The Forgiveable Journey Of The Cheated

33. Making Progress

This new communication honeymoon does not last more than a week. 

Eve still has so many questions. Emboldened by last week’s “discussion”, she again expresses her desire to send a letter to Charlotte. She also wants to know if Charlotte will be at the party Dan is going to next week. While her need to express herself had been received politely and with some acquiescence, these questions and requests are met with a fiery “no!” He tells her in his angry voice that he has no intentions of returning to Charlotte and that he would not go to the party if he thought that she would be there. “If by small chance she is there, I’ll leave. Charlotte has moved on to new things Eve!” 

He’s completely missing the point. He has interpreted her inquiries as a way of keeping tabs on him, as an expression of a concern that he may cheat on her again. He is in defensive mode and Eve knows that it will be thorny progress to explain her point of view. Her initial reaction is to evaluate his reaction, judge it negatively, and then disconnect: make plans to let him go and then spend the evening meandering the paths of her parallel world. It would be so much easier. 

But this must stop.

So she tells him that she does trust him, and that her questions about the possibility of the two of them crossing paths has nothing to do with worries about attraction between them. She has noticed his shiver of revulsion to discussions around what his life and future would have been if he had tried to build a life with Charlotte, and therefore Eve truly no longer had any suspicions of Dan harboring desires to be with Charlotte. The truth is, Eve actually hopes that he will cross paths with Charlotte. She hopes that Charlotte will see that she has been rejected. She hopes that Charlotte will see that he is happy and that he has no regrets. She hopes that Charlotte will make another scene in front of the others, to which Dan will respond negatively. After all, Eve never said anything about giving up scenarios of vengeance on Charlotte.

Despite the fact that Dan does not react disapprovingly to Eve’s explanations for her inquiries into Charlotte’s potential presence and contact with him, she is ashamed of having mean and vindictive thoughts. She had always had them in her inner world, but bringing them over to the real world, expressing them out loud to Dan, brought with them their lot of shame. She is not proud of these thoughts at all. Did Dan experience the same phenomenon? Of not feeling guilt or shame as long as he kept his second life secret and compartmentalized?  Did he too go through the process of deciding to merge his two lives into one healthy one, only to discover that the merging came with embarrassing feelings of shame? 

Acting and thinking in a manner incoherent with real life values within a secret or impossible world is obviously more comfortable than actually bringing such actions and thoughts to light. The discordance could actually be felt. 

If Dan is listening to Eve’s admissions of the shame brought about by revealing certain thoughts, it is also because he knows a lot about the shame that comes with admitting things of which one is far from proud. Instead of finding her anger and expressed unkindness unacceptable and ugly, he knows it takes courage. 

He is also caught a little off guard by her reasons. It was a far cry from his initial reasoning. 

This discussion is followed by further peace within and between them.

Then Eve is asking questions again. She can’t help herself. Eve pretty much follows Dan around the house requesting answers he has no intention of answering. For some of the questions, he isn’t really sure of the answers because he no longer remembers. For most of them, he knows his answers will have no power to be helpful. For others, he can’t remember what he answered (lied) the first time around and he is afraid to contradict himself. He’s fucked even if he tells the truth because even truths raise new contradictions about another truth she never believed or a lie he forgot about.