Truth & Consequences

AUTHOR'S NOTE: There is no sex in this story. This is an attempt to examine some of the underlying causes of an affair and the emotions that might occur. I also wanted to explore the difficulties that might be encountered by a couple that try to save a marriage after an affair.

Dear Phil,

By the time you read this, I'll be gone. I find that I cannot go on like this. Ever since you caught me cheating six months ago, we have been living a lie. We told each other that we would stay together to try to rebuild our marriage, but this has not happened. I cannot live like this any longer. I have found an apartment so we can each take the time to consider whether we are willing to make the effort needed to save our marriage.

I have come to accept the sad fact that I may have destroyed our marriage beyond repair. It has taken me a long time, but I now believe that, unless things change drastically, there is no way that we can ever get back to the happy marriage we had before. I am leaving to give you an opportunity to do the soul searching that I have done. I know I lost your love and trust. I need you to decide if there is anyway that I can ever regain it.

Ever since you caught me in bed with Jeff on that trip last September I have tried to do what I can to rebuild our love and your trust. To the outside world and all of our friends, I have kept up the pretence that nothing is wrong. That we remain a happy couple and I am your loving wife. I have tried to do what I can to make your time as pleasant as possible.

I accepted your mistrust and questioning of what I am doing as a natural consequence of my actions. While unhappy, I did not complain when you told me to move into the guest bedroom. I have tried to give you the space and time you needed to get over my betrayal, while still remaining there for you both physically and emotionally. On those occasions when you have sought physical release, I have provided you with sex as often as you have wanted and have refused you nothing. I have tried to show you both by my actions and my words that I am sorry and wanted with all of my heart to make it up to you.

I did all this because I wanted desperately for you to forgive me so we could rebuild our lives. I knew I was wrong and selfish and had destroyed our marriage.

I hoped that over time, you would see my efforts and join me in the process of healing the hole in the middle of our life. But this has not happened. I cannot continue to live as your wife without your love and trust. The fact that I cheated and betrayed you gives you ample reason to divorce me, it does not give you reason to control and destroy the rest of my life.

I have told you that I am sorry. I have tried to discuss the matter with you and you refuse to discuss it. I suggested that we seek counseling and you refused. We cannot pretend that nothing happened. If we are to get beyond this you need to gain some understanding of why I acted like I did. But you remain closed to me.

When we first talked about my affair, the one question you wanted me to answer was why. You told me that you needed to know why I had had thrown away our marriage and our love. At that time, I wasn't able to give you an answer that you could understand. All I tried to do was justify my actions and evade the consequences of what I had done. I couldn't explain it to you because I didn't really know why myself.

Over the past six months, your question "why" has haunted me. At night, I lie awake trying to answer that question for myself. I have finally gotten to the point where I have a better understanding of why the affair started. I accept full responsibility for my actions. I acted like a fool and destroyed the things that meant more to me that anything else: your love and our marriage. I have constantly thought about what I did and why. I realize now that you may never be able to forgive me nor will I ever be able to forgive myself. But, in order for both of us to move on with our lives, either together or apart, I need you to know that I finally understand the pain and suffering that I caused.

I was the worst type of hypocrite. Throughout our marriage I made it clear to you that I could not accept it if you were unfaithful to me. I shunned those who had betrayed their spouses in any way. I was unwilling to forgive them or to even associate with them. I felt there was no excuse for that type of behavior.

Now, I understand that my view was overly simplistic. I still believe cheating is wrong, even mine. But, when you discovered my affair, I was hoping that you could give me what I was never able to give to others: compassion and forgiveness. I have come to realize that in a moment of weakness everyone is capable of making mistakes. It does not excuse the action, but if the love is strong enough, hopefully the mistake can be overcome.

But, forgiveness must be earned. It was not enough for me to tell you that I am sorry. In order for you to be able to forgive me, you must know that I am aware of the pain that my actions caused. You must also know that I have discovered why I acted in such a self-destructive fashion so that it will never happen again. You must believe that I am sorry, not only for the consequences of my actions, but also for the actions themselves. This has been painful for me because when I examine my actions closely, I realize that while this affair was going on, I was not a very nice person. I did not think of you or our marriage, I only thought about myself.

I am sorry to admit that I began to take our love and our marriage for granted. I lost focus on what was truly important and grew complacent in our love. When we first got married, I gloried in the fact that you were not only my husband and lover, but you were my best friend. Every action that we took was made with a focus on how it would affect our marriage and love. We talked over everything and we made every decision together.

But, over time, somehow we lost that closeness. Maybe it was lost because we thought that we knew each other so well we could predict how the other one would act. We each started to make decisions without consulting the other. I still considered you my best friend, but I lost track of what that meant. I began to forget the reasons why we had become best friends. I became so convinced that nothing could shake our love for each other, that I put my own desires ahead of our love. In short, I grew selfish.

I did not set out to betray you. You did nothing wrong and gave me no reasons to look for sex anywhere else. My affair began not because of a desire for something better or something more, but because of a moment's weakness. I was lonely and feeling sorry for myself.

