Those of you who read my blogs on a regular basis will have realised that I tend not to hold back. I say what I feel, I say what I see, albeit primarily from my perspective, though I do try to be as objective as I can, but being painfully honest is, essentially what my writing is about. It was always intended in the first instance to be a therapeutic exercise, particularly during a period of time when I was unable to access more specialist therapy than my community psych nurse could offer on a rushed weekly visit, when so many other things; my mood, meds, benefits, interaction with the team caring for my son and so on also ate into that precious hour a week. If I couldn’t be honest with myself in my writing, it would, frankly have been pointless. It has in the past also proved a useful tool in sharing more sensitive information with my CPN, as I have directed him to my writing rather than having to verbalise the painful details of certain life events.

However recently, at the suggestion of my CPN, I have started some more therapeutic psychological work with a new member of the CMHT; but rather than my writing becoming defunct, I evisage it evolving into a way of processing and mulling over the issues discussed, as well as continuing to document my past and present struggles around my mental health, widowhood, historical abuse and in fact the whole dysfunctional package that is my life!

Today I attended my third session with the new therapist. In a very short period of time I have felt able to be very open with him, albeit in a slightly detached manner, but already something shifted today. The session was extremely emotionally intense and I was aware I was allowing myself to actually feel what I was expressing, for the first time. I have a very real awareness of how long I have waited for therapy, and also that funding is not unlimited, so I need to crack on with the most problematic of issues whilst I have the opportunity.

If you have read some of my previous blogs, in particular the one entitled When Love Hurts you will be aware that my late husband was emotionally and verbally abusive to me. It was while discussing this with my therapist today that I blew my own dirty little secret – I cheated on my husband. 

There, I said it. I’m not proud of it, and if I have shattered anyone’s illusions of sweet church-going little Angel, I apologise.

At the lowest point in our marriage, 

When my husband was being particularly cruel, 

When I had recently been discharged from psychiatric hospital 

When I was being ‘preyed upon’ by an unscrupulous male colleague who showered me with attention, 

When my Bipolar Disorder took me into the most extreme of hypomanic phases I have experienced to date,

The unfortunate outcome was that I had sex with said male colleague.

Who promptly dropped me like a stone when I had served my purpose.

My husband had been accusing me of cheating for as long as I could remember, and calling me every name imaginable to that end, and at some point I just snapped, fuelled by hypomania, and decided if I was going to treated as I if I was doing the crime, I may as well at least reap the bounty. One of my husband’s ways of exerting power over me was to withhold affection and intimacy in the relationship, and ironically when I angrily admitted to him that, yes, I had been with someone else, after calling me every derogatory name he could think of, he admitted that it was his actions that were responsible for pushing me into the arms, and bed of another man.

I was forgiven, but I made it clear that things had to change. He promised to change and we were together a further 12 years until his death. My ‘indiscretion’ was never mentioned again in all that time, and things improved in some areas of the relationship, while some things I just learnt to live with and exercised some Radical Acceptance.

I have always stated that both my husband and I made mistakes and behaved badly in the relationship at times. I hope this blog redresses the balance to some degree, as I feel until now I have given a one-sided view of how I was the wronged party. In conversation with my nurse recently, in clarifying he said, “So your husband withheld intimacy because you had cheated on him?”

I replied, “No, there just was no intimacy, right from the start, and there’s a limit to how many times you can be called a cheat and a slut before you start believing it.”

Thanks for reading 

Angel 👼🏼