I had never really heard anyone talk about the pain of heartache before.  I knew it hurt like hell, but this was something else.  Not in a million did I think it would be as bad as how this actually feels.  It’s indescribable.  I had never been dumped before, and the relationships I had had, more than 20 years prior to today, had just sort of fizzled out.  Furthermore, no one I was particularly close to had ever been betrayed or even died, so I had no first hand experience of trauma or grief.  It’s such a lonely and desperate place to be.

D had advised me not to tell anyone because he believed that once others knew, especially my friends, they would cast their opinion on what I should do, and that would be unhelpful if we were ever to repair our marriage and move on.  So the only people that knew were me, D, his father, my wonderful leg waxer, who has been with me every step of the way, and an old friend of mine who lives in Spain who had rung me, out of the blue the day I found out, and in desperation, I told her. Her sister had just found out that her husband of 20-ish years was shagging their cleaner, so it felt quite apt that she was the only friend, out of my huge circle of friends, that knew.

“As I was fighting for you, I realised I was fighting to be lied to; fighting to be taken for granted; fighting to be disappointed; and fighting to be hurt again… so I started fighting to let go.”

– Unknown

Therefore, D was the only person I could talk to.  How weird was that.  The person who had crippled me and let me down sooo badly was the only person I could speak to about this.

D is an interesting person; interesting in both definitions of the word.  He’s a good raconteur and knowledgeable, but he’s also interesting because he doesn’t follow the social / conventional rules of society.  My friends described him as Marmite, i.e. love him or hate him.  Over the years, my friends had also speculated that it was his naughtiness that I was attracted to – I am very much a rule abiding crowd pleaser.   He studied polotics, philosophy and economics.   He has an analytical and sharp brain.  He knows a lot.  He thinks a lot.  But he severely lacks EQ.  For example, on our wedding day, whilst saying my vows, my voice wobbled and I had tears in my eyes, and I can still see the look of disbelief in his face – he was amazed that I should be so emotional that day.  His friends, our friends, were there en masse, and he had to impress them in his macho, laddish type of way, and this was a theme throughout our marrige.

People talk about feeling sad and empty, a numbness perhpas, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the emotion of finding out your husband is cheating on you.  Perhaps there aren’t words, and that’s why no one ever talks about it.  The pain of the anxiety in your tummy, the constant bashing of the beat of your heart against your ribcage, the stinging eyes from the tears that you cry and the ache in your throat physically hurts.  It’s simply devastatingly sad.

You know that scene in the film Love Actually when Emma Thompson finds out that the present she was expecting for Christmas from her husband isn’t the present she actually, opens and that the present she wanted must’ve gone to another woman?  Well multiply the pain of Emma Thompson in that scene by about a million and perhaps that comes somewhere close.

The next day, a good friend of mine popped in for a cup of tea, to ask me to sign a form, I didn’t tell her.  And she didn’t notice my pain.  How can that be, when you are simply dying inside?  But on you go.  What’s the option?  I was in a daze of utter despair.  You need to wake your daughter up for school, she’s shouting that she’s lost her gum shield, you give her breakfast, take her to school, you kiss her bye-bye, you walk the dog, you go to work, you sit there and no-body knows, and all you can think about is D with his mistress.  It’s debilitating.  Hideously, we work together.  We run a business, so things really are pretty bloody awful.

Later that day my mum arrived because she wanted to do some shopping before we went to New York.  I get on really well with my mum, but I didn’t tell her.  I sneaked off to ring a couple of flat viewings.  What was D doing?  Was he texting her?  Was he thinking about her?  Weirdly he seemed quite excited about the flat viewings.  Perhaps he was thinking about a new shag pad?  And how was he with me?  Perhaps he was generally a bit more tactile?  Looking at me to check in perhaps?  Maybe more aware of me and my emotions than he had been, but that’s about it.  The constant recollection of the information he had told me about her, and about thier soirees together sent continuous electric blots of panic through my body.  I suddenly realised I hadn’t told him to end the affair.  But why hadn’t he already ended it.  Perhaps he had?  My God.  Maybe he wants to see her again?

