u/Record-Mundane

I’ve tried to be concise but there’s just so much more of it no matter how short I try to keep it.

I (32M) dated my ex wife for five years before I got married to her. It was a monogamous relationship and neither of us had ever been with anyone else. Until two months before the wedding, I cannot remember any fight with her that ever lasted more than a few hours. I don’t mean to say that there were no red flags; there were so many of them which I ignored. My ex had a propensity to lie about the smallest of things, which I constantly made excuses for: oh, she’s just being childish, it’s harmless. She wouldn’t lie about anything that’s important. I had convinced myself that I was the exception to the rule in her world, and that there is nothing that she would ever do to jeopardise the relationship. After all, I had been so perfect as a partner in so many ways; why would she?

Two months before the wedding, I had a feeling that something was off, and I doubted that she was hooking up with one of her new friends. Dude appeared out of nowhere. I asked- she lied about it. How could I accuse her of such a thing, she asked. Tears. I believed her, or at least convinced myself that I did. I knew in my gut that she was cheating on me, but I went ahead and got married to her anyway. In the two months before the wedding, in order to make me feel at ease about this friend of hers, she started inviting him as well in plans with me, so as to convince me that there was nothing going on between them. All while fucking him the whole time.

I had planned a two week long honeymoon in New Zealand right after the wedding. New Zealand was a destination I had wanted to go to all my life. Everything was planned around what she would like. I had done all of the planning, spent a bomb on it as well. While in New Zealand, on New Year’s Eve, I asked her again if there was anything she had to come clean about. Because we could try to put it to bed first thing, and try to build something new looking to the future. She lied again. Tears again. She convinced me yet again that nothing was going on between them. And on New Year’s Eve, just before the clock strikes 12, she video calls her fucktoy right in front of me and we both wish him a happy new year from NZ. That’s what I remember from that trip.

After coming back from the trip, it was evident that something was really really wrong. To the outside world, it seemed perfect still, and I had not spoken about any of this to anyone. I could not bring myself to. What was a very active sex life became non-existent overnight. Like a switch of a light bulb. Even during the time, she keeps up the charade that she hasn’t cheated and keeps making me meet the guy and attempting to get us to be friends. Until one fine day I cracked and asked her to come clean. It was insulting my intelligence and had been so for at least six months then. She finally admitted that she was fucking him the whole time. She said it was purely sexual and not emotional at all, promised to cut him off and the entire friend group associated with him, and begged me to take her back. Like a fucking idiot, I took her back.

In the months that followed, she did better to cover her tracks, but she kept fucking him. I know that now, but at the time, she kept lying. I can never say that I believed her ever— I knew in my gut. Yet, I went along with it. She would leave every morning with an alibi and she would come back in the night to me. Throughout the marriage, zero sex. I would try, but I would be refused every day. She would say that after she cheated on me, she feels guilty while getting close to me and that is why I’m being refused sexual intimacy. So many fights about how she could cheat me like this— yet she kept lying and cheating on me every single day. I made so many excuses for her. I did not spy on her. I tried to control my reactions the best I could. I was more concerned about her feeling called out rather than the emotional turmoil that I was going through.

I stayed like this for well over a year. Without speaking a word of it to anyone. Still doing my duty as a husband; providing for her, being emotionally available, helping her dysfunctional family out, trying to put her before me all the fucking time. Absolutely and utterly erasing myself in the process. All the while she was fucking me over— I knew it and I chose to ignore it. Every morning, I would wake up feeling emasculated. Like the weight of the world was on my shoulders and I was trapped. How could I possibly admit to the world that this was my reality, and that I was such a fucking fool through and through?

