This is all an exercise. It really is. I want to confess but I am not sure what for. I have done nothing wrong and shouldn't be the one who feels such a need. But I do. It has become a compulsion. I am embarrassed at the things that I do and of my thoughts when I think of . . . it. Maybe if I simply tell the story, I could gain a measure of relief. They call it cathartic, right? But who would I tell this to? A friend? No, no, no. For all the obvious reasons. So I will tell you. And I will call you "Reader". Please excuse the generic term. I know you are a person and have a real name but I just don't know it. And I am begging you for your thoughts. Please write back when you can. So here goes . . .
Dear Reader,
Without any prelude, the story is this:
After 12 years of marriage and 15 years together, Sylvia and I separated two years ago for a total duration of two months. The children were the primary concern and we decided that custody should be joint. As not to interrupt their schooling we agreed to the unusual arrangement that, on a monthly basis, Sylvia and I would alternate living in the Long Island home. The other of the two would live in the New York City apartment during that time. The children would live, at all times, in Long Island but could visit the spouse staying in the apartment on weekends if there were no conflicts such as soccer games or engagements with other children.
For the first month, Sylvia stayed in Long Island with the children and moved to the apartment when my month in Long Island commenced. After the second month of the separation was completed and I was about to move back to New York City, we decided to reconcile and have been together ever since. The arrangement was becoming too taxing on all involved.
We immediately enrolled in couples' counseling with one of the finest professionals in the field. During the course of one of the initial meetings, the therapist said that there was to be no discussion of our two months apart as this wasn't an example of how to deal with our problems. He said that any other people we dated during that time need to be permanently cut from our lives. I commented that wasn't applicable to our situation as we have only been apart two months. But Sylvia was silent. Her silence and eyes showed a guilt and my rage began to mount. Both the therapist and I gazed at her until she blurted out, "I saw one person. I didn't think we would ever be back together and wanted to move on with my life." The therapist stopped her there and said there was to be no talk of it but my blood had come to a BOIL. I don't remember anything of the rest of the session or of the next few days. I couldn't work, eat or sleep and became OBSESSED with finding out about this person Sylvia had been seeing. I resorted to technical sleuthing.
If there was evidence to be found, it would reside within Sylvia's email account to which I had no access. Sylvia is also rarely without her laptop and doesn't log into her account from any computer except her own. When we were both home, I began asking her to send me pictures or documents to my business email account just as I knew she was about to leave the house. Usually she took her laptop with her. Other times she shut it down. Other times she navigated away from her email account and the password was not retained. She noticed one time that I was a little too interested and close when she was logging in and was very guarded for the next couple of months. I was trying to eyeball her password but didn't catch it.
Then, about four months later, she was leaving for the day to visit with her mother. I asked her to send a particular picture of the children taken by one of our friends and sent to her account as she had her car keys already in hand. She said she would do it when she returned but I made up an excuse why I had immediate need. She relented and when she was about to shut down the laptop, it began some type of software update and she wasn't able. Thinking the laptop would click off after the update was complete, she left it to shut down on its own. The second the door closed, I pounced and was able to discontinue the update and, when I did so, the Firefox window was open but not at her Yahoo account. My fingers were nervous as I hit the backwards arrow until I was in her email box. When I attempted to navigate to the main inbox screen, I fully expected to get a notice that the session had expired or a pop-up requesting password information. But I didn't.
I knew Sylvia was an email queen but wasn't prepared for the amazing number of sub folders and her complicated cataloging system. My first stop was her Sent folder which was empty. Then, one by one, I started meticulously going through each and every sub folder. In an innocuous sub folder labeled with the name of one her charitable groups, I came across an email from a one "Michael C." with a subject line that read "Robert and Cindy's Party". The date was two days after she moved to the New York City apartment. While still on the Michael C. email, I clicked the From button on the top and when the order was rearranged, there were approximately 100 emails from Michael to Sylvia.
I was now in a jealous and angry rage as I began reading each email word by word and slowly analyzing every phrase. I didn't realize this until I began reading but the email on the top was the oldest and as I descended the communications were progressively more recent so I was reading a story from the beginning. What I read caused such a WHITE HOT fury that it melted my perspective on everything and has left me as I am today.
Robert and Cindy are old friends of ours. Robert was a business partner and also my attorney. He and his wife Cindy live in SoHo in an amazing converted artist loft. I gleaned that they happened to be having a party the very first evening Sylvia had moved into our New York City apartment to begin her one month stay and Cindy issued her a last minute invitation. It turns out Michael C. was an associate in Robert's firm. He was invited to the party because Cindy wanted to set him up with a daughter of a friend. The friend's daughter was a no-show but, under circumstances that weren't made clear from the communications, Michael C. and Sylvia exchanged personal email addresses at the gathering. Michael did not use his work address but, instead, a Gmail account.