It started with the cologne. I noticed the new scent on him in the morning's as he kissed me goodbye and headed off to work. The scent that would always make me want to just jump his bones. There was a quick passing thought in my mind wondering where I was when he purchased this new cologne. I cataloged it in the back of my mind but verbal acknowledgment
never escaped my tongue because I was busy. Busy starting a new home business of my own. It had become my dream to start my own business after being disappointed with so many unsuccessful interviews.
I had become weighed down with start up costs and planning for the immediate future. That really didn’t give me anytime to spend with my husband, but I was sure that he understood why. I suppose my warning, red alarm fire signals should have gone off then...
but they didn't.
A few weeks later I got our credit card bill and noticed a fee for the new gym downtown. He never took an interest in working out before, but now - there it was. There was a time in the past that I thought back to when he, out of nowhere, came home from hanging out with his friends and wanted to change his hairstyle and started working out. It was always my thought that he was most definitely trying to impress some other woman.
I shoved the statement into the pile of "to be paid" bills and thought to ask him about it (actually rib him about it) later, but forgot.
Setting up a business is hard work - and it was on my mind from the moment I woke up
until I took off my glasses at night and hit my pillow, still crunching numbers.
The funny thing (if you can call it that), was that he seemed more attentive,
more "around" then usual, almost to the point of being annoying. I guess I shouldn't have been so offhand and preoccupied - but I thought that we had built up enough history (19 years of marriage) to coast out small periods of outside interests.
A few more weeks passed and he started "staying late" at work. Glad for a few extra hours each night to work on my own growing project, I barely looked up at the clock when it chimed 5pm, and then 6, and then 7. When he would roll in around 7:30, looking tired out, I would pop a frozen dinner in the microwave and ask him to check on it while I jumped in the shower. He would eat in front of the TV where he would usually fall asleep. He would always ask me to come and spend some time with him whenever he got off from work, but starting a successful “business” was my only focus then. Most of the time I would have already grabbed a snack or just a light meal in between my work.
We went on this way for a while and I didn't put everything together, until I found the notes. I would always check his pants before I would wash, but this time I was shocked at what I found. Scribbled love notes on the backs of receipts and napkins, shoved in the back pocket of a pair of his jeans. Poorly written love notes, I might add. They were scrawled and desperate and quite rambling. There was never a time in our entire relationship or marriage that my husband had ever written me any love notes. I was always the “note writer”. I instantly became angry and started questioning everything now. Who was this “special woman” ,who had obviously stolen his heart, to have him doing things that he had never done for me before.
First, my husband started working out and now I start finding love notes in his pockets. What was going on with him, or should I say with us? That’s when it hit me like a baseball bat- I had lost my husband to someone else.
Everything came together and I remembered that first time I caught the scent of his new cologne. Then I thought of the gym and his newly trim waistline. There was also the designer pin striped suit that came after that which fit him just right, in all the right places. This was all coming from a man that wouldn’t even buy himself any sexy silk boxers to wear to bed with me. The late nights at work - and now these very obviously personal notes, full of a passion that I thought only I stirred in him. It was clear that I was the victim of my own preoccupation - and being smacked in the face with reality, I planned to tell him so and see if there was any shred of a chance to repair the damage that had been done. Even though I felt responsible to a certain degree it was definite that I had my priorities all wrong. I went through all of the emotions: shock, rage, sadness, and the all encompassing numbness which comes from knowing you are losing the one thing that you just can't bear to lose.
