Heading me off at the Pass

In 2005 I started to suspect that he was having an affair. I wasn't absolutely sure and my trusting nature always came back to the fact that he wouldn't be unfaithful to me. We had always talked about any issues in our marriage, so I had no reason to think that we had a problem, or he had a problem.

But there was that nagging doubt and the suspicion of him grew ever stronger during that year.

The suspected affair seemed to take on a different pace and emphasis. His car and clothes (and sometimes his body) smelt strongly of a perfume that wasn't mine. When I asked about it I was told it could be anyone of the women he worked with, he travelled with a lot of the women from the office with his job, to clients and suppliers and the like. He looked very uncomfortable when he said this and in our usual way of open and honest communication between us - I asked him outright if there was anything I should know about or be concerned about. He made up some stupid story to get me off the case but I knew something wasn't right. I perservered whenever I felt I had to. Everytime I had such questions for him the answers he gave me were nonsense.

Why would his body smell of something we didn't have in our house? I hate more than anything that he thought he could just lie to me and think I was so stupid I would just believe him. I started to see him in different light - he was heading me off at the pass each time I had something to say that questioned his behaviour, or where he had been, or who he was with. Between two truths, it always felt there was a lie.

During that year, there was a marked increase in his travelling, both in the UK and abroad. Often he would ask me not to call him whilst he was travelling because he would be "with the guys" or "with the team" or his phone would just be switched off. This was another new tactic – avoiding me. This had never happened before, in the past, if it was humanly possible, he would come out of meetings, or interrupt a work task to take my call. His return home from these trips would be bittersweet for me - I would be delighted to see him, and tell him that me and the girls had missed him, yet his behavior would be very strange and he was often distant towards me. At the time I put a lot of this behavior towards me down to the pressure of his job, his recent promotion, the increased travel and a family rift that had started between himself and one of his sisters.

I look back at this now and cannot believe that he would do this to me. Her, well, as I was to find out later, she had done this before – business as usual, no conscience, she was operating in the only way she knew how. But my husband? I was living with someone I knew so well, yet was a stranger to me........