From New to Former

It is New Year's eve, about to welcome 2012. Several months had passed in which the present seemed more like the past. Holding onto something that I no longer had, that we no longer shared. There is this word that I have always liked: Melancholy. The persistent and deep feeling of gloom, of sadness. That is how I had felt for quite a while. I did not want to look for the reasons why, even when they all laid so very close to the surface. Maybe I was just not ready to look. Regardless of where I was, that night jolted me into reality. It all started fairly predictable:

Me - Can I borrow your phone to play games? (A very frequent request. What can I say, my phone was not able to keep up with my need to pass all Angry Birds levels)

Him - [Scrambling, trying to delete messages in plain view]

Me - What are you, are you deleting stuff off your phone? (With a is-this-really-happening smile)

Him - Oh no, I just needed to send a text out. Here.

Me - O...Kay. (Translation: Alright, I can't be that stupid not to look - Angry Birds What?!?)

The man who I thought could never be unfaithful out of self-respect, never mind me, had gone from that to an occasional cheater. Our marriage was not going to solely end due to our emotional distance, lack of intimacy and communication. No, not only did the end came faster than it was tracking to be, it also had to be mired by the oh so common marriage-breaker: Infidelity. My feelings went from melancholy - the feeling emanating from the thought of two individuals, who respected and cared for each other, having to possibly end their marriage and stay as friends - to anger, humiliation and an even deeper sadness. Whatever I thought we still shared - care and respect - had just gone out the window. We were at our best friends' place with a half dozen of our close friends. I tried to keep a poker face, and albeit a "Are you OK?", "Yes, I am fine," followed by a fake assuring smile, I kept my cool throughout. I was not about to ruin their night.

Questions filled my mind, and in a matter of minutes the anger and sadness turned into numbness. I started to act as a third party in all of this. Reason has always been my forte and so facts and logic is what I was trying to rely on. It made more sense to me because all that I was feeling was too unbelievable, yet very real. And hurt was the last thing I needed.

Me - [Whispering]What else have you done that I haven't found already? I am smart, and you know I will find out now that I want to look.

Him - Nothing, nothing else. That is it.

Me - [Woman intuition in overdrive] Bullshit. Man up, don't remove another thing I have hold dear about you: your courage, your ability to own up to your mistakes. At least be honest to me now.

Him - There is nothing else to find out, that was all, I am sorry, please... just stop.

Hours dragged as I uncovered more (I'm known for my keen investigative skills - and now I had a reason to use them). That quickly followed by him feigning a slight case of amnesia. Reason, facts, that's all I was going for. It is over, now I need to know it all. What a nice way to push away the feelings that in turn festered underneath that armor of mine.

Regardless of the anger I felt, I did not feel the need to make the situation bigger than it was. Yes, I could have kicked him out of the house, yelled at him and more. What would have that gained when deep down I knew that this was the end, how could it not, and why hurt each other even more? His profession has always been at the forefront for both of us and with his upcoming deployment, I was not about to push him toward more instability. I care for him and I take his job seriously. Why add more wood to the fire? It didn't matter to me who or how it started.

A month passed by and I continued to let time get by without processing my feelings. When they started to slightly leak, I knew I had no choice. I had to let them out. It turns out that it didn't hurt as much as I thought - the result of a woman that hasn't been in love for a while. However, I was still hurt, deeply. How could he do this? Who is this man and what did I miss? Most importantly, how could he disrespect me like that and lie to me for so long. I started imagining myself at one of the bars in which he met one woman - seeing him flirting and exchanging numbers - acting as if he was single; as if I didn't exist. I thought about the humiliation. I remembered a conversation I had with some of his work friends and their significant others. I had mentioned, with so much confidence, that trust was first and foremost in our marriage and that infidelity was not a concern of mine. Ha! And yet, the anger and the humiliation do not compare to the sad realization that someone that suposedly loved me could hurt me this way. What if I had still been "in love"?


In one of our conversations he said "You have been through a lot tougher situations in your life before, so I'm sure you can get past this." I wondered how many times he said this to himself because hey, he picked a strong woman. She could handle it if she were to ever find out. I felt completely taken advantage of.

