my fear is not coming from me not being able to cope with life. i am a very independent person. financially and emotionally. my fear at the moment is not knowing what will happen if i confront him now. my distress at the moment is having to put a brave face and go on for the next several weeks.

in reality, i want to scream, shout, cry and make some damage to this person who is putting me through this. but at the same time i want my relationship to work. for the sake of my children. for the sake of normalcy. for the sake of preserving the intimacy we have had for the past 12 long years. for the sake of having faith in this institution that we call marriage.

i am from a broken family. i haven’t known my dad. i have had a step father and i have had an agonizing childhood. i don’t want my children to experience what i did.

i have also had first had experience of what my mother went through and is going through to hang on to her marriage. i have experienced how my stepfather’s children (my siblings – i don’t consider them half siblings) hate their father to the extent that they don’t even talk to him even when they are living under the same roof.

these are the the two sides of the coin i am looking at at the moment. i am having difficulty deciding what side i am going to choose. do i choose my children not to have a father!? or do i chose my children to have a father yet live hating him or even me for tagging along!?

at the moment i am more inclined to go my own way and break free (but only after i reach home). i am starting to believe that no matter how much i want the relationship to work it will not if he is going to continue the way he is.

the agony really is that past few years have actually been good for us. after the last incident of infidelity on his part during 2001, i have actually started to feel at ease with him again. started to feel secure in the relationship and started to feel i could trust him again.

the last time, i did not have anything concrete other than that other woman saying that he said he was divorced - and he saying he never said that. this time, i am having real-time conversations to read through on a daily basis. what a folly this online environment has become. he is actually ignorant enough to be unaware of his chat log acumulating in the “my received files” folders. i sometime scold myself for reading it. for if i hadn’t i will still be blissfully happy in my marriage. i will not be this confused. i will not be feeling this sense of someone pressing my lungs hard and long enough to make it difficult to breath. i will not be feeling this cold shiver running through my body the moment i read what they have to say behind my back about me. and i will not be feeling these tears welling behind my eyes.

the agonizing part is that this time he is not lying about his marital status. but he is using another line. that he is suffocating in this marriage. that both of us are not compatible. one of them uses a nick “vathu kiba” to refer to me (whatever that means). the conversations starts in the middle of a relationship. and now i am seeing the making of another relationship. his mobile credit seems to be always running out. and he gets all defensive when i even question it a little. and it gets much more distressing when some of their conversations reveal that they have known each other before.

i am starting to blame myself for putting myself in this situation. why couldn’t i just have ignored his recent addiction with msn?!! why couldn’t i have granted him his privacy! am i being paranoid? is this just some little time pass that he is going through? should i give him a chance to get over this infatuation (if i may call it that) and give him a chance to explain?

what i honestly can’t understand is why he is doing this

i am really scared of what is happening to my life. my kids life!!!