…confessions of a wayward soul part two…..

This is the post where I fill in the blanks……..

A long time ago (thirty years to be exact)  a very young and very naive virgin Ivonne met a very charming and charismatic entertainer who would sweep her of her feet.  Her mother being the old-fashioned Latina mother that she was objected to her daughter dating and being involved with this young man, who was an up and coming junior magician of the world-famous Hollywood Magic Caste.

My mother’s objections were voiced and they were loud.  At the time I was going to U.C.L.A. and my mother also worked there.  My mother and I would go to U.C.L.A. together because I did not know how to drive yet.  We would drop my sister off at school first.  During the time that I was dating this young man my mother would take the opportunity on the morning drive to lay into me, since I was pretty much a prisoner in the car and could not get away from her.  These scenes always ended the same, with my mother crying at the thought that I might possible be having sex at the age of 18, which would then cause my sister to also start crying.  Now does this sound like it was fun?  No it wasn’t but it would color later events in my relationship.

Yes, we did have sex.  My mother crying was not going to stop me in that arena.

But what it did do was that when he asked me to move in with him my first reaction was oh God–how would I get to school and what would my mother say.  So, my response was no.  I quickly changed my mind and was waiting for him to ask again but as you know from my previous post that did not happen.  Instead he left me for another woman a mere two weeks later.  I have lived with that regret all of my life—a black shadow on my heart.

It took me two years to get over him and by this I mean that the daily crying had stopped.  But we have mutual friends and through these friends (can you imagine a life without the internet or facebook to keep tab of your friends—the dinosaur age, huh) I always knew what was going on in his life.

I knew when he moved to Europe.  I knew when he had broken up with the other woman and I knew when he had gotten married and had a daughter.  All of this information courtesy of our mutual friends in the magic world.

He was always there in the shadows of my memories to such an extent that when I found out he was in town performing at the Hollywood Magic Castle I dragged my then husband to the show.  Of course, I didn’t tell my husband who we were going to see until we got there and were in a public space.  I knew he wouldn’t cause a scene in public and I certainly wasn’t going to show up empty-handed after what he had done to me.  Oh no, I wanted to show up looking hot and with my husband who was 7 years younger than me.

Fast Forward to three years his name (Jay Scott Berry) came up in therapy because I was looking at issues that I blamed my mother for.  And his was a big one.  I always felt that if she hadn’t acted so darn friggin crazy and would have been supportive of me I would have said yes to him.  I mean if he had proposed marriage I would have said yes but I was still kind of Catholic in those days.

By this point in time the internet and google had been invented.  So, I did what any reasonable woman does and I googled him and I found his web-site, www.jayscottberry.com , and I had an e-mail address.  It took a few weeks of building up courage before I was able to e-mail him.

He remembered me and we sent a few emails back and forth.  At this point in time I was divorced but he was divorced and remarried and living in another country with a wife and a young child trying for another one.  I was also doing the ivf at this time so most of our conversations had to do with fertility.

After a while the emails stopped.  At some point he friended me on facebook.

It was last May after I had graduated that I started to notice his spiritually inclined posts on face book.  After having spent five years doing religious studies where you take apart and deconstruct religion I was lost and not sure if there was a spiritual path for me.  His posts reminded me that there was.  Well one like after another like–posting to conversations etc…I found that I was falling in love with this man all over again.

Last Dec he contacts me to ask me to work with him as his personal manager in music.  It took me about a week to contemplate the offer.  Not because I couldn’t do the job–I had the skill set needed but more so because I knew I was still in love with him.

I said yes and we commenced to work with each other via skype.  We communicated almost daily for a month and he was flying out for business.  I was nervous not knowing how I would feel being with him in person.  But the old feelings and the magic were still there even after 30 years.  Within a couple of hours of being together we were confessing to each other that we both still had feelings for one another.  He was proposing a physical relationship and I was asking what about your wife?  His response was that he was in love with his wife and wasn’t planning on leaving her and that as long as a physical relationship with me didn’t interfere with our ability to work together (meaning his career)  or his marriage it was all ok with him. He told me that he did not take a vow of monogamy when he got married.  I told him that it was implied in the marriage vows.  He told me to think about it and not answer right away.

As I am writing this I have to wonder why in hell didn’t I just run in the opposite direction.  What was I thinking?

Well I wasn’t thinking I was feeling with the heart of an abandoned 18 year old  young girl.

The energy between us was “intoxicating” –his word.  After a week of working together in person it wasn’t something we could control or that we even wanted to control.  When I am with this man all logic–all common sense goes out the door.  I just wanted to be with him.

And yes, I got the standard “my wife doesn’t understand me”—”we don’t sleep in the same bed”–and yes I bought into it hook, line and sinker.

But when he wasn’t around and the power he had over me was not present I struggled with my conscience and my integrity.

A month later was another business trip that I would go on with him.

 

 

We were supposed to be doing a show in Malaysia combining Music and Magic.  It really would have been a great show had it gone off but the promoter cancelled the show the day before the artists were to arrive. It was at this point that the business fell apart in a big way and the relationship became collateral damage.

I went from leaving him at the airport crying to three days later he is not even speaking to me and getting a notice that we were also no longer working together.

