This is my continuation of the story by GeorgeAnderson,
February Sucks
. Please read his story first. I am grateful to GeorgeAnderson for granting me permission to write this continuation.
I am also grateful to Randi for her editing skills and my team of beta readers for their very helpful input.
I had read Linda's letter. The letter that I had insisted she write for me. She had been honest with me, I had to give her that. She had been brutally honest, in fact. Almost as if, despite what she had said, she had enjoyed writing it? Had been somewhat gleeful about rubbing my face in her cheating?
At first, I wished she hadn't been quite so open and honest, but then I realized that was a load of crap. One way or another, I had needed her to be honest, even if her honesty hurt me.
I thought further, upon consideration. Why hadn't she been honest with me before? Another thought occurred to me. If another man had approached her who had been as handsome and as poised as that asshole Marc LaValliere, but who hadn't been a famous football star, or a famous athlete in a different major sport, would she have still left me for him, still humiliated me in front of all our friends and a room full of strangers?
Well, that was the question wasn't it? Sure, she promised me that this would be a one-time thing only, that she'd never cheat on me again, but the rub was this: how could I ever trust her again on anything?
After all, how many drug users have ever said: "No thank you! One hit of heroin or crack cocaine is more than enough for me."
I remembered her writing that 'Marc was a very, very skilled lover,' which meant that he was better in bed than I ever had been, and this is how I saw it: better than I could ever hope to be. Could I put up with being second best with the woman that I loved for the rest of our lives together? I remembered the humiliation of being the recipient of her false second-best smile that Friday evening.
I needed to speak to someone about this shitty situation, but all my friends (what friends?) knew of my utter humiliation at the hands of Linda my wife and Marc LaValliere, the Asshole.
They'd tried, when I'd returned to the table, walking toward them like a zombie, to tell me that everything would be all right, and that Linda would come back to me. They assured me that 'after I got over my hurt,' everything would be back to normal between Linda and I. I didn't believe them, because I didn't think that even they believed the bullshit they were trying to feed me. Certainly not Jane and Dee, and as for the others? Who gave a shit what they thought?
It was a couple of nights later, Linda was gently snoring, her sleep obviously wasn't impacted by what she'd done, something I found interesting, concerning even, but I wasn't getting much sleep. I made a decision. If my former friends were of no help to me, maybe Mr. Google could be my new friend, provide me with the help and guidance I needed but hadn't been getting?
I walked downstairs, making sure not to wake anyone, and I quietly shut the door to the den, turned on a desk lamp and fired up the computer. I searched on 'infidelity' and was surprised and a little dispirited at the amount of resources there were. Some of the personal stories of husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends being cheated on were as bad as mine, some even worse, if you could believe that. It was true.
I read of a husband who had accidentally discovered that he was not the father of his twins; I read about a wife who found that her husband had a secret second family with three more children, a young man who found his fiancée in bed with his own mother only weeks before their planned wedding, a man whose wife blurted out, drunkenly, that she was having sex with his best friend, plus a couple of cheaters who felt so guilty about cheating on their respective spouses (who they both claimed to love) that they were undergoing therapy as a pair of cheaters to help them get beyond their guilt. That one really did make me shake my head. I thought, 'Well, stop cheating on them you dumb fucks!'
I also found several websites where you could get advice on what to do if your marriage or relationship was in trouble.
I decided to go with the one that looked the best. You could sign up with an anonymous account and start posting on it pretty much straight away. Using an old Hotmail account I kept for signing up for social media sites, I opened my own account there.
I used the name HurtDude, and 20 minutes later I had posted my story (with no real names but I did name the venue) on the "Dealing With Cheating" sub-forum on the site.
I then opened a new browser tab and for want of something to do, checked my emails and read a couple of news sites.
Much to my surprise, half-an-hour after I had posted my story, including the gist of Linda's letter to me, I got a ping telling me that I had a reply on the site.
Intrigued I returned to the forum, hit reload and read the reply to my post from a moderator on the site, no less.
"Hi, HurtDude. Sorry to hear about what happened to you. Although what you report is a fairly rare event in the annals of cheating, this type of thing is not entirely unheard of, either.
"However, please answer this question: Exactly what happened when the arsehole came into the restaurant? How did he approach your wife? Who else did he approach or speak to beforehand? Please answer these questions, as this is important for me to give you the advice you need. Thank you. BritishMan."
Someone from Britain had responded? Cheating was obviously an international problem, I thought to myself.
I posted that he had been sitting at a table for a few moments and had then, so far as I could see, walked directly to our table and had asked Linda if she wanted to dance; that she'd dropped my hand like it was something toxic and had then ignored me as she agreed to dance with Marc.
A couple of minutes later he wrote: "I dare say your wife is very pretty. And I have just quickly Googled the restaurant and I see it has a substantial dancefloor and features a live band (quite a rare thing these days) with dozens of tables and room for a couple of hundred of diners, from the photos I saw on their website photo gallery.
"With half of them (on average) being women, you are telling me that the Asshole footballer (I love your description of him) left the table he was sitting at after arriving not long before and he made a direct beeline for your wife (without asking any other women to dance) and that she agreed to dance with him without either of them even looking at you?
"I'm sorry to have to say this but if you believe this and believe the letter she gave to you, (I don't think I could have read such a letter, kudos to you, mate) then I have some perfect investment opportunities for you. I can sell you The Tower of London and The Brooklyn Bridge. I think you (and possibly your wife's friend) were set up, though her friend might be involved. There's very little chance that the story you told me is true. I'm not saying that you are lying, I'm just suggesting that the story that you were fed by your wife isn't 100% kosher and can't be entirely true.
"What you need to do is to recall the words of President Ronald Reagan "Trust, but verify." What I'd suggest you do is that you buy several top-quality voice activated recorders of the covert use variety and deploy them around your home. They can be disguised as pens, USB sticks, etc, so you can hide them in plain sight.
"I suggest you place them in your bedrooms, your kitchen and in your cars, but especially your wife's car. And also try to get one in her handbag. Or purse, I think is the name you use for them in the States.
"I suggest your car, also, if your wife ever borrows it. If not, don't bother to do that. And buy high quality units. Don't skimp on them. You'll fuck up if you do, because cheaper ones just will not work well enough, if at all.
"I know that it's quite an expensive proposition, but what price can you put on your peace of mind? Good luck, HD, and I hope that I am wrong and paranoid and that my cynical take on your situation isn't correct. But since I discovered 10 years ago that my now ex-wife was cheating on me with our son's geography teacher, I have pretty much seen it all, sadly."
