Follow up:

I sent Flirty an e-mail that redirects him to this site. To him I say: The "long version" is the one whose title has to do with getting home from dancing plus this one.

Today I still wanted to punch his lights out, & I was angry with myself for continuing to be an idiot, so I needed to vent or I was going to pig out. (Old habits such as emotional eating are hard to fight.) When I talked w/ another friend, she said, "don't you remember I told you he said one Friday that he was 'going home, putting his wife on the bike and headin out of town' ?" I had assured her that it had to be metaphorical, because he would have told me. He talks all the time about being honest, so I expected honesty. I knew/know his ladyfriend/wife was/is important to him, though he's never used her name & rarely mentions her, so his metaphorical wife made sense to me. I forgot the conversation.

I'd like to just say life was stressful with the start of school, meetings, Dad's stroke, Hannah going to college. So I forgot. I've studied enough psych to know there was probably lots of denial going on, too. But I would like to deny that it was. ;)

I'd like to give him the excuse of not wanting to add to my stress at the time. But I feel insulted by that excuse. We as a society tend to protect little children from reality, though I never did much of that with my own kids. We have two choices: We can tell them the truth. Or we can lie to them. I chose to speak the truth & to show them the truth. Yes, sometimes I can only say, "I don't know" and sometimes it is annoyingly still physically hard for me to talk when emotions are stressful. But I am a grown woman; I could have handled the truth.

I would have handled it a lot better than being lied to. When I was younger & delivering papers there was a song I sang as I walked the streets. "Who's trippin down the streets of the city, smilin at everybody she meets. Whose reaching out to capture a rainbow? everyone knows its (insert my real name). And I have stormy eyes that flash at the sound of lies..."

I am an optimist. I stupidly assume the best in people. I expect their honesty. Then I keep being reminded to be a cynic. Geez, if you can't trust your friends to be honest with you, who the heck can you trust?

So to boil it down, he told the two people that he knows I talk to about just about everything, but not me. He knew they'd let it go eventually, the chicken shit liar...

May your friends live up to the trust you place in them,
Take care,
Pete