note: i have edited this entry because i was contacted by tamara via a mutual friend and it appears some of the things i posted were not appreciated. while i think i am justified in putting the truth of the situation in my blog if it affected me on a personal level, i realize some of it may have come across as overly vindictive or mean-spirited. i think my actions are completely understandable given what was done to me; however, while i believe i should be able to state the truth of events, i also don’t believe i should seem to be speaking purely out of anger or for revenge. revealing truths after i’ve been suffering with them for so long was good, but some of the events that factored into my mistreatment don’t need me to parade them around. (and there’s plenty of stuff i’ve still never posted.) hopefully truth will eventually conquer deceit and lies. that said, areas edited below by me will be denoted by italics and square brackets.
[(i know this is […long…])
on the two year anniversary of tamara tabo (my ex-wife) telling me she was having an affair with alistair isaac, i’ve decided i’ll share some thoughts and experiences surrounding that…
i’ve been in alistair’s dad’s house.
(yes, i was invited.)
this was before i knew about the affair. [mid-2003] i think probably (hopefully) even before they were having the affair. alistair had a party while his dad was out of town (out of the country, if i recall correctly). a bunch of the uofh philosophy grad students were there, as well as alistair’s younger brother […] and some of his friends. there was drinking, pot smoking, that sort of stuff — a typical party except every now and then they used big words or rattled off some academic philosophical references or such. mostly it was just typical partying that goes on all over the place […]
[…] tamara seemed to think it was so cool and enjoyable. i went even though i didn’t really want to, because tamara seemed to pitch it as so great and different. that shows how much she’d started changing her views and focus, her values in life. because she had already gone through that […], and had come out the other side with a supposedly better stance on things. for the seven or eight years before that, this was not the life tamara craved at all (unless she was lieing to me and/or herself).
but now it seems very likely she had started to crave something new, or on a much heightened level: status. and alistair — the guy she had previously [spoken in negative terms about] — had access to status through his dad (and a bit of his own). suddenly she could go to fancy expensive dinners, meet and talk to “important” people, etc. so she hid things from me, relishing her newfound ability to craft her identity to be “cool” to whatever group of people she found herself with. (that first part is informed conjecture, the middle based on tamara’s descriptions, and that last line i’ve seen [written])
but obviously a life based on lies isn’t stable. oh, she was scheming. she was planning. she wanted to get all of the benefit she could from me until she finished her degree and could cleanly move on to a new graduate school, and leave me behind in the process. i also think maybe she wanted me to suggest divorce, maybe even that i would leave her, and she would never have to reveal the sin she was in and total betrayal she was committing against me. but her new appetite got the better of her. (most of this stuff i [saw written as well])
so it unraveled. two years ago today. [on oct 10th, 2003] the day she finally felt so sorry for what she was doing to me that she admitted she was having an affair. i was to the point where i couldn’t even make simple decisions, because i didn’t know what the right choice was for our relationship. i was trying my best to follow biblical principles regarding marriage and love — patience, kindness, long-suffering — but it was hard. (and i’m not claiming i was perfect about it either.) it seemed like no matter what i did, i got nothing back. i didn’t know what to do. she was ignoring me, leaving me out…it wasn’t only like we weren’t married, it was like we weren’t even friends…hardly even roommates. i knew something might be going on, i’d even questioned her about it at least once. but it seemed inappropriate to ask because i’d had so much faith in her integrity and her belief in the sanctity of marriage. i’d hoped she was just going through a difficult phase because of the miscarriage, and maybe she just needed some time to deal with things, some time to sort things out and maybe some time away from me to think, to find some things that gave her some happiness. little did i know what that would be.
i was at work, at my desk, on the phone with her when she told me. i’d missed the last bus home because i was talking to her about how she’d been treating me and what was going on. she’d been “missing” my calls, leaving her phone elsewhere, etc., while planning and doing things with other people (mostly alistair, obviously). on this specific occasion, she had planned out her weekend sans me, including going to a show, going to a party or two, and perhaps seeing a movie with others that we’d both wanted to see, suggesting if neither of us saw it that weekend maybe we could watch it together the next week. due to my attempts to get in touch with her and then our discussion, i missed my last bus, so i needed to decide if i was going to ride local routes or if i wanted her to pick me up. for the life of me, i couldn’t decide. it’s hard to explain the gravity i felt was attached to that decision — to every decision — at the time. i just wanted things to stabilize, to get better. but they weren’t, and i didn’t know what to do. i was literally at the point of tears trying to figure out if she should come to pick me up or not. so eventually she asked me why i was doing this to myself. and i said “because i don’t have a choice.” she said i did. which confused me, so i said “no i don’t. i made my choice when i married you. i don’t have a choice.” and she said “terry, yes you do. because…i’ve been having an affair.”
i have no idea how to express how it felt to hear her say that. to hear the person i’d put all of my faith in, put my life in, who i’d suffered for and with trying to work toward a better future, who my whole world was intimately tied to, who had told me she loved me, who’d told me so much…and while i was trying to figure out for the life of me what i could do to maybe pull our unravelling life back together, to have that person be having a relationship and sex with someone behind my back. i had put my complete trust in her, i had given her my heart and soul, and she was scheming to leave me while fscking [someone] behind my back.
but she was like a different person — getting drunk, smoking, snide and mean-spirited. […] she was changing her reasons for why she was doing things, sometimes admitting she was being unfair to me, sometimes crying about it, sometimes acting defiant, sometimes acting like she couldn’t care less about me. she said she wanted to get back at G-d and i was just the unfortunate sap caught in the crossfire. at least that was her story at times. […]
there’s so much more i could write. and at some points in the future i might. but i’m not trying to paint myself as a martyr, the perfect husband being totally taken advantage of by his evil wife. i handled some situations poorly, i have personality flaws. i didn’t see the warning signs plainly enough, i didn’t do some of the things i should have to try and get her talking and deal with some of her/our issues. and it honestly was really difficult to deal with the stuff we were going through, especially with our differences in ways of handling stress and trying circumstances. but these events did happen, and these are the experiences i had. i do feel like i was treated unfairly, both then and afterward, and i have plenty of reason to think that isn’t some selfish perspective that is devoid of external truth. others will have experienced these events differently…or not at all…
[…] because she and alistair were busy living a lie […].
[…] what was she possibly trying to accomplish by going to counseling with me while still seeing him and sleeping with him? why did she even ask about trying to reconcile? why did she keep going to the counselor? every time we went there i learned something worse about what she had done or was doing. i felt like i was being told to meet in the middle, then every time the middle moved, until finally i was miles down the road and nowhere closer to any reconciliation. but at that point, it was really out of my hands. and as time went out, i found out tamara cared less and less about fairness and more and more about what she could get out of the situation. and there was really nothing i could do, except watch the person i’d made vows to, that i had worked at trying to forgive and seek reconcilation, slowly take advantage of eventually almost everything she could.
so here’s to two years after.