Agony

The pain was agonizing. One day I was supposed to pick him up from work. I decided to park and go in (did I mention they worked at the airport?). I walked to where he usually worked and it was pretty much deserted so I headed back toward the C terminal. Just beyond the terminal I spotted them. It wasn't the first time I had seen them together.
This night they were walking arm in arm. I really didn't know what to do. What do you do? I just followed them. Eventually they headed up an escalator and he happened to turn around and he spotted me. I gave him a signal like "get down here right now!!!!" I didn't follow him up until I realized he wasn't coming back down as fast as I thought he should. I followed him up and though he denied it I saw him kiss her and off she went. I went up to him and put my arm through his like we were just fine. If she was watching I wanted her to be worried. He was not amused. I knew there were plenty of people who knew us who could easily see them together in the airport. As I said before, he did not care. Probably a year or two later a friend told me she had seen him with her there.
Each time I visited my therapist I felt more and more empowered. It's kind of like going to the temple and being filled with the incredible joy there and a desire to keep that spirit only to leave and within a very short time feel the world all around you again. You really have to work to keep those great, healing feelings. I was learning strategies to help me heal. One thing I was learning was to let myself feel joy even if it was for only minutes a day. When I was in the deepest depression I would try to fill myself with joy. I would smile and breathe deeply as though filling my soul with happiness. It felt so good, but it was very hard to sustain. The relationship was just so hard and relentlessly took its toll.
Every so often there were hopeful signs that he just might end it with her. But he always went back. He was reading a book called "How to break your addiction to a person" or something close to that. At least he was willing to acknowledge that they might not be "soul mates"....that the relationship might just be compelling.
My therapist called it a "vehicle of emancipation"...his attempt to become free. Free from the feeling that all relationships were a matter of control. We all need to break that cycle sometime in our lives of succumbing to the control of others to prove we love them. Its' draining. But we can't seem to separate love and control so we let our parents, spouse, the church control us until we just can't take it anymore and we find that vehicle to bring us the freedom we long for. There is a better way....
But I digress.
He was addicted. One day he very calmly told me that he felt that he had to pursue the relationship with her. His very life seemed to depend on it. she, he explained to me, was his only friend. funny...I thought a friend was someone who helped you be who you should be. I thought a friend brought out the best in you. He wasn't even who he really was when with her. This was not him!
I asked him where I fit into that scenario. After all, he had been a tiny bit receptive to our relationship as of late. It was very confusing, but gave me some hope every so often.
He told me that she was the person he had fun with, he skied and biked and hiked with. I was the person he came home to. I did his laundry, prepared his meals, did the dishes and the budget. .. I wanted to be the fun one.
One day he came home with a new sweatshirt. It smelled of a perfume I knew wasn't mine. It broke my heart yet again. I hated that sweatshirt and I hated Patagonia forever after that...and Coco Channel.
It was agonizing. One day as I was pondering (I did that a lot!!!) I thought about how much I did not like this woman! How much she was hurting me. Hurting my children. Hurting my husband. I guess Heavenly Father felt that there had been significant progress made in my spiritual growth and and that I was learning to trust Him so He taught me in that moment a startling thing. The spirit spoke to me and said "Heavenly Father loves her just as much as He loves you." Oh, WOW! It didn't hurt nearly as much as I would have thought it would because it was from Him and it taught me that if He could love her with all she was doing and all the pain her actions were causing our family then he surely could love me. Not that I was anybody, but it helped me understand.
My therapist suggested that I pray for Him to carry her burden. I was excited as I thought that perhaps my prayers could bring her healing. I was going to bless her life because I was a good person and was going to pray for her! I felt quite powerful until I realized one night that I was really asking Him to forgive her. It struck me then that I must learn to forgive her as well. That was painful. They were still very much involved yet I knew I must learn to forgive. But having been praying for her burden to be light had contributed to mine being lighter! There was hope that with Father's help I could pull this off.
I imagined Heavenly Father and my Savior with their arms around me. I allowed myself to feel the love they had for me though I felt completely unlovable. And I even allowed myself to feel the love They had for her.
I was feeling some healing and my husband noticed it. He was really torn between his need for her and his need for the peace he could see developing in me.
But there were some very tough days ahead. Yet I was learning in Whom I could and must trust.
"I learned that I had to focus on getting well and leave off trying to cure anyone around me! Many of those around me might indeed get better too, since we seldom see how much we are a key part of a negative relationship pattern. ...I used to think if I were worthy enough and worked hard enough and exercised enough anxiety (which is not the same thing as faith), I could change anything. But I learned that my power and my control were illusions. I learned that to survive emotionally I had to turn my life over to the care of that tender Heavenly Father who was really in charge.
"...God designed marriage as a refuge--two people tenderly caring for each other through life's experiences---but also as a tutorial in love. Each has something to teach the other, and the learning is usually not easy. If marriage is not seen as a tutorial in love, a preparation for living in eternity, Satan can rend the marriage by causing the partners to focus on what is unimportant and on the ever dangerous goal of self-fulfillment.
"And so marriage, perhaps more than any other relationship--because it is more intimate than any other---is our greatest spiritual challenge and has the greatest potential, along with parenthood, to make godly beings of us. We must leave off trying to perfect our spouse and study how best to apply the principles of love in ourselves.
"...The moment when a partner fears that he or she may have fallen out of love with the other partner is the moment when the opportunity for genuine love begins. It is perhaps the moment when a readiness for a step up in spiritual maturation has arrived. It is the moment when we realize what great power we have to bless the person to whom we are married, and how much power we have to cause unnecessary pain.
"...My witness is that there are special blessings reserved for those who devote themselves to making marriage work, blessings that are realized in this life and in the life to come; hidden treasures of the Spirit, reserved for those who would be gods."
M. Catherine Thomas (Spiritual Lightening pp. 62,63)

Could I, strengthened by His love, bless our marriage???? Would we survive this? And if we didn't, would I be able to exist without him?