What Good Could Possibly Come of This?

This is part twenty-five 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.

I think I’ve been pretty clear about this: It hurts.

It. Hurts.

I would not wish upon anyone the pain of being cheated on by someone they love. Well, maybe my wife’s former affair partner, but that’s about it. And of course I’m not ever going to say that I’m glad my wife had an affair.

But….

Here we are, sneaking up on a year since my wife started having secret text conversations with her high school sweetheart. The week after Thanksgiving, we’ll pass the one-year mark since they spent a night together in a hotel room, and my wife officially broke her wedding vows. That anniversary is going to bring some stuff back up to the surface again, I know. It’s just an arbitrary thing — a date on the calendar — but I know it will just be one big reminder, all day long. I’m as prepared as I think I can be to fight through it, but it’s going to be tough.

And over the past nine months since my wife ended the affair, as the grief has eased and the pain has lessened for me, and as my wife has started to forgive herself for what she did, we are increasingly left only with the more lasting effects of the trauma we have gone through.

For me, there are still the little reminders. In the early days of this, they felt like a barrage of automatic gunfire, each impact causing a different painful image to appear in my head. All the things she did with him that were supposed to be done only with me. The physical acts of affection and passion, yes, but also the “I love you”s, the “I miss you”s, the times they looked into one another’s eyes, the times they made each other laugh.

But now, I accept that those things happened. I just typed them out, and felt the pain that still lives in them, but only for a moment. Now here I am in the next paragraph, and I’m fine. I’m okay. These days, the thoughts and images still hit me when the reminders happen, but now they’re more like annoying flicks to my head than bullets ripping through my flesh.

My self-esteem is still a work in progress, too. Prior to my wife’s affair, I was a fairly confident guy, but even then, I wasn’t getting much support in that area from my wife. She had long ago stopped saying anything complimentary to me. She hardly ever even said “I love you” first. Honestly, she was never effusive with her love or admiration of me, even in the beginning of our relationship. It was just not who she was before.

Still, I had a healthy enough ego. I didn’t need her support in that area — or perhaps, more likely, I just didn’t realize I did need it in order to be the best husband I could be to her.

But your spouse’s infidelity can grind your sense of self-worth into the dirt. Now, I do need her to support my self-esteem. I need to know she loves me. I need frequent reminders of it. And she has been trying hard to give those to me. I’ve told her, though, that I don’t want her to always have to try. I want it someday to come naturally. If she feels it, I want her to freely show it. I know I’m asking her to change an aspect of her personality that has been with her all of her forty-eight years. Some may say it’s too much to ask of someone, but I don’t ask it of her only for myself. I know her life will be richer, more full and more colorful, if she could more clearly and frequently express her love for those around her. I want that for her.

Aside from those ongoing challenges, what else is still a lasting effect of her affair? Well, I have to admit: the biggest thing is our vastly improved marriage.

I look back on the years before her affair — after we had drifted apart without me even fully realizing it — with such a deep regret. So much wasted time. So many empty moments that could have been filled with… this. This love and closeness that we share now.

The easiest way to convey the difference is by comparing two similar events — vacations we took together, one prior to her affair, and one after. Last year, less than a month before her affair began, my wife and I splurged on an expensive, eight-day cruise for just the two of us. We went out on the cruise line’s biggest, newest ship. We booked fun shore excursions at every port. We partook of all the myriad delicious food options on this huge, floating resort, and ran up a decent-sized bar tab.

A few weeks ago, we took another cruise. Since we now have three children in college, for this one, we pinched pennies. We booked ourselves for four days on the same cruise line’s smallest, oldest ship. Food options were very limited, and the food itself turned out to be mediocre at best. We only sailed to a couple of ports, and we didn’t participate in any shore excursions.

Which of these two vacations will I always remember more fondly? The second one, hands down.

Back in November of last year, when we took the first cruise, I was hoping it would be a chance for my wife and me to reconnect. However, I was afraid to tell her about those hopes. I thought she would have said, “Ugh, I don’t want to work on our marriage. I just want to have fun and relax.” She has admitted since then that yes, that’s probably exactly what she would have said.

I remember what she was wearing the first day — a green jumper outfit that looked super-cute on her. She looked radiant to me, in a way that reminded me strongly of our younger years together. She was absolutely beautiful that day. And I told her, “You look nice today.” That’s it. That’s all I was comfortable telling her. I was afraid to say more about how I felt about her.

One night we stood on our balcony as we departed from a port. Over the island, as the sun set behind it, a powerful storm gathered. It was surreal, otherworldly and, for me, profoundly beautiful. We watched it together, and yet… not together. We were standing side-by-side, but we were separate.

We would sit uncomfortably at dinner most nights, unsure of what to talk about. When we did talk, it was stilted, surface-level conversation. I believe we had sex once, about halfway through the cruise. It was the usual for back then: the focus was all on her pleasure, not mine. High-pressure, low-intimacy.

After we arrived back home, my wife and the man who would become her affair partner planned their night away together almost immediately.

A few months ago, I told my wife that I’d like to go on another cruise, for a couple of reasons: to celebrate our new empty-nest-hood, and to replace the sullied (and, I realize now, never all that great to begin with) memories of that last vacation together.

So, we booked this cheap getaway, worse in almost every way than the expensive blowout of the year before. But better in one way: our relationship. And I would rather do this recent vacation over again once than do the one from last year ten times.

We spent almost every moment together. We talked a lot, and the words came easily this time. The conversation was natural and comfortable. And sometimes we didn’t talk, and that felt comfortable, too. We made love, passionately, lovingly, with intensity and mutual pleasure, almost every day. We didn’t participate in hardly any of the on-board activities, we just sat together and read, we played gin rummy (she kicked my ass), we ate the subpar food, we spent one long day on the beach just soaking up sun and I never got bored. I was grateful for every moment with her, and I felt the same from her.

We’ve been back from that trip for a few weeks, and I still yearn for those long, lazy days we spent together on that old, crappy ship. I now have memories I can truly treasure.

I will probably always look back with a sense of loss on that time during which my wife and I had disconnected from one another. Those years are gone, and I can’t get them back. All I can do is my part now, to make each day we have together the best it can be. My wife is doing that, too.

So even through the difficult times in life, the rough seas and the disappointing buffets, we’ll be fully, truly together. And that will make all the difference.

Editor’s note: There’s more to The Adulteree’s story, but unfortunately the sections only allow a certain number of pieces to fit on the front page. Please go on to part twenty-six.