My husband started talking about a divorce and sleeping on the couch the week after Thanksgiving. The majority of that month was a blur of holiday happenings and undeniable distance. Before we knew it, it was Christmas week. We had just come home from a Grinch performance and put the kids to bed. My husband said he wanted to talk. I sat at the end of our bed facing the computer where he sat. As soon as I sat there I knew. My blood ran cold. I was floating above my body. ‘This is the moment when your life will change. You will remember this for the rest of your life’ I thought. I wanted desperately to be wrong … I wasn’t. I held my pregnant stomach and listened in silence. As he sat there he told me he had been seeing someone else I felt numb and in denial. My brain heard his words but I couldn’t process them. The story of his affair unraveled slowly. Every new detail I learned I was sure was the last.
Over two years after that day in December and trying (but not succeeding) to save our marriage, I learned the affair had spanned over half of our marriage. I felt like a fraud. Like my entire life was a lie. I felt distant from my children who I’d always believed were conceived in love. How could I be so blind? I envisioned running away so many times.
It’s been two years since we divorced. The pain and hurt from my ex have finally stopped bleeding. I now see that the affair was a blessing in disguise that led me out of a toxic and unhealthy marriage. Life is on the upswing again. I have come to enjoy my freedom and been reminded of the undeniable strength and importance of female friendships. I have embraced my family of four vs five and we finally feel back on our feet. I feel closer to my kids than I ever have.
But even when I feel on top of the world I am realizing that the damage is still there. I have started dating again. And both times I started to get close to someone only to find myself drowning in the insecurities that still linger from my marriage. I bring whatever hope for a new future under the currents with me until they have been swept away too. Jealousy is an ugly beast who I have not learned to strangle. The burden of the work to rebuild the trust we didn’t succeed at in our marriage has just been transferred to whoever I am dating. I hate it. I want it to just go away.
I am someone who values family and security above all else (where are my fellow cancers?). I crave stability, yet my scars keep me swatting it away. Being vulnerable is not a feeling I was ever great with, and that has only been amplified in recent years.
It feels so ridiculous most days. I have three amazing happy healthy children. A job that I genuinely love. A home surrounded by the most amazing neighbors you could ask for. Life has been good to me. And yet I can still get hung up on the mud of insecurities lingering from the affair and my previous marriage the moment I try to let anyone in.
To anyone reading this: I do not care how unhappy you are in your marriage. I do not care how tempted you are by your kid-free co-worker. I do not care what a junkie for lust you are. I do not care if you’re bored. I do not care, and neither will your spouse. Be an adult and address your issues, don’t hide them under someone else’s sheets.
This had to have been cathartic for you. Kudos to you for writing on a subject that is often discouraged.
Good luck to you on finding someone you can trust. I had to find out accidentally that my ex was cheating. It’s been 10 years and I still don’t trust any man.
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