We sat down again to talk.  I told him to finish with her and he said he would.  In hindsight I wish I had insisted that I listen to that phone call so that I could hear the words he said, because later, she told me that he had not dumped her that day, he had told her to wait for him.  Bastard.

The things is, he seemed okay.  The frail, broken, sobbing wreck from the day before had softened.  Maybe it had for me too, but he was lighter and seemed stoic.  Maybe I was too.  No, I most definitely wasn’t okay.  I wasn’t down and depressed, I was all over the shop, unable to think straight, like a cat on a hot tin roof, chaotic and utterly out of control.  One minute staring into the distance and the next tripping over my own feet and landing head-first into a wall.  I later realised this was shock.

But a pressing concern was this trip to New York with our daughter, my mum, his aunt and two family friends.  We were leaving in two days time.  What the hell were we going to do?  If we pulled out, the whole trip would be off.  If we went it would be horrific.

During this time, I kept having this memory of an article I had read online about a month before.  In fact I’m going to find it now…. It was entitled, ‘Is your husband having an affair?’.  I read it, and I knew confidently he was not (oh how wrong was I).

A friend of mine said I must’ve had suspicions to even continue reading this article and perhaps that’s true.  There had been signs of infidelity in the past and we’d ended up in relationship counselling but I had naively carried on in our marriage. Once I had gone onto his computer when he had come back pissed from the pub and fallen asleep at his desk.  I had wiggled the mouse and found that he was on Plenty of Fish, a dating agency.  He had contacted about 20 women with the same question, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’, and he hadn’t responded to any of them.  I also found an email on this site where he had tentatively arranged to meet someone the next weekend but I had found the email before the date, and therefore he didn’t go.  He said he never would have gone anyway, it was just flirtiness, and I stupidly believed him.

He had also had an emotional affair a few years earlier (this means he had chatted intensely with this woman whilst palming it off to me as ‘supporting her in a crisis – just good friends’) with the wife of a friend of his as their marriage broke down.  (She ended up leaving her husband for another woman but that’s another story). But later, in a ‘truth amnesty’ between D and me a couple of months later, I found out that he had snogged her on a drunken night out during that emotional affair.  Double Bastard.

So here’s the article in case you are interested like I was:

10 signs your partner is ‘definitely’ cheating on you:

1. They start going to the gym a lot – he has always gone to the gym virtually everyday.

2. Their undies get an update – no.  Still the decrepit briefs he always had.

3. Their entire appearance gets an overhaul – no.

4. Mobile phone habits change like being constantly on WhatsApp, being stuck to their hand ‘like glue’, the ‘last online’ function is switched off and they keep the password a secret – this was always true.

We run a business and he was ALWAYS on his phone.

5. Snoring suddenly stops – no.

6. They start cutting themselves out of your friendship group activities, they avoid your mutual friends and their ‘work events’ increase – yes. This did happen.

7. Not answering their phone while they are out – no change.  I remember him being away one night, probably with Natalia, when I really needed him because our daughter couldn’t do her maths homework and neither could I.  She was in a state and so was I.

8. They come home smelling like perfume – no.  But I do remember getting into my bed one night and realsing it smealt of cosmetics.

 9. They don’t want to touch you, be touched by you, or have sex with you – no.

10. They no longer show interest in your life or sharing their life with you – no.

But honestly, we both felt we had a good marriage (I do question that now though) and I had told a good friend of mine, whilst out picking mistletoe a couple of days before I found out, that our marriage was in a really good place.  We were enjoying each other more – our daughter had got into a good school, our business had taken off and we were spending more time together, coffees out, walking the dog, etc.  In hindsight I wonder whether he was just trying harder out of guilt for the affair he was pursing.  I don’t know.  I’ll never know.

I just put my laptop down for a moment.  I’m not crying but I still can’t believe that this is real…. I can cope with it most days now, but the sorrow is still tangible and it literally takes my breath away.