce. Again, she’d brag that she’d rather be a widow than a divorcee. A counselor who saw us for months, after YEARS of begging her to seek counseling with me, told me that, in her opinion, that’s what my wife was waiting for…for me to die so she could then collect the huge insurance payout.

After our children were adults, I figured she would not go through with her vicious threats, so, to act as a catalyst for a divorce, I had an affair and let her know about it. Boy…what a miscalculation on my part.

She kept her word. She was always a woman of her word! She set out immediately to destroy me. She got out to all our friends and family, and made me out to be the most vile, most despicable man who ever walked this planet. Some bought into it. Most, did not thankfully. For they had witnessed us together for forty two years. They witnessed my pampering and treating her like a queen, while they witnessed a spineless worm, bending over backward to kiss her ass at every turn. Apparently, everyone had field days talking about us, all along, behind our backs. Making fun of us…of me.

Some did buy into it and to this day, I am garbage. Most, did not. Not even her relatives. One, a gorgeous cousin, actually showed up at my house one day, and confessed she always wanted to fuck me. We bacame lovers. The rest…well, like I said before, “those who mind, don’t matter…and those who matter, don’t mind”. The ones who left me, were never any good for me anyway and I am much happier in life with them not in it. And the ones who never left me, are even closer than before.

My children, who took their mother’s side, didn’t speak to me for two years. It was only after they found me in the ICU being “saved” from an apparent suicide attempt, that they realized what drove me to that point, and came back into my life. We are almost as close today as we have ever been.

So, why did I try to off myself? Because my ex was trying everything to destroy me. Financially, even though I had a very high six figure income, she had drained me. My credit was in the dumpster. I felt like no one cared. I was dragged into court so many times by her and her slimebag, ambulance chasing, duchbag lawyer, that it literally emptied my bank account. Every time MY lawyer had to appear and defend me, it cost me anywhere from $2800-$3500. And they filed eighteen motions against me. They lost seventeen. The only one they won was for spousal support…$6800 a month…for a woman who never once did a thing for me…why did she deserve $6800 a month? Because of the state we live in, that’s why!

So…is CHEATING ever justified…ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY…Y E S !!!!!!!. Is STAYING ever justified?…yes…but not so emphatically. And not permanently. My children are adults with children of their own. And they are WONDERFUL parents. But both are not happy in their marriages. One has a disengaged husband who doesn’t involve himself in a thing my daughter likes or wants to be involved in. Primarily, she is a single mom without a true “partner”. My son, is married to a woman who is quite like my ex. They are not happy. She is fat, boisterous, judgmental, unsupported, critical, and just a plain miserable woman who blows the money he makes, faster than he makes it. They even live in separate rooms. This, THIS is what they learned from me. Stay…and give up yourself to please in order to please someone else. This is what “ staying” helped shape. It helped shape my children into the same type of marriage they saw their spineless father in for forty two years.

So…staying justified, yes, but not forever! If I had left much earlier, I could have saved a lot of peoplse, a lot of grief.