T he very worst thing that could happen, did happen… I suspect you’ve guessed already what I’m about to say, because only someone as naive as me would still want to believe in the fairy tale that was(n’t) out marriage…

He went back to her.

As I write my heart is thumping.  I realise I have procrastinated for more than a week about writing this piece because it’s really painful.  But I have decided to just write it out without going into the emotion – the emotional side of this incident hurts me deeply.  It was gut wrenchingly awful, and probably more painful than finding out about the actual affair itself because it told me where his brain was at and where his allegiances lay.  It demonstrated a complete emptiness and disrespect for me, our marriage and our family.  Basically, he didn’t give a sh*t.

I’m not sure how to put this story into word but I’ll try.  Here’s what happened:

Things between D and I were horribly plodding along.  The daily pain of seeing him on his phone, and wondering who he was messaging was intolerable, and the total anarchy in my brain about ‘should I stay or should I go’ was completely debilitating.  Sleepless nights, with a kind of panicky feeling in my gut, tear after tear and actual heart ache were all reoccurring daily themes, and I was getting increasingly more obsessed with D being on his phone, wondering what he was put to.  Interestingly, we had spent every night in bed together since his affair was outed; whether I’d liked that or not but the truth was, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight for fear of what he might do.  Trust was obviously smashed into smithereens, and the only small comfort I had was that we’d put an offer in on a flat, two minutes away from our home, and we’d decided D would move in to it as soon as we were handed the keys.

Four days after we got back from NYC, I had organised to take our daughter and her cousins on a shopping trip to London.  D was going to his friend’s father’s funeral with a group of his university friends.  He was staying the night in a guest house so that he could have a few drinkies with his mates at the wake.  How in hell did I ever believe this?  But I did.

The trouble was, he didn’t know I was checking his WhatsApp messages on the desktop computer, and when we got back from London, 9pm ish, I had a sneaky peek.  I could see that D’s friends had left the wake saying, ‘Great to see you all’ and the like and I was perplexed.  Hmmmm – so why is he still there when all the others had gone?  I rung him.  He answered from the loo of his room.  Hmmmm…. Things didn’t seem right.  He was pissed, but I instinctively knew she was there.  I asked him, and of course he said ‘no’.  I then said, ‘Show me the room’.

He hesitated but then he pointed the video on his phone at one of the walls of the room, and scanned the phone in a rainbow shape over the celling, until the phone stopped behind the door.  And there, staring me in the face was a scarlet dress..  Soooooo devastatingly busted.

In that instant, our daughter barged into the room I was in.  “Daddy, Daddy, where are you”.  My heart was racing and my cheeks were red.  They chatted briefly and our daughter left.

Immediately, I asked him to show me behind the door again.  The dress was gone.  “She’s there.  You f*cking bastard.  She’s there isn’t she?”.  He denied it over and over again, but I knew what I’d seen.  I was speechless, confused and livid.  I hung up.  Distraught.

“Infidelity is not a mistake, it’s a choice.”

– Unknown

What was I going to do?  I needed to put our daughter to bed and show her that I loved her more than anything in the whole world, and then deal with my despair of what our family, our life had become.  So that’s what I did. And then I went to his desk top computer again, guessed his apple password and spent the whole night raiding through all his personal stuff.  (As I write I am really pleased with myself that I managed to do this).  What I found was hideous.

I found a text exchange between him and her from June.  June!! He told me the affair had started in September!! It was a text exchange from the start of their relationship, and he confesses that he doesn’t even know her name but enjoyed their kiss that night.  He is the one chasing her, and then the text exchange weirdly cuts out.  Perhaps he rang her?  Perhaps they decided to go onto a platform more secretive?  Perhaps they’d arranged to meet up?  I don’t know. But what I do know is that he’d lied when all I wanted was the truth.  Why?  So cowardly not to confess.  He was trying to ‘down play’ the intensity of their relationship but finding out this way made it a million times worse. My heart sank to the pits of despair.  What other lies were going to be unfolded?  My stomach was riddled with anxiety and horror.

– I found photos in his deleted emails of her naked in an empty bath, another of her rubbing her ‘small’ tits (this was apparently a bone of contention, rather than a bone of eroticism because D loves large breasts), and another of her dressed in bondage type underwear, standing in a weirdly small door frame in a ‘seductive’ type stance – not.  She looked ridiculous.  Did he really find this attractive?  I really can’t believe he did.  Eh?!

