Quote:
Originally Posted by varmint
Recurring theme is how many guys seem blind sided by the wife wanting out.
Were there signs you only now recognize?
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They were more obvious after the fact than during. I guess I was idealistic in my first one and couldn't believe she would cheat on me. On paper, it would never make sense for 2 young engineers to split up. In 1991, a combined income of over $100K at 25/26 years old.
Looking back, I can specifically detail 5 affairs she had over the years. There are another couple of people I now think she slept with.
I was away a lot. I was an international Field Engineer starting up large power plants around the world. I would be away for 2-3 months at a time and there might be a 15 minute phone call per week. Situation was kind of like being deployed in the Military in the 1980's.
I guess on my first trip back to the states after we married, at some point, while very drunk at a party at our place, she took off her ring and threw it across the room and said "I now feel totally unencumbered".
When I got an assignment back in the states, for about 3 months we were working in different cities. We closed out her apartment and she stayed with a friend. He was male. I expect she had been playing around with him for some time. She was pretty unhappy at moving time.
My local assignment finished and I was back on the road and she was now in a new city. I was in and out and then was able to get a local assignment. We bicycled together and got along pretty well. I was pretty busy when we hit startup phase, so there were times I was only home for 6 hours at night.
She needed to practice canoeing for an "adventure" Olympic Triathlon (too cold to swim in October). So she took off for 4 days. Later I found out that one of her co-workers was also out the same week. I ran into his wife years later and they indeed were having an affair. I guess the wife suspected something and it ended. Her "boyfriend" was doing a lot of her work. (kind of he M.O., as I did this with her in college). She lost her job due to incompetence when she had to do her own work. So she came on the road with me.
She ran off with the next guy. He was a mutual friend; I knew him and his wife quite well. We were all staying in the same extended stay hotel. He seemed to like to grab her hand and jokingly say "Always take small children by the hand", when we were doing stuff together. He was about 15 years older than us, and not very good looking. Never really thought anything of it.
When she ran off, a couple of weeks after he moved back to his home position. I called his wife, she told me she thought they were having an affair. Later I found really insane crappy love letters, etc.
Using above situations, and how she used to talk about stuff, it is possible that she slept a couple of others around the summer of 1990, in the Lenox/Stockbridge area. I also now suspect she was having an affair with the Dept. Chairman in the Civil Engineering office in college (86-88). I think she also slept with one of her bosses (leading to the eventual firing).
There were signs. Always wanting to do things with those guys. Always being a "little too close" to those guys. Not being around or not answering when I called. This was way before cell phones common.
So yeah, if I had been a bit less idealistic and had taken the warning signs a bit more seriously, I might have figured it out.
Second Wife, I'm pretty sure (now) that she slept with a couple of ex-boyfriends while we were married. She was EXTREMELY discreet if she did. I mostly suspect this now because she cheated on her boyfriend (now husband), with me, after we were divorced...