Almost 5 years later

I hadn't checked this email for about 6 months - I usually don't get anything but spam.  But I signed on this past week and there were 5 legitimate emails waiting for me!  I hope everyone who had emailed found the information that they were looking for.  But it made me think, I should write an update.  So here it is...

It's been nearly 5 years since I found out about my William.  I actually had to look up how long it's been because I've moved into that space "post-discovery" where it's not a shock, not a big deal, - basically that space where, when I was trying to find information about my discovery, every other spouse who blogged was living.  That's why I wrote my blog - because when you are going through the painful throes of discovery, you don't want to hear how things CAN be, you want to know how to deal with the crap that's going on right now!  I hope others can find help there, because it helped me immensely to write it.  And now I'm living in a much more peaceful place.

I think it took almost 4 years to get to this place of "it's not a big deal."  Oh, really, it was "only" about 6 months of incredibly painful crap, which gradually lessened over time, but was also fouled by the occasional rearing of the viper's head over the next couple of years.  But as I think back, it's been well over a year since any of that has come up - and if it did now....well, at least I'm in a good place to deal with it - and I'm confident that we would still be okay.

William and I are doing just fine.  We still dress, role-play, etc - at least whenever we can find the time in our crazy world of four kids, house, work and life.  William is NOT out of the closet with anybody but me - which is exactly how he says that he wants it.  I'm not sure how intense his desires still are to do more than what we are doing - we really haven't talked about them in a quite awhile, but the last time we did, he said that he's happy with where we are and doesn't think about it much - other than he still wants to do what we do and he loves that I'm okay with it.  My feeling about this is that when what-one-wants is acceptable, the desires stop being so all-consuming.  It's not that those desires fade, but they fall back to occupy a more-normal-amount of thought/time/energy.  What William wants is fine with me, so he doesn't obsess about them any more. It took him a few years to get to his happy place, it didn't happen right away either, but it was part of our journey together.

Our marriage is still good.  We communicate quite well - I can tell how "we" are by how he responds to me - does he take my calls during the day at work?  Does he remember what I tell him?  Does he get frustrated easily?  As soon as I see one of those start to wane, I know it's time for us to have a talk - and we do - and it's usually he's stressed about something - and things improve.  I must have some signals myself - because he will occasionally do the same thing to me.

I love him dearly - and he loves me.  I know our journey isn't over - no journey ever is - but we're still on it together, so it's all good...

God Bless and Take Care.