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Unfaithfully yours: a husband's tale - story of a man with an unfaithful wife

Men's Fitness, Nov, 1998 by Sean Robinson

Have you ever been kicked in the gut? I haven't. But I know what it feels like, and even now, a month later, as I sit down to write, I feel myself re-living the pain ... not the body-numbing stab of first impact, but a dull throb that refuses to go away.

This is a tough subject for me to write about, so forgive me if I dance around it as I try to find my bearings. It is not an easy thing to tell the world - when you haven't even found the words to tell your family and friends - that your wife has been unfaithful.

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I suppose I should start by saying that if outward appearances are everything, we still probably have the happiest marriage this side of the Cleavers. Joan and I look good together, look like we belong together. We share the same dreams, or many of them, at any rate. We genuinely enjoy each other's company, and laughter comes easily to us. Even now, I know she loves me just as much as I love her.

Our troubles began almost immediately after our rabbi/minister (we used both, but that's a different story) ran us through the vows. We quit our jobs, packed up and moved west, giving up security and everything we knew for the complete unknown.

I was selfish, committed only to my work - as, I suppose, was Joan. Money was a neverending worry. We gave each other little in the way of emotional support. We lived independent lives. Joan had big expectations for the two of us, and they didn't quickly materialize. The sex sucked.

In short, we gave each other 1,001 good reasons to cheat; Joan just took the initiative.

When the phone call came that all but confirmed her deception, I can't say I was too surprised. Even before it happened, I somehow knew it would. Perhaps it was because we were both obsessed by questions of fidelity, wondering if we - or any couple - could really be expected to give ourselves to the other for eternity. Or whether fidelity was even a healthy thing. But that was abstract. More recently, Joan had been on edge, jumpy. A creature of habit, she'd broken old habits, the small kind you notice only if you live with someone and keep your eyes open. But while suspecting something is one thing, having it thrown in your face is something unbelievably different, something unimaginably worse.

I don't know what you'd do if you found out your wife was in another city (Vegas, of all places), in the arms of another man, but I'll tell you what I did: I got drunk (something I rarely do), watched the fights (something I often do), and then, taking leave of my senses and our claustrophobic apartment, I accompanied a friend to a party. Within minutes, I scoped out the prettiest girl I could find, she scoped out a hot-looking girl sidekick, and the three of us got very busy.

Was it a mature way of dealing with the situation? Hardly. You might say I also cheated, but even distanced from the events, I still contend that all I was doing was dulling the pain, building up my broken ego, taking my mind off Joan's infidelity and confirming to myself that if I'd really wanted to cheat, I could have done so all along.

The following night, we cried. (Earlier that day by phone, I told her I knew and, just to be cruel, told her what I had done.) She said she never meant to hurt me. I told her I'd try to forgive and forget, but that I didn't know where my emotions would take me.

I still don't.

What I do know is that if not for the fact that both of our sets of parents are still together, we probably would have already split up, even before this whole thing went down. We know what happiness feels like and how hard it is to make a marriage work.

It has been a long, hard month as I've tried to come to terms with what Joan did and why. I'd like to say that I have handled the situation well, that I have been understanding, that I haven't allowed anger to get the best of me. Some days, I've felt like we've never been closer, that we've finally said so many of the things we've needed to say for so long. Other times, I fear we've backslid into the same paralyzing patterns that drove us apart in the first place. Silence. Emotional apathy. Doubt.

I've had to learn to trust again. Joan is a beautiful woman, and her job often keeps her out late at night. I've had to learn to accept this and not question who she's with and what they're doing. The only thing I asked of Joan was that she sever all contact with Dantana (my clever nickname for her lover). She claims he lives out of town, that I don't know him and that she hasn't taken his phone calls. I have no real way of knowing. To believe her is difficult; to question her is futile.

But the hardest thing is acknowledging that I wasn't capable of fulfilling my wife's needs, that she "needed to see [her]self through somebody else's eyes," that she needed to live a life of fantasy. It makes sense, too much sense, but it hurts. Indeed, even now, images haunt me. Dantana and my wife meeting at the Vegas airport, sneaking around, their hearts racing, checking into a hotel (he smug, she biting her lips in fear), the two of them "making love" beneath a cheesy mirrored ceiling. Images that vivid die hard.

Unfaithfully yours: a husband's tale - story of a man with an unfaithful wife

Men's Fitness, Nov, 1998 by Sean Robinson

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