It Was About Time I Apologized for F*cking up His Life…

But dare I expect forgiveness?

My whole body shook as I dialed the phone. It’d taken me weeks to muster the courage to make the most important call in my entire life. I had to tell my recently separated from but still married to husband that I wanted to set up a time to make amends. In person. Finally.

Not that I really wanted to, but I needed to. When I explained the reason for the call, voice halting and quivering, I hoped he’d be glad I was taking responsibility for my unsavory behaviors. Behaviors that qualified me for a 12 step program which strongly encouraged making amends, “except when to do so would injure them or others.” This was not one of those exceptions.

“IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU APOLOGIZED FOR FUCKING UP MY LIFE!”

His rage blasted through the telephone line. The fact that I deserved it did not help me listen with anything other than shame and fear. Yet it was a start. We set a time. The place — his studio apartment up in the hills overlooking the bay.

I prepared for the coming confrontation as best I could. I had a lot to amend for. He did not need to know the details of my “acting out.” That’s program-speak for behaviors unbecoming of a decent person but du rigor for a sex and love addict such as myself.

Program wisdom to the contrary, I believed he deserved to have any and all of his questions answered. He might want to know where I was on those nights I’d told him I stayed over at Blanche’s apartment in the city so I didn’t have to drive after clubbing.

Blanche is a dear and would have said yes in a hot minute but I never asked. I usually didn’t drink. My drugs of choice were younger, male, usually LatinX, and hopefully good dancers. I hoped he wouldn’t ask for those kind of details. Or numbers. I lost count after about twelve.

I tucked a cheat sheet right inside my open purse so when I got shaky and tongue-tied I could glance down and be glib again. The idea wasn’t to give a sex-o-log, as we call them, but to own my actions and take full responsibility for them. And to make whatever amends might be appropriate.

Yes, but how?

How can one amend for over a year of this? I could never restore things back the way they were, especially the trust broken after months of sneaking and lying and otherwise trashing my marriage and stomping all over his heart. (And my own, come to find out.)

What kind of reparations or penance even made sense? Scrubbing his toilet with a toothbrush? Writing I will never lie or cheat again 1000 times on a blackboard? Money can be paid back. Broken hearts, mended with time. But how do you pick up the sharp and shattered pieces of this sort of wreckage? Whatever it might entail, I was finally willing to facing the music and doing it.

So I opened my mouth and stammered out a vague blanket description of what I had been up to, sparing the details till asked. Then I shared not only how I now felt about all this, but more importantly, tried to imagine and honor how devastated he must have felt. Finally I got quiet and braced myself for the coming barrage.

Silence. Awkward silence.

Then he got up and went to the table beside his bed. Studio apartment, remember? He picked up a framed photo of himself as a child of about 7 or 8. He looked at it and held it out for me to see.

The picture represented his inner child. The young soul who felt terribly hurt and abandoned by his mother. The little boy who sat out on the stoop and waited for her to come home all hours of the day or night, even with a house full of siblings.

This was the boy who ran the man — the man who stayed with a woman doing the things I did. Could this be why he hung on so long, waiting for the nightmare to end on its own?

He didn’t ask about Blanche. Or any other details. Nothing like that.

Instead told me about his therapist and counseling group. He told me about learning to love this little lost one whether or not anyone else ever did.

Was this the same guy I’d lived with for nine years? My heart and eyes overflowed with relief, gratitude and something else. There was a hug — a real genuine hug. No promises made. Just a deep connection in the moment.

How do you account for this?

It’s what I call grace — the blessing unearned and undeserved, yet we receive it anyway. Robert Capon calls it, “the bursting presence of love at a time when we have the right only to expect condemnation.”

(Source: Robert Ferrar Capon, from Between Noon and Three, 1982, quoted by psychologist and author M. Scott Peck in What Return can I Make, 1985.)

It’s not a license to do more harm. It’s a call to live up to the trust that forgiveness bestows. The gift of this moment was realizing that while I had done bad things, I was not a bad person. We were both hurt and wounded in ways that attracted us to each other originally.

Humbled and awed by this experience, I began to forgive myself. My belief in a power greater than myself strengthened and deepened into a faith I can and do rely on over and over.

No, we did not get back together, but we did reconcile. Although we don’t see each other very often, when we do, it’s amicable. More importantly, out of that moment I began what’s called a living amends — a commitment to live from a place of integrity for the rest of my life, working my steps to the best of my ability, one day at a time.

Folks talk a lot about forgiveness these days. From my perspective, forgiveness is not an option. If sincerely requested, I give it.

It’s contrition that’s the big bugaboo. Because it’s not just about saying I’m sorry, which we all can do. And it’s not just about meaning it, which isn’t that hard. It’s about living it. No matter what. Sounds hard and it is, but I can now look myself in the mirror with a clear conscience and eyes of love.

There simply is no deeper joy.

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Post Script: In preparing this post, I realized sooner or later my ex-husband or mutual friends might come across this piece. Reason and compassion suggested I call him up and explain my plan. My hyper-active imagination immediately pictured him saying, “What? You want to fuck up my life again?!!! Wasn’t it enough 30 years ago?”

Fortunately, I trusted my intuition, found my rubber-banded address book with its pages falling out and dialed. He actually answered. I took a deep breath and told him what was up. While he did have questions, he ended by saying he hopes my writing brings the results I’m intending — sharing my experience in order to support and inspire others with similar situations. In addition to his blessing, we got to catch up on each other’s lives a bit. Yet another grace. Thank you!

Marilyn Flower is a sacred fool who writes fiction, poetry, and blogs, inspired by the practice of SoulCollage®. Her books: Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction, Creative Blogging, Bucket Listers. Follow her Sacred Foolishness or SoulCollage® for Writers, and Stay in touch!