Would It Have Made Any Difference?

I have said before stalking is not good, yet I still persist.  After a little Facebook foray yesterday I came across the pictures her new boyfriend has taken of her for her birthday.  He is a part time photographer and she regularly crops up on his page.  Recently he has taken to adding puke inducing descriptions next to any comments or posts about her.  It was her birthday last week and I knew there would be something from him, some declaration of undying love for her.   Sure enough there are two pictures of her – one in colour and one arty type black and white.  She still looks a complete mess. 

My husband saw me looking last night.  He had the good grace to look appalled – I think on two levels ; firstly that I was looking at all – his face was concerned and I think he genuinely felt for me, and secondly because he saw exactly what I could see.  She is 51, a large lady to be polite and should know better.  Let’s put it this way, her face was not what you noticed first in the pictures.   The extremely low cut, leave nothing to the imagination, here I am come and get it dress which would be a struggle for the lithest of nubile young things to pull off was not good on her frame.   In fact I am going to be honest, she looked dreadful.  

Women tend to compare themselves all the time to others, and it did hurt me immensely that my husband could have an affair with someone so awful.  Other bloggers have already said it does not make any difference whether the OW is younger, slimmer, fitter, more beautiful (in fact in some cases some people have said it is worse if it is this way round).  But it is such an insult for your husband to be attracted to someone who is so very different to you (and I don’t mean that is a blowing my own trumpet type of way, but I don’t think I am like her physically or mentally).   Perhaps that is it, so very different.  She certainly didn’t make any demands on him, he was right all the time, she gave him no cause to question himself, she was just there.  He could do no wrong. 

This backward looking, obsessing, mood destroying mode has made me bring up all sorts of stuff again.  I have been thinking (too much) about the bad parts.  I have lost sight of the progress we have made, the good bits which are there and which need nurturing.  The growth and steps we have taken.  The good times since the last D Day. 

In particular I have been stressing about whether it would have made any difference if my husband had ‘come clean’ before I found out for the last time?  Would I have felt any different if he had admitted it to me, rather than me having to find out, again?  In the immediate aftermath of the final D Day I wondered this, whether he had only stopped seeing her because I had forced his hand?    Had I forced his hand?  Would he still be seeing her now if things had not come to a head?   Did he wish he could still see her?  Did he miss her?  Does he miss her?  I asked him this a lot in the beginning.  He swears he was trying to make the break, he didn’t want to be in a relationship with her but had gone so far down the line he didn’t know what to do.  He was terrified, whichever way he turned he was going to be wrong.  Paralysed by fear.  I had stopped obsessing over this one, but now it is back.  Why won’t these thoughts go the place I want them to be?  Why is it two years since the first D Day and still it hurts like it was yesterday? Why and What If?  Two questions I wish I did not have to consider. 

I have been feeling low since Christmas and I know this constant looking backwards is not helping me one bit.  But still I persist.  It is like a compulsion.  The more you do it, the more it hurts.  I think my stalking is feeding it, I am going cold turkey.