Vintage

My husband and I were married in 1985. Graduate school for both, law school for him, 3 children and 19 years go by. Everything is good. Pretty good......my husband works a zillion hours, easily 12 a day and many weekends. So I am alone much of the time. I could never get him to change.

July 2003- He goes to his high school reunion without me because I had to drive our boys to Scout camp. He was supposed to meet us after the camp for a family vacation, but he only makes it for one day at the end. During reunion, he meets up with High School girlfriend and the affair starts that night. He says she pursued him and had her room moved next to his when she found he was alone. He says she told him she was single, but she wasn't. He says she was very aggressive and he found himself in an awkward position. Baloney!! That could all be true, but after 25 years and a whole lifetime with me.......he fell into her in ONE night. Not even one day to think it over before he tossed me and the kids aside. This is one thing that I will never understand how he could do that.

March 2004--I am diagnosed with breast cancer and have my first surgery. He has a month long trial in Vermont and didn't come home for the surgery. No support from him. I got support from my mom who comes to help.

I call his partner's wife to thank them for the flowers......she tells me about the affair but no details. I was devastated! I was leaving in 2 days to be with him in Vermont (we live in CA). I confront him and he tells me about the affair and about the baby and who the affair is with. He says he will end it and that he has tried before. But he didn't.

April 2004---I flew home for the second surgery. He was not supposed to come home without having ended the affair. He lied and flew to the other woman's town to see her and only makes it to my surgery as I am being wheeled in. He says he took care of everything and not to worry. He didn't.

His parents have begun a relationship with the other woman and were thrilled with the idea of a new family for them to be involved with. They are very supportive of her. They have never called me about the cancer or the affair or anything. They encourage my husband to divorce me and be with the other woman and the child. I have never had a bad relationship with my inlaws, even though we are very different and my mother in law is nuts. But I tried hard to make things smooth and normal. They had moved to another country about 3 years earlier.

He continues the affiar through my radiation treatment. No support. I find out that he has a secret apartment near his office where he stayed much of the time. (He used to stay overnight many nights a week because the office was so far. I thought it was a hotel). So he is not even home during this time except part of the weekends. the other woman flies out frequently to stake her claim. He keeps telling me he will end it.

May 2004--I intercept an e-mail were the other woman has accepted my husbands offer to marry her! I freak out and let out my secret that I have been reading his e-mails. He says he doesn't know what to do, he can't live without her and he loves her. I tell him to move out that day. He leaves and is gone about 10 days. Kids don't even notice he is gone! What does that say! I file for divorce.

He comes back and says he has ended it and wants to make our marriage work. I let him come back. Mostly because I didn't want him in that apartment with her! She had a key and I still didn't even know where it was! Contact continued through July. I found a copy of his apartment phone bill and could see that the other woman had come several times and stayed there and that he had been talking to her all along and slept with her a few times. I don't think we are going to make it. The child is due in August. I do not want him to be at the birth (other state). I try to hang on that long. If he had been at the birth, I don't think I could have taken him back.

The other woman was not giving up. She was using his parents as a wedge to force him to leave me. They talked to her everyday, even though he was not speaking to parents much. They wrote him a letter saying horrible things to him and that if he did not leave me and our children, they would disown him and give all his inheritance to the other woman and her child. He didn't leave us for her. Inlaws disown him and stop speaking to him. He said it had become a psycho drama!

August 2004--The child was born in August 04, and my husband was with us on vacation in our favorite place. He filed to sort out Child Support for the child at birth, paid for everything (and more that I didn't know). Mother in law flies to the other woman's state and stays with her after birth to help her. For a month! They call and leave nasty messages for my husband and for our intermediary. My husband had made his choice to stay with us. I told him my choice was to be No Contact with the other woman and the child. I can't even imagine bringing that disaster into my life and the lives of our children. He had to make up his own mind about this and after some false starts, he realized it needed to be this way. I know it was hard for him.

