My husband cheated early in the marriage, just before our fifth wedding anniversary, at a particularly vulnerable and delicate time for us as a couple and as a family on a variety of fronts. It was a nearly anonymous, physical, sexual infidelity. He made a conscious, deliberate decision to partake, based on the understanding that unless he confessed, I'd never know. That much was accurate.
Turns out, he couldn't handle the guilt. It was visible on his face from the moment he walked in the door back home.
He didn't tell me on his own. I realized of my own volition that something was *very wrong.* For the first time in our relationship, my husband could not look me in the eyes, starting from the very moment he walked into the front door. He kept talking to a point in space behind me, somewhere over my left shoulder.
Even though we'd never been in this place before, I knew *exactly* what that meant.
Finally, on Day Three at home, after two days of me gently nudging and then finally banging hard on it ("Dude, I know *something* happened, you are miserable and it is obvious, you might as well tell me now and get it on the table...") he outed with a very sanitized version of events.
He says he always knew he'd tell me, that he always planned to tell me, but that he was "waiting for the right time." IMHO, we all know that's bullshit. 'The right time' never, ever comes.
He freely admits that it was my prodding and facilitation that enabled what I got out of him, to get out of him.
Without that, who knows? He says he would have 'told.'
Given how long he held onto the actual essence of the matter, and that in the moment he fully intended to enjoy himself, and he did, based on *never telling me,* well... I'm not convinced he would have ever gotten up off of it without a significant nudge from me.
Then again, he could have continued to lie, futile or not.
Basically, in terms of the physical facts, he did not continue to lie.
But he also did not own up to the most inherent betrayal, which was to deceive me by omission, for his own pleasure.
Approximately seven years later, we've put this incident firmly behind us, as much as we both understood it. (I actually did not, due to rug sweeping.)
My husband did not engage in further incidents of sexual, physical infidelity, but inherent dysfunction continued to rear its ugly head during that time.
Seven years hence, mid thirties-ish, I was so completely fried by the seemingly bottomless pit of demands and dysfunction and 'can never be enough' that I was confused, beyond frustrated, exhausted, and actively telegraphing all of the above.
It's not like I didn't telegraph it to my husband- I WAS SCREAMING IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOPS AT HIM- and he will agree, I was.
He was simply too wedded to his dysfunction (FOO, FOO, FOO) and too wedded to the way things were, to even consider any significant change.
We were on a trajectory that would continue for decades.
And right at this precise juncture is where I became an Almost Wayward.
Personally, in terms of the real estate between my own two ears, I understand that I became a Wayward. I fully well knew why this other guy was hanging around. And I let him hang around, and I soaked up the attention- because I was fucking *starved.* Because I was exhausted. Because I couldn't get my own husband's attention with a taser, a baseball bat, a suitcase nuke and a Pit Bull. Nor with lingerie, sex toys, various 'adult materials,' willingness, and a surprising amount of physical, emotional and psychological nimbleness.
Just, nope.
You've heard the term, 'Hopium'?
I was firmly parked, through no agency of my own, at 'Nopium.'
I cannot even count the number of nights and mornings in which I cried in the shower.
LOL, to quote Beetlejuice, "I was utterly alone."
For our purposes as a couple, we do not count me as a Mad Hatter because, despite super human temptation and frustration, I did not cross that line. I never let that guy, nor any other guy, touch me.
Also, here's another factor in why I let this particular guy hang around, with his obvious agenda:
Compared to the bids I'd been fighting off to that point, while my husband *dithered about with growing up and actually being married,* this, his presence, was the least threatening. I'd already fielded and dispensed with far, far more threatening bids. Shit that would have threatened marriages, jobs, careers, families, finances, next week's work schedule, promotions, reputations, WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
The guy I let hang around, for too long? He was all that in his own right. He was not a loser. He was not a slacker. In fact, he'd already played out a considerable skill set against a spouse and a FOO that was brutal and unyielding.
In my world, he was small potatoes. Ultimately dispensable. As I was in his.
I'm sure you betrayed husbands are waiting for me to say that it was because my own husband was enough for me.
Or because he was the only man for me.
Or because I could not stand the touch or the thought of another man.
The truth?
None of that is true.
I could have fucked that guy and any number of other guys who made bids to the end of the earth and back again and then fucked a whole orbit around Mars and likely would have been physically and psychologically better off for it.
The truth is two fold:
1. Primarily- I did not want to be that person. I am not an inherently dishonest person. Not everything I do is up for public consumption nor for public judgment but I *will* live my life in harmony with my own integrity, ethics, and values. In accordance with that, I will not deliberately screw over another sentient being, human, animal or otherwise. I will be a good steward to those provisions, blessings, resources with which Providence provides.
2. As Providence provides, so goes my responsibility.
Yes, I certainly *could* be selfish, God knows others in my life were, and had been, and continued to be, but that's on them.
They are not me.
My husband was the first to trip.
He handled it... not badly, but certainly not optimally.
His 'trip' was, weird.
Purely sexual, physical, ephemeral- at the very moment when I was a wife, a mother, an athlete, a professional, and fully available.
My 'trip,' IMHO, was purely predictable.
I was all in,
...and I was alone.
And where the rubber hit the road, I walked right up to my husband unsolicited and 'confessed,' to all of 'the voices in my head' that were prompting me, *pushing me,* to reach out and grab that for which I was so starved,
and I also firmly, and with full disclosure,
pushed that other man away.
And do you know what that got me? What that got us?
A trip to Disney World.
No, I'm not kidding.
It got us a fucking trip to Disney World.
A trip that my husband had been talking about and simultaneously putting off *for years,* waiting until the time was *juuuuuuuuuust right.*
Like, after I *almost* fucked another guy out of sheer frustration and neglect, *but didn't?*
"YOU GET A TRIP TO DISNEY WORLD!"
Fuck me. Fuck us.
(That was Husband's one bid toward 'an enlightened and fun life,' as he identified it. And then it was right back to Business as Usual: Workaholism.)
I do believe that SI fails *all of us* in this regard:
Yeah, marital weather conditions can indeed lead to infidelity. I am proof positive, as a spouse who stood on the precipice, but did not.
Decades ago I read a science fiction novel that addressed 'marriage' in terms of 'five year contracts.' Every five years, the couple and each individual within decided to re-up the contract, or not.
I'm beginning to think that it's a sane way to approach a marriage- some other contingencies where children vs. infrastructure vs. income are involved.