Towards the End of the Year,

we were finally able to corner her enough to reveal her true motive. One that had played out through out their marriage, through all previous trials and finally culminated in her silence.

The kind of silence that speaks volumes.

I've always heard that emotional affairs are the worst. Now that I've seen the fallout from one I am a true believer that they are.

Its one thing to "hold a special place in your heart for your first true love", heck, I imagine most of us do! It's a completely different thing to continue to nurture that "special place in your heart for your first true love" while your married to another man! I can't even comprehend how someone rationalizes that.

So in the end, she got what she wanted. She had a beautiful child with her first husband and is now married to "her first true love". How sweet.

NOT

What about the father of the beautiful child? He wanted to be a father! What about their relationship? She had absolutely no consideration for it.  She never imagined that he would fight tooth and nail for that relationship. We never imagined that she would fight tooth and nail against it. We never imagined what she would do to both of them to stop it.

The stress of it all put my husband in a place that I only thought I would end up! I now have a special needs husband. Its kinda like having a special needs child! You look for doctors, therapists, hospitals; all in network of course! You wonder if all the work and medication are going to be worth it. You ask God why?

But there is something very very different about having a special needs husband and a special needs child. I found it easier to confide in people about my child. People tend to understand more, be more sympathetic, be more...hopeful. Maybe its because they know of the baby/child with special needs and they don't know them on a personal level.

With an adult, its different. People know them. The stigma is greater. I found it harder to talk about. Harder to find just the right people to confide in. I didn't want my husband to be judged, I didn't want me to be judged. I was the one after all, who pushed to sue her back! I am just as much of the cause as she! Perhaps because as adults we tend to think that we have lived a little more and therefore can have a great hold of our emotional needs and can "take it" so to speak. Why does he need help?  Surely he could handle a court mediation every three years (TX family law or she would do it yearly!) with his ex wife. Lots of men do. Most divorced men don't get to see their children hardly at all. If it doesn't bother them, why does it bother him?

Well, perhaps those other men were not married to sociopaths.

I now know why some divorced fathers walk away.

Perhaps those other men (fathers) do want to see their children but not at the cost of whats left of their financial future. A decent family law attorney starts at 250 an hour, the better ones are 350 and up. In addition to paying for the attorney, there is child support, which in TX is starts at 20% of the pay per month, unless you have remarried and the new wife has blessed you with 2 more mouths to feed, then its 16.5%. The look on her face from that factoid was priceless!  

Then they have the mandatory legal maze to go through and then jumping through the hoops of fire that some ex wives set up for them in order to see their kids feels like a swift kick to the balls of their dignity and no one (in their right mind HA!) is going to voluntarily sign up for that. 

I no longer blame some men from walking away.