He made up his mind because he had purchased a secret cell phones for he and the other woman to communicate with......in emergengies. The other woman flooded him with calls, text messages and pictures of the child. He said he realized it "muddied the waters" too much to have her calling him all the time and he knew she would not stop and was still trying to break up our marriage. I only found out about this because he "surprised" me with a new cell phone........the one he had bought for communication with her!. He gave it to me and I am telling him how sweet that it was, until I opened the phone. Immediately, a whole list of texts and pictures come up from the other woman! It was like some movie plot! He grabbed the phone from my stunned hands and started deleted them before I could even look at them. He then fell on the floor in front of me apologizing and explained what he had done with the phones. He then asked me if this revelation made it less sweet that he had given me the phone!

October 2004--He finally stops talking to the other woman about anything. Not even about the child. Going through attorneys only. We are No Contact, partly because of distance and partly because the other woman still wants to break up our marriage, and partly because I couldn't do Contact. Maybe that will change sometime. Recovery can finally begin. But so hard and sooo much pain.

May 2005-- The other woman calls my husband and says she is moving to California so he can be near the child, so get ready! Also, Child Support would triple....at least. He and I decide to move out of state before she gets there. We move in July. We had been talking about it for a long time and decided this was a good time. It still felt like we were being run out of town. But I couldn't just stay there and wait for her to do what she would. We gave it all up and my H left the law firm that he started.

November 2005---Legal Child Support is finally settled, restraining orders in place between the other woman and my husband. He insisted because we had received quite a few weird phone calls.

June 2006--We are doing well now. The move was very hard on me. I left all my support and friends and I was still in bad shape over the affair. It takes a long time to develop new friendships and get to know a new town. We didn't know anyone and we didn't have any relatives. Afer we settled in, I was depressed for months and I had dreams of running away and never returning. My husband has been working very hard to recover our marriage and for this last stretch he has been pulling me along, too. By January 2006, I didn't have any feelings at all for him. Not love, not hate, nothing. I could have left. But our kids were so happy with the new area and the schools and they would have been devastated. So I hung on longer. Only my oldest son knew about the affair and none of them knew about the child.

We have grown and changed so much. But the work has been very hard. I know we have a better marriage relationship than before and it keeps getting better. But what a price! He is interested in meeting my needs now and being part of MY life, where he hadn't been before. But there will always be this black mark on our marriage. The line was crossed and it could be again. I will never have a husband who didn't cheat on me and the child is always out there. I don't think I will ever be the same. I do love him and ultimately that is why I stayed. I still am guarded, but the walls are slowly coming down.....largely due to his efforts. And my counselling. I still talk to him by phone and he has helped me immensely and I give him huge credit for saving this marriage.

I have just been cleared by oncologist to return to regular yearly mammograms after two years clear. Hopefully, the cancer doesn't come back. I hate to think about that time. I have bitter memories about having cancer and my husband abandoning me at that time for another woman. I really didn't even have the energy to focus on the fact that the cancer could kill me.

November 2006--We had a major setback in September. I found documents dated May 2004, that compared me and OW head to head in an effort to decide whether to stay with me or marry OW. It was very painful to see in black and white how he felt about her compared to me and what he benefits he thought each brought to him. In addition, I found a file that documented most of the expenses he had during the affair and the total was more than $115,000! That doesn't include attorney's fees, insurance or CS. Included in that was a receipt that showed he had given her the exact same diamond ring he gave me when he recommitted to our marriage. It was so important to me and meant a lot.........and two week later he gave the same one to her. I can't wear it anymore. He has been properly mortified and repentant (although it was two years earlier). But it still took me two months to grieve for my loss and recover from the pain. Funny that even 2-1/2 years can go by and you can still be taken back to the pain of D-day by something like this. Maybe your mind and body never forget what that felt like and stores the memory of it.

But surprisingly, I am doing great now! I have felt so much of the bitterness leave me. I see how much he continues to work and change, placing me and our family first, above all. He truly is a different man than he was during the affair and even a year ago. It gives me so much hope and confidence in our ability to succeed in our marriage for the long term. I feel more love for him now than I have felt for years. I feel sure it will continue and our family is closer than ever.