How it begins

All names and locations in this post have been changed to protect the innocent.

It started with “I love you.”

Scrolling through the long line of Facebook messages, I saw the words standing out like a beacon. “I love you.” Nothing even remotely suspicious surrounded them. Logically, I told myself it was the normal exchange of affection between friends. I remembered exchanging “I love yous” with a close male friend, after all.

But my gut told me to keep scrolling.

The next message that stood out: “Ooooh baby.” My throat tightened. But as my eyes raced over the surrounding messages, I quickly understood the context. She was was saying “ooooh baby” as an exclamation about something else, the way people say “oh shit” or “oh man.” They were talking about food that looked delicious. That was all it was. I relaxed a little, but once again, my gut nagged at me. Keep going. 

“Sweetie.”

“Baby.”

Okay, this time there was no mistaking it. My fingers and toes started to go numb. I kept scrolling, because at this point, how could I stop?

“Cuddling with you on the sofa…”

“Feeling your breath on my neck…”

“I want to act all couple-y for a while…”

“I want that too…”

A picture of him kissing her neck.

“You have magnificent breasts…”

I had to scroll over and over these parts, convincing myself that they were real. My heart was pounding so hard it shook my entire body. I jumped away from his computer like it had burned me, running upstairs and opening a chat with my friend. I’d complained plenty of times about what appeared to be the inappropriate closeness between my husband, James, and his friend Delilah. But this?

I never thought I’d find anything like this.

I’m not particularly proud of snooping. But to be fair, he never made any effort to hide it. He left his computer on, Facebook logged in, phone sitting around - I could have discovered all of this at any time. I trusted him, and he knew it. We were one of those couples that would joke about the possibility of cheating on each other, because it was so ridiculous. We were always together, when one of us wasn’t at work. And both being in the retail field, there wasn’t exactly ample opportunity for work-time hanky panky. 

But then, she came along, and everything changed.

Suddenly, I wasn’t the only person he wanted to spend large amounts of time with. James, like me, was someone who didn’t make close friends easily, so I’d never really experienced this side of him before. When he first started talking to Delilah, he kept asking me if I was comfortable with their friendship. Of course I was. I had no reason to be otherwise. He’d had female friends before I came along, and I never felt threatened by them.

But it soon became clear that this was something different.

In the early summer of 2013, we moved to Metropolis. It was James’ hometown, even though his family relocated when he was a child. He never stopped loving the place, and always intended to go back. In early 2012 I started a business that turned out to be very successful, allowing us to make the move and start a new life.

Delilah just happened to live about forty-five minutes away. During our visits to Metropolis before we moved, we always met up with her and spent time together. Increasingly, I felt like a third wheel whenever I was with them. The first time they were physically alone together, I was overtaken with a feeling of dread. It was very practical - he had to drive her home after she hung out with us in our hotel. She didn’t have any other way to get there. I’d be damned if I was going to be the jealous, controlling wife who refused to let her husband spend forty-five minutes alone with another woman.

My gut was telling me something, but I didn’t want to listen.

One of the things we specifically looked for, when we moved, was a three-bedroom apartment. I needed a home office, and we wanted a spare room for family and friends who might visit. But within just a day or two of moving, the “spare room” became “Delilah’s room.” While I struggled to unpack and get my new place in some semblance of an order, she was always hovering. She and James would go out shopping together, hanging out, while I sweated and toiled at home. I told myself it was my choice. If I asked him to stay and help out, he would. I was just fine. And honestly, if they were out of the house without me, that gave me more space to work.

For the first few weeks, it seemed like she was constantly there. For a natural homebody like me, who’s not used to having guests, it was a living nightmare. My usual feelings of anxiety tied to having a near-stranger wandering around my house mixed with my particular reservations about her, and the nature of their relationship. They wrote little lists of things they wanted to do together, passed cute little notes that said things like “hi, best friend,” giggling across my kitchen table. Agonized, I passed it all along to my friend, who correctly diagnosed the situation as high-school bullshit. My husband was trying to make up for the silly, puppy-love high school relationship he never got to have. 

Finally, I was able to gather up my courage to talk to him about at least one aspect of my discomfort. He had to stop inviting her along EVERY time we went on an outing. Eventually, it was whittled down to just large events like sports and concerts, plus one sleepover per week.

After I found out what was really happening between them, I asked him about those times he brought her over. To my house. To eat my food. How we’d all play games together, but towards the end I couldn’t even speak to her or look her in the eyes. I knew, without knowing. And I thought he must know too, how much agony it was for me to be in the same room, the same building, the same planet, as her.

I asked him how he could bring her here. How could see look at me and smile and say hi, thank you for having me? How cruel were they?

“That was our time together,” he told me. “We decided it would just be that, and nothing else.”

Strangely, I took little comfort in the notion that their innocent friend sleepovers were actually a cover for them to play house, to exchange sweet nothings and cuddle on the sofa, right under my nose. But he told me that he was pulling back. The “sex stuff” was over, he was trying to separate from her because he knew that it wasn’t a healthy relationship for either of them. He’d figured that their affair would “just end” at some point. I asked him why he didn’t willfully end it. He said he didn’t want to.

He said he still wanted her in his life.

Before that, during the initial confrontation, he’d told me he didn’t want to be with me anymore. That he didn’t think there was anything left to salvage between us. He was unhappy. My mental illness made it impossible for him to live with me anymore. I knew my depression often made me withdrawn and difficult, but I’d been working on that, at his request. I’d been in therapy. I was doing better. I thought we were happy together. Hours later, he went back on what he’d said. He was in shock, assuming that our relationship would be over anyway, so he might as well stand his ground. He was sorry that he said there was nothing left to salvage. He was sorry that he blamed me. He still loved me. He wanted to be with me. But he couldn’t separate from her, not fully.

Because I’d spent a few hours thinking he was really going to leave me, for good, I didn’t feel in a particularly strong bargaining position. Unlike most people in my situation, I didn’t tell him that he was crazy if he thought he’d be allowed to talk to her again. I knew it was going to happen no matter what. I told him she wasn’t allowed in the house anymore, and he promised the romantic stuff was over.

And that’s where we stand now. He’s coming with me to therapy tomorrow. I have no idea how to move forward from this, but I know that I still love him, and this incident - despite what he says - doesn’t indicate that he’s a bad person, or cast a dark cloud on every good thing we have in our relationship.

I’m cautiously hopeful.