There are those moments. You know the ones. Those moments that seem to impact every cell of your being. Those moments that your being won’t let you forget. Those moments that all you want to do is forget. Those moments that you know, when you are most honest with yourself, you know that maybe you shouldn’t forget. You maybe just don’t know why…just yet.
He was an incomplete man. I look back now on that moment and I can see all of his incomplete parts that led to that moment and everything that followed. I can still see him in that moment, sitting across our kitchen table. I knew the woman he had been with. A mom of one of our children’s friends. All I could think about was the last time I had seen her. We were standing in the lobby of our kids’ school waiting for pick up. I was about to have my third child with the man I didn’t realize was so incomplete when I made that decision. I complimented her on her hair.
There were SO many decisions from that moment. I wished I had a guide to help me sort through some of those decisions. I am hoping that by writing this, others may find the highlights of my decisions to be a helpful guide during their own process.
I decided I needed space to figure out what else I needed. So, every weekend for six weeks, he needed to leave the house. I was trying to maintain normal for our young children. During the week, he needed to help with the logistics of our life so that I didn’t have to carry all of that burden on top of the heavy emotions I was processing. On the weekend, I needed to not have to look at him.
I decided I needed more information. I resisted the emotional need to seek information from my incomplete husband. One of the helpful insights from my information quest was being told that not only will you not know what information is real and what is the version that your unfaithful partner wants to share, but that any amount of information you get from them will not help you make peace with the situation. There were several other helpful insights from my information quest:
- Don’t make any significant decisions within the first six months. Emotions wreak havoc with rational thoughts and how you feel will change based on lots of things.
- The affair is not the actual problem in your marriage. It is just a symptom of the actual problem(s) in your marriage. This was a game changer for me. It helped me open up to the idea that my marriage didn’t need to be over, but there were serious things that needed to change.
- Trust has been broken and action needs to be taken to restore that trust. I have never been one to expect that a person should change for someone else, but in these circumstances, if the relationship is to have a chance, the person who was unfaithful needs to change and take deliberate action to prove themselves worthy of trust.
We decided to see a therapist. Our sessions began with a focus on me needing to understand my husband’s fear of being truthful with me about his cheating. I decided I wasn’t going to waste any more of my time with that therapist.
I decided to share my experience with a close circle of family and friends. Another insight from my information quest was to be very careful with who you talk to, for various reasons. Some will let it define how they view you. Some will let it define every future interaction you have with them. Some will find some way to use it to their advantage. There was one friend I told while on the 5th tee playing golf for our ladies’ league. I wish I had known in that moment, that 12 months later, she would be at the center of the moment that I lost any hope of ever again trusting or loving my incomplete husband enough to stay married.
I decided I needed to put me first. When you get ready for take off on an airplane, you know when they say, “make sure to put on your own mask before helping others”? This is just like that. I knew our resilient little family could get through this, but it would take a toll on me. So I stayed, for several more years. I stayed to maintain the status quo. It was a deliberate decision. I needed to secure my career so that when it came time to help everyone else to be resilient, I could do so knowing that I would be a model for fiscal independence and drive. And I needed to secure my emotional health so that when I decided to be done, I could do so knowing that my decision making about co-parenting, managing finances, living arrangements, and anything else would not be overwhelmed by anger, sadness, and disappointment. I took the time to put on my own mask before assisting others.
I decided to close the circle. The outcome of having two women you know engage in physical and emotional affairs with your husband…I don’t trust women. I stopped playing golf in the women’s league. I stopped going to happy hours. I stopped joining in the idle chit chat in the stands during my kids’ sporting events. I stopped inviting people into my life. At least for now. It was another form of self-preservation, much like the oxygen mask.
I decided I was done. It’s been eight years since I sat across the table from that incomplete man, listening to some mashup of truths and lies. During that time, I decided to be even more intentional about how I raise my children. I decided that shielding my children from the darkness of adult issues was important to their future relationships and identity. I decided that taking care of my own needs was just as important as taking care of the needs of others. And then the time came. I decided to be done. Done thinking that I carried any responsibility for the choices of this incomplete man. Done feeling angry. Done feeling sad. Just done.
We all try to make the best decisions we can with the tools and information available to us. What decisions led you to just being done? Similar to mine? Different?
