Asparagus Soup
There were a lot of tell-tale signs when my husband would
have an affair or at the very least, started pursuing a potential supply. He would become distant and suddenly VERY
busy at work. He would dress differently
or suddenly have an interest in a new author, musician or even food. He would become very impatient with me,
cranky and rude. He would talk to me
like I was a servant to be dismissed.
But then, when that pursuit didn’t pan out, he would usually come at me
with some grandiose gesture. Book a getaway
for our 10th anniversary, buy me a gift of some sort, do something
really special and of course, suddenly become charming and loving again.
I didn’t know this all at the time it was happening. I didn’t know what the new meaning of Narcissism
was let alone how to spell it. I always
thought a narcissist was someone who was in love with their own image and would
take constant pictures of themselves or stare lovingly into a mirror. It wasn’t
until the end that I discovered what he was.
But in 2018, something drastic changed. Something so much different that any other
time. His WHOLE personality changed. He
became more dismissive, rude, angry, and most of all, more emotionally
distant. I didn’t know what was happening,
but I could feel the space between us growing by the day. He started spending more time at work, especially
late hours after his shifts at Kohls, sometimes not getting home until
2AM. He would practically ignore me when
he was home, or pick a fight. The drama he created and the meanness he
exhibited was getting to me. I didn’t
know what I had done wrong and when I brought it up, he would tell me I was
imagining things, or over reacting.
One day, this woman shows up at our daughter’s state
tournament. She flitted in, didn’t even
acknowledge me, nor did he introduce me to her.
However, she knew my mother in law, my brother in law and my husband lit
up and they closed their little visitation circle, putting me on the outside. They laughed and joked and she would reach
out and touch his arm, or his back. I
seethed. Our daughter was in eliminations for the medal rounds and I was
focused on her, unlike her father or her uncle or grandmother. This woman
commanded all their attention. RED FLAG! Our daughter made it into the gold medal
match, but none of her family was aware.
Finally, I put my foot down and pulled him away, stating our daughter
needed our attention. I asked who this
woman was? She worked at Kohls with him
and his mom. She was his mom’s friend
and she came out to see the tournament.
I mentioned how she didn’t even pay attention to what was going on. That’s
when I got clapback about it…so I shut up.
The coldness between us on the drive home iced up the car,
spoiling the mood of a podium finish. He was animated like he’d just taken a
shot of espresso. I, on the other hand,
was steaming.
A week or so later, our daughter and I stopped in at the
Kohls where he was working to shop for return to school clothes and backpacks.
While there, I talked to my husband about some shoes she was looking at but her
size wasn’t available. He was about to come off shift and we were going to head
out to dinner. Well, here comes the new
supply…bouncy and smiley…and said hello to our daughter and fawned over her,
completely ignored me. But then, my
husband started laughing and pulled something out of the pocket of his jacket
and the two of them laughed hysterically.
She touched him again in that way she did before. A familiar touch, one that had no hesitation
from insecurity. This was an act that had been done many times and was
welcomed. I caught a glimpse of what
made them laugh so hard. A can of
Campbell’s Asparagus soup. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. But I DID
know what connotation asparagus had and the sexual innuendo it derived from. My
heart dropped to my shoes and it was all I could do to not cry. I didn’t want to go to dinner. I wanted to hide away and figure out what was
happening. Every nerve in my body was
screaming at me that this was an affair.
Later that night, I asked my husband about the soup. He got really vague passing it off as an “inside
joke” between them. They often work in
the same department and they joke around.
I was not convinced. I know my
husband. I’ve known him since we were
16. He doesn’t just buy a can of soup
for a joke with another woman unless he’s trying to woo her. I’ve watched him through
all of his relationships. I know how he
works. So I pushed it again and he turned on me. Defending her and accusing me
of butting into his private life. Since
when does he have a private life?
Weeks went by and he just wasn’t acting right. A sudden interest in country music and tv
shows that he normally didn’t watch or wasn’t even home to watch. So, who was he watching them with? He spent more and more time in the bathroom
during weekends when he was home, and there were times where I would wake up
and he would be on his phone. He claimed
to be playing a game, but often it was a text screen he was in.
