WDILM - cont.

This cycle of living (if you can call it that) we had fallen into continued until it all came to a head one day.  I was already fighting normal suspicions that he is just all over the place.  A friend is talking to me about a friend's daughter who knows this Moroccan guy (and she's telling me since I have a Moroccan in common) that she is emailing and seeing and yada, yada, yada.  It was a completely innocent conversation, except the more she was talking, the more it was sounding like MY Morrocan!  I didn't say anything to her, but I had (quite on accident while calling his sister from his phone one day) seen a shortened version of this girl's name in his phone.  So, I did the appropriate thing and asked him if he knew this girl by this name and who is she? I am told she is one of his clients and let it go at the time.  But, I am curious and his cell IS on my plan, so I look at the records.  Wow - that was enlightening.  What I find to be this girl's number has 300+ calls, texts, etc. per month over the past 6 months.  I ask him again if he is sure he doesn't know anyone else by this name.  Nope.  So, I hacked his email account and found gues what?  Emails to and from this girl consisting of "your body is heaven on earth", "sorry I couldn't make it yesterday, I will explain later".  So, I confront him and tell him that my friend told me this story and it sounded like him and ironically a girl of the same name.  He denies anything but having a client of that name.  He is completely outraged, shaking, furious that I am confronting him. He just can't believe that I can't believe him.  He has no idea how he can prove he is telling the truth.  So, I ask him to open up his email account for me.  Oh no...he won't do that. He is not going to have me irrationally suspicious of him as a reason to invade his privacy.  So, I said, fine, take the door.  He is ranting and I am ignoring because I meant it.  He calls his brother, they talk in Moroccan and then he comes and tells me he will open it, but not here where I might have fiddled with the computer, but at his duplex.  Okay, we go to his duplex, he opens the mail and it is empty.  And I am talking not even one piece of spam anywhere, no deleted items, no sent items, nothing!  He quite proudly said, "see, I told you that was irrationale and I would prove you wrong".  I said, no, all you proved was that you can call your brother, have him delete everything and that you definitely think you are a slick ass fuck!  Once I told him I had previously hacked the email account and knew what was in there, he changed his tune to some of his guy friends using his account.  Yeah, whatever.  During this same just few days, I had also realized he had resigned his lease once again (even though he was lying to me about doing so).
We separated at this point.
Oh, how I wish I had just gone on.  At that point, I was bouncing back.  During the 4-5 months we were separated, I got my dance studio finished, planned and celebrated an opening night and had several projects planned there.  I was broken hearted, but not destroyed, not torn to pieces like I ended up being later. At that time, I still had a couple friends that had my back.  They were helping me like crazy, supporting me like mad and I was more mad and righteous about being cheated on with a 19-year-old girl six months after I married!!!  I didn't contact him, I didn't go near his place, I didn't care.
Biggest mistake of my life - Around the end of month 4, he e-mailed me, said he was sorry to bother me, but his dad was really sick and he wanted to know if I could send him information on the disease since I had worked so long in the medical field.  I copied articles and info on the disease and emailed it back to him.  He ended up calling wanting clarification.  He was very nice and respectful talking to me.  He then ask if he could meet with me to talk.  OMG - as I mentioned earlier, he has that gift of talking that is absolutely amazing.  Yep, I got hoovered.
Only to not after much time return to the same old shit different day.  Until I was done and he was arrested and wow, finally divorced now.  Now to get to the real meat of these issues now that I've gone on ad nauseum refreshing things in my own mind - what was I thinking, feeling, good grief!
Firstly, I know that my biggest problem with my boundaries is that I often set them and then don't stick by them.  I usually back down later feeling guilty. I have learned to not feel so guilty and to say no.  This part of my journey is happening.  And I have this huge issue with justifying things.  I can see with the N from the very beginning seeing it written out, way too many times when I let it go because of...insert whatever here.  I have been working on this, but I think part of what I need to do is truly outline what is okay and not okay for me.  Is it okay to make me feel bad if you are tired and stressed?  If so, when is it okay and how much of that is okay?  A little more work on my own rules of 3 or 2 or 1.
I can also see my need to really state my boundaries clearly.  I think many times I'm so easygoing that it's not real clear - maybe even to me that I mean it!  Just communicating such things as "I am just too exhausted to focus on tacos".  That way if issues arise later, I know I have stated where I am at and there is no question later that I stated it and it was crossed.
As to the whys.  I wanted this man (who he pretened to be).  I wanted a classy, gorgeous, intelligent, cultured, well-traveled man.  In part, actually, I think I wanted a type of trophy husband!  I think this does stem from my high expectations I have held for myself and in part to prove something. 
I also really got into a cycle with him of feeling competitive.  I was going to one up him, I was going to not only prove that I was good, that I was smart, I was also going to prove that he wasn't all that.  He was absolutely the only person in my life that I can remember ever making me feel inadequate like that.  It's happened a time or two in certain situations, but overall feeling that way.  Nope, that was a first for me.
Where does it come from?  Being alone a lot.  It wasn't tragic, I actually enjoyed being free to wonder about nature and be myself.  And my parents were great parents when they were there.  But, I don't think this helped me develop a lot of normal life communication skills that I probably should have learned earlier in life.  And it also promoted quite a bit of fantasy type thinking.
As far as this need to prove myself worthy.  I always felt worthy to my parents.  But I think I did feel off - like born in the wrong time and place type off. I never quite understood society or our roles in it, really.  I do think this ties into the above aloneness and fantasy thinking.  And in part to my school career, never being in the same types of classes or levels as my actual friends. My main memories of especially my teen years socialization was friends and my cousin trying to explain to me the ins and outs of it.  Like, Rani - this is how you flirt with a guy.  You can't be all deep and weird, it freaks them out.
To me, my drive to stay with this man at all costs had a lot more to do with me wanting to show all these "friends", people, the world that a deep, weird, freak could attract and keep this gorgeous world-traveler.
I think this process, although long and a bit of rehashing, I think has been helpful.  I never really accepted before how much I have actually felt like a freak during my life.  I have touched on it a bit here and there, but never really owned up to not thinking I'm okay.  I'm going to let this sink in for a bit and hope to get some more sleep....