I will never forget the moment I found out my husband was cheating on me. In fact, the memory will never leave me. Every feeling is as fresh and raw as the day it happened.
It started after I found a text message on his phone from a woman I’ll call Margaret.
Margaret and I spent most Saturdays together with our boys at junior rugby league. Our kids had grown up together and gone to the same school. We’d worked side by side at the tuckshop and spent hours in the car, travelling to sports carnivals on weekends. Our friendship was solid and long-lasting. Even when our boys finished school we’d get coffee and catch up at yoga every Thursday.
So naturally, I was curious when I saw her name flash up on my husband’s phone as it lay on the kitchen island. He’d gone to the loo, it went off, I checked it. Why wouldn’t I? We’d been married for 25 years. I thought we were happy.
The message was simple: ‘L8ter 2nite’.
He walked out of the bathroom, his shirt half tucked into his undone pants. He looked at his mobile in my hand and raised an eyebrow. Slowly he strutted over to me. 'What have you got there?'
I exploded.
‘Are you having an affair?’ The trembling in my voice was out of control.
He half laughed.
'Tell me, are you having an affair?'
‘I thought you knew,' was all he could muster.
My husband. The father of my two sons. The man I had started growing old with had been having affair with one of my best friends - and I was the last person to know.
My life fell into tatters around me.
‘For how long?’ I asked.
The details were messy, things that nobody should ever know came up. The reasons were both disgusting and troubling. My question opened a waterfall of emotions he had never thought to discuss with me.
For the most part, I’ve blocked them out of my memory because just thinking about them, let alone writing them, still to this day makes me want to vomit into the nearest pot plant.
But this is what I learned in those brief, shocking moments. For 20 of our 25 years together, husband dearest had seen a few different women.
In The Other Woman Leslie Mann found texts on her husband's phone.
Some, like Margaret, were my friends. I knew most of the others - I'd chat with them in the street or had business dealings with them. One friend - who says she never acted on the invitation - was propositioned by him. I spoke to her every day and she never mentioned it.
The details were tawdry. Liaisons would take place at the local AFL ground. In the back of his car, and in our house, while I slept mere metres away.
And I had no idea.
I had heard rumours, but always dismissed them. My girlfriends had also heard rumours. But they hadn’t thought to tell me. Or wanted to tell me.
Seven years later, I still can't think about it straight.
Margaret denied every detail of it. Even when I wrote an email to her husband informing him of her 'adventures', she still denied it.
She's still happily married. She still says nothing happened. But that text, and my husband's stark admission that he'd done it for the sex but should be forgiven because, after all, he 'always came home to the family', prove she's lying. Disgusting woman.
But over the years I have let that go.
What still haunts me is the fact that no one had the heart, or the guts, to tell me. So much for the sisterhood.
The people who were supposed to have my back the most (apart from, you know, my spouse) just didn’t. I was left feeling like a fool. A fool who couldn’t trust anyone.
When people found out I finally knew what they had for so long, some tried to call me. Some even visited me in the motel I moved into.
When I asked them why they had chosen not to tell me, their answers were much the same: 'We didn't want you to get hurt', 'we didn't know for sure'.
Sometimes I pressed them for more - if they had been in my shoes, wouldn't they have wanted to know? Didn't they know me well enough to know I'd want to know? Surely someone thought they should at least bring up their suspicions with me?
All of the answers meshed into one 'Oh, but you know, it wasn't our business.'
Let me tell you this. If you love your friend, if you want to protect your friend it is your bloody business. No matter what.
That's the one lesson I have learnt from this horrible situation.
If I ever find out that one of my friends is being cheated on, and I could prevent her from feeling humiliated, I would tell her. I would tell her everything I knew.
I wouldn't wish my situation on my worst enemy ... not even on Margaret.
The author of this post is known to Debrief Daily but has chosen to remain anonymous.
Why not try....
Top Comments
I need some closure. WHAT happened after all of this???? I am 21 and i was just looking up relationship stuff and decided to read this. I'm not even in a relationship but I've been haunted by your story for almost 2 weeks. Please let me know what happened. Did you forgive him and go to marriage counseling or did you get divorced or something else? This doesn't even involved me but it really hurt. This is seriously haunting me. Thank you for sharing your story though. please respond or ask me for my email if you don't feel like sharing online. Please get back with me cuz i need closure. :( :( :( :( If you dont feel like sharing I understand because it's not really any of my business but i would like some closure please.
