Bennett’s real name is Tony. I’ve debated putting the photo of the both of us up my Facebook or IG and let that sit for a while.
But I wrote this rambling letter instead.
Tony’s biggest worry is the destruction of your family but I doubt, knowing what a good mother you are, you would pull your children into this adult mess. Your family unit is obviously strong and I admire what you’ve built. But you’ve both allowed the marriage to fail and I made the mistake of believing Tony actually wanted to move his life forward, with me.
Kelly,
There is no appropriate way to tell
You what I am about to tell you because it’s horrible to hear. I can only give the reasons I am doing it for myself, and certainly I already know you don’t care about my reasons. But I suppose you should have some context. No matter what I say this letter is viewed as being sent with malicious intent. I’ve spoken to Tony about this letter at length many times and he said he would be the one to tell you. Did he?
Before I start, I will get one thing out of the way: I am foolish and heartbroken. I believed that somehow our affair would be different from any other affair. I believed we were soulmates and he would eventually be with me. He stated many times we were meant to be, there was no other answer for the way our lives collided. I knew I was wrong for a long time and didn’t accept it. In doing so, I have subsequently allowed this affair to destroy my life and affect my family. I know it has affected Tony as well but he has protected you and your family. I am sorry for being so stupid. I am sorry I believed your husband could leave his family to love me for the rest of his days. You couldn’t possibly call me any names I haven’t already called myself. I valued my love for Tony and my belief of him more than I valued my self worth. I believed he was my true love and I was so very wrong.
I have been in love with your husband for over 2 years. When we met our connection was instant and unreal. He called it being struck by lightening. He thought I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and he needed to meet me. He once said the world was all black and white around me and it was like I was living color. He said he was never truly himself until he met me.
I never experienced love, attention and commitment the way Tony demonstrated for me. I suppose I was so starved for attention, and his type of attention was extreme, that I made the fatal mistake of believing his words and actions.
For a very long time, almost a year, I believed in our fairy tale. I believed Tony wanted to be with me, he had told me many times about seeing our lives together, how deep his love for me was and how he had never felt the way he felt with me before. Of course, now I realize, he was fooling himself about the foundation of your marriage and the reality of his life, and I know you have a great life….. I know almost everything there was to know over the period of the first two years. He was never leaving your marriage, but he wanted to believe he could for a while. And during that time, I started to believe he was my “one” that soulmate we all look for. He believed for a while, too. We shared an intense kind of love for a time. The love I developed during that time has consumed me and is the primary reason I am writing this letter. I am so broken and have literally become unhinged from reality because of this affair. This is no excuse. It is my only truth, I have lost all sense of reality.
Its none of my business but he should be honest with you about the past 20 years of deceit. He’s cheated on you since almost the very beginning – at Anthony Poggolis wedding while you were right in the hotel. At Daniels when you were not around, multiple times. On business trips to LA or Madrid etc. At corporate Xmas parties. He even played spin the bottle with one of his friends in a hotel in Chicago. It happened multiple times In front of his brothers and friends. His buddies seem like a tight group that sticks to the man code and not tell on each other and their “excursions”. His brothers, his friends, and especially John knew all – but I suppose since his wife is your closest friend and she took her husband back, that Tony felt he could be honest with him. His xboss did a little lingerie show for him while you were pregnant and he’s been to several strip bars and made out with the girls there. Because he loves to kiss. Super bowl weekends. The stories are many and he considered them harmless. But they stack up over 20 years. His reasons are that you are not interested in sex and you make it too complicated for him. You make him feel bad that he struggles instead of actually participating in sex and enjoying it. When he tells you about these stories he will describe them as silly, petty, uneventful incidents. He couldn’t cross the line of having sex with these women, so it didn’t really count as cheating in his mind. He will tell you I am exaggerating. He told me it’s in his DNA to cheat and he’s never been faithful and probably never will be. That I was the only woman he was very sexually faithful to. Is that true? He hasn’t had sex with you since 2011? Not even so much as making out? And that wasn’t a massive red flag for you? He swears by this but I can’t imagine anyone being so foolish as not to take a closer look at her husbands behaviors. Tony is an amazing romantic and fulfilling lover – why in the world wouldn’t you admire and want to please someone who so obviously has such a hug sex drive?
When he met me people commented how happy he looked all the time but you didn’t notice?
