I love my husband to death, but several weeks after we were married, I found him engaged in some very unsavory activities on our computer with some not so very nice and not so very attractive middle aged women. We were just married and he was already flirting with other women and planning some rendezvous’ with them. This completely blew me away because after several bad marriages, I was determined never to marry again. He was the one in our relationship who wanted to get married and said he couldn’t live without me. I have two teenage daughters and had monitoring software installed on the computer so I could keep an eye on their activities. Little did I know it was my husband, not my girls I couldn't trust. The software records every keystroke so I had a complete transcript of all his conversations and also screen shots of his girlfriends’ web cams. I was crushed. Not only was he flirting with multiple women at the same time, they were all performing sex acts for him on their web cams.

These were not sexy young girls, but out of shape middle-aged women flashing their fat, floppy bosoms, flabby bellies, and big, dimpley bottoms around looking more bazaar than sexy. Far be it form me to comment on another person's physical appearance, but some of them were actually comical and I caught myself laughing several times. It was obvious from the conversations that he had known some of these women for a long time and had been doing this before as well as throughout our entire relationship. It occurred to me that some of these "ladies" were probably in the Internet chat rooms because they were lonely and maybe they haven’t had real sex in a long time. None of them were exactly attractive, so I didn’t feel particularly jealous or threatened by them. If my husband was giving them pleasure or making them feel good about themselves as well as himself, well to be honest it wasn’t the worst thing in the world a man could do. I was more annoyed that he was doing it behind my back and wasn’t up front about it or sharing it with me.

However, there was one conversation in particular he had with a woman who called herself luvsrdroses49 that not only bothered me, it infuriated me. I read it several times and was stunned. It was obvious from the conversation that they had known each other for a long time and that they had talked about me and our relationship. This conversation was very different from the others which were mostly things like “oh baby, you make me so hot, blah, blah, blah.” This was very personal. I know people talk about their significant others with their friends, we all do it, but I couldn’t help feeling somehow violated. She knew all about me, she knew about our life together, the problems with our relationship, and fights we had. She knew all sorts of intimate details about me. But up to that very moment, I didn’t even know she existed.

Their conversation was horrible. He made me sound like I was a monster. Was I really such a terrible person? She felt sorry for him. Said he should never have moved in with me. Asked him how he could stand being with me to which he responded that he didn’t know. HE DIDN’T KNOW?!?!?!?!?!?!? Excuse me, but didn’t he just marry me? He cried like a baby at the wedding. He told me I was the love of his life and he was never happier. That is what he should have told her, not that he didn’t know! Then she said that he could have done so much better meaning herself. WHAT?!?!?!?!

According to her profile she was a few years younger than I am, but one would never know it from her profile pic. She was in real need of some good hair care products, in fact, a full makeover wouldn't hurt. Her face was round and puffy, and I could see where the corners of her mouth and her jaw line were starting to sag.  She was not at all attractive.  A lonely woman without resources, she didn’t even live in her own house but with some relative if I understood what I was reading correctly. How does any of this make her better for him than me?  Not that I want to blow my own horn or anything but I watch my weight, workout, am reasonably intelligent and attractive, I have a good job with a good income and I'm also fairly well off.  What did he see in her?  It took me a few minutes to figure out.  She was needy, I am not.  Her neediness was the attraction.

They made plans about where and when they were going to meet. It wasn’t clear if they had met before or not, I just couldn’t tell. He told her she could call him at his shop and if somebody else answered she should ask for him and say she was a customer, that way there would be no questions. He was going to pick her up in his car that he was so proud of, the one I bought him for his birthday! Of course he didn’t tell her that part, or that it was my money that financed the shop where she was to call him. How convenient for me to have supplied him with the very means to humiliate and betray me. But according to him, I wasn't a generous loving wife who tried to give him everything he wanted and anything he asked for; I was a controlling psychotic super bitch that plucked him out of his happy little white-trash-one-step-away-from-homelessness lifestyle and was now making his life a living hell.

Then came all the sex talk and the flashing (she seriously needed a Victoria Secrets Angel card to buy herself some stylish undergarments and lose the dowdy old lady bra and granny panties) and the orgasms and the shock of reading the same words he said to her that he’s always said to me. Things I thought were ours, special and unique to our relationship. What kind of man was I married to? I felt foolish, stupid, used, played, and completely betrayed.

I could feel my stomach turning. I was shaking. I was furious. What made it worse was she knew very well that he was in a committed relationship and she didn’t care. In fact, she would have been most happy to breakup this relationship so she could have him for herself. My immediate reaction was if she wanted him, she could have him and all the emotional baggage that came along with him, including his drinking problem, and his horrifically bad temper (which I’m sure he never mentioned to her either) the results of which sent me to the hospital more than once. I was done, fed up, finished… it was over!

