#5 His first affair

#5.

1998

I was sitting in my office one afternoon, talking to a few of my agents, when I received a phone call from Cindee’s husband. He said that he and Cindee were having marital problems and had started seeing a marriage counselor. During one of their sessions Cindee had admitted to having an affair with Craig two years previously, that had lasted for over 6 months. At first I didn’t want to believe him, but he was crying and I knew he had no reason to make this up. To this day I remember my drive home that afternoon, with the pain reeling through my body so hard that I wanted to drive my car into a pole as fast as possible. I needed to remove the pain from inside of me and make it external. I wanted to numb myself, I was in shock. I waited until I got home to confront Craig. He admitted to it and begged for my forgiveness. He apologized and said that it had started when I was late in my pregnancy with Richard (Remember the big fight?). One of the very shocking things to me was, Cindee was a very big girl. I was too, so I’m not judging, but in my mind I didn’t ever, ever see that coming. I thought if my husband was going to cheat on me it would be with some long legged, skinny, gorgeous girl, and I would be able to pick up on it before anything ever happened. Cindee was a smoker and Craig couldn’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke, so none of this made sense to me.

During 1998 sometime, before I was given this news, I discovered what kind of people Cindee and Mike were. She would laugh and brag that she would go to the airport and steal people's luggage, just to see what she could get. I was horrified! Then another time she confessed to me that she would make fake identity cards for kids who wanted to get into bars. I couldn’t be around these people anymore and I told Craig I never wanted to see them again. We were driving back from their house in Ogden one night and Craig just laughed at me and said I was acting like a goody two shoes, but I was very serious. I would not go out with them after that. And I thought Craig had stopped seeing them too because they faded out of the picture, and their names never came up again. Until I received that phone call from Mike….and everything came flooding back.

Turns out Craig saw opportunity in them. I found out Cindee and Mike had “fixed” the paperwork for our mortgage and we would never have qualified without their “help”. Yes I know Craig was in it for the free sex too, but you will learn through this blog that Craig was an opportunist, a master manipulator, and when he wanted something he would go after it until he got it. He wasn’t taking Cindee and Mike boating…. it was just the two of them (Craig and Cindee) going and I had no idea what was going on. Craig was getting lessons. He learned how to make fake ID cards (which you will hear about later) and it just grew after that. He told me he had ended it with her because he really didn’t like her and was only doing it to get away with it.

We went to see a counselor and in one of the sessions the counselor told me that I had two choices. I could choose to not forgive Craig, and move out and file for a divorce, OR I could choose to forgive him, stay and learn to trust Craig again. He said it wouldn't work if I chose to stay but kept bringing up the affair. Apparently that wouldn’t be fair. Was any of this fair?? So I chose to stay and not bring it up again. I had 4 little boys who adored their dad and our lives looked so good from the outside. We spent a lot of time playing together as a family and I wasn’t about to be the one to destroy all of that. I should have realized it wasn’t me that caused this havoc, but I couldn’t bare to be the one to unravel our lives.

It took me time to build up that trust again. I was scared, but I really believed that Craig had made a bad mistake and was very sorry for it and had learned his lesson. I believed he wanted us to be the family we once were and that he would never do something as terrible as that again.

AND HERE COMES THE NEXT ONE

One of Craig's massage clients was a lady by the name of Liz  Liz had been a client since we were in massage school and was still receiving massages from Craig once a week. One night Craig and I were having a quiet discussion while we were lying in bed, and he brought up that he was interested in bringing Liz into our bedroom. He said it could be fun and exciting and different and that he hadn’t said anything to her about it because he wanted to see how I felt about it first.(That was a lie). I told him absolutely NOT. No part of me was interested in bringing another woman into my bedroom at all!. I had gained a lot of weight with each pregnancy due to pregnancy induced hypoglycemia and was still very heavy (almost 100 lbs overweight). Liz was very thin (here comes the skinny long legged one I was afraid of) and just the thought of being naked next to her horrified me, let alone watching her having sex with my husband! I also told Craig that we were supposed to be trying to build up trust in our marriage again and this would not help at all. He let it go that day, but still brought it up once in awhile, hoping I would change my mind. I never did, but that never stopped him.

Then I noticed Craig had a password on his voicemail. He would check his phone a lot, and to listen to his messages he had to enter a password. I asked him why he had a password on his voicemail and his response was “Because you need to learn to trust me again”. He stuck to this and continued using this password on his voicemail. One day he checked his voicemail while on speakerphone, he punched in his 4 digit password and then picked up the receiver to listen to his messages. I memorized the sound of those 4 digits. I played it over and over in my head until Craig had to leave for an appointment. Once he was gone I got on the phone, turned on the speaker phone and punched on numbers until I got the tune right...and bingo. I cracked his code. To my horror, the message was from Liz and she was talking to him in a very seductive way, giving him direction on how and when to come and see her when her husband would not be home. I knew from this message that they were having an affair and were very familiar with one another. Once again my world turned upside down. I was sick to my stomach and this time couldn’t wait for him to come home to discuss it. When I called him he was with her. I yelled so loud into the phone I think she probably heard me. He told me to calm down and that he was coming home. Once he got home he apologized again, begged for my forgiveness, asked me to punch him as hard as I wanted to, asked me to slap him across the face. I punched him in the chest, but didn’t have the strength to even cause a bruise. My anger/hurt turns within, It’s not something I can “punch” out. I was so so upset and had no idea what to do. All our money was handled by Craig.(side note...he never put my name on the title of the house). My income checks were direct deposited into our bank and he deposited his massage income and then he took care of all the bills. He was also doing online day trading which kept him on the computer for hours, sometimes yelling in distress and other times screaming with joy at what he had made on a trade. So with everything being in his control I knew I couldn’t just pack my bags and move out. He told me I was nothing without him. He said if I tried to leave he would take my name off the bank account and I would have nothing. He told me that if I tried to take the boys away that it would ruin their lives. He convinced me I had nowhere to run , nowhere to turn. I did not even tell my family or closest friends because I was so humiliated, embarrassed, hurt. I didn’t want anyone to know that my husband was cheating on me. So every day I got up and went to work like any other day. I smiled for the boys and endured Craig's attempts of affection in front of the kids, so that they would think everything was normal. But I was torn apart from the inside out.

Craig's parents moved from South Africa to come and live with us in the SJ house. Craig said we could use the help while I worked and it would help his folks out at the same time. Craig was working on writing up “trusts” for people. For a long time he had talked about trusts and how people used them to get out of paying taxes and that there was a lot of money in setting them up. So he would have his mom type all day long (as well as watch the boys while I was at work). Once again I faithfully (and very naively) believed in him and really thought he was doing what he said he was doing. He took a couple trips to CA to meet with “some guys who needed trusts”. I don’t remember the conversations exactly but I’m sure he called me a few times while he was there and he had me convinced that he was meeting with these people. He would only be gone for a few days. I was very focused on building my business and didn’t want to delve too far into what he was doing for fear of him calling me “distrustful”.

Blog #6 is on it’s way..I attended a wedding tonight and it’s almost midnight so to keep my brain sharp and focused and keep all the detail to the point I will stop here for tonight. Blog #6 will delve into a large case of identity theft and Craig's first trip to jail. No one could make this stuff up….so hang in there and please KEEP SHARING!

Pictures are coming this weekend!!

Don't forget to Keep Love in your Heart!!