However, one day, something snapped in me. I was not going to give this thought the time of day, and I would spend my time working hard on myself and at my work. In the three months that followed, I found that I was barely ever home. I was making new friends, putting in long hours at work and the gym- life started feeling good again. I was still living with this cheating lying swine; however, mentally, I was checked out. Every lie after that just felt like more closure. During this time, I had the chance at a workplace fling. I tried to take that chance also, and tried cheating back, but much to my dismay, my dick wouldn’t work. I had been so emasculated and refused for so long that I didn’t think I knew what to do with it anymore. However, I made no attempts to hide this and soon enough, she found out. I admitted immediately and told her that I was out. I told her I did not regret anything that I did.

She attempted to reconcile multiple times, and did everything that you would expect a typical narcissist to do in the aftermath of this, but finally, a few months down the line, I got my divorce. I dealt with so much of this alone that I have gotten so close to myself. A year later, I’m both in therapy and a thoroughly fulfilling adult relationship. I do not wake up with this weight anymore. The truth I will have to always live with was that I was willing to sacrifice all of my self respect for a woman who was bleeding me dry in all senses of the word. I offered it all up willingly for nothing. But sometimes, the best you can do is to dust yourself off and look ahead. I’ve tried to kill the parts of myself that led me to make those horrible decisions for myself. If I had to blame anyone for this, I would blame myself because I brought this upon myself and I cannot see it any other way. But what use do I have of that blame?

I got promoted at work. Money is good. Dog is good. Love life is good. The soft parts of me that I have fought hard to keep alive are still very much alive. Life’s good.

Any bowler dead or alive

“ The Road Not Taken- By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

This poem is something extremely close to my heart. When I took the plunge into this exam by leaving my six-figure job that I had at 22, I was at a crossroads. Each of the roads had its own opportunities and neither one was any less traveled really. Further, much like each way leads to another way, each one offered a different life, fulfilling in its own ways. At that time, I decided to use this poem as my anthem of uniqueness. I was following my dream, and to dare to follow your dreams is the stuff of great poetry. I rationalised it as my road less traveled, but it wasn’t really any less traveled than the other one. Had I cleared my exam in either of my four attempts, some day long into the future, I would have probably proudly told my grandkids that I took the road that was less traveled, and that made all the difference. If my experiences as an IAS officer made me regret my choices, I would still rationalise them but say that they were wrong in retrospect. I would say that they made all the difference, in a tone filled with  regret. 

After my failures, I found myself at a crossroads again. It wasn’t the same crossroads and I wasn’t the same person. Each way had led to another way, until I reached here. I had come quite close to clearing the exam, but did it matter at all? I could have kept preparing for the exam or have taken up a job. I chose my way of taking up a job. It has been five years since, and I’m doing really well at my job and my career hasn’t really taken a hit at all. I can now make peace with the years that I wasted preparing for this examination and tell people how not clearing the exam helped me become a much better lawyer, and contribute better in the private sector. I could probably even tell them that this was what was better for me than the services. And I would then point to this crossroads and say how my choice made all the difference, and how my choice of moving on from the exam was the tougher thing to do (which most others don’t); how that was what always was meant for me, and how the pain that I willingly put myself through needlessly on end for years with absolutely no assurance of a payback was in fact well founded, as it made steel out of iron. Give me a break.

You don’t need to glorify this examination. You can go about life without this examination as well and very well be able to develop valuable skills such as resilience, honesty and commitment which will help you in life. It is not a function of your choice of UPSC prep necessarily, that is life.

The decision to pursue the CSE should not come from an emotional place. It is a highly uncertain and unpredictable process, whichever way you look at it. Factor in where you are at mentally, physically and professionally, the state of the economy, the possibility of failure at each of the three different stages of the exam, the possibility of success and how that would empower you. Do it only after you completely assess the reasons for and against, and weigh them against each other. At the end of the day, whatever decision you will take is the right call. Trust it, commit to it and if at a later point in time, you want to make a different call, that option would always be open to you.

Whenever you are stuck at a crossroads, you will make a choice. Someone else would make a different choice. Each choice would lead you down an entirely different path, as one way always leads to another. One day, everyone would rationalise their choices and point to them as the ones that made all the difference. Because what else can you do?