I confronted him. I ranted, raved, cried, screamed, made a horrible scene. I was disgusted with myself for making this horrible spectacle of myself. I threatened to leave.

He begged me to stay. He said he loved only me, and these women from the chat rooms meant nothing to him, that he was just telling them what they wanted to hear and he had no intention of ever meeting any of them. He told me it all started years ago as just some fun and flirting in the chat rooms but that he became addicted to the thrill of it all, like some men might develop an addiction to pornography. It was all just a bunch of meaningless flirting, and even though he had become friends with some of these women, he would drop them all in a heartbeat just as long as I didn’t leave him. I didn’t believe him, didn’t want him to touch me, didn’t trust him and alternated between volcanic rage and the deepest darkest depression. I vented my anger in a dozen or more poems about the situation (some of them can be found in my hubs) each one more terrible than the one before.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Hell-Hath-No-Furyy

I was like a woman possessed. Honestly, I truly believe my reaction was completely disproportionate to the event, but I felt like he had made a complete fool of me and my pride was mortally wounded. If he had this “addiction” he should have told me about it, not gone on sneaking around behind my back making me look foolish, especially in the eyes of this other woman who was clearly infatuated with him and wanted him for herself.

Eventually things settled down between us. We made an uneasy peace. I was still hurting but I no longer felt like shooting him between the eyes or burying an axe in his skull, maybe just running him down with my car would satisfy. I know it sounds insane, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been completely disrespected and betrayed. It would be a long time before I trusted him again.

Forgiveness came with a price. He would have to call or e-mail this “redroses” person and confess to her that he loved me, he had lied to her about me and what kind of person I was, and that he would not only never meet her but that he would never contact her again. I also wrote a poem to her (it’s in the hubs) http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Old-Man---To-luvsrdroses49-from-sinderella317 and sent it to her via instant messenger, right before I pulled Yahoo Messenger off the computer along with MSN, and disabled every venue of social networking, and blocked all e-mail. It wouldn’t be forever, just long enough to satisfy me that he wasn’t going to hop right back on the computer and start all over again. Based on how I was behaving, I thought to myself, maybe he's right and maybe I am a psycho-bitch? Well if I was now acting like one, so be it... he brought it on himself and it was his own damn fault.

I developed an aversion to red roses because of this and frankly never wanted to see another one again as long as I lived, which really upset me because I have always enjoyed roses. I made my husband promise that he would never ever again give me red roses because if he did I’d shove them so far up his butt he’d be spitting thorns for a week. What can I say, I have a temper as bad as or worse than his.

It took several long months before I felt like I might start trusting him again. During that time we went to counseling, worked on our issues and problems and tried to strengthen our relationship, and get back to a place of love and happiness once again.

One morning in early spring while I was sitting in the sunroom having my coffee looking out on a pair of doves flying around above a particularly nasty patch of yard some ways beyond the pool where the previous owner used to grow vegetables, I had an epiphany. I would plant a rose garden. It would be the perfect symbol of the transformation which had taken place in my marriage. By planting roses, I would be taking back the power I had given this luvsrdroses49 almost a year earlier when I let her chat room "flirtation" with my husband put doubt and anger into my heart. This would be my slap in her face. No longer would she or the symbol of her userid have any control over me or my emotions. I would be able to enjoy roses of any color and not let them remind me of that night of gross betrayal. She would be just another thorn in the beautiful rose garden that was my relationship with the man who is my husband.

I love my husband and I believe he loves me. We are neither of us perfect by any means and if the truth be told, I'm equally as flawed as he is. But I know we can be happy together (if somewhat dysfunctional) and make a good life for ourselves, but we must always be careful and understand and respect the fact that no matter how beautiful the rose, there will always be thorns.

I found my love to be untrue

With roses red and violets blue

It broke my heart in pieces two

Obsessed was I with guilt and blame

Reveling in torment and in shame

Not knowing how my heart to tame

Wisdom came on the wings of doves

And I planted roses for my love

With long sharp thorns to remind me of

All things of beauty though they be fair

Those thought to be far beyond compare

Must be handled gentle and with care

For they are not without the sting of pain

Or freed from blemishes and stain

And the bitter taste that does remain

Thus freeing me from deep depression

No more enslaved by cruel oppression

Or the tyranny of insane obsession

So wiser now than in times before

My love is true and strays no more

His passion and pleasure I do adore