Echo

 When I had the affair, the things I thought most about were ‘how and when’ I would get caught, or ‘how to get out of it without getting caught,’ quickly. The urgency to get out of it was always present.  The fear of hurting the ones that I loved, my husband, my kids ( others I didn’t even know) drove a panic and anxiety in me. The second thing I thought was “How on earth will this end? How will I go on, when it does?” The paradox was almost paralyzing.

I was married to my husband for ten years, with him for a total of twelve years. The man I had an affair with was also married for twenty-five years. It was the very first time I had ever cheated on anyone, and it lasted a whole of three weeks.The guilt and shame, two years later, still  wants me to tell you I didn’t even sleep with the guy- but I know as well as you do that means nothing. I waited to have sex with my own husband until we where married. In fact, I waited to do everything but kiss my husband before we were married. I met him at my church, where I worked full time and where he volunteered. I knew I was going to marry him almost the moment I saw him.  I still remember the first time we discussed marriage, it was the first time that a relationship felt right, like it should be a marriage. In fact no other guy had ever felt right in my gut like he did. There was a peace about moving forward with him, despite some of the red flags I also felt. I would come to realize, much-much later on, that the red flags did not necessarily mean we should not have gotten married, but that we had some major work to do BEFORE we got married. We did not do that work, but 18 months later we did get married. 

I married Chris in a beautiful mansion in Kansas City within a garden, and we had a picture perfect reception under a white tent. It looked exactly like my dreams…classic, expensive but understated – not in your face. Two hundred family and friends joined us; my siblings drank in the parking lot because we didn’t serve alcohol (most of our church group did not drink, plus you were not allowed too if you worked on church staff.) The audio got messed up and we walked back down the aisle to nothing. “At Last”  by Etta James was supposed to play, maybe that is ironic. We forgot to put the communion elements on the table for the ceremony so we turned our backs to the crowd and faked it. I still chuckle to this day about that, but in the moment I was a tad uptight about the perfection of the day unfolding. All I wanted then, was a best friend to be my partner. I wanted someone that I could do everything with. Someone who would know me and love me just as I was. We danced to Tim McGraw’s “My best friend” and I drank a little champagne in the bridal suite despite the rules. I got what I wished for. A decade later Chris was certainly my best friend.

Over time I watched other marriages around me. Some I admired, and in some I saw the lack of friendship and I was sad for those couples. Some of my dear friends would confide in me about how they couldn’t believe what good friends Chris and I where. How he really knew me and understood me and supported me with the kids and my dreams. Then I saw other couples who seemed to not only be good friends, but actual lovers. Those ones always made me sad. I never felt that sexual pull…that chemistry, towards my husband. I did when we dated a little bit but then it was ‘forbidden’ so I shut down as I had learned to do for the last five years of  practiced celibacy. As a married couple we lacked that part. I longed to want to hold him, fall into him, kiss him. I prayed for this desire for nearly ten years, though it was not just me. I know he longed for me to want to do that naturally as well too, but my husband had his own struggles as well. I remember asking girl friends of mine frequently how many times a week they where having sex, always hoping to find someoone who said the number that would match mine. After I got pregnant with our first son, two months after we where married, I don’t think I had sex again for nearly a year. We were newlyweds. 

Nine years later we ended almost as quickly as we began. My own parents got a divorce after twenty years of marriage when I was about a sophmore in Highschool. I remember my mother telling me it took her nearly a decade after the split to miss my father and their marriage. I missed my marriage the moment I decided I could no longer survive in it. It’s shocking to me how much the moments, the memories sneak up on you. Obviously there is nine years worth of history in this story that has not been explained, and our lack of intimacy would not be our single demise by any means, but the missing, the knowing of a person you pledge your life too and for- and the letting go of that life (that person) is like death. Divorce is truly death. 

I am in love with somebody else now and I live with him. He is grafting into my family nicely as he is easy to love. But those moments. They haunt me. They must haunt the kids, and they are a reminder of all things lost. To think, two years ago I dreamt about these moments when my family would accept this new person, when holidays could be shared together and family wide vacations enjoyed. They were to be such milestones in my progress of living through divorce and starting over, but they still feel more like reminders of what is not there. I did not expect to come home from family events (which have always been my weekly highlight – we are a very close family) and feel dread. Missing. 

I will find myself  leaving a family event-  in a relationship that is stable, with a partner I actually feel madly in love with, supported in ways I needed badly, with that same family beginning to open their arms to my new life, and I can hear the echo of laughter from my ex husband. His presence, his charisma, his big personality, the way he loved my family so deeply. I can feel all of that missing. It’s similar to the swirl of death after you lose a loved one. My heart rips open again and without warning (afterall I should be celebrating a milestone moment) and a flood of emotion and loss wash over my chest and travel up into my thinking space. I feel so sad he was not there. I feel like I wish he could come over and hang out with everyone, including my new love. I feel sad for his personal loss too. He moved us half way across the country after our first son was born so I could have my people in my daily life. He rode a scooter 45 miles to work and back each day so I could live 3 minutes from my mom. My oldest brother and my sister become his best friends. 

This scenario plays out frequently for me. I am not thrown off now, I expect it, what is surprising is the weight of the echo. I catch myself wondering when the heaviness and the loss will lighten. My partner now, is also all too familiar with this situation. He too was married and knows the mourning process as up close and personal as I do. He hears the same echoes from his life at home as it where. I am grateful we have this understanding because it did not go as planned and here we are together in the un tangling, the mourning.

I find it very easy for people to hear my story, to hear how much love I have for my ex husband and how good of friends we have become again, and want to say things like “Why don’t you get back together?” I suppose that’s a natural response to feel when you know and loved a couple, a family. I cringe when I hear that question because naturally I would like to put it all back together at times, and feel better too. I want the happy ending as much as the commentator. I mean this was my life- my family and my dream. All my memories are tied up in him and what we set out to create; how could I not prefer the happy ending? What I don’t want to do is the hard work of relationship autopsy. I hate wadding into the pain the echo brings, admitting to the holes the foxes made that have spoiled the vine. It’s more than I can bare at times knowing what I know now that could have saved us back then. But, it’s also the work that must be done. “Just fix it” is a knee jerk response in an effort to not feel real pain that probably got my ex husband and I here in the first place.

These same innocent people seem to assume certain ideas when a marriage falls apart. They want to blame one of the spouses and place them into categories that box up the problem. Things don’t just fall apart for no reason. People don’t have affairs and cheat on other people they love just because they are ‘selfish.’ Marriages don’t fall apart if everything is fine. Men dont’t stray becasue they are just tempted by ‘new and exciting’ sex, and women don’t cheat becasue they are simply sluty and have some low self esteem issue or their husbands didn’t pay enough attention to them. I get that we like to box up pain and especially the cruel act of betrayal with a reason, something to make the suffering valid, have meaning. But people’s real stories, someone’s unraveling is never tied up in a neat little bow of explanation. That would be a gross understatement and when we say things like that, or encourage someone to ‘just fix it’ we demean the whole process of work that must be done in order to move forward in a way that brings true healing. 

The echoes for now, are my  constant reminders of the work I owe myself, my ex husband, my children, my partner. As much as I braced for impact during the short lived affair I was in, I had no real idea of just how complicated a mess I was setting fire too. I have to do this work before me. My marriage gave me some of my very best years, and some of my very hardest. I am learning that most of life is lived in the grey, the paradox, the “both and” at the same time. So in this place I will stand, knees shaking, reflexes wanting the seemingly easier way, ankle deep in my own tears and continue to embrace all that echoes for now. 

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