It's About to Get Real - Cheating on Your Husband

Sometimes I wonder if my mom prayed for my future husband when I was small. I pray for Hayden’s someday husband.
I wonder this because if she did, God heard her.
But sometimes fairytales collide with real life – in a “I just totaled my car and everyone died” kinda way.

You see, I am a hot mess …often, it seems.
I had a wonderful childhood growing up in a nuclear family with parents and siblings who were wonderful. Friends that all grew up together in school and church. You could have made a feel good movie from my childhood.

Got good grades and went to a great college and earned two bachelor’s degrees. Met a guy and liked him. Grew comfortable and when he proposed, I accepted. I was happy with the idea of getting married, excited with planning and dreaming about it. All the while, I wasn’t happy with him – you know, the guy I was marrying – the one thing that should be driving all the happiness.

Here comes the ugly…I cheated.

Before we got married. Right after we got married.

It is painful even to write that. It makes the ugly seem more real somehow.
I knew in my gut that I wasn’t supposed to marry him. I knew I was comfortable, but not in love. Love, by definition, is self-sacrificing and that is certainly not where I was. I grew up in a strong Christian family and knew that what I was doing was incredibly wrong. Why didn’t I listen to my gut?

Because I listened to my head instead. He’s a great guy -a Christian man who will lead my family. He has a great job. He will provide for me and our kids (thank God we didn’t have any!) So many logical reasons to go through with it, but I left out the most important part – what did my heart have to say about it? I know that sounds fru fru, but if we make decisions only from our head we are left with an empty shell of an outcome.

I married him. Then two years later I walked into a store and met a man who worked there who seemed pretty cool. I ended up going back a few times and we had lunch. Then we had more lunches. Then it became more.

Obviously I wasn’t happy at home, and finding my husband watching porn at midnight or when I came home early didn’t help the situation. But what was I doing? Was this guy just filling the empty spot in my heart? Can that be filled by a man at all? Were my feelings for real?

This part of my life is a swirling typhoon of emotions – almost as if I can’t quite delineate where reality lies. I really, really wanted to be with this guy. He didn’t have the ridiculously paying government contract job or the master’s education, the $250k house, but he had something else – he had my heart.

Can you even say that when a relationship if borne out of adultery?

Then it happened. We were found out. A kiss in public betrayed our secrecy and my husband knew. Then it was all like, “Do we go to marriage counseling?” “The Bible says I am SO wrong here.” “How can I ever face my family?” “I know you want to work things out, but….BUT….”.

Then it hit me. The end to that thought was, “…but I don’t.”

I don’t want to just live life being comfortable, but never blissful.
I don’t want to dread seeing my husband every day.... Every. Day.
I don’t want to wonder if he is home watching porn.
I don’t want to have children with him.
I don’t want to just be with him because he is a good Christian man.
I don’t want to grow old and unhappy with every passing day.
I don’t want this house to be the best thing in my marriage.
I don’t want to live in a secret anymore.

How selfish am I? How can I put my own selfish desires over what I know to be right? I know divorce and adultery are awful. How do I reconcile what I want with what is right? (I still don’t know the answer to this – I only know my own outcome.)

I told him where I stood. Then I went home to my parents to think. (Not to tell them, because he beat me to that.)

I remember being at home and feeling an excruciating amount of guilt. This was my Baptist, Bible- believing family (I am one of six children so my brothers and sisters were some of the people I had to face), and they were heartbroken at my actions. Heartbroken and maybe a little angry. I was heartbroken, too – I just wanted them to love me.
As I write this, I just broke down. I don’t think I have been honest enough with myself to say this before now. I have been too swallowed up with guilt to venture into how I felt. Is it okay to feel this way? Is this whole part of my life nothing but my making one selfish move after another? Maybe this is still a part of my struggle.

My parents were sad, but they were the ones that stood beside me. They didn’t want my life to be marred by divorce, but I think they could sense how unhappy I was.
They also were concerned – about this guy. Who was this guy? What kind of man fools around with a married woman?

It gets worse.
He was married, too -with a 5 year old daughter. Honestly, she was the only reason the marriage still existed. I think he and his wife had found different paths years before. (His ex-wife is pretty great, actually. We get along wonderfully and we try to support each other in every way we can. I am so blessed.)

So now I am a home-wrecker. Just add it to the list.
And while we are at it, I am going to come clean on the other men I cheated with. Might as well air ALL the dirty laundry. So I told them: my family, my friends who were close enough to care, my husband. I needed to feel free again – not to be held down by this stone of dark, crippling lies one more minute.