Thanksgiving came and we were going to his brother’s home. One of the few times I didn’t host. We drove
separately because he had to work at Kohls. It was of the era where stores were
opening at 6 or 7pm on Thanksgiving night. Of course SHE worked too as well as
my mother-in-law. My husband refused to
go up the elevator with us. He didn’t
offer to help carry any of the bags or serving dishes I was juggling either,
opting to go up the stairs because suddenly he was on a self-improvement kick! When we got the right floor, we had to wait a
really long time for him to show up from the stairwell. I jokingly asked if he ran out of steam and
he glared nastily at me and walked away from me, again, leaving me to lug
everything by myself. When the time came
for him to leave, he basically bolted out the door. No goodbye kiss, no endearment, just
gone. I started to get really upset and
as our daughter and I left, I dropped a serving dish and it shattered. That was just too much for me that day and I
completely lost it. I wound up sobbing as I tried to pick up the pieces of
glass and the mess of the dropped leftovers in the entrance of the
building. My brother in law and daughter
were trying to console me but I wouldn’t have it and ended up just throwing
everything away and we left.
Over the next few weeks, I saw less and less of my husband.
His daughter maybe saw him a few hours a week.
He missed her Christmas concert and several tournaments. He missed parent teacher conferences and some
other school events. He had never missed
anything before and our daughter was starting to feel the effects. Christmas came
and his gifts to me were not thoughtful or personal. In fact, they felt like he’d
stopped at a convenience store to purchase them. He was distracted and took
hours to come down Christmas morning.
His bathroom time became so bad that I threatened to call a doctor. He became a stranger to me. Whenever I tried to talk to him, he dismissed
me or ignored me completely.
On New Year’s Eve, we, as a family, did our usual puzzle. He was obviously distracted and uninterested
and when he did focus, he would take over a section I was working on, pushing
me out. When midnight came, he wasn’t with me.
He was….guess? In the
bathroom.
January, I started investigating. Pouring over phone records and trying to
figure things out. I did find a recurring number in both phone calls and texts
and I researched it. It was hers. The new supply. Over 3000 texts in the month of December
alone. Phone calls lasting hours and at times when he was supposed to be
working late. At the end of the month,
he was supposed to go downtown Chicago to participate in a “Kohls Cares” event to
raise money for charity. He told me he
was going down with “a bunch of coworkers” in a car and he was doing a stair
climb at the Hancock (I think). He didn’t
communicate with me at all during the time he was gone and didn’t get home
until HOURS after the event was over. So
I confronted him. He was with Debra,
right? He denied it until I showed him
the phone records. Of all the times he
was in the bathroom Christmas day coincided with his texts to her and on New
Year’s eve. I had other events
highlighted where he had lied to me. The
times he kept wandering off at a tournament he came to matched up with texts to
her. He exploded on me. Told me that it was MY fault he HAD to have
someone to talk to. They got along so
well and she made him feel alive! I grabbed
his phone in anger and he threw me to the floor, putting his knee in my back
and twisting my arms til they hurt to get it back. He ripped into me for hours about what a
horrible wife and mother I was. How I didn’t meet his needs. How he could never
do anything right for me and how awful I was to the kids. He told me Debra was wonderful and she got
him and she understood him.
During the weeks after this, when I should have left but was
too scared to, he acted like nothing was wrong.
But he wouldn’t talk to me either. I asked him to choose and he didn’t. I went into full scale FBI investigative mode
on this woman and confronted her and begged her for the sake of the kids to
leave my husband alone. She actually
laughed at me and told me how he had told her how my marriage was over a long
time ago and how awful I was. That she
and my husband “Got Tight” and when I asked her about her own husband, and did
he know about what was going on, she stated that it was none of my business but
yes, he knew all about my husband. (lie)
That was the beginning of a 5 year downhill spiral to the
finalization of the divorce. The mask,
when it finally came off, showed me how ugly narcissism is. His mother, the pot stirrer and enabler
pushed them together. They destroyed two
families and she is still going through her own divorce but her kids were grown
and out of the house. She is 6 years
older than we are.
So many years he played me. He put every thing on me. I know I wasn’t innocent, but I wanted to
work out our marriage. But as time went on, and I found so much evidence to how
he deceived me and how stupid I was when I believed his lies, I began to
question my ability to ever trust again. I questioned my ability to trust my intuition
and my sanity after the years of being told I was the problem.
Don’t ever doubt your intuition. If something is off, there is a reason. There
is ALWAYS a reason.
Mine started with a can of Asparagus Soup.
