Around 10PM on a Thursday night last August, my life changed. Not in the way I thought it would. I figured out my husband was having an affair. He was in the shower. His phone was in my hands, which it hadn’t been for months. I don’t remember what I was looking up. In hindsight, as many things should have been, that should have been a clue. He got a text message of a heart emjoi from a woman. My stomach sank. I ran around to the other side of the the bed and was crying, curled up in a ball. When he came out of the shower, I was inconsolable. He thought I was sick. I was, but not in the way he thought I was. I was love sick. For him. I still am. I showed him what I had. A heart emoji on his phone from a woman’s name I didn’t know. He shrugged it off and said it was this girl who sent him recipes sometimes. Didn’t I notice the recipes he had been trying out?
Here is the kicker everyone.
My husband has no friends. No one send him anything. Unless we are related to him. He by choice is a loner with no friends. He is an introvert. A self proclaimed intellect. No time for anyone but his family. And now this slut. My world was coming unraveled right before my eyes. I don’t remember how he convinced me to come to bed, but I did eventually. I did not sleep that night but a few hours. That weekend I combed through everything I could. I found clues of this affair that had been going on for months. Presents he had been buying her. High maintenace things like outlet shopping at designer stores; designer face masks. (We work in health care. We have money. I can’t tell you the last time I went in a designer store, with my fulltime job as a nurse and his fulltime job as a MD. Truth be told, I can’t stand deisgner stores, and am not sure I ever go in them really, ever) I thought about the long hours he had been working. (We work together) I thought about the days he off he took and how he would be absent for hours on those days with no explanation. He never used to take his days off unless we were taking days off together; but working in a busy office, we rarely did it. The knot in my stomach grew and grew. This ate at me all weekend.
By Monday I knew I had to figure it out with finality. Once at work, I logged into our cell phone account, as it was linked to his work email. There it was. In black and white. Her phone number. Over and over. Hours a day. Every morning when he left home at 610AM. I felt dizzy. Nauseous. The room was spinning. My heart pounding. I was in a happy marriage. Wasn’t I?
Two of our three kids had gone away to college earlier in the month, the last home with us was due to start senior year of high school in September. I thought about his behavior over the spring and summer. He had been acting strange at times, but nothing overly weird. When he did, I sized it up to Covid and the kids getting older. We are a close family and I knew he was having trouble with them going to college. As a combined family, we are dysfunctional, but we all love each other very much. With everyone stuck together for Covid, it was very heart warming to see how much the kids got along. Covid was hard on me; I went to work and home. I didn’t go to a store from March until September 1. (More to come on that) He told me the whole time it was ok. He assured me that it was fine I didn’t go anywhere, that he had it under control. Any shopping that I needed to do I did online. It actually became some kind of a joke at home about my inability to buy small amounts of things online. I would do some groceries online. He mostly did them though and was all too willing to go out and go to the store to get things. He would go to the store multiple times a week. I just thought he was supportive of me not wanting to go out in the time of Covid. Looking back, he would be gone for a longer time than neccessary for what few things he was coming home with, but it’s my husband! I am had not gone to stores in months. It could be mayhem in there and I would be none the wiser, so when I had irrational(which were actually rational) thoughts about it was taking him too long at the store, I assumed it was because shopping had changed so drastically.
Earlier in the year he started a longer work out regime, and would often times be in the finished basement working out for 2 hours a night. I thought nothing of it. He liked using the treadmill every night. Even pre-affair. I would be gardening. Watching television. Reading. But we went to bed together every night. I later found out, from a third party (details will be worth it) allegedly it was because he said I was lazy because of my multiple sclerosis, so I was just laying on the couch and didn’t want to spend time with him and that was how/why he was able to talk to her on the phone nearly every night for such a long time. Far from the truth. He was hiding the basement, harbouring secrets from his loyal, stupid, trusting wife. The secrets that I wasa going to figure out were going to blow up my life. And he was just going to sit there and watch me fall apart. Then cry to her.
Never had a white picket fence 