There was not a lot for him to say, but listen and apologize. At moments he tried to make light of it, excuse himself by solely blaming his job, the stress he was under, and the need for attention. There maybe many truths buried within the abundance of excuses, but I was no longer interested in listening. Those desperate attempts to get me to agree to give him another chance decreased, and the realization that the end may be coming jolted him into introspection. I could feel his regret, his sadness, anger and shame. He knew that all he could do was try and figure things out for himself, to learn from his mistakes and to grow from this experience. He shared his thoughts with me, the insight he has been able to acquire in such a short time. Someone he knows once said to him "Release your expectations, sometimes we expect to get what we ask for and sometimes the universe gives us what we need, which is not always what we expect. As hard as it is open your hands, don't hold on and what you need will come to you." This is something he is trying to do.

As time went on, things started to make sense to me. I started to feel more balanced. It was as if I was finally completing one of those puzzles that although you can already figure out what it is, you haven't really seen it all. Months later:

Me - About us, I think we both knew what was going to happen. I for one wanted to give it my best, give it time, put effort and more because I truly do love you and I want you to be in my life. I also know that because I protect myself like crazy, I was not going to let it in for a while, it wasn't going to hit me naturally until I would finally give in and just letting myself feel. Since this all started I knew deep down that the infidelity wasn't the only thing I needed to consider, like you said before, I needed to consider us as a whole. I allowed myself to wake up and to trust my intuition and my feelings.


I also realized that I knew my decision early on, I just didn't want to accept it without fully understanding it. You, you were feeling terrible regret, confusion, fear and in a way went into panic mode and wanted to hit the reset button so you would not lose me. We both needed time, we both needed to really assess what we feel will make us happy again, what happened, how we went wrong (because I have plenty to do with it too) and how we could move on from that. I really tried, honey. I did. This is as hard for me as it is for you, but we cannot continue our marriage. 

I can't help but realize that you must feel so guilty for the demise of our marriage. I can't say you don't have much of the responsibility, but you don't have it all. We both pushed away from each other, we both missed the important component to a marriage which is that glue, that chemistry, that passion that makes you feel as if you can't have enough of each other. We lost each other. I realized that you were never that much in love with me to begin with. I wasn't that much in love with you either. Our actions spoke loudly throughout the years - we loved each other but kept each other at arms length and never dug too much into each other. We liked the idea of us, of what we brought to the table and what we could do with it. It all made sense. We can be great together, but together as friends, not husband and wife.

In a way, I think things won't be changing a lot for us. Because of the distance and the emotional change we were going through last year, we really relied on our friendship and we did too after this all started to happen. I want and will give you that for as long as you'll have me. I am here for you now, I will be here for you later.

Him - One thing I realized is I haven't had a whole lot of confidence in myself the past few years.  I've done all of these things, gone to all of these schools, excelled at work, but I haven't spent any time on myself.  I've let myself go and haven't paid attention to the way I've been thinking about things, and I have chosen not to confront issues that directly affect me.  I let all kinds of things that shouldn't have any influence on me have an affect on me and push me in directions I never wanted to go in. 

I know you tried, and I was willing to keep trying, but only if it is what both of us wanted. Just know that I came to terms with the idea that we would not be married much longer, and I had no illusions that we were completely in the clear while you were taking your time to let it sink in.  I hope things won't be changing a lot for us, and I felt that it wouldn't, no matter what the outcome was.  I want and will give you my friendship for as long as you'll have me, like you said, whatever you need, I'll be there, now and later. 

There was a lot more said than what I included here -his replies are shortened and much was removed out of respect (he may one day find this blog). There was also a lot more said back then about what led to the end. There still is plenty for us to talk about now, but no longer about our marriage. The reality is that our marriage ended several months ago. What we share now is a friendship, one that will have to be on hold for a while to allow us to move forward with our lives.

Now, a very common Navy SEAL online thread is "Do All Navy SEALs cheat?" I do not believe that to be the case. Military life is a difficult one, but then marriages are difficult too. In the last few years, I had once in a while wondered if this marriage was only temporary. Well, not only do I know that now (with the help of my therapist), but I also know that our marriage wouldn't have been successful even if he hadn't been in the military.

My opinion is that for fidelity to reign over temptation, it is necessary to want to be loyal to your partner as a reflection of your principles and self-respect. Although hurting someone else can also be used as a detractor, being loyal for my own sake, regardless of who I am with or how much I love them, is the main reason why I have been faithful in my previous relationships. For many, knowing that their actions can hurt a loved one can be enough to keep them faithful, who knows? However, I do believe that the best that he and I could have done to have had a successful marriage was to have started and sustained a strong bond of love, passion, true intimacy, communication, independence, commitment and constant attention. We were missing plenty since the beginning.

