The last thing that I thought would happen....

This blog is something that I've been thinking about posting since June 21st. I have to say, that after the bravery of Canadian Blogger Girl I felt that maybe I could post about it too and I wasn't the only one.

As my previous posts on this blog will indicate, I am ill. I am not going to go into what I have, again, just touching on the fact that I am ill. Because of being ill, I take a lot of medications, a lot of medications that fight pain on many different levels. Unfortunately, the side effects of many of these medications is an adverse effect on my sexual desire, mainly between all of the medications, I have zero sexual desire. To add insult to injury, my Fibromyalgia, at times, can make my cookie so completely clenched. Not "like a virgin" tight, no entry without crying out in severe pain and not loosening up. So, as you can imagine - my husband and I don't have sex very often at all. We wait around for me to get something that may be like having a sexual reaction to something and trying to exploit it so that my husband and I can enjoy each other in that way. Before my illness decided to alter the path of my life so drastically, the slightest touch of my husband running his fingers down my arm or him looking at me a certain way across the room could send us to bed. Let me tell you about that, actually - I won't go into detail other than we have amazing sex. It is nothing like any of the sex I had before him and I don't intend to be with anyone else. It is impossible to explain the love he and I share, it is what those cheesy romance novels talk about. You know, the love at first sight, can't be away from each other because it physically hurts, the world ends when I'm in his arms - kind of thing. Yes, I turned into THAT girl, all doe-eyed and the antithesis of whom I said I would when I got married. My husband, quite literally, feels the same and isn't afraid to admit it. I'm also that lucky...:) We are each others best friends and can talk to each other about everything. We check out chicks together, I point out the nice looking boobs or butts. I never discourage him looking at porn or going to a strip club, both activities, I'd gladly do with him.

We found the courage to talk to each other about the "what-if's" of the sexual aspect of our relationship. With my sexual desire taking a nose dive, and with the increased pain in my joints making our sex life incredibly difficult, even when the mood strikes. We were talking that there is possibilities of my hip bones fusing so there will be severe limitations put on my movements and it could take the possibility of sex right off of the table. Now, my husband is eight years older than I am and has a very healthy sexual appetite. I acknowledge this and also acknowledge that at some point I will no longer be able to give that to him. And as much as it breaks my heart to think about that is an awful lot to ask him to give up. So we discussed it and we left it on the table to be discussed at a later time because he felt that we were no where near needing to take up the possibility of him having a "sex stand in". In my mind, I rationalize that if that is all that is broke with our marriage, then I'd rather find a way to be okay with him meeting that need with some healthy boundaries in place than lose him and my marriage. We've discussed this many times over the last six months, all just trying to communication our thoughts and feelings on the matter and try to feel out all of the ramifications and trying to see if we could/can really make a really well thought out choice for our marriage.

Something changed with me and my sexual desire picked up a bit. I went from desiring it once every 6-7 weeks to increasing to about once everyone week/week and a half. I felt proud, maybe the time I was spending concentrating on a lot of stuff with my husband was working, or maybe doing some extra fantasizing or maybe it was reading naughty stories..who knows, but something changed and I was proud of myself. Then one day, my husband tells me he is meeting his son at the movies that evening and they were planning on seeing a scary movie (I don't like scary movies). I didn't bat an eyelash and bade him to have fun with his son, also wanting hubby to spending alone bonding time with his kids whenever he or they want. He came back about an hour and a half later, some miscommunications with his son and they decided not to see a movie, but to hang out the next day. A couple of days later, we had a small hiccup with a past issue from one of the kids and I was playing "the person in the middle" as I typically do. I got into my husband's e-mail account to see if one of the people I was trying to contact on the behalf of my husband had e-mailed him. In the process of doing thing, I clicked on his sent mail. In his sent mail, there was about 5 message with photo attachments sent to an e-mail address that looked very much like something my husband would make up. In opening up the sent pictures, I saw a couple of pictures of him, a picture of a pierced clit and a naked picture of my husbands junk. So I went to the other e-mail client and hacked into that e-mail account. I had found that my husband had posted a "strictly platonic" ad on Craigslist looking for someone to talk to but had responded to some ad for a female looking for friends with benefits and had exchanged genetalia photos with him. After doing a little bit of digging, my husband had used meeting up with his son at the mall to go to the movies as a ploy to meet up with this woman.

According to him, nothing happened between them. I was and still am devastated. I was betrayed. I was mentally and emotionally trying to be okay with him sleeping with another woman when we were no longer able to have sex. I always listened to him talk to me about his sexual frustrations. I was always very clear with him that it was nothing he was doing that caused the issue with our sex life. I knew he knew that because when we'd have a break in meds due to financial issues, we were at it like rabbits. While he says nothing physical happened with this woman, I still don't want him to touch me sexually. I can't leave him or divorce him. Don't judge me and think me weak, our relationship is special and unique. I couldn't lay next to him in bed. I could listen to him to go on and on about how much he loved me and how he knew it was a mistake from the get go but didn't know how to get out of it. Listening to him tell me for sure what he had told me a month before without meeting up with another woman that it isn't the physical act of sex he is missing....it is what makes us us is what he is missing. When we have sex, it is an amazing connection that is so above and beyond anything ever. That shit is once in a lifetime shit, not something you get with someone you don't know or don't love.

Right now, I'm still stuck on all of this. How do I move past it? How do I forgive it? How do I stop being mad at him about this? Will I ever find a way to not want to make him feel a hurt as deeply as he hurt me? I know that revenge isn't always the best way, but in this instance I want him to hurt, but I don't want to violate his trust because when I took my vows I took them very seriously.

We are going to start therapy so we can deal with this issue in addition to find ways to deal with not being able to have a sexual relationship that is satisfying to him. He understands it's not a lack of wanting him, it's an inability to want him. In so many ways our relationship is strong, but when our relationship and my illness collide, we have issues because he struggles in understanding what I go through and I am angry about being sick. I think in some ways he's angry with me for being sick but doesn't realize it.

I made my choice to stay in this marriage regardless of his urge to violate my trust and instead of us continue talking throughout the possibility of him having an approved Mistress, but it doesn't mean I don't get to still hurt about it. It doesn't mean that I want to take the mistress thing off of the table now because he's proved untrustworthy. I even added the GPS tracker service to our cell phones so I can constantly check on his location to make sure is where he says he is. I can't stand him being on his laptop, especially Craigslist, I am constantly over his shoulder with his e-mails and Facebook. I take his phone whenever my fancy wills and verify that he isn't chatting up some random chick. He isn't keeping his phone glued to him anymore which is helping. But the computer thing is killing me. It's like I can't trust him to not indulge. I just can't trust him, period.

Sorry for the long post, but I needed to get this out.