For you readers out there, I will probably do this blog topic in sections. These entries are for ME, but feel free to comment. :)
I went to a pizza get together at a friend's house. I was invited because we are in the same Young Family Life Sunday School class at church together. This was only a week after my husband left and I was still in initial shock. Although everyone there was married and had children already, I needed to be around close friends. So, I went. By the time I arrived everyone had already eaten and the women were in one area, the men in another. I took a call on my cell phone and by the time I was finished it was dark and everyone had gone inside together. I went into the house and sat down on the couch with a girl friend of mine and her baby. Suddenly, I glanced across the room and saw a smoking hot male late twenties, early thirties that I didn't recognize. I also noticed he wasn't wearing a ring. So, I poked my friend and asked her who he was. She said, "Oh, that's Kevin*, you don't know Kevin?". Everyone started getting ready to leave at about that same time and I went into the kitchen. He was in the kitchen too and I introduced myself. (The strangest thing is that he had worked with my husband and a guy we went to church with. He hasn't lived in the area very long and hadn't met very many friends, so they had been trying to get Kevin to come to church with us. My husband and I had also been trying to find someone for him to date, and had asked him to come over to our house several times to hang out, but I had never met him.) So, he said he had heard that Chuckie* had left and he was sorry. I was grinning like a school girl and choking back tears-talk about mixed emotions! At this point, I was still wearing my rings. We started talking and everyone else left the kitchen. He said he had gone into my dad's shop when it was still open (when my dad was still living 7 years ago.) My husband had told him who my dad was. We talked and flirted some. Then we picked up alphabet magnets from the floor and put them back on the dishwasher. All the while, I was hoping not to turn my head to face him in this tiny space! We stood up and finally acknowledged that everyone was outside but us. So, we went into the living room and sat down on separate couches, waiting for our hosts to come back inside.
Understand readers, I didn't plan on getting a divorce at that point, much less seeing someone else! I flirted inside boundaries that night-just enough to flatter myself. I was dying on the inside. In fact, when Kevin left, I told my friend that she should never leave me alone with him again because I was vulnerable and he was very attractive-physically and emotionally.
*Obviously, I am not using anyone's real name.