The Discard: Act IV

You may read this and think, “Wow. WTF. You’re so badass for uncovering all of this.” No. I don’t feel that way. I hated every second. Every single layer of deceit only intensified the anger I felt at myself. I lost my mind and I lost it, a lot. I may be smart. But these details felt other-worldly, and in the entry tomorrow, you’ll understand why.

 

Act IV:

 

By the end of July, I was collecting lies as casually as a 15-year-old scavenging for baseball cards. It felt as though, all at once, the house of cards had fallen. His words were now completely weightless. Zero gravity and it really sucked. Until then, I had never realized just how empty words could feel so heavy.

 

Tracing step’s retroactively, I had painfully come to realize that by February and March, he was setting the stage for my classic discard. This of course all hinged on whether or not the reverse discard worked. You know: coming clean about the lies about smoking for more than a year. He said he was positive that I’d leave him over that. I didn’t. And as embarrassing as it is, much of what I’ll detail today, at the time, I could have forgiven.

 

So the discard prep?

•Fabricating events to friends and family about me, not realizing that I’d find out sooner or later.

•Emotionally, physically and monetarily devaluing me, the woman who had overwhelming financially supported us for, statistically, 91% of our relationship, unhesitatingly.

•Creating a new ecosystem of people in Ft.Myers who didn’t know me, and who could feed his need for false validation in the lies he had rehearsed as well as anyone in Hollywood.

•Telling me he wanted a short-term lease with a male roommate there to save money on airbnbs.

•Telling me that people and pets weren’t allowed in the condo who weren’t on the lease.

•Future faking plans of traveling the country in the RV’s we were shopping for

 

And then April came:

He faked a nervous breakdown to earn sympathy and create insecurity in who I was, an opportunity to witness my newfound weakness and desperation. After that, I was a puppet. He blamed stress. I accepted it. So, I did everything. There was no longer any help around the house. He went to the ‘grocery’ each morning and spent hours in the bathroom. Hid his phone. Began drinking everyday after work with coworkers before coming home, a habit I couldn’t question or else he’d tell me I was controlling and projecting my trauma onto him. Deflection was the new pattern. Became inconsistent in daytime and evening texts, would fail to call me back when he said he would, would call me early instead of before bed, “so that he didn’t forget.”

 

Only now can I see this as clinical “push-pull” behavior. He now overwhelmed me with love and validation for my requests of consistency and reassurance. It intensified my addiction to his niceness and exacerbated my withdrawals from love. I was no longer the rational, secure, stable woman I had previously been.

 

And at that point, questioning it was coined as needy, insecure, and controlling. In retrospect, I couldn’t be human anymore. I was a Stepford wife without even noticing it. Dinner, always ready. House, always clean. Laundry, always done. He proclaimed stress and overwhelm from work. I was happy to pick up slack. I trusted him with everything I was, and when you trust someone, and someone is as healthy as they claim, any of this seems justifiable and feasible within reason.

 

Right?

Well, wrong.

 

•Payroll statements indicated that he lied on several occasions about where he was and who he was with. In one particular instance, he text me a very elaborate lie about his workday with ornate details, when in reality, he wasn’t even at work.

•A joint google account search history detailed his thoughtful decision to go “incognito” moments after he pretended to have a nervous breakdown and left for Ft.Myers, stating he just wanted to golf and let off steam.

•Double, triple and quadruple the usual expenditures at his hospital.

•Newfound gift shop purchases.

•Google maps and toll bridge transactions revealed new driving habits, new addresses and new places of interest.

 

And then I began having very vivid dreams that gave me clues for more leads. This became nauseatingly unsettling. I now had an even stronger intuitive hunch that a new supply was involved. The dream gave me her name. I searched and searched, thought I had the right person. That ended up a dead end. And then I had ANOTHER dream, which clarified it more. Same name. Different context.

 

I found her, and her info. Kept my poise. And observed his behavior. They deliberately weren’t friends on Facebook. But according to google, he frequented her side of town in Punta Gorda, FL nearly everyday after work (a 45-minute commute north of his condo). And the private investigator? Well, he had long confirmed that he was not staying at that condo of his regularly.

 

Remember that road trip to Ohio I was privy to in July, before the baby shower (found in Act III)?

 

Well I’ll be damned if this chicks hometown wasn’t in Ohio. According to credit card statements, they had lovely dinners, went shopping, bought wine. You know, really did the damn thing.

Wait, but there’s more: His google playlist song history in Ohio and a few days prior made and continues to make me physically ill. My husband had the audacity to swoon her with the same damn songs he swooned me over in that beach hammock the night we met in 2016.

 

These are dots I connected after the fact, closer to September. Naively, back in July, I was hopeful that he was listening to our music as he nursed his shame over what he done 5 weeks prior.

 

Wrong.

 

He was using the winning playbook. After all, why change up what you know already works?

 

I didn’t think it could get worse than this. Wrong, again. We are now only halfway there my friends.

 

• • • • •

 

Chanelle