I was abandoned yet again by this man.  And yes, I am sure that there are those of you out there who are probably thinking it serves me right.  And maybe you are right.  But what I do know is that you haven’t lived in my heart like this man has for the past 30 years.  And I really thought that he was my soul mate.

Given that my father always cheated on my mother I too have been judgmental of others.  What I have since learned is that one, we don’t always know the whole story and two the heart often plays a bigger part in our lives than our logical mind.

Am I proud of what I have done? No, I am not.  But that does not make the hurt in my heart go away any faster.

I can only pray to meet the man who deserves to be loved by me and the one that I deserve to be loved by.

The other thing that I have learned is that I can not live or love a man under some other woman’s shadow.

If you can’t put on your facebook status : In a relationship with Ivonne, then we shouldn’t be in a relationship at all……..

Related articles

• Breaking the Addiction to the Affair (recoveringwayward.wordpress.com)
• Do we really care about marriage? (crunchyinalabama.com)
• Marriage is Forever! (deaconjohn1987.wordpress.com)

…confessions of a wayward soul…….

There is something that has been weighing heavily on my mind and heart for the past six months and it’s time for me to set the record straight.

As you already know from my previous post on infidelity I have a definite set of proscriptions regarding marital infidelity having grown up in that environment and energy.

For starters I believe that any man who cheats, not only cheats on his wife but also cheats on his children as well.

I remember at the age of 18 my new stepmother, who is only eight (8) years older than me asking me if the rumors she heard about my father cheating on my mother were true.  Not only were they true but I witnessed firsthand his cheating ways. My mother was out-of-town because my grandmother had had a stroke and I remember my father bringing over this blond-haired women and her young son and telling my sister and I that this was going to be our new mother and brother.  Tell me what kind of man does that to a child?  So, to answer her question yes he cheated and  no it’s not rumors.

So, what kind of man do I attract into my life? You guessed it, men that have cheated on me and left me for other women.

This energy/vibration seems normal to me because that is how I grew up, with a father who cheated on my mother before, during and after I was born.  Granted this is not a conscious sense of normal rather it is buried deep into my psyche so that I am not even aware of what is going on until it’s too late.

So, my father has always chosen another woman over his wife and kids.

The other woman somehow has always been a factor in just about all of my relationships in some form or another.  With my ex-husband it was his sister that always took top priority.  It seems that I have this subconscious need to be chosen over someone else but I always seem to lose.

So at the age of 16 my parents divorced.  By 17 my father’s son was born and he was well into his new family such that my sister and I became the collateral damage.  My dad’s new and much younger wife and son took top priority over my sister and I.

Okay I am getting to the confession part because this is really just one big mess that is all interconnected.

Remember the guy from the last two posts?  The one I met at the innocent and tender age of 18 as a virgin?  Well he was the first man to cheat on me.  I was a virgin, I fell in love and we had sex.  He asked me to move in but good Latina Catholic that I was at the time it freaked me out.  How could I do that?  What would my mother say?  She was already giving me major grief just for dating the guy.  Well, I had given it thought and wanted to tell him yes I had changed my mind, that I did want to move in with him.  But I was so young and naive I did not know how to approach the subject again.  I hoped he would ask me again me and then I would tell him yes. Well I was busy opening a play and he was performing as well and two weeks later not only was I not moving in with him but he was telling me he was in love with somebody else.

What?!!!

How do you go from” move in with me” to” I love somebody else” in a matter of just two weeks?  Well not only was my heart-broken but I grieved that loss for the next two years.  If the truth be told I have never really gotten over him.  He has always been lurking in the shadow of memories ever since.  I have lived with the regret of that decision for the past 30 years.  Yes, it has come up in therapy.  And no I have not been able to forgive my mother for interfering with the love of my life.

Why am I telling you all this when I said I was going to make a confession and come clean?  Because I do not want to be hated for what I  am about to tell you.  I want you to understand the place where my heart has been.

You see I became that “other” woman.  The woman I have always hated—the woman who took away the man who I loved.  And I didn’t like what I had become or the fact that I had compromised my own integrity.

The man, Jay Scott Berry, who came back into my life 30 years later was that young man.  The young man that I had fallen in love with 30 years ago. Yes, the very same man who had cheated on me and left me for another woman. It seemed like a fairy tale—like something out of a movie that we would find each other after all of these years.

Yes, it started out as a working relationship but we soon realized we still had feelings for each other.  And yes, against my better judgment and will we had a brief affair (the details will have to be left for another post).  And yes he is married.  He is the kind of man who is handsome and charming and when he walks into the room I just want to be with him and nothing else matters.  All common sense merely walks out of the room.

Some of you may think I deserve my broken heart but it is much more than a broken heart that I have.  I feel that it is my soul that has been broken, the dreams of what could have been 30 years ago and what could have been now…all broken into a million little pieces of shattered glass lying upon the floor of what is my life.

I am still trying to understand how is it possible that I still love this man after all that has happened?  I am still trying to heal and make sense of it all……

Related articles

• Blaming the Other Woman or Other Man for your spouse’s affair (recoveringwayward.wordpress.com)
• What is “cheating”? Defining infidelity in a world where it’s a floating concept (recoveringwayward.wordpress.com)
• Once a Cheater, Always a Cheater? (scott-williams.ca)