Editor’s Note: This personal story is a diary of an affair. It’s one woman’s recount of the emotions and events she endured as she coped with her husband’s deception, and was submitted to us anonymously. This diary will be published in a series of articles. The following is part three. Click here for part two.

And I Say to Him

I keep waiting for a letter, an explanation, something in writing from you. I can’t eat, sleep, even think. I’ve lost five pounds in four days. But it seems you go on living in a state of normalcy.

It’s not the sex that hurts. It’s the lies, deception, the secretiveness. I don’t even know who you have become. It’s that I am the one person in the entire universe you rely upon to keep you safe, the one who knows you from the inside out. I am the one who encourages you to be a better man, to live your dreams, to evoke a sense of self-worth each day.

And you deceive me.

I feel disgusting. I feel inhuman. I can’t describe how hard it is to go about my day when all I want to do is huddle in bed and hide from the world.

And you. So overprotective, untrusting of me.

Yesterday

I can’t imagine a day harder than yesterday. I am sure it will arrive shortly.

I visited my doctor. Revealed all the truths inside my gut. Testing and more testing. Revealing and more revealing.

I then went home and slept. I slept from 7 p.m. until 5:30 a.m. I did not budge, though I did snuggle up with my baby boy when he climbed into my bed.

The night before I went to the gym alone. When I arrived home, the song “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon was one the radio. I sat and listened. I began crying. Crying for the first time since this whole thing began. I came inside and fell to the corner of my room. I cried for at least an hour.

He came in and sat on the bed. Just listening. I asked, “Why did it take this for you to finally see ME?”

I told him everything. How I felt. How I lived in his shadow, under his skin, within his bones. I lived everywhere but inside of me. I was not even a part of him. I was him.

I was okay at first. Angry, enraged. But okay. Now I don’t think I can describe myself as anything but pathetic. Miserable maybe. Infinitely sad.

Sun Beneath the Clouds

Wednesday night I lost it. I wanted him gone. I ‘broke into’ his email and found her information. I then sent her a nice message from his email address:

Hi ****,

This is ****’s wife. Thank you for f**g my husband and ruining an 15-year relationship and the lives of our two children. I hope you feel a deep satisfying sense about your decision.

F** you very much,
Me

I woke him up and told him I wanted him gone by the weekend. I was sleepless and worn.

The following day I told him that I emailed her. He said it was fine. So, I asked why I had to do it, why couldn’t he? He claimed to think that not contacting her was the right thing to do. I made him call her. I wanted him to express his remorse, regret, and the fact that he loved me and only me. He did so.

At first she was terrified. Refused to answer. Had a friend from work call back to assure it wasn’t me calling. Then he told her everything. How I knew it all and how he made the biggest mistake of his life. And she dare ask if I was going to start harassing her after she violated me.

Friends and family have told me that I am a brave woman for if it were them they would have taken it further. One said she would have emailed her supervisors. Another said her husband.

I feel this is between my husband and me. I do not want someone else’s dirt in my home to clean up for days on end.

After he called her, I felt a weight lifted. My abdomen grew lighter, as though the giant rock I swallowed to sink to the bottom and sleep had been removed.

I am not okay, but much better. Knowing that it is me he loves. I knew it all along, but doubted that love was enough to keep us together.

I know not the answer, our future, or what lies ahead in the shadows cast down by deceit. I do know that steps are slowly moving us forward, beyond the grave our love crept past.

Counseling begins Wednesday.