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AMANDA
My husband betrayed me in the worst way possible, and I don’t think I will get over it. We’d been together since middle school. Of course, in the beginning, our relationship consisted of doing our homework together at my kitchen table, Saturday matinees with my older sister as chaperone and we were always there for each other’s birthday parties.
As we got older, it was a given that if you saw one of us, the other wasn’t too far behind. I’m a planner, and by the time we were fifteen, I’d had our whole lives mapped out. We would go to college together, get good-paying jobs in our chosen fields, get married, buy our first home before we turned thirty, and then settle down to have kids.
We were each other’s first at eighteen our first semester away at college because I wasn’t ready before then, not to mention my fear that my parents would somehow find out, which back then to me was mortifying.
Everything was on track. I got a job in finance while he became a professor, the way he’d always dreamed of. We knew it might take a while for him to become tenured, but with our academic record, we were both doing really well and were on the fast track to fulfilling our goals.
We got married at twenty-four, bought our first home at twenty-seven, and by then, with promotions and raises, our bank accounts were healthy and more than capable of supporting a family of three. And that’s where we met our first hiccup.
Three years after first trying for a baby, there was still no news in that department. I wasn’t too worried since, in my mind, these things take time, and there were no preexisting issues that would keep either of us from reproducing.
There was a lot of pressure from his mom, especially because she wanted a grandchild. I’m not sure what was wrong with the four she already had from his siblings, but I’d always suspected that my husband was her favorite, so obviously, a child from him would be somehow more special in her eyes.
After three years of trying and failing, we decided to see a specialist to find out what the issue was. Unbeknownst to me, my husband was very stressed by this because, as he put it, he was afraid that the fault was with him.
I had no idea that he was struggling with this because he never told me, and I was under the impression that we told each other everything. Well, in his misery, he found a shoulder to cry on. A twenty-two-year-old TA, who apparently did a lot more than listen to his woes.
As I guess you can imagine, she turned up pregnant. I’ve never known so much pain as the day he and his mother sat me down to tell me the news. I’d thought she was coming over to discuss that year’s family vacation because she’d sounded so excited on the phone, and I know how she gets about traveling.
I think I blanked out for the first few minutes after she asked me to sit down and broke the news to me. I remember looking at Dan and hoping he’d be wearing one of his stupid grins and saying something like Gotcha, but instead, he sat with his head hanging down, looking defeated.
“How…?” I couldn’t get the words out because there was a burning coal in my lungs, and my vision was blurry to boot.
“Now Amanda, don’t make a big deal out of this. Look at the bright side; you can’t have children, and now Dan will have one of his own blood.”
I looked at my mother-in-law as if she were some alien species that landed in my house and parked herself on my couch. Her words seemed so reasonable, except for the fact that they had just unilaterally destroyed my whole existence.
“Dan?”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry baby, you gotta believe me, I never meant for this to happen. She means nothing to me. I was just lonely, I guess, and scared.”
“What were you scared of?” Now, you’ve got to understand; at this point, I was still in shock. Not only that, but this was my best friend, the person I trusted more than anyone else on this earth, so, of course, I wanted to believe that he hadn’t just ripped my heart out of my chest for shits and giggles.
“I thought that I was the one who couldn’t… I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“But now we know that it was you who had the problem.” His mom said with what sounded like glee in her tone.
“Get you, get out of my house.”
“This is my son’s house, too; you can’t just make him leave.”
“Mom…”
“No, she has to act like an adult sometime. The reality is there’s a child involved, my grandchild, so she’s going to have to buckle up and get with it or…”
“I meant you, not him; I want you out of my house right now.”
They both tried to argue, and that’s when I snapped out of it and snapped. I don’t recall what all was said and done, but I know by the time I calmed down, she was gone, and Dan was trying to hold me. We were both in tears at this point, and I knew what it felt like to want to die.
I wished for death as the most excruciating pain ate away at my insides, and I fell to the floor, bawling my eyes out and trying not to throw up on myself. We had sex right there on the floor in the hallway. It was wild and hot, and I came so hard, harder than ever before, I think.
That night, we had sex three more times, and each time, I cried throughout and felt numb and empty after. Trauma bonding, now I know what that feels like.
I called out of work the next day because I felt worse than the night before. Dan had gone off to work, and I laid in bed staring up at the ceiling, wishing for this chapter in my life to come to a quick end.
Dan had told me about the affair this morning over coffee. I wanted to know everything, and yet I didn’t. I listened to his pleas for forgiveness and his reassurance that he didn’t love this other person, that it was just a stupid mistake and would never happen again.