– I also found a couple of pictures of another girl he had an emotional affair with a couple of summers before; one of her in a bikini and another of her in the bath with her big toe shoved up one of the taps.  I’m smiling because I made a replica of that photo with me in the bath with my toe shoved up the tap which became the profile picture of my category A mates’ WhatsApp group, the group where I share all of these blog-posts before they go out.  It’s called ‘My Sorority”, the phrase D uses when he refers to my group of friends, my harem, and the hatred they have of him and the unwavering support they have for me.  (For those of you who don’t know, an emotional affair is when two people become connected in an emotional way rather than a physical way).

The thing is, I actually didn’t find that much.   He was obviously very careful with the correspondence.  I searched and I searched, typing in random words into the search engine and coming up with, well, not a lot.

So in the middle of that night, I ended my marriage for good.  I couldn’t go on like this.  The mistrust, the lack of accountability, the disregard for me and my feelings, and my sorrow was killing me. I could no longer go on as if nothing had happened and I wanted to scream from the hill tops and tell everyone what he had done to me, our family and our life.  I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, so I wrote an email to the only person of significance that knew what was happening – my father-in-law.  I knew he’d be devastated and so would D by proxy, but it had to be done.

(Perhaps that was cruel because D has one of the best father / son relationships I know. They really are good friends and D respects him hugely. Perhaps D is a little subservient to him, but for D, letting his dad down wouldn’t go down well.  We both love him a lot, and since Covid, we’ve spoken to him almost daily because he’s become the sounding board for our business.  He is our little family’s biggest fan in my opinion he rocks, and this feeling in mutual).

Here’s what I said:

From: D’s email account to my father in law  


Date:  03:11:30 GMT 


Subject: Keeping you in the loop 

I’m so sorry to tell you this G, but D is currently spending another night with Natalia having promised me he had ended their relationship and promising we would wait until the New Year before we made any bold moves about our marriage in any direction.

This email was going to be a letter of resignation from ‘our company’ for you two first and then the whole team, but I have spent the last 3 hours thinking about this, and for ‘our daughter’s’ sake, I won’t do this until the New Year.  The ‘company’ is built on our relationship and things may wobble if we aren’t able to work together.  I have also decided that, for ‘our daughter’s’ sake, no matter how cataclysmically awful it will be, we must spend Christmas Day together so that not every Christmas is a reminder to her of her parents splitting up.

I am so sorry G.  I know this was not the outcome you and I wanted but there is no other way.  For the first time since I found out about D’s affair, I feel strong about this decision, so much so that I might cancel the relationship counselling I booked for Thursday.  Utterly pointless.  I know what has to be done, and I’m starting the process of doing it.

Wow. I wish I had the words.  I’ll try… I have enjoyed most of our marriage.  In my opinion we were good together.  I have enjoyed most of our work together; finally seeing the benefits of sheer our hard work pay off, at last.  I have also enjoyed co-parenting a beautiful, confident, popular, and intelligent daughter with you, D, and I hope we can somehow rekindle at least a vague relationship for her sake.  In time perhaps.  Currently, I just want to spit in your face.
Wedding rings off and turn the page to the new chapter.  Good luck.  G, I still love you dearly.  D, you’re a f*cking arse hole at best.  Stay away from me.

F x

Not that dramatic is it?  I wonder if I was just too knackered to give it my all.  But it’s a relatively bland email considering the magnitude of what I had just unearthed.

As an aside, I imagine that D will justify this whole debacle as a bit if fun.  Don’t overreact Freida, everyone does this.  It’s just a bit of laugh, a chance to let your hair down and live a little, and it doesn’t mean anything. You’re the one I love.

It’s actually taken me a long, long time to realise how wrong his actions were which to anyone on the periphery would know instantly.  But it took me an eternity to open my eyes to his misogynistic behaviour and not make excuses for him, for once upon a time, this is what I had been attracted to.  I had done this since the day I met him, and now I’m livid with myself for allowing this behaviour throughout our marriage.  And if you’re reading this thinking ‘I have suspicions about my bloke, but he doesn’t sound as bad as him’ open your brain cells up, as well as your eyes and ears.  Shake yourself and realise that people like this don’t change and you are in love with the idea of a marriage and not your actual marriage itself.

The saddest thing for me was his total and utter disregard for me in the time when I needed it the most.  It made me wonder if he had ever considered me and my needs, if he had ever loved me.  I mean, I know now that he never loved me in a way I wanted to be loved.  The lack of respect and the lack of care for something that was soooo precious to me – our marriage, was a huge kick in the teeth.  He is selfish, and the whole situation for me was shattering beyond belief.  To walk away and end our marriage once and for all was the right thing to do.  Thank goodness – the grey area had finally dissipated, and a new black and white decision was uncovered, and this was a huge relief to me.  (Disappointingly short lived however.)  On we plod…