The Path we must Walk

I have decided that what I really need in all this is an out let. A place I can write what I really feel, about the path I'm on and how I am going to walk through it.
So here I sit. Alone. It's early and my house and my heart look like a battlefield. I want nothing more than to be snapped back into my old life. Transported back to October of this year. I want to be standing in my kitchen making dinner and when I hear him say "I have a ride along tonight with the new dispatcher" I want to stop him right there, kiss him, tell him he's special and that his wife loves him. Instead the reality is I kept working, never looking up, pretending I was so busy I couldn't be bothered with his work life. That's the first thing I want to do right now in this moment. It was a few days after Thanksgiving that I knew something had changed. I am pregnant with our third child, a boy we'll name Trav. Jake and Luke are time consuming as is,  but I am noticing their cries for their father. He's home, but absent. He sits on the couch most days after waking from the night shift. He is busy on the laptop, and his cell phone is never around. I wonder for a moment...could it be? Could he be absent, lost in his computer because it's happening again? No...No we've been through this...a girl at work, flirting with him, exchanging sexy text messages and emails and  pretty soon their meeting for tacos and kissing in a parking lot. No..we've done this. Our marriage has survived and things seem really great now. 4 years later I no longer check his email, dig through his phone I trust this man I have loved for 14 years. Mistakes happen, once learned from they don't happen again? Do they?  The giant gash in my heart has healed nicely since then with a big gray spot of scar tissue. A scar so large I didn't know there was room for more breakage. HE had to know there wasn't more room for breakage. But instead I decide that I would keep my eyes open and just see if my husband would return, return to the man that played with his kids and asked me how I was. For 2 weeks I am plagued with dreams of him with another woman. I awake crying uncontrollably, drowning in my own tears. One morning he walks into our room and sees the tears I tell him. "You left me, you bought a house with a woman, she was pregnant...you gave her my dream home" he laughs..."Your pregnant my dear, hormones do funny things to women" and walks into the bathroom. It's now mid December and our 14 year anniversary is coming. We plan a sitter, so we can go out to a fancy dinner. I buy a new maternity outfit, I want to look as good as you can at 5 months pregnant. As I am getting ready, he walks out of the bathroom. He looks at me and nothing is said. No "you look great" just compliments himself. I tell him he's hurt my feelings, he leaves and let's the sitter in. My heart screams at my head "something is not right...you must ask" During dinner we sit by candlelight and make small talk. Mostly about the up coming birth of Trav, and all the things we must get done. At dessert I take his hand and say "I hope you start acting like yourself again soon, I hope that it's not what I think it is and that you'll come back to me" He laughs and tells me I'm acting crazy. After dinner we ride back in silence. We're headed to a Christmas party and I'm aware that he wants to go have fun and not talk about our marriage. I again approach the subject. "if you are I will find out. I can understand that sometimes friendships go too far, and pretty soon your having feelings you shouldn't be and that you can at any time stop it and return to our marriage." I have given him his out, but silence is all I receive in return. Sunday goes by and he's almost giddy to get to work that night. He's acted this way about heading to work for a few weeks now. I have decided that my approach is not working. Before he leaves I tell him..."Have fun with your girlfriend" he leaves. Something tells me to go online and check his phone bill. I log on and the computer freezes. Monday I awake feeling sick and spend the day in bed. Tuesday morning he arrives home from work a little later than normal. It's Christmas break and the kids and I are sleeping in. He doesn't come to bed. He sleeps on the couch until I wake up. When I do I wake  him and ask him why he didn't come to bed. He says he didn't want to wake me. He'll see me this afternoon and he hopes I feel better. I have a ton of Christmas cookies to bake for his work. So I get started knowing I have to pick up my 11 year old cousin at 1:30 from school. At 1:15 I pick up the computer and log on to the cell phone website. Again it freezes, and I leave the site up on the computer. That afternoon I am busy with all the kids decorating cookies and