We have a former friend who was obsessed with marrying her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was on drugs and was a womanizer; she confided in me that she put Salt Peter in his food to keep him from having sex with other women. She believed that if she could just get pregnant he would marry her. But in the five years she had been with him she wasn’t able to conceive. This woman was my husband’s friend and his ex-wife’s cousin. We all went to college together and while I never liked her I tolerated their friendship. When we began dating I asked him about their relationship and he said it was platonic. I believed him and never considered her a threat to our relationship primarily because she was so obsessed with her boyfriend. My husband and I married and a year later we had a baby girl. When my maternity leave was up I returned to work which involved moderate travel. This woman offered to babysit for my husband to give him a break. A little over a month after I returned to work, my husband sat me down and told me that he had done something that he was ashamed of; he told me he had sex with another woman, I was pissed! I asked him what happened and he said that he stopped by a friend’s house and had a drink; he started feeling drowsy and must have fallen asleep. When he woke up a woman was on top of him. I asked him if he was having an affair and how long it had been going on. He said he wasn't having an affair, it only happened one time; he said he didn’t love her and didn’t want her. I asked if the woman was pregnant and he told me she said she was not pregnant. I was too naive to understand what had happened. We were newly married, and I couldn't believe that he would cheat on me three months after our child was born; I was hurt and angry and told him I didn't want to know who it was. Now I wish I had insisted that he tell me who it was. He said he was sorry he didn't want to hurt me and begged me not to leave him. He said he loved me and our child and just wanted his family to be together. His father had children by a number of women and treated his children horribly; he never wanted to be like his father. I believed him and we managed to put this behind us. He changed after this happened and suffered from depression; a condition he did not have before it happened. My husband was a good man and husband, he loved me and was a dedicated father who loved and took care of his family. He had a soft heart and went out of his way to help others when they were in need. The woman, who babysat for him, announced that she was pregnant about 3 months after this happened, she had a son and called him her “miracle baby”; her boyfriend married her to give his son his name. Over the next 37 years this woman was in and out of our life and home. She put her son in the same private schools as our children and used every excuse she could to stay in our lives. After her husband died she began to act strange; she made up stories about things that never happened and would not let people sit on chairs because her dead husband was sitting there. We thought she was unstable and felt sorry for her. But when she told our daughter that she raised her because I loved my career more than I loved my family and had abandoned my family for my career, my husband and I broke off our relationship with her. After husband passed away, I took a DNA test so I could learn more about my family and encouraged our daughters to take one too. My daughter received a DNA close family match and that is how we discovered that my husband had a son. When his friend’s son told me he was the match I was stunned; my children were crushed and couldn’t believe that their father would have a son and would not recognized him and be a father to him. They knew he never wanted to be like his father and wouldn’t leave his child behind. I honestly don't believe my husband knew that child was his, he said on many occasions he only had two children, our daughters, if he had known he would have been a father to his child. The son looks like his mother and does not resemble my husband at all. The sad part is that these kids grew up together and could have dated. I’ve attempted to talk to her but she refuses to talk to me. Her son and sister told her she owes me an explanation. She told them “it just happened and it was only one time.” When I heard those words I realized that this was the woman who had sex with my husband 37 years ago. Based upon what he said when he told me about it I also realized she may have drugged him and forced penetration to conceive a child in order to trap her boyfriend into marriage. I don’t blame the child, and I am not making excuses for my husband or unjustly accusing her of assault. But if it happened the way she said it did, why is she so reluctant to talk to me? This happens to men frequently and until recently they were too ashamed to report it because they didn’t think anyone would believe them and are often in denial themselves that it happened. Some victims of female on male assault experience depression or a number of other problems as a result of being emasculated by the assault. I believe she assaulted my husband to conceive a child. She had the motive, opportunity and means and used my husband, who she knew was fertile, to get pregnant so she her boyfriend would marry her. Anyone who would put drugs into the food of someone they profess to love will do anything to get what they want. I don't know if she is able to tell the truth but I still want to talk to her.