Part III……The Confession & Fallout

I will never forget the silence after I told her the three text messages that I had found and begged her not to make me go through all the rest of the messages and read all of the disgusting details that were already making my stomach turn. Little did she know that those three messages were the only ones I was able to find and I am sure she knew that no matter what she told me, I was going to read them anyway if they had been recovered. But after my question, the silence seemed like forever even though it was probably only 3 or 4 seconds. The question was, “Did you fuck him?”. The answer was yes. My heart sunk; I became instantly sick. For whatever reason, I felt the need to punish myself and ask more questions. She became defensive immediately and her defense was being a smart ass which only made things worse. I asked how many times and the answer was 70. I asked for how long and she said 6 years. I honestly cannot even tell you the content of the flurry of questions that I asked after that. The problem was she told so many stories that she couldn’t keep track of what was the truth.

I still had three hours of work left and could do nothing but stew about it. I called my best friend but he didn’t answer. I paced furiously back and forth waiting for work to end. I was trapped after hearing news that felt like someone had killed my entire family. I was pissed, hurt, devastated, confused, embarrased, and disgusted.

When I got home, I walked in and grabbed a couple of things. I could barely look at her but could tell she had been crying and had a scared look on her face. Now I have never laid a hand on her the entire time we have been together so I don’t believe that she feared for safety but was more worried about if I was leaving her or what I was going to do to the other guy.

I left and went to the bar about 4 blocks from my house. She texted me almost the entire time I was there. Begging me to come home and talk. Begging me not leave her. I just kept asking questions as I drowned myself in Tequila. By the way, Tequila makes me very mean and want to fight. I started to walk home about 2:30 in the morning and was met by the headlights of her car coming my way. She asked me to get in the car which I refused. We proceeded to get into an argument on the sidewalk in front of our house. I am surprised the cops didn’t get called. Now when I say Tequila makes me mean, I still usually have some idea of what the hell is going on. And despite the amount I had to drink, I am proud that I looked at this woman I had been with for 12 years, and is the mother of my two children, and I didn’t call her names. And I hope that this serves as a lesson to all the men reading this; unless she is going out and gang-banging guys every night or having sex for money on a regular basis, she is not a slut or a whore. One, hell even two affairs does not make her a whore. It makes her human. She is still your wife, she is still a mother, she is still someone’s daughter or baby girl. In my case she was still my best friend.

So after our fight outside, we moved to the inside where I became emotional and then sick. I went to our back room and fell onto the couch. She took care of me as threw up. She held the bucket and got me a cold wash cloth. After I was done purging the excess alcohol from system, she asked me to come to bed with her. I did but I would sleep on my side, as far away from her as I could be.

The next two days was filled with more conversations and yet none at all. I asked questions over and over and yet still never got the answers I wanted. So here is her story: she slept with him one time, in 2006, she didn’t enjoy it, she was drunk, and that is the only reason she did it. Yeah I know I’m calling bullshit on it too. She also says that she never even kissed him and he only lasted three minutes. She said they used a condom and for her and my sakes I hope she did. One thing that I have not mentioned is that the other guy is married and she and I know of at least one other girl he was cheating on his wife with and I know of yet another. The guy will fuck anything that moves so I certainly hope my wife didn’t feel special.

So the problems I have with her story are as follows. First of all she says it was sometime in March 2006. Well this would have been 3 months after we had our second child and 1 month before we were to get married. Now I think she picked this time because she didn’t want to admit she had violated our marriage vows. You know and I have an issue with this to this day because she said for a split second she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married. She says that the reason was that she didn’t want things to change for the worse. I asked her if it was at her Bachelorette party to which has flatly denied. While I don’really know what makes a difference, she won’t admit it. Now this may have been the first time but i don’t believe it was the only. I can think of at least one time over a year later when she didn’t come home from the bar until 1 1/2 hours after it was closed and wouldn’t answer her phone. Now we are talking about a girl who doesn’t go to the bathroom without her cellphone. I honestly believe that this was at least the second time.

