My Husband's Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me (36 page)

I apologize for belittling and berating you and making you feel like a bad person in my subtle and manipulative little ways. I apologize for tearing you down and chipping away at and destroying your self-esteem, the whole time convincing myself I was doing the opposite. I apologize for making you look bad to other people and trying to make myself look like such a great person in contrast.

I have not loved, honored and respected you as a wife ought to love her husband. The truth is I don’t even know how to do this. And the thing that I now realize is that the wrongs that I have committed against you are equally as bad as your sleeping with Helen.

I am not one bit better of a person than you. My mistakes are not lesser mistakes than yours. I have crushed and just about destroyed you, as much as you have done to me. Like me your pain is also so great that you feel it is unbearable. My greatest pain is knowing how much I have hurt you. Perhaps, today for the first time I catch a glimpse of what you have been suffering for the past nine months. No wonder you have been asking, “Doesn’t anyone want to know how I feel?”

For all of the above I ask your forgiveness.

Now comes the hardest part of all. I have made a decision to change. Awareness is the beginning of change. Today I have become aware of my part. The reason I have treated you this way is because of my own emotional pain. I do not mention this as an excuse, but because although I can change considerably on my own effort right away, I will not be able to fully respect you as you deserve until I am fully healed myself.

However, I now see that we need to open up and fully share our pain with each other. I have not been willing to really hear about your pain yet. I am now willing to listen. Let the truth be told. Let the real healing begin. I am committed and willing.

Brian, I know that when we get through this, you will truly be as great a husband as any woman could ever have. There is not a man out there anywhere who is better suited to me than you. I love you.

Anne.

Brian: After receiving this letter, for the first time I felt relief, and hope for our future. Through everything, even the affair, I loved Anne deeply, but I had been unable to communicate my needs to her. Finally I knew that Anne had been able to really hear me, to hear the truth of my side, how I was feeling. For the first time I felt understood.

CHAPTER 22
From Fighting to Healing 

The Tree

The tree that never had to fight

For sun and sky and air and light

Never became a forest king

But lived and died a common thing.

The man who never had to toil,

Who never had to win his share

Of sun and sky and light and air,

Never became a manly man,

But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow at ease

The stronger wind, the tougher trees.

The farther sky, the greater length

By sun and cold, by rain and snow

In tree or man good timber grows.

DOUGLAS WALLCOCK

“SELFLESS LOVE,”
BY JOYCE SIMMONS

Even though Brian and I had reached this major breakthrough and significant turning point in the healing of our marriage, things were still tough. Dealing with the real issues in our marriage and facing the truth was painful. It required courage and patience on both our parts. We continued to fight as we wrestled to understand each other’s needs, while we were both hurting.

As the Christmas holiday approached, I was fearful that I may have to leave my husband permanently, and that Christmas for my kids would always represent “the time that Mom and Dad broke up.”

I didn’t dare tell Brian about my real fears for the relationship, but we both agreed that we’d had it with the fighting.

We agreed to put our problems on hold over the holiday and just have fun together. For the first time since our world had fallen apart, we began to relax. Surprisingly, we enjoyed a wonderful time together as a family and Brian and I emerged from the season feeling a renewed sense of love and appreciation for one another based on reality, not on fantasy or a Hollywood portrayal of what romance should look like.

Putting my problems on hold and just enjoying myself helped me to see how very much I loved Brian. And I didn’t just love Brian. Love is something that speaks of self-sacrifice and commitment. I liked Brian too. I truly enjoyed his company and the wonderful human being he is on the inside, in his heart. All this fun was like spending a night in a luxury hotel after months of traveling through the wilderness, sleeping in a tent every night. At last hope was restored and I could see a light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel.

I was still on leave from work, but one day it became necessary for me to stop by the office. I hadn’t been for months, fearing that my coworkers might sense that there were serious problems in my life. If they found out, I feared, they might not view me with the same level of respect.

Finally, I felt strong enough to make the trip. I walked into the

reception area and greeted the receptionist cordially, while requesting the necessary papers. I had no intention of speaking to anyone I didn’t have to, nor had I any intention of staying any longer than absolutely necessary.

My boss heard me from his office and came out to greet me warmly. He seemed pleased to see me after my long absence.

“Anne, come on into my office,” he said. “Tell me how you are doing.”

Rats,
I thought.
This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. If I am going to make it through this errand without anyone knowing anything is wrong I am going to have to sit through this polite visit.

“So tell me, how are you really doing?” He asked. “You look great.”

“I’m doing fine. Brian and I have had a few problems in the past months, but everything is working out fine,” I said as nonchalantly as possible.

He looked at me discerningly for a moment and said, “Was it another woman?”

I was shocked. How could he have guessed? In the same moment, I became aware that lying about my situation was going to be useless. My facial expression had just given the truth away.

“Yes it was,” I answered, trying to keep tears at bay. I had been totally unprepared for such a conversation.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

No, I didn’t. But, then again, I did. My boss was a man of integrity. He was respected for understanding human nature, and for showing genuine concern for the well-being of others. In the past, he had been a minister and had counseled others through life’s challenges.

