By Zootartia
Posted Thursday, June 23, 2016
I cheated on my husband. Go ahead, I’ll give you a moment to judge me. Seriously. I don’t mind; up until very recently, I would have judged me too. But I haven’t even gotten to the most controversial part yet… my affair kept me from getting a divorce.
I met my husband when I was 23 years old. I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship, and I was very much in that tumultuous time in your twenties filled with bad decisions and even worse boyfriends. I had just broken up with my boyfriend du jour (one of those delightfully dramatic on-again, off-again situations most of us have, unfortunately, experienced) and looking to just live it up for a bit.
One of my friends from high school had started working with my husband, and told me that she’d met the guy I was going to marry. I thought she was crazy, but entertained the idea and let her set us up.
A few dates later, and I called my best friend to tell her that I wasn’t sure if I could continue the relationship. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him, but because I knew my husband wasn’t the kind of guy you dated; he was the guy you married.
Marry him I did. Our relationship was not the most passionate I’d ever had, but it felt right. For the first time in my adult life, I felt happy, safe, and comfortable with a partner and I enjoyed my life with him more than I had ever enjoyed with anyone else. Our marriage was good, by anyone’s definition. We traveled, went out to bars and parties, and spent time with friends and family. Our sex was always, solidly, in the “enjoyable” category. After a couple of years, we decided to expand our family, and I got pregnant about 6 months later. A little over 3 years of marriage later, I had my daughter, and life as a family of three suited us perfectly. I was happy.
But, I hear you shouting, happy people don’t cheat on their husbands! When I struck up my affair, I would have argued that they do. I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was happy. When my daughter was almost 1, I ended up having a very brief affair with a colleague of mine that I’d had a major flirtation with for the better part of a decade. My affair was about sex. That kind of crazy, no holding back, just about having a good time sex. I never had any intentions of leaving my husband for him, and actually convinced myself that sex with him would make me a better wife to my husband. My affair was with the kind of guy I sought before I settled down and realized just how bad they were for me. We slept together twice; my husband found out through some salacious gchat messages he saw on my computer about a week before our daughter’s first birthday party.
I thought my marriage was over; I would have never stayed with someone who’d had an affair, and my husband had always made it clear that he would never stay either. I didn’t blame him for leaving, but begged and begged for him to give our relationship 6 months of marriage counseling before filing for divorce. I figured that any divorce proceedings and custody battles would be better handled when emotions had cooled a bit, and we’d had a professional mediating the relationship. For the sake of our daughter, he agreed.
We started marriage counseling, and after the first couple of sessions, we both decided to actually really give our marriage a try. We quickly realized that there were many things in our relationship that led to my affair. I was keeping my sexual preferences a secret from him. Not to give away too much, but there are some scenes of 50 Shades of Grey that I’ve enjoyed in the bedroom. My husband didn’t have a clue. Any attempts for him to be “rough” in bed, got quickly shut down by me, so he thought I wasn’t interested. He didn’t have a “Madonna/Whore” complex, but apparently I did. My own insecurities boxed me into the role of wife and mother, and without consulting my partner, I decided he wouldn’t want to be married to that “type of girl.” It made it really easy for me to look outside my marriage to get that kind of release.
My husband, on the other hand, comes from an immigrant family that often did things “old school.” Emotions weren’t discussed. Problems weren’t aired out. He was keeping his frustrations with me, our sex life, and our overall relationship under lock and key, and because he wasn’t communicating, he was slowly pulling away. I come from a world filled with lawyers, where no one ever shuts up and everything is constantly being discussed. My constant communication was overwhelming him and contributing to a bigger gap in our relationship.
When we started counseling, the therapist asked us to rate our marriage before the affair. We both gave it an 8. After a month of therapy, we realized pre-counseling we were maybe at a 4 or 5. Our marriage was broken, and we didn’t even know. After months of therapy, we started to communicate better. We stopped having the same fight every two weeks. Our sex life improved. We started to remember why we fell in love.
Looking back, I am so grateful that I had an affair. I am happier now with my husband that I ever have been in the 8 years we have been together. We are more open, honest and respectful of each other than we ever were before. Without my affair, we never would have gone to therapy and I truly don’t think our marriage would have survived the long haul without it. When talking to my husband, we both realize that if this hadn’t happened, we would have woken up one day and realized far too late that we had drifted too far apart to save our relationship. Without my affair, I would have ended up divorced.
About the Author:
I'm a married, New Jersey mom who spends works her day job planning events, and spends 24 hours a day trying to figure out how to be the best mom I can be to a "spirited” daughter. I love football, ice cream, the beach, working out, binge watching Netflix, and judging people who don't vaccinate their kids.
