The questions swirled around my brain the whole week Amy was away. Should I confront her? Should I change the locks? Should I divorce her? It wouldn't be easy throwing away four years of marriage, but I wasn't going to stand for her cheating, not when we'd worked so hard to patch things up after the first time, not after she'd sworn up and down that it would never happen again.
This hurt. Her first affair had thrown off our schedule for starting a family, as we devoted months to building trust. The funny thing was that Amy had come to me and told me she'd cheated. I didn't suspect a thing and probably would never have guessed. That she told me helped us get through, though it hurt like hell at the time.
I remember the moment clearly. We were in the car on the way back from her mom's. Amy had been quiet at dinner, more quiet than usual, but her mom was so talkative that no awkward silences or breaks warned me something was up.
"Honey, you know I love you, don't you?"
"Yeah, I do. You feeling insecure?"
"No. I have to tell you something bad." She paused, not for dramatic effect, but to gather herself. In the hard shadows cast by passing headlights, I could see her struggling. "I had an affair. It's over. It didn't last long. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wish I could take it back."
My first reaction, other than gripping the wheel very hard, was to ask questions: with whom? why? where? I'm glad I did because she was vulnerable at that moment so she let out a flood of information. Her friend Jesse's fiancé had been hitting on her. She agreed to meet him for a drink, only to get evidence to expose him to Jesse - so she said and at least partly believed. She said she discouraged him and tried to convince him that Jesse was all he should want. A couple of week later, when I was traveling on business, she went to a party at Jesse's, got a little lit, and they hooked up for a quickie in Jesse's and his bed.
She saw him twice more, both times at their place, before her guilt overtook her. She ended it. She swore she ended it. Two months later, we went to their wedding. A month after that they moved to Chicago and a month after that Amy came clean to me.
I can understand how it happened: a handsome guy hits on you, a guy you already know wants you, your husband is working long hours, traveling too much, you drink some alcohol and you're on your back. I had trouble with the repeat performances. I had more trouble with him being Jesse's fiancé. It may be common that people betray their best friends, but to me that indicated a real weakness of character. How could she walk down the aisle in a bridesmaid's dress to celebrate her friend's wedding when she'd been sleeping with the groom?
Things got worse between us over the next few days. I didn't want to be home. I didn't want to touch her. When I tried, I found myself thinking about how we'd been having sex while she was fucking her friend's future husband, how she'd kept that secret from me, how I'd been gullible, how I'd been the fool. I cringed at the memory of my congratulating him at the wedding, at the commentary I'd given him about what marriage is really like.
After two weeks of barely speaking, Amy asked if I'd go to counseling with her. She told me she was afraid, afraid that I'd leave her, afraid that she'd blown it, afraid that she'd hurt me so badly I could never forgive her.
The sessions were painful but after several months I was able to put the mess far enough behind me that our relationship was growing again. A lot came out. She mistrusted our marriage because I traveled. She was insecure about her sex appeal. I was too passive, not in bed but in the relationship. I preferred not to discuss what was happening between us, and my silences contributed to her feelings of inadequacy.
It's funny how what someone else does becomes your fault. I interpreted the counseling process as the spreading of blame until it rested evenly on both our shoulders. The balance tipped back and forth for a few months as anger and denial worked themselves out. Then we hit a happy medium and started once again to be happy.
The part of therapy that stuck with me was the commitments we made to honesty, to trust and to earning trust, to fidelity and to communication. I tried. I really tried. I scheduled some of my trips so she could meet me late in the week. We started working out together, just to share the extra time. If I had to work long hours, we'd meet for dinner.
Now all that was gone. I'd stumbled on her cheating completely by accident. I had to send a file but my mail account was down, one of those frustrating moments that make work life thrilling. It was 3AM and Amy was asleep. I realized I could copy the file to her laptop, connect to her work network and mail the file through her work email. I did that.
The preview pane of her email was open. I just happened to glance at it as I was moving the mouse to close the window. The words "You are so unbelievably sexy" jumped out at me as if they were printed in 48 point bold. The sender was one of the other associates in the firm, so my first guess, though my heart was pounding, was a flirtation or a joke or maybe a teasing game. The rest of the email said very little, but it was suggestive of a deeper relationship.
"Okay," I said. "This could be friendship. It could be. Don't lose your cool."
I searched for the guy's name in her account. Oh no. Oh shit. Oh fuck. She'd saved dozens of emails from this guy and had sent him dozens more. I picked one at random from him. "Yesterday was the absolute most amazing time of my life. You are a goddess." This was not good. I picked another, this time from her. It set up a date and said "Jack will be out of town. I have to be home by 10 for his call." Another from him: "You are a bad girl. And I love it."
Oh fuck. Goddamn it all. My blood started to boil. The idea, "I should strangle her right now," came into my mind. I sat at the keyboard wondering if I should read all the emails.
"I need some time to think about this," I muttered. My first thought was to forward all his emails to my account, but that would leave tracks. Instead, I laboriously copied each email onto my key drive.
I tried to go to sleep but couldn't get in bed with Amy. I tried to lie down on the couch, but that felt worse, like I was being evicted by my loving, unfaithful wife from my rightful bed. I ended up slumped over the kitchen table, flipping the pages of magazines, until dawn. Then I hopped into the shower, roused Amy, told her I'd had a problem with my document which could only be fixed at the office, and left.
Sitting at my desk, hours before anyone else arrived, I printed out all the emails between my wife and this guy Rob. They were a novel in letters of a sexual affair, stuffed with the kind of innuendo that stirs adolescent loins. It was obvious the affair had begun three months earlier, that it was not dying out, that she had no intention of letting it go, that it wasn't casual or infrequent but as regular and often as they could make it.
The best part was that Rob had a camera. He sent Amy pictures of them, mostly her sucking his cock, but a few of them fucking, some taken in the mirror so you could see their faces. I had trouble looking at them. They bothered me so much, my finger almost hit delete.
The next best part was that Rob and Amy were heading to the same conference the next week - this week - gone together Monday through Friday at a hotel in Phoenix. They talked bluntly about sleeping together for a whole night. They'd have to be careful about the time because Amy could never miss her calls with me - or as Rob put it, "your loving husband's check-in ritual."
Those calls were part of the commitment we made to be faithful, to be open and honest. I guess commitment is only a ritual to some people.
