Posted by hunny_Beez on Thu 22 Apr 04, 9:53 PM to hunny_Beez's blog.
Over the past few weeks i have been reading with interest some of the post on married people cheating.
i am not going to judge, just tell you my story.
i had been in a BDSM relationship since i was 15, over 25 years. we had three children in their late teens, and for the first 18/20 years of the relationship i would say i was happy.
but then things changed.
my master developed a mental illness. i dont want to go into details of mental health but i think most of you will understand the pain that we as a couple went through.
i had been a submissive in a very restrictive and controlling relationship. For over 20 years i had been told when to eat, sleep, what to wear, etc etc. I had spent large periods of my life not leaving the home, all this had been consentual and i had been happy. the problem was that i had become agraphobic, i was not able to leave the house alone, i was unable to make basic decisions, and i had no idea how to run a home and do simple things like pay bills that most take for granted. so when my master became incapable of running all of our lifes, it fell on me.
in a matter of weeks i was running a home, making all the decisions for all in the family and running the family business. i had no choice but to change. i was still fighting the agraphobia but i had no choice.
my master also changed. the illness took a total grip for about 2 years. as he came out of the worst of it he expected everything to go back to the way things had been. i tried, but the problem was not just that i was a different person but that he had changed also.
the illness had made him totally self obsessed, egotistical and insular. he had changed so much, everything he now did evolved around how he was feeling, i lived on egg shells. for his part he did try and thought that things were ok and we would in time work things out. He was so wrapped up in himself he could not see the pain i was living.
i knew i could not live this way. i know many have and will condem me for leaving a man because of mental illness. all i can say in my defence is that i not only nursed him for the worst 2 years of the illness but tried to work things out for a further 3 years, struggling to be the person he wanted me to be.
at the most unhappy and difficult time of my life i found msn chat. most who knew me at that time would say i was disruptive and not easy to get on with. i was drinking far to much, and running scared not knowing that i needed to get out of the life i was living and having at that time no means of doing so.
i can hear some saying if you need to get out you can. you have to remember i was agraphobic, i still am, i had never worked, i had no qualifications (i do now). at this time i also started going to college, with one of my kids, i would not have been able to do so alone.
i was not looking, i did not want it, i wanted to be free but i found happiness like i never new existed.
we started talking one night and the moment i first spoke to him on line, i was in love. sounds silly and if anyone eles was saying this i would call them a silly sod. but its the truth.
i cheated on my ex for about 6 months, in this time, i lied to everyone, my ex, my parents, my kids, my friends. its was not hard to come up with reasons to leave the house alone but it was a monumental task to get over my agraphobia to do so. i had a car and that was my escape, i did not go out alone i went in my car.
its over three years ago now that i walked out on everyone who had been part of my life. my ex my kids my parents my friends even my dog. i had no idea if i would ever see any of them ever again, but i knew i had to do it. i needed love, i needed to love, and at the age of 39 i had found it.
it took two of my kids over a year to accept my new life my third child is still alienated from me and i see him rarely. it still breaks my heart. i lost all my friends and some of my extended family, and a few months ago i heard that my dog had been put to sleep.
was it worth it...YES...did i cheat...YES did i hurt eveyone i knew...YES....but i think i hurt more than anyone. my ex is now in a new relationship. i am still struggling to over come the restrictions of my past, i am still agraphobic, i still get panic attacks but i am happy.
it is so easy to say leave one relationship before starting another, but it is so hard to leave knowing you are going to hurt not just your partner but everyone else that is involved.
i am telling my story to try to show that judging others for their actions is not always so clear cut. We always feel sorry for the person left behind the one that has been cheated on, but often the person leaving the one doing the cheating is hurting just as much if not more as they know they are the one doing wrong, and causing others they love and have loved so much pain.
hunny
Edited Thu 22 Apr 04, 10:34 PM by hunny_Beez