I drove back to Ohio to tell my husband I was going to file for dissolution, and I met with Jay (the new guy – now my husband of 10 years). I told him I couldn’t go through with the relationship. I was so confused about who I was and what I wanted, what is right and wrong, where I put down my next footprint, what the next step looks like. Then I headed back to PA and my parents. During that drive I felt a hollowness I haven’t felt before or since.

It took a few days of alone of filtering through my feelings to realize what I wanted. I wanted to be with Jay. He was willing to fight to make it happen. He was completely devastated the day I told him I didn’t think I could make the next move. That day still sits in my memory as sad, but also the day my feelings might have been solidified. Losing something might be just what one needs to realize they can’t be without it.

Back to Ohio. Rented a crappy hotel room on the wrong side of the tracks and waited. Within a few days Jay and I were living in a hotel purchased with my credit. Ugh.
Then friends swooped in to save the day. Actually, they weren’t even close friends, but people Jay worked with. They offered to let us sleep on the floor in their spare room for as long as we needed. The room smelled of cat litter and we were covered in hair each morning, but it was free. They were so amazingly giving to us, buying us the occasional pizza and honestly, just loving on us. It was like food for our souls. I remember days of eating a bag of chips for lunch because we were so short on money. Eventually we saved up enough for the down payment on an apartment and finished up everyone’s dissolution paperwork.

It was me and him against the world. That was a very honest feeling.
Friends saw the ugly and bailed. Family became distant, as they felt the need to take sides (my parents showed concern, but were always there for me).
I saw my ex’s mother one day and she told me that I would never be happy again. This still bothers me a bit – not because I am unhappy, but because she truly believed it. It weighed on me for a time. Why do we let the actions/words of others influence us so deeply?

We eventually got on our feet enough that he decided to propose. He asked my dad beforehand, but my mom didn’t know. I don’t know what he and my dad talked about, but I’m sure it was an interesting conversation. As he was on one knee my mom blurted out, “NO!” – something Jay and I giggle about to this day. She was a little mortified because of the circumstance.

Wedding day. Just a few friends, his mom, my parents and two of my siblings. Small, but meaningful to the both of us. A new start was something desperately needed.

Fast forward 10 years.
I have a step-daughter that is sixteen and looking for a job. She is an amazing person. I don’t usually tell people that I didn’t give birth to her – I don’t use the term “step” unless people look confused and I need to explain.
My family has mostly healed from the chaos I incurred. It has taken all of 10 years, though. Sometimes there is still an awkward silence or sad feeling on my part. I’m not sure if it feels sad on their end, or angry, upset? Maybe there isn’t a complete healing in this circumstance – I have left a scar.
Jay and I have a daughter who just turned nine. She is incredible. Being a mom to these two has made my heart happy in ways I couldn’t imagine.

The kids nine years ago.

I have my soul mate. I know, it sounds so shallow, but it’s true. This man is better for me than if I had created him myself. He honestly knows me better than I do.
He is kind, even when I am a jerk.
He sees so much good in me, even when I feel like a disaster.
He builds me up, especially when I am tearing myself apart. This happens daily.
He listens, even when I have repeated myself three times.
He leads. He is incredibly motivated, and it motivates our family.
He imagines. His vision is insightful and has no boundaries. It is the reason we accomplish all we do.
He brings God’s words to me – usually exactly when I need to hear them.
He fights for us.
He shows his love for me when I feel undeserving of love.
He is the example I want our daughters to see.

I watch a lot of people go through this life unhappy with the marriage decision they made. I was almost one of them. I can’t imagine my life without Jay. It is so refreshing to feel that wave of butterflies in my tummy when I see his truck pull in at night instead of a wave of dread. He has shown me more love than I can imagine and helped me become a more loving person. He, and this life we built, is better than I thought it could be.

Funny, but the biggest question for me has been where do I stand with Christ?
I know in my head that He forgives. He IS love.
We are a part of a great church now – have been for about nine years. We have grown in love and faith together over those years. Our daughters are being raised in a family that loves Jesus.
Most of the time I don’t wonder about it, worry about it. Prodigal son and all that. He loves me. I love him.
But I know I hurt him.
Maybe that is the scar I have to carry until this journey is complete.

PS. .. I just finished this in time for my friend to come over. She read it and the first thing she says is, “That is a scar what Satan wants you to carry, not God.”
I burst into tears.

As far as the East is from the West.

Maybe writing this was all just so I could hear those words.