He Cheated, She Stayed: One Woman's True Story of Getting Over Infidelity Part 2(final)

I tried to downplay what a chump I'd been for not seeing this coming. When I told one friend about Sam's infidelity, I said, "I know it's not like he's literally the last person on Earth you'd expect to have an affair...."

"Nope," she cut me off, "he pretty much is."

And honestly? I'd thought so, too. I fell in love with Sam with the kind of total trust and joy a child feels when she jumps off a table into a grown-up's arms. I knew with utter certainty that he would catch me.

After we got engaged, he asked me to promise that if I were ever tempted to cheat on him, I'd come to him first and tell him, so we could address whatever part of our relationship had gone awry and was making me crave attention elsewhere. I laughed, because it seemed like such a ridiculously hopeful request. And then I gave him my word. Did I ask him to promise me the same thing? Of course not. It never even occurred to me. Sam's cheating on me was inconceivable.

What is the difference between trusting someone and taking them for granted? I think I fell into that gap. I felt so safe with Sam that it was almost an insult. If you'd stopped me on the street any time during the past five years and asked what was the single thing I loved most about my marriage, I'd have said, "That's easy: trust."

I had grown less in love with Sam than with the security I felt from him.

While it was happening, of course, I wasn't aware of any of this. I knew we were a little off, but I told myself it was just a passing phase, a rough patch on the long road of married life.

Besides, Sam and I went to great lengths to take care of our relationship. Even during the years when he was cheating, we went out on date nights every week (except when he was traveling for work—or for "work"). Every Thursday, as I stood before the mirror putting on eyeliner and brushing my hair, the children would mewl and cling to me like kittens. "Why do you have to go out with Daddy again?"

I would stop what I was doing and gather them around me and explain that our family was a wonderful, precious thing, and that my relationship with their father was at the heart of it. We had to keep our relationship strong for the whole family to be strong.

And sometimes, a few hours later, when Sam and I finished dinner (we never went to movies or shows; we always preferred to talk) and the bill came and we balked at the cost, one of us would offer up what had become a standing joke between us: "Well, at least it's cheaper than couples therapy." Ha ha. (Ask me, when all this is over, how much we've spent on therapy, individual and group and couples. It will be in the tens of thousands.)

And sometimes we'd have a fight, and after it was over we'd congratulate ourselves on the way we fought things through, really aired them and resolved them, didn't let them fester. We agreed that one of the strengths of our marriage was that we fought so well.

The idea that Sam had sat there, echoing all these preening verdicts about our marriage while he was screwing Daphne on the side, walloped me one day, many months after his confession. This kind of thing happened a lot: Some out-of-the-blue realization—some piece of the puzzle I'd somehow missed—would, out of nowhere, just stun me. Each time this happened, I went spiraling down into a three- or four-day depression. After a while, it occurred to me that maybe my mind was parceling out the pain, because I never could have handled it all at once.


Yet interspersed with the dark whirlpools were small, sparkling moments when I would remember why I loved my tall and handsome husband—and why I liked him, too: his intelligence and sincerity, his patience and humor, the pleasure I took in his easy company, day to day.

And so, after some of my anger had dissipated, I began to take a long, hard look at myself. I had to admit that I was partly to blame, not for Sam's affair—that was his own stupid decision—but for the cloud of disappointment and annoyance that had become a permanent feature of our marriage. I had grown to resent him when our kids were babies—a time when his needs, even his love, felt to me like just one more tiresome burden.

Oh, I'd never stopped being generous and sweet to Sam in small ways, but deep down I had gradually divested myself of our marriage. Many years ago, I read in a magazine (Esquire, I think) that men care less about how their wives look than about how they look at them. In other words, our extra ten pounds matter far less than our critical, disappointed gaze. It had been a long time since I'd bothered to regard Sam adoringly. How could I when he neglected to call and tell me he'd be home late from work again? Or left his underwear in a wad behind the bathroom door again? Or was too busy to help when I prepared a dinner party for our friends...again? We were in a standoff—neither of us getting what we really needed, and neither of us willing to perform the first act of generosity. It felt easier—kinder, even (for the fight it avoided)—to give up, to just not care.

Of course, not caring is fine as long as you really don't care. But in our case, we actually did. A habitual mild bitterness, a casual scorn, became my default attitude toward Sam. He, meanwhile, was boiling with anger. He just didn't know what to do with it—until Daphne came along and offered him an outlet.
It is very hard to fall back in love with someone you know as well as you know a spouse after 12 years. You have none of the momentum of early love to propel you forward, and all the habits that drive you crazy to drag you down. But we both cared for our marriage enough to want to give it a chance, and to try our best not to damage it further. So we set some ground rules (which, okay, we broke fairly regularly): First, rather than blaming each other for what went wrong, we would each talk only about ourselves and how we felt—hurt, scared, unappreciated, whatever. Second, we would try to put aside our own anger sometimes and really listen to each other. And third, we'd spend as much time as we could not talking about the affair, but just talking—about the news, or our friends, or our crazy siblings. We'd go to concerts, and on hikes and bike rides with the kids. We'd cook together. We'd hold hands.

It's too soon for me to say how this will all turn out. There are still times when I am suddenly appalled to realize that I am married to a man who could do to me what Sam did. But here's the thing: Sam is appalled—and ashamed, too—and he was appalled and ashamed even when he was with Daphne.

Meanwhile, I do know this: Much as I am loath to admit that anything good could come out of his affair, our marriage now is, in important ways, often better than it ever was. Sam doesn't dismiss his anger in hopes that it will go away—and he's getting better at pinpointing some of the vulnerable feelings that the anger, like a guard dog, protects. And I've begun paying attention to the parts of him that I fell in love with 12 years ago, and that I never stopped loving, though I let them get buried beneath piles of laundry and dirty dishes. I even try to gaze at him adoringly, though sometimes it comes off more like a crooked grimace. "I'm trying!" I tell him.

A few weeks ago, I came across the push-up bra in the back of my closet. It embarrassed me—so emphatic, so blatant, more like a prosthetic device than an article of clothing. Yet I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.

So I tried it on for Sam. And it turns out it still works, still makes my breasts look amazing. He liked it.

But then, in the middle of sex, I slipped away, unable to stop myself from wondering: Did he touch her like this? Were her breasts bigger than mine? What did he say when he walked through the door of the hotel room—at any of the 21 different hotels where they had sex?


Sam held me while I cried. Later he asked how long I thought it would take until I was over it, and I had to admit I had no idea. Forever maybe. Or tomorrow.

Then he did something for me that I wasn't able to do for myself. He pulled me out of that ugly, bleak chapter of the past—our past, now—and back into the just-fine present. He said, "I am with you now. I love you now. I want to make our marriage really good again, starting now."

I blew my nose, took a deep breath, and found myself in his arms—the arms of someone utterly familiar to me, and also completely new and unknown. Which, it turns out—even after all the shock, the hurt, the betrayal—is still where I most want to be.

From the April 2010 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.