Demand All of Their Heart

Don’t settle for sharing. Ever.

It’s 3:00 am. I haven’t slept yet; my whole sleep schedule is a hot mess thanks to COVID. My circadian rhythm relies on my phone time and the glow from my laptop screen, not from going outside and experiencing the sun.

My phone buzzes. It’s Jon. The guy I had an affair with, we ended things and in the blink of an eye, he’s settled down for the long haul with someone new. I keep myself honest with No Contact by writing about him here; yesterday, he messaged me and that text ripped open the No Contact wounds all over again.

Yes, I could block Jon. But my experience with a stalker has taught me that if I block someone, I’ll spend every moment wondering if they’re messaging me. Which then makes me obsess even more. I’d rather just know than let my imagination wonder for me.

The addicted side of me also clings to the hope that he’ll break the No Contact rule for me so that I can be the innocent victim while getting a hit of his intoxicating drug.

Jon’s messages start sweet and trail off with him commenting that I’m probably juggling multiple men. He says this as a way to deflect me calling him out on falling in love with someone else while still saying that he loves me.

I flip my shit and after writing that I’m not talking to dozens of guys, I tell him to fuck off (I don’t swear as an attack but at this point, I don’t care anymore). I tell him that I’m going to bed and that I’ll inevitably hear from him in a few weeks when he wants to make another comment about me boning an entire football team.

Since last June, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had sex with other guys. I don’t accept snarky comments like that coming from a guy who fucked me, his soon-to-be-ex-wife, and his new girlfriend all in a single month.

With that, I toss the phone across the room. It buzzes with his messages of apologies but I don’t care; I’m not doing another month of this drama after painfully surviving twenty-three days of No Contact.

Personal growth and change are hard. Like, eat-a-Carolina-Reaper-pepper-with-no-milk hard. I spent a life choosing misery and angst because changing my mindset was that much more difficult. With my marriage imploding in 2020 (along with my life…thanks Covid!), I knew it was time to suck it the fuck up and finally do the hard work.

After making a lot of progress, I learned that personal growth is an ongoing activity. It’s not one and done. “Cool, I no longer suffer from my childhood trauma, time to partayyyy!” It’s learning self-awareness and challenging yourself regularly.

With the ending of my marriage (to Joseph) and a significant relationship (with Jon), that’s double the self-reflective work. Not only did I have to examine and face my contributions to the failure of my marriage, but I also had to rip open the layers of my relationship with Jon.

I focused more on my marriage because that’s the longer, more instrumental relationship that’s formed who I am today. It was going over 20 years of my actions and reactions to Joseph’s behavior.

I forced myself to identify the trauma from my childhood that became negative baggage in my marriage. I challenged who he thought I was against who I know I am. I created my anti-cheating prevention plan for future relationships.

Admittedly, I didn’t focus as much as I should have on my relationship with Jon. I blamed our circumstances on our demise. Last month, when he told me he fell in love with someone else, it hit me that I hadn’t worked on evaluating my role in that relationship (and the series of events after) as much as I should have.

Ironically, it took the start of a new relationship this month for me to see a critical missing piece in both my marriage and my affairs.

My sweet relationship with Cory this month was cut short. I ended it two days ago (another Medium post for another time). He’s wonderful and I have nothing but good things to say about him. I’m still smitten. What is it that made me feel so good right off the bat with him?

I had all of him.

Cory was enamored with me and only me. He worked, he had his daughters, had some buddies and he had…me. While we were by no means exclusive, I was the only woman he was dating. I had all of his attention. I had all of his intentions. It hit me that it was a missing component of my relationships for almost two decades.

With my husband, I didn’t have “all” of him. I shared him with porn. The sexual rejection meant porn had more of Joseph’s physical attention than I did. That extended to his massage parlors. My husband was never all mine.

Looking back at the past few relationships, the same pattern appears. A few years ago, I had an affair with a coworker. Jason made it clear that he loved me. Yet, he was the only happily married guy I’ve ever met who had an affair.

Jason had constant, steamy sex with his wife. To this day I don’t fully understand why he pursued a relationship with me and was devastated when I ended it. I never had all of him to myself.