“It’s been a devastating experience,” I said. “I’m not sure if we are going to make it or not, but I’ve decided to give working on my marriage an honest effort and to reevaluate the situation after a year. The darn problem with the whole thing is that Brian and I love each

other so much.”

“The fact that you still love your husband and he loves you, tells me you have something worth fighting for,” he said. “As you know, I have counseled many couples in my lifetime. Do you know that many people never know what it is like to experience the love that you and your husband share?”

His words gave me a great encouragement. I left the office with greater confidence that I was doing the right thing, fighting for my marriage now under reconstruction despite the size of the boulder that had been dropped in our marriage path.

Armed with renewed hope and a realization that we still enjoyed each other’s company tremendously despite all the things which had transpired in our relationship, Brian and I entered the New Year ready to resume the work of healing our marriage. I was also finally emotionally ready to return to my job. My leave of absence had been nine months long.

In January, we attended a weekend personal healing, development and growth seminar, which had been recommended to us by our family physician. During this seminar, we made a giant leap forward in our healing experience. The couple facilitating the seminar had also experienced the devastation of an affair in their marriage at one point.

Having been there herself, this woman truly understood my pain. Affairs, like many things in life, are something you just can’t really understand unless you have actually been there yourself. Seeing that she had recovered gave me courage to believe that it just might be possible for me to move past the pain and recover as well.

The most valuable lesson I learned during the weekend was how being neglected as a child had resulted in believing, in my subconscious mind, that I was an unlovable person. This was why, no matter how much Brian showed me that he loved me, I could never really believe it. I had sealed shut the valve to my love tank.

In my lifetime many people, including my parents, had loved me

and shown that love to me in various ways, but I never received it. As a child, I processed abandonment and neglect as proof that I was unlovable, so although I enjoyed people and my friendships very much, I never really let the love of any person into my heart, because after all would they not also one day abandon me? All of this had taken place for years on a subconscious level.

Brian was an outstanding man who surpassed most husbands in ability and effort to communicate love towards their wives. Yet continuously throughout our marriage I would ask him, “Do you love me?” My frequent asking of this question made Brian feel inadequate.
I must be a lousy husband,
Brian thought, because if I was a good husband my wife would know that I love her. She wouldn’t need to keep asking this question.

Unbeknownst to me, my insecurity and constant asking of the same question chipped away at Brian’s self-esteem. No matter how many times he told me he loved me, I never really believed it.

As a result of what I learned this weekend, I was able to go back and reprocess with truth the events that took place in my childhood. Abandonment and rejection I had suffered were due to the shortcomings of the individuals involved and not due to my being unlovable or not good enough. Once this incorrect childhood tape, “you’re not loveable,” had been reprogrammed, I was able to open the valve and at last receive the love that others showed me. I wish I had asked myself years earlier: What baggage from my past may affect my present, my future or my relationships in a negative way?

The next issue I had to deal with was trust. How could I ever trust my husband again, after such a devastating and unexpected betrayal?

The first step in rebuilding trust was Brian’s willingness and cooperation in breaking all ties with Helen. If he had insisted on remaining friends with her, I would not have been able to trust him again. From time to time, I would ask him if he had heard from her or seen her and he would always answer honestly.

He told me about the time he saw Helen at work, only two weeks after the affair had ended. To his astonishment, Helen was walking around arm-in-arm with another man. She was already dating someone new.

Brian: Seeing Helen with this other man, only two weeks after I had allowed my relationship with her to nearly end forever my eighteen year marriage to the woman I really loved, significantly impacted me. All this time, I had been deluded into believing that I was really special to Helen. Seeing Helen dating another man so soon after our relationship ended, helped me to realize how wrong my thinking had been.

I saw that it was never really me Helen loved. Rather it was the reflection of herself which she saw through my eyes. She had been looking for an escape from her present unhappiness. Any man who could provide this would do. And here I had nearly ruined my entire life for the shallow relationship I had with her.

One may ask: How could I believe Brian was telling the truth about his contact with Helen? I contemplated playing the role of an obsessive detective by checking his cell phone bills, showing up unexpectedly at his work at lunch time and questioning guys he worked with. But I decided if my marriage was only based on my checking these things all the time, then really there was no trust in my relationship. And if there was no trust in my marriage, was it really a marriage of value at all? I decided to extend to Brian a measure of trust and forgiveness. I did believe him.

At the same time, I would no longer blindly or naively trust. I was now well aware of the possibility of affairs and how easily they could take place. Certainly I would act on any intuitions I might have in the future, to check up on him.

The second factor that enabled me to rebuild trust with Brian was his willingness to be totally open and honest with me. If he had been unwilling to answer my questions, I would have thought he was still hiding something from me.

There was no room for hiding and privacy in our relationship

after the affair. Brian may have had a right to some privacy before hand, but there is a price to pay for betrayal, and part of that price is full disclosure to one’s spouse so that trust can be rebuilt. Brian revealed everything to me.

Of course I had to do my part to create an atmosphere that encouraged his honesty. I did not react to things he shared with me, nor did I judge him or tell him he was wrong. I listened now, truly listened. When Brian shared things with me, I did not spend the time that he was talking formulating my next response, rather I tried to come into his world and really imagine what it might feel like to be him.
What was he saying really ?