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Six months into my separation/divorce to my husband I got a call from him. It was late in the afternoon and I was at my office, which thankfully was fairly empty. He asked if I could speak with him for a moment and if there was a place I could go sit down. I took residence in the conference room. It was very warm in there, the giant window faced East and the summer sun was pouring in through the big wooden blinds. These details don’t leave me. My first thought was “Oh God he got someone pregnant” which I apparently uttered out loud because then he reminded me he had gotten a vasectomy when we were still married years before. We laughed.

It was not lost on me that I had actually forgotten that in the moment; The vasectomy was always the ‘beginning of the end’ in my mind. He had the procedure done even though I was not at all in agreement with it. I had just had my last son and I knew I wanted a fourth baby at some point, but he was done. It was a very difficult year for us. He was getting a Master’s and I had three babies under five. The ‘strand of three’ started to unwind that year. I remember fighting with him for several nights before the procedure, pleading with him. Reminding him how many other ways there was to not get pregnant again. I even reminded him of how little we ever had sex to begin with and the chances of a pregnancy where so far off just from that alone. He was adamant. I felt like he was trying to control something in his own life…. in his world that was far away from mine with him and our family. 

It felt like he was grasping for something steady, something he could rely on. His world in school, breaking his neck everyday working full time, and then doing his best to be a full time father, brother, son and husband, It was all but slipping away from him I thought. I came to the conclusion (because back then I still needed reasons I could comprehend why people did things) that this vasectomy was a way for him to feel in control of something. I pleaded with him not to go through with it the night before. We made a deal that we would try one last time for that fourth baby and let the chips of fate fall where they may. The next day he had the vasectomy. I never got pregnant with that fourth baby. The pain of that felt like betrayal. I remember him telling our marriage mentors he had made a mistake to do that to me and he knew it when he saw the pain white wash my eyes. 

“So what is it then?” I asked as I stood in the conference room alert, back stiffened. He began to say he didn’t want to feel angry anymore. He didn’t want to fight anymore and blame me….blame ‘him’ meaning the man I left him for. Up until this moment I had no real proof of any of my husband’s infidelities. I read text messages, I saw photos on his phone from women I did not know. I heard him flirt occasionally. I excused the night he came home 7 hours late with his shirt on inside out and piss drunk as the coffee he said spilled on it, after blowing off steam. But I did not ever actually believe he cheated on me. I would consider it, then dismiss it because of what I did believe. 

I believed that that man I knew could never ever actually do that to me no matter how love-less our marriage was. I knew his insides and they were good, and they were kind, and they would not let him come to that. Our life was hard. It was so fucking hard. All the time. But that guy, he was the guy who would take a bullet for his brother in laws. He was the guy who would never ask my father for a handout even when we needed it. That guy would never ever let another man disrespect me and he would defend the honor of his family in the same way he was taught too by  his Italian father. That guy, my husband, had his own code of honor and  by God he would not stray from it. This is what I believed all those years and because I am hard wired to believe the best of people, and because I have a gift to see the true self in others I was unable to also see other signs of the fading marriage. 

It wasn’t until I had my own affair that I could begin to look more clearly at my surroundings. My infidelity took the thin veil of naviatey from my eyes and not only gave me the ability to see things I hadn’t noticed before, but to understand things I hadn’t been able to understand before. My ex continued “I want you to know you are not the only one who made mistakes. I was planning on dying with this – but it’s poisoning me.” He then proceeded to tell me that he had cheated on me several times during our marriage. Over the course of about four years he fell in love twice, with two different women, each relationship lasting about a year. They always ended because we would not leave me. This fact will teach me about his code of ethics, his code of honor that was instilled in him later down the road. It will also be what helps me to understand his choices and be able to continue to freely love him in the present with forgiveness. 

The first thing my friends asked me after they heard of this news was “Wow, don’t you feel so vindicated now? Justified?” I understood why they asked this; my ex husband acted like a full blown lunatic during the discovery of my affair. In the months that followed his behavior was erratic, untrusting, down right scary at times, and abusive. But I didn’t feel justified as was suggested, I felt confused and shocked. Mostly that he could carry on for six months the way he did, tossing me under every bus with our family and friends both in public and private. It was the only question I remember asking him that day on the phone during his confession. “How could you have treated me, him, so badly all this time, knowing you did just the same only more often and for much longer?” I don’t know what repetition or longevity had to do with anything at this point, but I was in part looking to make what he did somehow different, somehow worse than what I did. I know now they are the exact same thing.

The rest of me felt shocked I didn’t know of this. What was I doing all that time? How did I miss this? TWO seperate year long relationships that ended in heartbreak for him and the women, and I didn’t see it? I truly believed our lack of a sex life was due largely to exhaustion. I wouldn’t know the depth of healing I needed from the absence of physical intimacy until I actually fell in love with a man as an adult. That healing is in full swing and can be read about in book number two by the way 😉

It took me the better half of two years to understand why my ex husband was so hurt and torn up when I told him I was not coming back. I genuinely could not figure out why a man who was obviously very lonely, very love deprived, would want to be back in our marriage. There was the obvious- for the sake of our family, our sweet boys. The idea that he made mistakes and wanted to now learn from them crossed my mind, but it didn’t fit. So many things didn’t fit as to why he was so heartbroken over me not coming back. A year before he sat in our bedroom with tears in his eyes (and was basically confessing to me then) by saying he didn’t think he should have to go on in such a passionless marriage. It was the first time I ever saw him talk about a need he had. I wonder now if he was grieving the loss of one of his loves and facing the reality of his home life with me again. I now understand how people get caught up in long term affairs and can’t get out. The joy the love brings sustains you in your real life, but the perplexing agony of the thought alone of not having this love could propel a human to stay in such a cycle. 

I am so grateful my affair lasted all of three weeks. Many of those days I had the dreaded thought of ‘how will I get out of this?’ It felt like a certain death sentence to walk away from this love that found me, but I also knew nothing beautiful could come of so many lies. I longed to be free to love this man, but I agonized over how to get there. It was paralyzing. I knew my life as I had created it was over. I knew I had crossed over to something else. I knew an innocent woman lay in a grave I helped dig for her and she didn’t even know it yet. There I stood frozen to the core forcing my feet to take another step towards this new place I was forging.  

Part Two coming soon…

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