In hindsight, while his cheating was wrong, he did hide it from you and kept a stable marriage. He did right by your family as a provider who was upset with his wife for staying home while he struggled. He always said he liked your story and that’s what your relationship was built on – a great story and the kids. He wanted his parents life, he wants to recreate what he had growing up. It wasn’t until your relationship with Mancini that something snapped in him.
He told me the last time you had sex was the summer of 2011 at a baseball tournament somewhere in a hotel with the kids in the bed next to you. He claims he tried for years to get you to pay attention to him and you rebuffed him multiple times. That you refuse oral sex which he loves. That you wouldn’t even hold his hand. That you made jokes with your female friends about not touching his cock because that’s where he urinates from. He tells me there is no physical or emotional intimacy between you for years because you don’t like it and when I met him he believed you no longer even liked him. He said you were never really interested in sex from the start. He also told me you don’t really have a life and little thought in your head beyond children so he couldn’t connect with you emotionally. That changed when you cried after he told you he was unhappy. It was the first time in years he realized you cared about your life with him.
I found out later he was on Bumble, Zoosk and Tinder attempting to meet women. He forgot to take his profiles down after meeting me. Or maybe he didn’t take them down on purpose and it’s all a lie. After all, if he cheated on you for 20 years it only makes sense he was always lying to me.
He told me, and blamed me, for the text you received. I did not send that text. But he was on dating sites and I was embarrassed enough to have a friend of mine find him there. I still have the photos. He claims that he has “needs” so that’s why he cheats. He blamed you for not understanding that marriages require intimacy so he felt entitled to cheat. Because you don’t concern yourself with fulfilling his needs, he masturbates and watches porn several times a day/week. When I met him he felt he was entitled to cheating. He claims he never had intercourse with any of these women before me.
He said the final straw was your “affair” with the baseball coach. He was sure he caught you doing something in a park when he was GPS tracking you. Now he doesn’t seem as concerned that you cheated on him because he’s lost his desire for you – but back then he was still horribly jealous of you. I believe he still is jealous but he claims he no longer cares. He claims your turning into your mother and it’s unappealing.
We spent so many wonderful nights and days together. I have never been so happy. He said he never felt more alive or more like being himself than he was with me. He told me you two didn’t speak, that you had no brain activity other than the kids. He said you cost him several good friendships from the neighborhood and couldn’t keep girlfriends. Of course I believed all this in the beginning but then realized it’s just his way of hanging on to the past and harboring stupid things. He told me you stole money from him before you were married and he never believed you after that. He told me either a few times You got so drunk when the kids were little that It disgusted him. He told me you are turning into your mother and it was the biggest turn off ever. He was mad you insisted on buying a house so soon after his father died. He never forgave you for not helping him through his fathers death. He has always been angry that you stopped working. He claimed you stole money while you were engaged. All these things – I see in hindsight – was just Tony creating excuses for not fixing your marriage. Both of you allowed it to fail in the intimacy department. Maybe you did or didn’t have any affair (I’m guessing you didn’t) but it gave him the excuse he needed to feel righteous about cheating.
When I heard all this the first time, it seemed like there was enough in your marriage to make him unhappy. That he wasn’t lying.
But he was lying. Not only to me but himself. I see now that you have a civil and caring relationship. Maybe there is no intimacy but you are a working couple with a good life and because I never had that, I didn’t understand the foundation of your marriage is a partnership. You have a very tight family unit but he claims he two of you have zero intimate emotional or sexual relationship and it would have made him miserable to live like that the rest of his life.
Last April, right after your 18th anniversary, was when he finally had the courage to speak to you about how unhappy he was in your marriage, because he was about to lose me, your tears scared and surprised him. He assumed you would be angry and throw him out. He even hoped maybe you were having an affair with someone else because you were not having sex with him. He realized he was not ready to leave the family and soon after told me he was unable to leave you because you would be unable to care for yourself and his family is his responsibility. He claimed you would never manage anything on your own because you can’t figure anything out, even the simple things like the kids school. He realized after that conversation he wasn’t ready to leave the family or your marriage. We subsequently had a terrible and horrible Summer compared to the summer before when we fell deeply in love.