Then along came Jon. His marriage was garbage (his wife cheated on him and then allowed him a few hall passes as a result) but theirs was a passionate relationship. Constant arguing and loads of sex. They went on trips together. I know the drill as The Other Woman; the spouse always trumps me. My role was to fight my jealousy. That’s expected. But it’s noticeable when your needs are ignored at the drop of a hat because of his wife beckoning him back.

After Jon and I ended things, I briefly dated Bruce. He knew I was fresh out of both my affair as well as my marriage and supported me in dating other people if I had wanted to. He juggled multiple love interests, which was fine by me. But the same pattern appeared: I was not his only woman.

Again, I had to share.

None of this registered with me until I began dating Cory. After our first date, it struck me how different it was to have all of him. It was like he popped his heart out of his chest and casually said, “take it, it’s yours”.

Me? You’re letting me…have this?

As such, another puzzle piece was found in my personal growth journey. While the relationship was brief, I learned more about valuing my self-worth than I had in years.

Still stewing this morning after my text exchange with Jon, I mulled over why everything from the past few months bothered me. Then that puzzle piece popped into place.

I initially shared him with his wife, as expected. After we split up, I was forced to continue seeing him due to an upcoming surgery. While Jon didn’t think anything of still getting physical and emotionally intimate with me, it continuously shattered me but I allowed it to happen. Why was I allowing this and why was it killing me when it did?

Because this time, Jon was juggling more women (the soon-to-be-ex-wife and the new girlfriend) whereas I ended my marriage without beginning a new relationship. To him, having sex with me represented a sliver of all his intimate moments. To me, they represented 100% of mine.

When Jon said he loved me, he was also saying it dozens of times to someone else. Someone who had a more significant role because they could go on dates, be seen in public, and she texted him directly unlike my anonymous Snapchat messages. Jon’s girlfriend was getting his all. For me, even if I only heard it once or twice in a month, it was the only source of “I love you” that I received from anyone all year.

I had unknowingly exasperated and heightened the very thing that made me feel awful about myself for over a decade. I had voluntarily put myself in a position to receive fewer table scraps than before and I jumped at them because they were the only ones I was getting.

Do I need table scraps of steak? No, I’m perfectly happy subsisting on PB&J sandwiches unless I get a full steak dinner. But in the absence of that dinner, when steak scraps are thrown my way, my body lunges and devours them with ferocity.

Later today, I called Jon. He immediately apologized for his comments this morning. I gave him a “sorry not sorry” apology for telling him to fuck off.

“We can’t keep doing this every month,” I tell him. “Pick a day next week, we’re going to have a Come-to-Jesus discussion in person and reset expectations.” We haven’t seen each other in months.

I’m not asking him to give up everything and be with me; that’s the furthest thing that I want right now. If it were up to me (which it isn’t), he would take the time to be single for more than 24 hours for the first time in thirty years and focus on himself. I would never accept being another rebound to him. But my expectations are low that he’ll recognize the need to do that for the sake of all his relationships, including the one with himself.

Instead, my goal is to convey that I don’t want table scraps anymore. If he’s incapable of giving me his all (which involves the work of being alone and finding out who he is outside of always being someone’s other half), then don’t toss me anything. I’m not desperate for love or attention. But like a recovering addict, even a fragment of heroin will make me fall to my knees all over again.

Why does no one tell you all this reflective, self-growth bullshit is like a hangover? My head hurts as if I’ve been drinking all night.

I don’t know if I’m destined to be a full book or a chapter in anyone’s life. Maybe for Jon, I was just meant to be a single page in his story. A page he needed to turn to get to his happy ending.

If that’s the case, then I don’t need a small percentage in his heart’s stock. I would rather Jon give my share to its rightful owner than to keep something that isn’t mine. I can’t keep pretending.

While I say this with eternal optimism, I know this will end with more crying in agony as my heart yells at my brain to just accept what I can get from him. Pushing myself to do the right thing is not fun, it’s hard, and it’s heartbreaking. All I can do is push myself onward and write loads of Medium articles to deal with this loss to my heart.