I have grown a lot in the last 6 months and I'm sure I'll continue to learn things from this as I move on with my life. I am still sad that this marriage ended this way, and that what I initially thought would be forever turned to an experience that only lasted three years. I also still have anger left in me, but it is slowly going away. Forgiveness can be a tough thing to offer. Nevertheless, the sadness and anger cannot overshadow the overwhelming feeling of hope, joy, freedom, happiness and maturity. Having to dissolve my marriage is a very difficult experience, but it hasn't scared me away from relationships. Now that my feelings and reason are balanced, this experience has actually given me the courage to truly give it my all next time. I realized that while keeping someone at arms-length for the fear of getting deeply hurt can work, it can also keep me from feeling true happiness and love; and for me, the benefits of falling in love outweigh the risks. I truly am happy about where I am now, excited about the direction my life is going, and proud of who I am becoming.

Dangerous Assumptions and Superman Thinking

Miscommunication is not a new thing when it comes to marriage, especially a new one. Add several months of long-distance contact and a hefty load of stress and you are now looking at big problems. This is what happened to my husband and me.

There are different levels of stress, frustration and feelings of loneliness. We assumed that we would always be able to deal with them. We failed to see that as strong as we both are, we also have moments of weakness. We are human after all. It is easy for him to remember this of me, and sometimes he forgets how strong I really am. On the other hand, it is not as easy for us to remember that he is not Superman. Sometimes I say this jokingly, but now that I reflect on last year, we subconsciously (and stupidly) assumed that he was.

When we got married, we made a commitment to each other to share our burdens as much as our happiness. Now, due to his profession, this comes with a disclaimer confidential information remains confidential, so this adds a layer of difficulty when trying to communicate our emotions. We are still great when it comes to fixing external (non-relationship) problems and sharing our happiness. However, due to the above assumptions and superman-thinking, he slowly, but surely started keeping his emotional burdens from me. I was too distracted with myself, the house and other things, and I didn’t want to stress him out even more by asking him to work harder on sharing his emotions.

So how did this turn out for us?
I started feeling as if all he wanted from me was to take care of our dogs, house and other belongings while he was gone. Although this is highly important, my role as his wife and best friend were close to non-existent. I knew that my feelings were wrong and so I powered through it because I knew how difficult the training that he was going through was. I bet a lot of people know this is, but a good percentage of the training that SEALs go through have little to do with physical challenges (except for sleep deprivation), but mostly mental.

As months went by, my husband began to separate himself from his true self – in his mind he had no family, friends or anything else but the training that he was going through. This is too robotic for even someone like him, and thus he started drinking alcohol… way more than what he is used to. When it came to our conversations, he would say that he was fine, or that he couldn’t talk because he needed to get some sleep. When he felt like sharing his feelings with me, he was usually exhausted. That made it very difficult for him to think of ways to communicate effectively while removing confidential information, and so he would decide to keep his emotions to himself. Long story short, he successfully completed all of the various training events throughout the year, as that was our first priority, but it left our marriage in a bad state.

What I’ve learned so far is that although Navy SEALs get tons of training to do their job amazingly well, they didn’t use to get a lot of training for how to deal with their challenges at home. When my husband joined the teams more than a decade ago, these types of services and training opportunities were very few and some thought of as being underdeveloped. Nowadays, based on what I’ve seen, there are several programs, services, workshops, and more especially designed to help our community through family and personal development.

When my husband and I realized that our marriage was in trouble and that we needed to improve our communication, emotional regulation and coping skills, he moved into action (he beat me to it!). Just like anything else, he faced it with all the focus and determination that he would place for a work-related mission. Before I knew it, we were enrolled to use a service called FOCUS. Here is some information regarding this service:

FOCUS is Family Resiliency Training™ for Military Families, which includes those without children. FOCUS has helped us learn to improve the following skills:
- Emotional regulation
- Communication
- Problem-solving
- Goal setting
- Managing deployments (or long intensive training trips)
http://www.focusproject.org/

As I know, this service is then developed to work with the specific needs of the community – Navy SEALs and the Marines, for example, have plenty of differences. Again, it is not couples therapy and their goal is not to help us save our marriage; these are skills that we can apply to our relationship with ourselves, each other and others.
So are we now Superman and Superwoman? Not really. If things work out between us, we know we'll never be and we like it that way. Hey, even Superman has his kryptonite. Nevertheless, we are better equipped to deal with multiple deployments, we now understand each other better thanks to the new skills we’ve learned, and we will now also be able to do a better assessment of our marriage.