I Did to My Second Husband Exactly What My First Husband Did to Me

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When I was 25, I walked down the aisle with a guy I knew was cheating on me.

I knew because his brother had confirmed my suspicions minutes before we took our vows. If this had been a rom-com, I would have taken off my dress, thrown my shoes into the air and dashed from the room onto the sunny sidewalk, where my soulmate would have been waiting to catch me as I slipped in the only puddle within a two-mile radius.

But it was real life and 100 guests sat in my sister’s backyard waiting for the music to begin.

Beneath the chuppah, we accepted the Rabbi’s blessing. My husband stomped on the glass. As we danced, the shards worked their way into my heart.

Due to an illness, his mother was unable to travel, so two weeks later, I kneeled in a church in Ohio, while the pastor pronounced us man and wife. This ceremony was followed by a small reception at my in-law’s house, complete with stews simmering in slow cookers and homemade pies. I stood on the outside listening to the small-town gossip, trying to figure out why I was at this event.

Later that evening when I heard my husband talking to her on the phone, I prayed he had come to his senses. He looked up with a sheepish grin and said, “It’s about a gig we have in two weeks. In San Jose. You should come.”

My hopes inflated. Perhaps from now on, she would be just the lead singer in his band and nothing more. After all, we had said our vows twice, both times before men of God. That counted for something, didn’t it?

What it counted for was more heartbreak.

We traveled separately, and I knew the minute I walked into his hotel room nothing had changed. Her suitcase sat open in the corner. My heart fell onto the floor. He walked across it, took me in his arms and tried to explain his way out of the obvious.

In his words, she had bewitched him. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “She has me under some kind of spell.” By the time my driver’s license arrived with my new name, we were separated.

Having a marriage end six weeks after it began, leaving me temporarily unable to eat, sleep or function properly, should have been enough to prevent me from hurting someone in that same way. But emotions are far from logical.

Years later, I did to my second husband, what my first one did to me. I had an affair.

I had moved to Michigan to marry a kind, hardworking father of two small children. Within a year we welcomed our daughter, bought a three-bedroom house and started our “happily ever after.” My life was unfolding the way I had imagined.

And in walked LUST. I can’t call it by any other name. And I can’t justify my actions by saying I was under a spell, as my first husband had claimed. But I can say the magnetism toward my boss was all-consuming.

I should have quit work. Bookkeeping jobs were easy to find. I should have fought the urge. Instead of following in my first husband’s footsteps, I should have followed the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But I didn’t.

I met with my lover a few times a month, always at his apartment. A good friend covered for me. I would leave my husband at home with our toddler. He began to suspect that I was cheating and once went so far as to ask why I had taken my diaphragm with me to dinner.

It was a brief affair, and a few months later I convinced my husband to move from Michigan to California to be closer to my family.

And then for some inexplicable reason, or perhaps to get it off my chest, I confessed. We were 3,000 miles from his home, his family, his children from the first marriage, sitting at a park watching our daughter on the swings. Our conversation veered to his suspicions yet again, and he began questioning me about my unfaithful behavior. Up until this point, I had been denying what he “knew” had happened. This time I blurted out the truth.

I watched his face twist and followed the path of tears, falling down his face onto his plaid shirt. I knew exactly how he was feeling. I had been there. When finding out a spouse has been unfaithful, the ground seems to fall away. Thoughts spin out of control. Anger, sadness and confusion wash together. Nothing seems to make any sense.

“Why did you wait until now to tell me?” he asked.

I don’t know. And honestly, to this day, I still don’t know.

At that moment, I wanted to grab my words out of the air and tuck them back where they belonged: unspoken. People in my situation often confess to relieve themselves of their guilt. To feel lighter. But in doing so, they burden their partners with so much sadness and insecurity, and trust issues.

This was the situation in our case. I had been carrying around such a heavy weight. But confessing didn’t instantly erase any of that from my mind or heart. Time was the answer. The days turned into weeks into months into years. And eventually, my husband forgave me. And I forgave myself.

We grew stronger and closer as the decades moved forward. We learned to communicate on a deeper level, promising to share our feelings before they could lead to something either of us would regret.

That conversation in the park took place 41 years ago. We’ve had far greater challenges in our marriage than my infidelity. Custody issues with my stepchildren caused rifts for many years. Our daughter's drug addiction nearly collapsed our family structure. Then, there was my husband’s brain tumor. Splitting up would have cheated us out of decades of working together, throughout all of it, and our happiness.

 
Would you ever stay with a spouse who cheated? Let us know in the comments below.