One day on a family outing to a zoo, she glances over his shoulder and sees he is texting “Hi Beautiful”. How odd, she thinks, we are here together and that is his name for me. The bottom falls out of her stomach as the surreal nonsensical morphs into the real. Questions flood her bloodstream, racing through her system, searching for how this could be, poisoning her life immediately and irrevocably.
She tells me later that she waited to confront him at home,when the children were in their rooms, reading after a long day at the zoo. It is in those waiting moments that I admire her maturity or patience or I am not sure what it was. When she confronts, he denies, looking deep into her eyes with reassurance. This is our human trusting thread- we all share it on some level before we separate. It is our longing to believe and trust, regardless of the evidence shoved in front of our faces, over and over. Often it is presented only once , backlit, neon, dramatic and forensically verifiable and obvious. We can stare it down, push it back and kill it. We are dying to not lose the ground that we know. It is shaky, the richter can’t count that high, but we have normalised it. We tell ourselves it is solid.
His words finally gave way to the truth. “I’m done” , he says. This is what we said impolitely as kids, when we were full. He pushes his marriage away with the same insouciance as a plate after dinner. She begged for a month, they sought counselling, she confronted his lover, had public tea with her no less, and they even made love again. But he was done.
24 short months later after his life with this woman was made public, they split up. They had moved half way across the country together, bought and renovated a house, started new traditions, took trips together and created a new life. Soon he was done again.
This was a secondary loss for the ex wife- the marriage broke from this relationship and then this relationship broke. Although possibly just the catalyst for them to split, it feels wasteful in a way that is unbearable. It is barren and empty and she has to revisit all that is still sore and open.
click here to read my latest post on Urban moms called DEEP POCKETS