The experience of going through my affair partner’s D-day (the term often used to describe the day when your spouse discovers you’re having an affair) and the resulting fallout was incredibly difficult, and continues to be so, but it wasn’t the worst part of navigating this situation for me. The worst part was killing my dying marriage, and then grieving the loss.
I know, you’re thinking, “This is someone who cheated on her husband. She clearly has no compunctions. Why did it bother her to break up with her husband when she was willing to cheat on him? And if she feels grief about it now, isn’t that her own fault?” Fair enough. Still, that’s how it was.
I know that what I experienced, I would have experienced no matter why I left my ex-husband, but because I was leaving him in conjunction with an affair, the guilt I felt made the whole process much more painful and complicated. I offer this because I think that people who are trying to navigate a situation like this need to know that it is not easy to end your marriage, no matter why you’re ending it, and that you will experience it as a loss, often at unexpected moments, in unexpected ways, and it will be surprisingly and sometimes excruciatingly painful.
A friend told me on the day of her divorce hearing that she almost envied someone whose spouse had died, because at least for that person, the wound can close over. They don’t have to see and figure out how to communicate and raise children with someone who looks and acts like the person they loved, but isn’t. I think this insight applies to spouses who are left behind, for whatever reason, and for spouses who decide to leave, for whatever reason.
I’ve said that my relationship with my ex-husband was bad, and I do believe that it was irretrievably broken. My ex was never going to change. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think people fundamentally change; they can only modify their behavior to be less maladaptive, within the range of behaviors of which they are capable. My ex had abandoned me emotionally and physically, and our relationship was extremely codependent. He was always going to view me as an accessory to the lifestyle he wanted, not a true partner. Whenever I tried to talk about our problems, he essentially told me I was crazy, and I was almost convinced. I was looking at the rest of my life, and it was a bleak, sad picture.
But it was my life. It was what I knew. I had married on the young side for my demographic, and at that time I believed my husband was a very different person. It was hard to realize that that person had never existed. There were key points of resemblance, mainly an intellectual affinity and a sense of humor that kept me going for a long time, but ultimately it wasn’t enough. Leaving that marriage was like experiencing a death. But because of my betrayal, it felt not only as if my husband had died, but that I had killed him.
Also, it didn’t help that I had spent most of my adult life smoothing things over for my ex, shielding him from painful experiences because, I realize now, someone had always been there to do that for him. First his mother, then me. And suddenly, I was the cause of the painful experience, yet for a long time I still felt obligated to manage his feelings about it. I would have felt this pressure no matter why I left, but my guilt increased it exponentially. I had to let that go and make him deal with his own suffering, even if I was responsible for it. Eventually, I had to face up to how much comfort and validation I had gotten out of being a martyr all those years. Not a proud moment.
From the time that I became emotionally involved with DB to the time I left my ex-husband was about 10 months. They were not good months. There was the daily stress of worrying about discovery of the affair. There was guilt about the affair. There was the emotional roller coaster of being in love, but not being able to be with the person I loved. There was extreme anxiety about what would happen to my children, and agonizing about whether it was worse to have them grow up in the middle of a loveless marriage vs. weathering a divorce (a whole separate blog entry in and of itself). There was the confusion of wondering whether any of my feelings were real, and wondering whether DB would be able to be there for me on the other side of all of this if I left. There was the worry about finances. There was the fact that I dreaded going home every night and couldn’t sleep. I’m not sure how I managed to function. It’s all a blur. It ended when I realized that to save myself, I had to end the marriage, and nothing was ever going to make that hurt any less.
The upshot is this: to do what I did, you must realize that you are going to have to commit a deliberate act that will result in the death of a relationship. As nice as it is to fantasize about your affair partner riding up on a white horse to sweep you away from all of this, that’s not going to happen. If you are going to get out, it is going to be because you walked away from everything that had previously kept you in your marriage, which, as messed up as it was, probably wasn’t all bad, either. If you leave it behind, you will lose it forever. Don’t think it won’t hurt. Make sure it’s worth it.
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