preparing dinner. After my cousin leaves, I am busy with baths and bed time. He leaves for work. I don't even know if he has kissed me good bye. The kids go to bed early and by 8pm I return to the computer to check my email. The cell phone site is up, and it ask me to login again. I do. I see the number, it's there so many times. My hands start to shake and I pick up my house phone to call it. It goes to voicemail and I hear "Hey you've reached Sara, leave me a message" I hang up the phone and my heart feels like it's fallen to the floor. Sara...Sara...who is Sara? I pick up the phone again and listen 2 more times. It's only 8:08 and he has just started his shift. My hands are clammy, "Mike?" "Yes" he says and I ask "who is Sara?" It's quiet for a moment. He explains she is a dispatcher, he often has to call her from his cell phone while working so not to busy up the radio with small business stuff. But I explain that he isn't calling during times he is working. He tells me he'll be right home. My heart is broken open. The scar tissue broken free and blood feels like it's running onto the floor. The Christmas tree sparkling, and I fall to my knees and scream "How could this be? Again!" I keep calling her, no answer. This time I leave a message. "Sara, this is Mike's wife and I know what you have been doing. I am pregnant, I have 2 wonderful boys at home. We are a family. Stay away from my family." He arrives. My anger takes over, as he walks to the door from his car I start to clap...the way you would if you were proud of someone coming home with a promotion. His head is held low, and he tells me to stop. He sits next to the Christmas tree and I listen to what he tells me. I don't remember any of it. I am shocked. I ask what he wants to do. Was he planning on leaving now, or waiting until the baby came. He says he never planned to leave. He was confused. I asked if she was okay with our family. He said she felt guilty and wished he was single. But that she would be okay with his kids. He tells me he has feelings for her. I push him further. "can you see yourself with her? Do you love her?" He tells me he has feelings and that he may be falling in love with her after 3 weeks" I tell him,well I love you flaws and all. 14 years seems like too long to be thrown away for a 3 week affair, that he is the father of my kids and that I will do anything for him. I instruct him to call her. He walks outside and 4 minutes later he returns and tells me it's over. Before he can tell me any details, Sara calls my phone. She tells me that she never did anything other than have a friendship with my husband that she does not want to lose her job and Mike is crazy if he thinks their friendship was more. She would never disrespect another woman by having an affair with a married man. I tell her I have the emails and phone records... she keeps denying it all.  I'm not stupid and I hang up. His phone rings, I tell him he better answer it on speaker. He does, she cuts into him wanting to know what I have. Why he didn't deny it? What is he going to do?She will not lose her job over him. I fly into a rage...like the one from the movie Unfaithful. I know that at any moment I could stab him. I grab a knife and start to chase him around the house. He is scared. I stab the knife into the coffee table in front of him. It stands there still vibrating into the wood. I ask him to get out. And he walks out the door. It's 5 days before Christmas, my family has been torn ed into pieces. My heart feels heavy and I lay on the floor and sob. The night doesn't end there and over the next 30 hours I am awake and he has returned. There are so many conversations and confessions that I am unsure how to process. I walk around dazed. Unable to be a mother to my kids, my own mother steps in. There are moments where we talk and I think I can fix it all. His demons. This dark side of him caused by bad people and bad family life. There is no excuse that makes it better. There is nothing he can say or do that helps. I have nowhere to go. I must sit in the skin I am in and figure it out. I don't want to end this relationship. I am told over and over again I should. Something tells me that 4 weeks of an affair is not enough to end a relationship. He pledges to do whatever it takes to save his family. And me. Well for the time being my heart is on pause. The next steps will decide which path in the fork in the road I will take. I am unsure I am ever doing the right thing, but I also know that unlike before I did not cause this. That I take very little if any blame in this. This is not my flaw. While I wish I could be in denial. I am not. And because I am not I must stay and figure out if this is fixable, or if I must walk the path away from our family.