I know that I have rambled greatly during this post but there is just so much detail and so many thoughts that I am trying to get in here so that there is a full picture. See I had mentioned that I had cheated at the beginning of our relationship but this was different. There were two children involved. There were marriage vows involved. There was a family that could have been broken into pieces. I came from a broken home. I didn’t want that for my children. I wouldn’t risk losing her or doing that to my children. She did for a cock, and according to her and at least one other person I talked to, a small one.

So anyway, two days had went by. I had mostly laid around and stared at the ceiling. I remember thinking that she should have been in there begging and pleading with me to not break up our marriage, to not leave her. But she wasn’t. And then finally she came into the bedroom and laid down beside me. She didn’t say a word and neither did I. After about 10 minutes of just laying there in silence, I reached for her. And then Instantly, our clothes were off and we were having some of the most amazing and mind-blowing sex. When were finished, we had a very open and for the most part honest conversation. I didn’t feel any better and or believe that she had told me the whole truth, but i told her I forgave her. I told her we couldn’t move forward together or even apart unless I forgave her. After all, we still had children together, and despite hurting each other, we are best friends.

As far as the other guy goes, it took me a little while to figure out what to do. I thought of screwing his wife as revenge to both my wife and to him. But honestly revenge would have solved nothing. Also, his wife is not attractive and I am not sure he would have cared since he is out sticking everything else. I mean yeah i did drive up to his house one night to confront him, but I thought about his kids. I also thought about just calling his wife. I decided against that because I didn’t feel it was my place to tell her. She will find out someday. I thought about telling his boss because he did a lot of the texting while at work and on a work-issued phone. Also, the one time the allegedly slept together was while he was working. I thought about finding him and kicking the shit out of him. In the end, I settled for a warning to stay the fuck away from my wife to which I never received a response. See I thought he and I were friends. I guess that’s what makes me better than him. C actually told me she would call his wife and tell her. I told her she doesn’t get to do that, she doesn’t get to crush the other woman and pretend to be a good person. Maybe I handled none of that right, but that is how it was done.

Ironically in a city of only 15,000, I am yet to see him in the 13 months that have followed me finding out. She has only seen him once which she volunteered on her own because he came into her work. She says she didn’t talk to him and he didn’t try to talk to her. She says that she hasn’t spoken to him since before I found the deleted text messages. If that’s true, I hope that she takes that into account. If I were having an affair with a married woman and knew the husband found out, which she had to have told him, because the texts stopped afterwards, I don’t care what kind of threats the husband made, if I truly cared about the girl, I would have called or done something to make sure she was okay. So that to me proves me theory that she was just a piece of ass to him. He will avoid me and not because he is afraid of me but because he has no morals and a lack of quality traits and avoiding me is the easiest way to continue living his life not being reminded that he is a piece of shit. He didn’t care about her, didn’t care about her two children, his wife or his children, and what his actions could have resulted in. What kind of person do you think that makes him. I am sure he worried and cared about getting caught. I am sure he worried about his wife leaving him and losing his house and half his paycheck to child support and alimony. But he didn’t care about C. That bothers me. It sounds weird, but he didn’t care about someone that I love and care about so much. He just used her and she let him. Now I am not letting C be the victim here. the thing is, he got off scott-free. Me and C suffered, mostly me. His wife and kids are unknowing victims.

So, time does heal all things, slowly but surely. One of my favorite songs has a line it, “Time can heal, but the scars only hide the way you feel”. My scars run wide and deep. And that is what I do on a daily basis, is hide the pain because it still very much there and real.

