I stayed with a partner who strayed and I am okay, I guess. At least, hopefully on my way to okay…
For women who inevitably hear ‘leave the cheating scumbag’ as soon as the words my husband cheated on me are out of their mouth, I am not the first one to deflect the widespread consensus and tread the opposite path. In fact, if you look around, I am really in notable company – Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Fergie, Elin Nordegren (for a long while, anyway)! Yet, I do not mean to clothe myself in the noble ensembles of forgiveness – for that, until today, hasn’t really been possible. And I do not know if it’d ever come to be.
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It was about two years ago – and nine years into our marriage then, when I found out that my husband cheated on me. To be honest, I always knew. But just like the legion of women who make excuses for their husband’s philandering ways, I, too, kept the marital rug in place, refusing to see the dirt of infidelity beneath. I’d really convince myself that his overnight stays in office were engineered to meet his quarterly targets and that his business trip extensions were his alone downtime. In fact, I’d even pretend that the several cut looks that women at his office parties shot in my direction, duped by the thought I wasn’t looking, were actually green glances of envy! Silly me – I fooled myself to believe they coveted my place coz I had ‘someone’ they’d have loved to call their own. Ahh, the self-fulfilling ways of the human heart! And it wasn’t until my elder daughter and I ran into him at the movies, with one of these ‘women’ that I forced myself to confront what I’d known too well – all along!
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Cheating is a deal-breaker, I had taught myself! Yet, as I stood face to face with a cheater, I couldn’t break off what I had built and sustained all along! And the decision surprised me. There would, no doubt, be a self-righteous satisfaction that’d come from calling it off and satiating my female pride with the fair and just platter of punishment force-fed to the cheating b****rd – and yet, I chose otherwise. I gulped down the bitter tonic of adultery, as if it were me who needed to be rid of the illness!
Suggested read: What men think about monogamy- REVEALED!
WHY – still remains a tough question to answer!
Wasn’t I supposed to respond in a ‘hell hath no fury worse than a woman scorned’ way? Wasn’t I supposed to blame him for bringing our marriage citadel crumbling down to dust? My husband cheated on me… the most grievous of assaults – wasn’t I supposed to yell, scream, rage, and ask him to explain himself? Wasn’t I supposed to treat this as a fatal stroke to my dignity and walk out of the marriage?
I hear you, loud and clear.
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Yet there I was, my head out of the sand now, still refusing to TALK! My coping strategy was anything but anger and confrontation. Don’t get me wrong – it took me an infinite amount of energy to be in the same house as him, feed our children in good spirit, and put on a fake smile for the neighbors. I was dying inside – after all, my husband cheated on me. And every day, every moment, I demanded a reason of myself. WHY, I’d ask myself, over and over, and tearworks would follow.
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It has been two whole years of crying and slinking away to my own emotional corner in the house, unable to face him and demand an explanation he ‘owes’ to me, my head bringing up explanations for my own insipid behavior – everything from my maternal instinct overriding my female pride, to maybe an inherent problem within our marital dynamic. I have toyed with all the possibilities my head brings up now – for it’s no longer churning excuses for his ‘betrayal’ but trying to HELP me when I do not want to ‘talk’ about it to another soul – and yet, I have ruled them out – all of them. From the thinnest argument about my maternal imperative to his ‘emotional retreat’ that I’d oftentimes tried to discuss, and thereby, fix – I couldn’t and didn’t believe that these things and everything that lay in-between were the reasons why I was staying back.
I knew that it’d be a tough transition for my daughters, should I decide to leave where they’ve known ‘home’ and more importantly, who they’ve known as ‘dad,’ but I didn’t think it impossible – and I believed that in a few years, they’d understand. After all, I wasn’t bringing in any animosity and would never badmouth their dad. Similarly, my own self-deluding moves were now clear instances of ‘making up’ for his ‘non-availability’ – a thing I had consistently tried to cancel the membership of, for myself, our children, and our home for nine years! But you can’t make a person do what they don’t want to do – and he’d work more and talk less, and I’d talk less and cry more! And over time and with increasing effort, I have found that I can discount all the floopy reasons my head would advance as plausible reasons for staying back with the currency of logic.
But then, what perverted sort of sense did ‘staying back’ make?
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When I was strong, independent, and intelligent enough to dispel the clouds of delusion masking the signs of cheating and in turn the signs of a cheater, knew I could give myself and my children the best of both worlds, wasn’t willing to engage in a filthy blame-game that’d contest the personal elements of motives, culpability, and collusion in the marital game and perhaps, draw the philosophical and cultural coordinates of monogamy and adultery up in arms too, understand the ‘greys’ in a relationship and perhaps, even make sense of his ‘actions’ in a cost-benefit analysis – what, then, was keeping me back?
Today, I know – and the answer surely isn’t convenience, habit, safety or even compromise.
The ANSWER is LOVE.
I love him. I know he has done something heinous that I cannot, as a woman, come to forget or forgive (yet), but that does not take away from my love for him!
Suggested read: BEWARE! There are so many ways your partner can cheat on you!
Yes, I cannot bring myself to give it unto him, as freely NOW – a battle I’ve been fighting for two years now! Whether my love wins and I am able to get myself to discover a breakthrough in this breakdown or I am unable to bear the gut wrenching pain of someone stabbing my insides every single moment and choose to STOP – remains to be seen.
Either the festering and rankling wound shall grow in size, forming a lump, ever-so-more large that it needs to break my being and roll out or my love shall accept defeat, ripping its way through my heart, flesh, and soul – leaving me bleeding out! But as of now, it’s war and until the victory cannon goes, I am staying coz all this time…
I stayed with a partner who strayed and I am okay, I guess. At least, hopefully on my way to okay…
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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