Told her we needed to talk. Sat down at the kitchen table and showed her the kiss photo. Said “I know about Michael, but I want to hear everything from you. The unabridged truth.”
She initially seemed startled by the picture. But then sort of slumped into her seat and said that she was so very sorry. A few moments later she went to our bedroom and came back with an envelope. She said it was the writing she did while in therapy and that she might need it to jog her memory.
So they met in Jan 1999 at our church’s Mother’s Morning Out. OM’s daughter was the same age as DD2 and they were in the same class. OM was a SAHD. She said they immediately hit it off, and over the next 6 months became very close. They talked about family life, complained about their spouses, and shared stories about their kids. Over the summer, they had sex for the first time. They would drop the kids off three days a week and then use the 3 hours of free time to have sex. In their cars, at our houses, even in the Church basement. That winter, her girlfriends of the time (who were in on and encouraged the affair) conspired to plan a “Girl’s Weekend” in NYC to cover a romantic vacation for her and OM. That is when the first 2 photos were taken. They did a few more of these out of town trips, always billed as a “Girl’s Weekend.”
Once DD2 was in pre-K and Kindergarten, they were having sex every day. They now had the time to try out all sorts of “fun” new positions and kinks. Pretty much everything under the sun. To her credit, she didn’t pull any punches describing their escapades. BDSM, costumes/roleplay, anal, etc.
She kept saying she knew it was hurting me to hear it. Apparently I looked like I was in physical pain. She kept offering to stop. I couldn’t seem to talk during all this but I just kept motioning for her to continue.
Eventually, they decided they were in love. They demonized their spouses to one another, made us both out to be the bad guys. She said it got to the point that they were fantasizing about running away together.
In Feb 2008, OM, OBS and his daughter were killed in a motor vehicle accident. Slid off an icy road and down an embankment into a river. Affair over.
She was devastated. As an aside, I do remember her decompensation during this time. She had told me one of her friends from college had died and that she wasn’t handling it well. She started therapy shortly thereafter.
Apparently, it took her a year in therapy to get over her affair. Then she began to realize what she had done to her family during those 9 years and she said she hated herself. She ditched her old toxic friend group. She went to therapy weekly for another 2.5 years. Her counselor apparently forced her to do exercises imagining how she would feel if she found out I had done all of the things she had. Made her visualize me physically doing those things. Made her write down everything that happened through the affair (that is what was in the envelope). I guess that her counselor suggested that instead of telling me though, that she work on our marriage and become the wife and mother she should have been during the years she stole from us. “Bear the burden herself,” are the words she used.
She ended by saying she knows she can never make this up to me. But she has now devoted her life to our family and me. We just sat and stared at each other for quite some time after that.
When I finally found my voice, I asked her why? She said because she was selfish. Wanted the attention and the thrill. The illicit nature of it made it much more exciting than our day to day life and allowed her to live in a fantasy. She had always felt pressure from her family to be perfect, walk the straight and narrow. No rebellion was tolerated by her parents. Somehow, this was her opportunity to break free of those restraints.
That’s when I pulled out some of the pictures and emails that I printed. I asked her how she could write these things about me? Up until then, she had held it together pretty well. A few tears, but no crying. When she read the emails, she fell apart. Uncontrollable sobbing. When you read about people wailing...that was what she was doing. I just kind of sat there. Stunned silence, I guess?
I eventually took her into our family room and laid her on the couch. She was effectively noncommunicative for over an hour. When she managed to pull it together, she said it was physically painful for her to imagine me reading those words. Knowing she was responsible for causing that pain made her want to scream. She now understood why I seemed so ill for the past week. Then she smiled a little and said “At least you don’t have cancer.” Apparently that was what she was worried about all week.
She gave me the envelope with all of her therapy writing to read whenever I wanted to. And she asked if I wanted her to leave. I told her that I needed some separation to process this. She seemed sad but agreed to pack up and go visit her sister (who knows about the affair). Sister agreed that she could stay as long as necessary (sister is a widow with kids out of the house). I helped her pack the car and off she went.
Sitting in our house alone is strangely peaceful. Thanks for listening. Gonna take a little break from all of this and watch some football. Seems gloriously mindless.
