How Much It Sucked, Part 2

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.

How Much It Sucked (Part 1)

Most people who have affairs, whatever their motivations, do not give adequate thought to the possible consequences. They’re in a hormonal and/or emotional state that is simply not conducive to rational thought. I worry that by saying I left my husband and ended up with my lover, people might think it was a blithe decision, and easy to do. It wasn’t. It sucked. It is difficult to express the extent to which it sucked, and will eventually suck for you if you have an affair, but I will try.

First, let’s start with the very concrete reality that most people who have affairs get caught, and YOU SHOULD ASSUME THAT YOU ARE NOT AN EXCEPTION. I didn’t get caught, but that’s really rare in the long term, and more a testament to my ex-husband’s self-involvement than to my keen intellect and considerable paranoia. DB got caught, and if you have an affair, you probably will, too. Having an affair requires a lot of attention to detail, and it’s almost impossible to be vigilant all the time. You will get lazy as you get into a routine, and that is when you will screw up. It only takes an absent-minded moment when you forget to secure your phone, or you get caught not being where you said you were. A suspicious and determined spouse will find out, and your spouse will get suspicious. You will not be acting normal.

Getting caught sucks. Quite unexpectly, you have to explain yourself, and you can’t possibly explain yourself. You suddenly see yourself through your spouse’s eyes, and it’s not a pretty picture. You have to deal with someone who is justifiably furious at you, who you have betrayed, someone with whom you have built a life and have a history, and you will feel enormously guilty and conflicted, no matter why you had the affair or what your relationship with your spouse was like. You will also have to deal with the consequences of their rage, which might include some pretty bad things, such as bolting across the country with your children, or draining your bank accounts, or humiliating you in front of friends, neighbors, colleagues, or even your own children. Unless you are a complete sociopath, the moment of getting caught is a horrible, shameful, pants-crappingly terrifying moment, beyond your worst imaginings.

It also sucks if you haven’t gotten caught (yet) and your affair partner gets caught. Suddenly, you have to face the fact that there is a real person on the other side, who is suffering because of a decision to which you were a party, and who has a hold over your affair partner that you do not. Until she found out what was going on, DB’s ex was almost a cardboard cutout in my mind. Afterward, she was a real person. A real person who was pissed off and had access to firearms, a real person might show up at my house or work, a real person who might call my spouse, a real person who had probably already learned quite a bit about me. But also a real person in pain.

Thankfully no bunnies were boiled in the course of this affair, but DB’s getting caught sucked. It was obviously far worse for him than for me, but if you care about the person you have an affair with, it’s important to consider how the implosion of his or her world will affect you. You will feel partly responsible for what is happening to your affair partner, and it is hard to support someone through the kind of fallout that is coming, especially when you are trying to navigate your own situation and figure out what to do. Your affair partner might lose custody of their children, not to mention money, reputation, professional credibility, and self-respect, to name a few things. Your affair partner might (possibly repeatedly, changing his/her mind back and forth) throw you under the bus and break your heart out of a desire for self-preservation, or to avoid breaking up his/her children’s household, or just from the paralyzing guilt of it all. DB didn’t do this to me, but in my darkest moments I feared he would and wouldn’t have even blamed him. That would have really sucked.

I’ve just scratched the surface here. Shall I go on?