He Cheated
And it’s such a cliché
My husband goes on guy trips every so often that I fully support. And, I get to do the same thing with my friends. It’s so healthy to get out of the house and away from your family that you are working so hard to provide for on a daily basis. So, this is nothing new for us.
He left for a 4-day rafting trip on a Thursday. Totally fine, I’m great at home hanging out with the kids, doing family stuff. Saturday comes around and I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop catching up on some work while one of my children is playing video games.
My cell starts to ring. It’s from a number I don’t recognized. Normally, I let it go to voicemail, because no I don’t want to buy or invest or donate to whomever is calling. But, our vehicle is in the shop and I answer because it could be someone calling to give me an update.
Good guess, it wasn’t. It was a man on the phone confirming I was who he was looking for. He was extremely uncomfortable and kept babbling about how he wish he didn’t have to give me bad news about my husband. My stomach dropped. I thought the worst — maybe he’s in the hospital severely injured or worse, he died. I interrupted this mans stilted explanation and told him to get straight to the point.
“I’m sorry I have to give you this news (he says my name). Your husband had an affair with my wife which ended in April. I have the text messages to prove it and she’s confessed to everything”.
My stomach dropped for the second time. Of course I asked him all of the questions you do when your mind thinks you’re being pranked or it’s not true and the other person must be wrong.
- Emotional or physical — both
- One time thing — oh no, for a year.
- Where? They’d drive to the country and f*ck in a vehicle or outside somewhere. And they texted every day.
- What are your full names? He gave them to me and I immediately Facebooked stalked them — because that’s what you do, right?
Turns out, he was telling the truth. I got off the phone and sat there, shocked (I had moved outside, btw so my child heard none of this conversation). I ended up texting with him to gain more information and even his wife.
I never talked to her on the phone as I couldn’t bear it. She tried to apologize, etc. and I dismissed it. I was actually super cordial with her because I wanted all the information I could get before my husband got home. It was almost like I was on autopilot and not at all how I though I would handle this situation. I was very logical and non-confrontational in the sense that I didn’t call her names, etc.
He gets back the next day. I’ve had 24 hours of anxiety, tears, denial, anger, disgust (because a year?!?!), and hurt while keeping it together in front of our children.
He immediately knows something is wrong because we’ve been together for over a decade. I confront him, he doesn’t deny it, we decide to separate. There’s a lot of tears and ‘wtf’ on my part, and apologizing on his.
Yeah, sounds familiar, right? I never though I’d be a walking 40something cliché when it comes to separation and divorce. Our relationship was solid and that’d never happen to us. Ha!
I’m still in shock and processing it all, but I think what I feel the most is what a waste (minus our children, they are never and will never be a regret or an I wish I didn’t).
A waste of my youth, energy and time on a man that I wasn’t enough for. I built a life around our family and lost a lot of who I was in the process. Perhaps that was part of the problem, perhaps not.
So familiar and so sad.