The physical act of her having sex really isn’t the thing that bothers me most. Yes that hurts, someone touched my wife in places that are only meant for me. But for me was the fact that she texted him for over a year, years after she supposedly had only had sex with him once really hurt. What bothered me more than anything was wondering if she had/s feelings for him. I think if you ask anyone that has been cheated on, they will tell you that emotional affairs are far more painful than physical ones. I can tell you in all honesty that if she came home and said that she had sex with a total stranger that yes it would hurt, but not nearly as much as knowing she might have had feelings for someone. I cannot compete with someone she has feelings for because if she has feelings for him then that means she is no longer in love with me. I believe that it is impossible to be in love with two people at once. Sure you can love two people at once but being in love with a person requires a special type of feeling and bond. She said that she only texted with him because they were good friends. She said that he had try to rekindle whatever but she had shot it down saying that she was happy with me and that what had happened was a mistake. She said that he was a connection to a life she missed very much (referring to her old work and old friends) and that he was someone to talk to. She was lonely and she had been through a lot. To tell you the truth, there is a small part of me that can understand some of this after what she went through. Trust me there is no excuse or good enough reason just as there was none for mine. I guess understanding is the wrong word, it would have made sense.

A lot of the problems that I am having moving on stems from the way she has acted since the affair was discovered. It was business as usual and even then sometimes it was less than business as usual. Two years ago she had a hysterectomy at 30 years of age. It was another huge blow to her as she reached the realization that she would no longer be able to have any more children. It snapped her into a depression. It has caused many a problem between us because she simply does not have a sex drive. Some are probably reading this saying that I should be happy she doesn’t sex drive because she is less likely to ever cheat.    Of course I think that but women cheat for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with sex. Some cheat because of low self esteem and that rush of a new person is an instant bump to their ego. There are many reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the physical act.

But the low sex drive has caused problems for us. For me, I view my wife wanting sex with me as her way of showing she wants me, that she is still attracted to me, that she still wants to be with me. It’s not about getting off, it’s about the intimacy, the orgasm is just a bonus. Don;t get me wrong, she enjoys it when we do have it and does have orgasms. It’s just that she doesn’t have the physical feelings or desire to be the one to initiate it. That’s hard for me and especially in the post-affair marriage. I need to feel wanted now more than ever.

Over the last year, I have given her many chances to walk away from the marriage free and clear. I have encouraged her to be with whomever she needs to be with to be happy. I told her I would always be her best friend, always be there for her. I want her to be happy. If you truly love someone, you will do whatever it takes despite your own feelings to make that person happy. It would kill me to let her walk away but not as much as it would for her to be where she doesn’t want to be and eventually cheat again. I love her too much.

The trust has not returned fully yet. I will occasionally check her cell phone, Facebook, and have questions that run through my head from time to time. It gets better with time. Will it ever go completely away, I’m not sure. She has chosen me and likewise I have chosen her. This last week and a half has been particularly good. I have seen the old C back. She has slowly started to emerge from the dark cloud that she has been under for the last 3 1/2 years. She’s been more loving, more affectionate, and doing the things that I have missed and need to help me heal from the pain she caused me. As sad as it is, it might even be better because there is an honesty that exists now on both our parts that was never there before.

There are people that say that an affair can make a marriage stronger. Sure it can, but it can also rip two people apart that made a vow to spend the rest of their lives together. I don’t know what the future holds for me and C. I’m just taking it one day at a time. I can tell you that as a result of everything, I have become a better husband. I tell my wife almost everyday that she is beautiful, sexy, gorgeous. I tell her constantly how much I love her and I miss her when we were apart. I am a better listener and when she has a problem instead of always trying to fix it or tell her what to do, I just listen, sometimes that’s always she wants is just to vent. I let her know every second of the day, in some small way, that I love her. I don’t blame myself for the affair, but I do know there were things that I did not do to help make her not want to go anywhere else. It’s still a work in progress. Marriage is. There is no point when you love someone that you should feel comfortable enough to become complacent.

For those of you that have been in the same place where I have been and still am, there is no answer that anyone else can give you as to whether or not you should stay in your relationship if you have been cheated on. That is for you to decide and not for anyone else to judge you for. The one thing that you need to know for sure is are you in love with that person and are they in love with you. If you know that for sure, your answer is simple, it’s just a matter of getting there.

• Affairs
• Cheating
• Forgiveness
• Love
• Marriage
• Sex