Innocent Parties Make Contact

It has been almost three years since I learned of my ex's infidelity. At the time we had been married for 18 years, had four children with one about to graduate high school. She left the state (MD) and travelled to Indiana to meet up with an old boyfriend. I had always wanted to confront her lover, the person who disrupted the lives of my kids and I. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I always questioned my motives, that it was more for personal revenge than it was about the truth.  It's funny that so many years later, after life has moved on, that the wounds of betrayal can still ache. I hope it is not always this way. It doesn't seem fair that a person can hurt a person like that then slip from your life.

Rcently I felt as if my heart was in the right place to say something to the paramour's wife. In my head, I played through how to reveal the information that I had and the thousand possible outcomes. I wondered what her reaction would be. How would I react if I heard this information for the first time? The thing is I knew how I HAD reacted when I heard it for the first time. It is a dark, cold blade blade plunged deeply into what was a warm peace and undoubtable security. It crushed me for a time. I didn't want to do that to another person. In conflict to this was the need to disclose the truth. I rationalized that if I was in her shoes, I would want to know. I would not want to be a blissful fool.

So I called....and she already knew. It was an absolutely terrible feeling. My ex never admitted the affair, and I have no reasonable expectation that she ever would and certainly would never appologize for it. But her husband confessed it to her. I could hear the pain in her voice. Then she spoke the words I needed to hear, "Neither of us deserved this."  I wasn't ready for that. I simply apologized to her for having to go through this much hurt. Any scripted comments I thought I had, turned into a million questions when I got off the phone. But in those moments, I had nothing to say. My moral obligation discharged, conscience picked apart the conversation, criticized my discourse and handling of the call. She would go home, it told me, she would go home a wounded woman. Wounds which neither of us deserved, but would endure nevertheless.