You will recall that my affair began when we were both swamped with work. We stopped making time for each other and we were spending a lot of time apart. When you phoned me to say that you would not make it back in time from your business trip to see me before I left for the convention in March, I lost it. I was vulnerable; feeling incredibly sorry for myself and extremely frustrated sexually. You had been away on your trip for two long weeks and I had been looking forward to making love to you the night before I left. When you did not make it home, I felt cheated of my pleasure.

It was my bad luck to run into Jeff at the convention. You know that Jeff and I had dated before you and I met. What you may not know is that, for a time, I was in a very serious relationship with Jeff and had even talked of marriage. We broke up when we discovered that our connection was based more on physical attraction than on a love for one another. I accepted Jeff's invitation to dinner because I was lonely and needed a friend.

Over dinner, Jeff made me remember why I had been attracted to him. He is fun to be with and can be very attentive when he is seeking companionship. As the night went on, Jeff took me to the hotel bar for a few drinks and dancing. I know now that it was stupid, but I ended up telling Jeff about how frustrated I was feeling because you had not made it home. Like a fool, I let Jeff know that I was ripe for seduction.

I do not want you to think that I am trying to blame Jeff for my actions. Yes, Jeff did take the initiative in seducing me. Yes, Jeff was the one who asked me if I would go to his room with him, but I have no excuse. While he initiated the seduction, I did not do what I should have done to discourage him. I knew what would happen when I agreed to go back to his room. I knew that there was a good chance that I would get fucked, and to be honest, I was excited by the idea. I'm sorry to admit this, but my decision was based partly on my memory of his skill as a lover. I was aroused and I knew that he could give me the orgasms that I needed to relieve my frustration.

I agreed to have sex with Jeff with full knowledge of what I was doing. I knew that I was cheating on you but told myself that it did not matter because you would never find out and it was a one-time occurrence. I told myself that it was just sexual release and meant nothing. I deluded myself and let own selfishness take over.

Please do not believe that my affair was in any way caused by my dissatisfaction with you as a lover. You are an incredible and considerate lover that gives me anything that I can desire. You are a better lover than Jeff is. But, he was there and you were not and I let my own selfish desire for release overrule my judgment.

I betrayed you, not once but many times over. Maybe you would have forgiven me if I had ended it after that one night. Maybe then, I could have forgiven myself. I know it is not much, but at least I had the excuse of my sexual frustration and my long time attraction to Jeff. I did feel guilty for betraying you when I finally got back to my room that first night and vowed not to let it happen again. But over the course of the next few days, my guilt was overwhelmed by my memory of the pleasure that Jeff had given me. I minimized my guilt by thinking that I was not hurting you. I thought only of my pleasure and finally decided that I would get together with Jeff again if he asked me.

I can find no explanation for my actions for the rest of that week. When he asked me out to dinner on the third day of the conference, I knew what he was expecting. Despite this, I willingly agreed to go out to dinner and gladly went with him back to his room to spend the night. I found myself spending more time with him as the week went on. I was selfish and thought only of my own pleasure. I was not in love with Jeff and was only using him for my own self-gratification. I am ashamed to admit that, once I saw Jeff the second time, I stopped feeling guilty. I was not thinking of you or our marriage at all. I am sorry to say that I betrayed you, our marriage and myself.

Yes, we did talk on the phone that week and I knowingly lied to you. I would tell you how bored I was and how lonely I felt, even though I knew I was meeting Jeff later that night. I kept on telling myself that I was not hurting you because you were two thousand miles away and would never find out.

It was not until I saw you at the airport, that I realized what I done. I panicked and almost confessed my infidelity to you. But you welcomed me with open arms and told me how much you missed me. Yes, I felt guilty, but, even then, I continued my betrayal. I justified my actions in my own mind and made myself believe that my affair did not really hurt you because it happened while I was away.

I told myself that it wasn't like I had cheated on you at home. After all, I wasn't taking time away from you to spend time with Jeff. I never once thought how I badly I would have been hurt if you had done the same to me on one of your trips.

I justified my failure to confess by thinking it was for the good of our marriage. After all, I loved you and would only hurt you for no reason if I confessed. I promised that I would make it up to you by being a loving wife from that point on. Looking back, I can't believe how self-serving and selfish that I was. My actions were not for you or us: they were only for me. Please understand that I now regret every one of my actions bitterly because of the hurt that it caused to you and to our marriage.

I promised myself that my involvement with Jeff was over. I vowed never to cheat on you again. When Jeff first contacted me by email after the convention, I didn't know what to do. I was flattered that he wanted to see me again, but I was also determined not to let it happen. I knew that it could only hurt our marriage. But, I wasn't strong enough to tell Jeff to leave me alone and eventually found myself responding to his emails.

At first, Jeff's emails were seemingly innocent. He told me how nice it had been to spend time with me at the convention. But, over time, they began to change. He started to tell me how he wanted to get together with me again, and he got very explicit in describing what he wanted to do to me. His interest did excite me and flatter me and I began to respond by asking him what else he wanted to do. In my selfishness, I continued to betray you by what could only be considered a cyber affair. I found that I got an illicit thrill from the cyber sex I shared with Jeff. I continued to get in deeper over my head.

