The Other Guy

This is part twelve of my story of recovering from my wife’s affair and rebuilding our marriage. If you haven’t already, please start at the beginning with part one.

For a couple of weeks, I toyed with the idea of sending the other guy an email. I hated this person more than anyone else in the world, and I hadn’t told him so. One day I sat down and composed an email to him. I didn’t hold anything back, and it felt good just to type the words and see them on my screen.

Still, sending the email didn’t seem like a good idea to me. I had written it merely as a cathartic exercise. He had left us alone since my wife told him to. Better to let sleeping dogs lie, I figured.

As I’ve said, the other guy was my wife’s high school sweetheart. They dated from the age of 14 to 20. They were engaged to be married, but hadn’t set a date. Then one day he called and abruptly broke up with her over the phone. That was it.

She went and sold her engagement ring, and bought diamond earrings with the money. She says she became depressed and withdrawn for a while, until she and I met. After that, our relationship quickly blossomed. We were married about a year and a half after we met. We started having kids three years after that.

The other guy’s family are all friends with my wife’s family. The families were connected even before he and my wife started dating, and they remain connected still. So even though he stayed away from big gatherings, I would occasionally come into contact with his mother, father and sister, and I was aware of what he was up to. I knew he got married, too, and I knew he had started a successful company. I knew his wife stayed at home and raised their kids.

I always knew this was the situation my wife had wanted out of her life. She loves kids and dogs in general, and spending her days doing nothing but taking care of them was how she envisioned her ideal life.

With our situation, that was not to be. I work in a creative field, and although I’ve done very well in that field, it’s not one in which it’s common to make a ton of money. When the kids were young and the opportunity presented itself for me to work from home, we took it. My wife would continue to commute downtown. Her job offered good pay and fantastic benefits. For a while I made more money than she did, but because she’s smart and hardworking, she got raises and promotions and eventually passed me in income.

We did what made sense for our family as a whole. She kept her well-paying job with great health insurance. I worked from home and was the primary parent with the kids, as far as time spent with them goes. My wife came to resent that. I was getting to do what she wanted to do.

I always suspected that she sometimes thought about how things would have been with the other guy. Had she somehow worked things out and married him, she would have been at home with their kids. He made very good money with his company, and she would have had a bigger house, a nicer car, and gone on more exotic vacations. I think even though she and I had a good marriage, wonderful kids and a great life together, a part of her always felt like she could have had more.

Then, one day a few months ago, after 25 years of water under the bridge, he reached out and gave her another chance. And she thought she might want to take it.

I told my therapist about my unsent email to the other guy.

She said, “I don’t see any harm in sending it. You’ve expressed your anger to your wife. You haven’t expressed it to him.”

This took me by surprise, but it made perfect sense. As soon as she said it, I knew she was right. Maybe some of my anger could be alleviated by expressing it to him — just by knowing that he knows what I think of him.

So, after making another pass at it to remove the pure vitriol and (I think well-deserved) name-calling, as I was advised to do by my therapist, I sent it. Here’s what I told him:

You may be surprised to hear from me, but after I’ve been able to think about everything for several weeks, I just wanted to send you a quick message. My therapist said it might be good for me to say these things to you. So yeah, I’m in therapy, [my wife]’s in therapy, and we’re in marriage counseling together. It’s not easy recovering from what you did to us. It’s not cheap, either — maybe I should send you a bill.

Don’t get me wrong. Believe me, [my wife] bears blame for what you both did, too, and she has accepted all of that. She knows what a terrible thing she did. But the thing is, she didn’t start it. You did. You encouraged a married woman to have an affair with you. You’re a homewrecker, pure and simple, and there’s good reason society considers that a despicable thing to be. It’s not something a decent person does, because every married person knows even good marriages (which [my wife] and I do have together, despite what she may have misled you to think) can be fragile sometimes, so if someone comes along and suggests an affair at the wrong time, well, we end up here.

You had your chance with her decades ago, and you squandered it. A real man would admit that to himself and never try to destroy a marriage to take back what he had willingly, if stupidly, given up. A real man lives with his bad decisions.

I want you to remember forever why she chose me. It’s not just because I’m her husband. It’s because she knows I’m a good person, and you are not. She has told me several times that the only thing you had over me was money. She says she was attracted to the “shiny things” (her words) you could give her. In every other category she says I beat you hands down. That was nice to hear. She knows now that she would have been miserable with you, and, as for me, I honestly don’t give a shit that you’re rich.

She’s deeply ashamed that she ever put the material things you could give her above everything else. She sleeps snuggled up next to me every night, naked. It’s really nice. I want you to think about that, too. You got one night and morning with her, and you couldn’t even get it up either time that you tried. I get her with me every night from now on.

You didn’t get anything lasting out of what you did. Your stupid, selfish and intentionally destructive decision to pursue a married woman accomplished absolutely nothing but causing pain and suffering.

But [my wife] and I are working through things and doing really well, considering the circumstances you helped create. We’re going to be happy together and have a fantastic marriage from here on out. I hope you’re not doing as well as we are, and I’m guessing that’s the case. Your life is probably pretty screwed up right now. I can’t help but hope it stays that way for a long time. You deserve it.

I didn’t expect a response, and haven’t received one.

I immediately felt significantly better. I know now that it was something I had to do in order to fully heal. I’m glad I wrote it in order to hopefully induce maximum shame, guilt and pain in him. That asshole knows now what a better man — the man who was ultimately chosen by the woman he wanted to take for himself — thinks of him. I feel a lot better having told him.

I also hope it hurt him to read it. I really do.

Part thirteen.