The following year was not good for us as your marriage began to improve in its communication. We had several break ups before we got back together at my insistence. Unfortunately I am broken and weak and don’t want to live without him, even though he never was and never can be mine. And now he longer wants to be. So that’s my other reason for writing. I can’t fathom the man who told me all the things he did and treated me the way he did doesn’t want our relationship any longer. I can’t believe the things he promised me can just disappear into thin air.
So writing this causes the final break between as I know he will never forgive me for hurting you. He knows only one of two things happen – you stay or you go – and we all know you stay. You are not the type to leave. You are too weak alone. And you have him. Not matter what I outlined above – I was willing to take your seconds – so who could judge you for staying in whatvappears to be the happy perfect life? You will be angry and hurt for a while, but just like he said, you could never leave the life he provides for you. You like your life too much to let an affair ruin it, just as your friends have managed through it – so will you. And as weak as this sounds – my intention isn’t to hurt you but to hurt him – but I’m not foolish enough to think you don’t end up as collateral damage here. I am sorry for that. In my own way I have no desire to harm you or your children ever. He believes you will tell the children and ruin their lives as well. I claimed no mother would ever do that to their children – share adult marriage problems – but he insists you would do it to hurt him and ruin their image of him and his role as father, protector and provider is the most important thing in the world to him. From what I know of you, because he shines nothing but positive light on your mothering, you would never bring your children into this mess. What’s the point of hurting your children for the damage he’s done when you won’t leave him anyway.
You will believe, or not, anything I have written. He will tell another story. Of course you will believe him over me. He has this super amazing memory but I have every text, email and photo he’s ever shared with me for two years. He can tell you any version of the first year he wants – because his memory is so perfect – but I have it all in writing. I believed him when he told me he could never love anyone the way he loved me, that he always wanted to be loved the way I loved him and wanted to love someone as deeply as he loved me. He loved me so much he couldn’t contain himself. He cried with me all the time and showed the depth of his feelings. I spoke to him every minute of every day. He sang to me and recorded for me. I was as much a part of his life as an affair can be. He told me everything. We shared every part of our lives that an affair allows. He didn’t experience any sexual problems with me except nerves in the beginning. Our sex was amazing and we had a lot of It. He worshiped my body and I worshiped his. I slept on his arms in his chest all night. He would lie awake at night to watch me sleep and breathe because he was so in love with me. He sang me the most beautiful love songs and always included a special quote when he sent my flowers. He knew my favorite foods and drinks and would cut my food and feed me. He held my hand everywhere we went and couldn’t stop kissing me.
I wrote a blog during the time we dated and I have a record of virtually all the things he spoke to me about. He can claim he never told me that our future was together: sitting on the porch in rocking chairs – that I wasn’t just the next chapter but the next book. He believed in us. But he can say differently now.
He shared his life with me for two years when it wasn’t his to share. He was giving me leftovers and I understand how that looks from your point of view. But I’m not claiming to be some proud marriage wrecker. I fell so deeply in love with a man I shouldn’t have that I no longer have a will to live and raise my own family. I can’t function anymore and my children are paying the price of a depressed mother and it scares them. I am destroyed and have no self worth. I admit I am a completely broken and terrible person for doing this. I am all the horrible things going through your mind. I am sorry for dropping to this level but I have lost all control.
Tony was my life and love. Tony has been at my home many times and helped me with everything, met my children, visited at work, met my friends and showered me with love, flowers, dates and gifts. He was very good to me emotionally the first year – and he learned to let go where I could not. He helped me get my job and supported me and gave me advice through many things with work or the kids. He was my partner. He was the first and only man to show me what love should truly look like and how a partner should behave.
People think I have so much but I have nothing without Tony. Unfortunately for me, Tony doesn’t feel that way – he feels he has nothing without his family intact. He made that decision last year and we spent a year trying to establish something else that never worked. I know how pitiful all of this is. I know I have no self respect and self worth. But when he loved me, I had everything I ever dreamed of and I don’t know how to let go of that dream without just quitting my own life.
Tony can’t stand me like this: broken and pathetic. He only likes when I ignore my actual feelings because he is able
To compartmentalize his. Is that how you do it? Do you avoid him when he gets stubborn?
I am sorry this letter is cruel but how else do you know who you are married to? I can’t blame you, I still love him and would take him as he is. But if you are staying married, you should have fair
Playing ground.
I’m open to criticism and suggestions on the letter. I do not know what happens. Maybe it dies on the blog. MAybe not. But I had to get it out of my head.