When I got scared you might find out, I didn't stop what I was doing, I just tried to cover my tracks. I tried to justify my correspondence with Jeff by rationalizing that it meant nothing. After all, he was on the other coast and all we were doing was exchanging emails. I told myself that all I was doing was improving our sex life. As a result of the emails, I was more aroused than I had been in years and you were getting the benefit of it by better and more frequent loving. I told myself that I loved you and my actions weren't hurting our marriage.

But, looking back at my actions, I have come to realize that my love for you was not as strong as my love for myself. If I had loved you as much as I thought, I would not have continued. I would have understood that whether or not you were aware of what was happening, I was hurting you every time I responded to Jeff. I also would have been more concerned for how much this would hurt you when you eventually found out. It was only after it was all over that I finally realized how foolish I had become.

I told myself that I was only thinking of you when we made love, but I now know that I was only trying to justify my actions. My rationalizations did not and cannot excuse my actions. My continuing contact with Jeff can only be considered a betrayal of you and our marriage. I now understand why you felt that my actions humiliated you. I understand the anger and pain you felt when you realized that your wife felt it necessary to live a second secret life. For the pain that I caused to you, I will be forever sorry.

When Jeff found out that I was scheduled to speak at the convention in September, he immediately made plans to attend and told me that he wanted to pick up where we had left off. I did try to resist and told him that it would not happen. I knew that if I did meet with him, I was descending a slippery slope that could only lead to disaster. But, he continued to push me down and tried to convince me that we weren't hurting you if we got together only during the conventions.

When I left for that convention, I honestly did not know what would happen. I promised myself that would avoid Jeff and nothing would happen. I thought about canceling my speaking engagement. I tried to get you to come so you could protect me from my own weakness. When you told me that you could not get the time off from work, I was worried that I could not resist Jeff when I saw him.

Deep down, I think that I went to that convention fully expecting that I would be with Jeff. Even my worries were not the actions of a wife who loved her husband, for if they were, I would have explained to you why I did not want to go to the convention alone. My actions were that of a weak, selfish person who was worried that she could not control her own desires.

I know now that you knew of my affair long before I left for the September convention. You began to suspect something when you caught me lying to you about where I was during the convention last March. You found my emails to Jeff and you knew that he would be at the convention. You knew that he wanted to see me again and you knew that my resistance to him was weak. You must have known that you might catch me in his arms.

You flew out to the convention not to stop me, but to watch me. You wanted to discover whether I would meet up with Jeff. You were there that second night when Jeff finally caught up to me and convinced me to have dinner with him. You even called me on my cell phone to find out if I would lie to you about where I was. You watched him get me drunk and get me aroused as we danced. You saw us leave the bar and go up to his room. You then waited before coming up to confront us so we would have time to get undressed.

To be honest, I am glad that Jeff refused to let you into the room when you knocked on the door demanded that he let you in. As soon as I heard your voice, I knew that I was caught. I knew that you would not believe Jeff if he told you that I was not there. But, I didn't want you to see me like I was.

By the time you started to pound on the door, we were both undressed and Jeff had already begun to fuck me. I knew that if you had come in and seen me like that it would have broken your heart. I was also afraid that you would have gotten violent. Jeff was also afraid of what you might do. He wanted to call hotel security, but I would not let him do so. I could hear the anger and pain in your voice as you pounded on the door and I knew that I was the cause.

It was clear that you knew I was there. So, I told Jeff to admit it. But, I asked him to try to stall you. I wanted to get dressed before he opened the door. Maybe I thought that I might still be able to fool you if we could get dressed fast enough. I am sorry that I did not call out to you, but I was in shock. All I could think was that my worst nightmares had come true and that you had found out. When I finally got dressed and opened the door, you had already gone.

I did try to catch you before you left, but I did not know where you were staying. I ran to my room in the hopes that you might have gone there, but all I found was the note you had left telling me that you wanted a divorce. All I could think of was getting home as quickly as possible to try to convince you otherwise.

This brings me to my final act of betrayal: The fact that my initial thoughts were how I might be able to lie in order to avoid the consequences of my actions. As I flew back home, my remorse was not for my actions or what I did to you. Rather, I felt sorry for myself for getting caught and destroying my marriage. All I could think about was whether I could come up with some type of story that might convince you that nothing had happened between Jeff and myself. I know now that my continued lies are what make it hard for you to ever trust me again.

Deep down I knew that you had found out about Jeff. But even then, I was not thinking of you or how I had hurt you. My only thought was how I could avoid the consequences that I deserved. As soon as I got home, I had the opportunity to confess everything to you and to tell you I was sorry. But, I only thought of myself and tried to avoid the consequences of my actions. I was weak. I tried to lie. And, in doing so I continued to betray you.

The whole way home, I told myself that I could deceive you. I thought that I might be able to convince you that I had met Jeff at the conference and we were just renewing our friendship. I thought that, if necessary, I would confess to you what happened in Jeff's room when you caught me, while pretending that this was the first time we had gotten together. I deluded myself and thought that if I could hide or minimize my betrayal from you, we could continue our happy marriage. I forgot that a good marriage must be built on trust as much as on love.