My husband and I were set up by our parents when we were fresh out of grad school, and because our values aligned — we both wanted to be married and to have a big family — we sort of just went through the motions and had a traditional trajectory. We dated for about a year, had a big wedding in my parents’ backyard, and moved to the suburbs, and I was pregnant by our one-year anniversary. My husband is a doctor, so shortly after that, he started his residency, and we were off into married-with-kids adulthood.
There were — and still are — a few great things about us as a couple. We have incredible sexual chemistry. Neither of us was that experienced before we’d met; we’d both slept with five or six people, but nothing crazy. Then once we started having sex, about a month after our first date, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We were like bunny rabbits. Which explains how we now have four kids!
But honestly, our bodies just fit. Even with all the babies, and all the exhaustion, and all the drama, I am still very attracted to him, and if we have any energy left at the end of the day, we’re going to have sex.
The other really positive thing about us is that we’re excellent parents. He’s an awesome, devoted dad. He works long hours and makes all the money, and I’m a stay-at-home mom who loves to cook and help out at my kids’ schools, and it works out pretty well. But it wasn’t always that way.
When I was pregnant with our third child, I was not in a great place. Imagine not sleeping for five years straight. Imagine talking only about kids and playdates and pediatricians for five years straight. I resented my husband’s exciting work life. He was working all the time, trying to advance his career to a position that earned more money. He said (thousands of times) that he was doing that “for us,” but it was for him. It was always for him. He was chasing the power and ego of it all. And that’s okay — that’s human — but tell that to a sleep-deprived, pregnant, completely mentally and physically depleted woman like I was.
When he’d come home from work, I would be exhausted, angry, and accusatory. I’d call him a workaholic, and an absentee father, and an asshole. He was always coming home to a deeply unhappy woman. I can admit that. He didn’t have the tools to deal with me, so we just started avoiding each other around the house. He was still totally engaged with the kids, but he and I could barely look at each other. I had so much rage toward him and he hadn’t even done anything wrong … yet.
By the time I gave birth to our third child, my husband and I basically hated each other. He would give what little free time he had to our kids, but he never did anything nice for me. He never acknowledged all I did around the house or how I kept our family together. Not one compliment to me, ever. I had pushed him away, big time.
I noticed at the hospital, as I was literally giving birth, that he was on his phone a lot. Like, while I was screaming and contracting, he’d get a text and write back and put his phone away. He said it was work. That was the first time it occurred to me that he might be having an affair. I always thought he was just work-obsessed, but something about those texts in the labor and delivery room felt off. I mean, he’s a doctor; his colleagues would know not to text him mid-childbirth.
So now we have three children at home, and he goes right back to work. I hadn’t even healed my body to the point of being able to walk okay, and he was back at work. My hatred for him swelled. I was threatening divorce right and left. There were no good nights — none — anymore.
My affair suspicions were high, but my girlfriends all said he wasn’t the type. He’s very intense. Very serious. Very smart. Yes, he and I had a healthy sex life, but in general he wasn’t a flirtatious person. Then with the baby and my older two kids, I was really in the weeds with motherhood, so I stopped wondering if he was having an affair. There was no real evidence, anyway. The few times I asked him if he was cheating on me, he said “Hell, no” and then made a bad joke like “I wouldn’t have time to have an affair even if I wanted to.” Anyway, I just didn’t have the mental real estate to go there.
Then he got promoted at work. His office threw him a party, which obviously I was going to attend. I was excited to dress up for him, and hire a babysitter, and maybe get our marriage back on track. The dark days of having three young kids were almost behind us (the baby could now walk and I wasn’t breastfeeding, and our two other kids were in elementary school). I saw this party as a potential reset.
But at the party, the office manager for his practice brought him a cocktail, and she knew exactly how he liked it. Like, she knew he liked margaritas with no salt on the rim. Suddenly, everything clicked into place for me. I wanted to pass out. I ran out of there, like a scene from a movie, and got in our car and drove home. I was shaking so badly I thought I’d drive off the road.
He had the nerve to stay out until 3 a.m. that night, even though I had run out of that party with tears in my eyes, and he knew I had it all figured out. He texted a few times, like, “All good?” And I just ignored them. I didn’t have the words. I had to figure out next steps.
The next day, he was hungover, and miserable, and I forced him to tell me everything. I stood over him in the bedroom screaming “Tell me!” He confessed to the affair. He said it was just sex and that it had happened only about five times over the course of the past two years, but that she was stalking him. He said she was mentally unstable. He was afraid of her and afraid to get Me Too’d if he ended things with her. I called bullshit. Takes two to tango. I told him I was leaving him and taking our kids, and that’s when he completely broke down. He was sobbing and wailing and apologizing. I wouldn’t hear a word of it. I made him find a rental house and told him he had two weeks to get out.
My husband was begging me to reconsider. It was beyond pitiful watching him. He offered to do anything. To quit his job. To move towns. To move us to a different country. To get individual therapy, couples therapy, electroshock therapy — he was willing to do anything. He called out sick from work that week and just followed me around the house begging for one more chance. He was pathetic. It almost made it hard to be mad at him.
I asked him to show me all his texts with her from beginning to end. Some were hard to find because he’d deleted them, but there were a few emails and photos that he shared with me that helped me put the story together and verify the truth. I didn’t feel rage like you might think. It wasn’t like I’m going to kill this woman! or I’m going to castrate my husband! It was dizzying, overwhelming. But there was also this huge sense of I knew it. My instinct was right. There was a strangely freeing quality in that, even though it definitely wasn’t positive in any way. It was painful beyond imagination, but after a few weeks of his begging, and my investigating, I felt that everything was out on the table.
Three days after the party, he wrote a text to the woman saying she must never contact him again or else he’d call the police. I basically wrote it for him and he hit send. He told his colleagues and his boss what had happened and was transparent with everyone, on my insistence. My feeling was that secrets make you sick, so everything must be out in the open. I even made him call my parents and his parents and own up to what he did.
The drama and blowback was nothing compared to what he thought it would be. It was consensual. Neither got fired. But he did start looking for a new job. All of these steps were (more or less) enough for me to give him one more chance. We also continued to sleep together — it was just like a primal yearning, despite everything.
He ended up getting a new job a few towns over and he comes home at normal hours now and never looks at his phone anymore. He’s given me the passcodes for everything. It’s been four years since I found out about his affair, and there’s never been a single red flag or gray area since. We’ve also had another baby since then. We always wanted a big family. The affair didn’t change that. I felt ready to be pregnant again — it was an animal instinct — and the minute I said we should try, we started trying.
He never blamed me for anything, but I am a reasonable person and I know that I made our home a deeply uncomfortable place for him. I know that men are, in a word, simple, and because he felt so unloved by me, he was quick to feel loved by someone else. He needs love like a plant needs water. My husband was the villain in this affair, not me, but I’m evolved enough to take a little accountability.
We tried therapy, but with four kids, we don’t have time. But we now communicate constantly about everything. It’s honestly too much sometimes. We know open communication is our life raft, though — it’s the only way after an affair. I apologize after saying something cold. I try not to throw unnecessary daggers. Occasionally, I feel judged by my family or friends for taking him back. I wonder if they think I’m weak or naïve. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t feel the need to explain myself to anyone. One day, we’ll tell our kids about the affair — it’s a healthy example of life being hard and complicated, and how we all make mistakes and we all fuck up, but also how life is ultimately good in the end.
I love being married. I did not want to break up my family. My husband made a horrible mistake at a really fragile time in our relationship, at a time when I was a mean person and he was a sad man and no one was rested or well or sane. We weathered the storm and worked through it. I can live with that; I really can.
