Imagine This........

One of the things that "gets" to me about infidelity is the slow or non-realisation, non-understanding of the pain the adulterous partner causes. During one of our counselling sessions we touched very briefly on how my husband would have felt had the situation been reversed. We did not explore this concept further in the session, but I was keen to place him in my shoes even if it was imaginary, in order for him to be able to empathise. So I wrote him a letter...

I realize that what I want from you is for you to be able to put aside your own embarrassment, shame & guilt long enough for you to try and really understand how I feel and for you to acknowledge those feelings, I want to be able to talk about this massive issue in our marriage in a calm way, but your constant stonewalling of questions, and your standard responses of “she was my friend”, “I can’t remember” and “I don’t know” creates a wall between us.

I really struggle with you understanding the pain I feel about your affair – not just when I found out for certain, but also when I suspected and confirmed that you were involved with her during that 4 year period so I wanted you to think about if the roles were reversed, and how it might feel for you for you to try to get some idea of what & how I feel, that way, you might just be able to understand the things you would want to know to be able to try to reconcile your deliberate and conscious act to destroy me and our marriage.

I want you to imagine my hands, my lips, on another man's body. It's someone you know of. Someone I work with and like and I think is a friend to me. Someone perhaps that you felt uncomfortable about me having a friendship with. Imagine you once even had the courage to tell me that you felt uncomfortable about me liking or working with this man. But I just laugh and make you feel silly when you tell me that, and I look in your eyes and say ”we are just friends that’s all, we work together really well, you know, you would get on really well with him” You believe that, because you trust me, because I am your wife, that there really is nothing going on between us, that he really is just a work colleague and a friend and you accept that we have to work together because he is supporting me with developing business with my clients. You could not imagine in a million years that I would do anything to put our marriage at risk.

I tell you that yes, I think he is a great guy, one of the best I have ever worked with, he makes me laugh, he is amazed at my work ethic and approach, he flatters me, but come on, I'm married to you, we have children together, we are building a beautiful home together, planning our future life and retirement together. You believe me because I am your wife, and you love me and trust me, but you still feel like something is not right. Whenever you bring up your fears I just get annoyed and make you feel bad about thinking something so awful about me. So you decide you're just a tiny bit jealous of the fact that I am so effusive about a work colleague and that your fears are unfounded and unreasonable. And so you stuff your concern and worry deeper and continue to mow the lawn, clean the cars, help with the children, go to work, have holidays, visit family and friends, discuss our finances and plan your future, together with me. I am your wife.

Imagine that once, when I was away overnight with him, on business matters, you were at home with children, helping with their homework, doing the washing, sorting out the bills, emptying the dishwasher, doing all the mundane but necessary, usual, routine, tiring and often boring jobs at the end of the work day - he and I have dinner and drinks. Later, we go to sit in the hotel lounge, close together on a sofa, talking about our lives, families, hopes aspirations, flirting unashamedly with each other and he leans over me to hear something I said quietly and his hand brushes against my face. Suddenly, I turn to him and he is kissing me. I don't mean to respond, but I am flattered that he touches me and appears to want me, and I choose not to stop myself from responding to his touch and his kiss. I do have a choice, I am not been coerced , and I choose to carry on.

I don’t think about you at home, not once, you there with the girls, doing all that mundane stuff. I am excited by the attention he gives me. He makes me feel good. We end up in my hotel room. I never check myself to ask if this is right or wrong. My eyes on are on his. He isn't you. He smells different, feels different, touches me differently, and the next thing I know our clothes are on the floor, he pushes me to the bed and lowers himself onto me and he is inside me. We f*ck all night. I never ever once think about you, or the consequences of what has just happened. The next day, he and I talk about what happened the night before, that it felt good and we enjoyed it, but eventually we say it shouldn’t happen again, it was good but it was a mistake, a one-off. No-one will ever know. No-one need ever know.

Even though our lives are insanely busy, somehow this man and I make time every day to talk, in the office, when we are travelling together, on our mobile phones, telling each other we look good, or smell nice, or we’ve handled a work problem well, flattering each others ego at every opportunity - sometimes you try to call me and I get you off the phone quickly so I can call him, or I don’t miss him calling me.

Not long after he and I have agreed that we shouldn’t have an affair we find we are making time to be with each other whenever we can and work ways of meeting so we can to be together to f*ck. I ask family and friends to have my children when you can’t so I can "work late" and meet him at hotels. I go to lunch with him, just the two of us and never ever mention him or any of this to you. I touch his hands while we talk. Brush against him when we're in a public place, stroke his leg when we are in the car together, teasing him, going to business meetings and wanting them to be over so we can be together, just the two of us, in the car, talking, laughing, enjoying his company. Being his friend. F*cking him because it and he feeds my ego.

But I never ever think about what I might be doing to my life or my marriage, or the devastating effect it will have on you if you ever find out. My saving grace is that I naively think you won’t find out.

Imagine you and I go away together on a holiday – and in the taxi from the airport I receive a lot of texts, which I read and smile about. You ask me who they are from and I say, just the girls from the office and look at you like you are crazy for asking such a question. Later, when I am in the bath, you read those texts, and they are not “from the girls in the office” but from the guy at the office who is my “friend” who I get on with, and who you are now feeling very uncomfortable about.
You also realize that the texts are not the sort that a work colleague, or a friend would send you quite inappropriate – saying he missed me a lot, he was sat at my desk and how good it felt to be sat at my desk, how he couldn’t wait until I was back in the office. Imagine that you ask me about those texts again and I give you some stupid reply that I can’t control what people send to me, and I make you feel really bad for even asking me such a thing. Imagine how you would feel reading those texts, knowing that something is very wrong. But I am your wife, you trust that I wouldn’t do anything wrong with another man, a friend, a work colleague, who I get on with.

Imagine we have another holiday and I am constantly on the phone, canvassing your sympathy because things in the office ”really can’t wait until I get back” in a weeks time. I concoct some story about someone who has discovered she has cancer and you feel sympathetic and think what a wonderful person your wife is, taking time out of her family holiday, because a work colleague is in need. But that story isn’t true, I am in contact with this man. I now need this man to feed my ego, even when I am on holiday with my family. I believe that you will never notice me texting and talking “to the office” because you are so involved with the holiday, sunbathing, reading a book, or being with the girls.

Imagine that, whenever I can, I climb into bed with him and let him hold me and kiss me and touch me intimately and remove my clothes. Imagine my naked body stretched out against his. Imagine having to constantly fight the mind movies where you see the two of us next to each other, together in bed, his mouth on my breasts, his arms around me, laughing together, and me never thinking about you or the girls, acting without a care or responsibility in the world. He makes me feel good in a way that I think you don’t make me feel.

And I am married to you the whole time. I do the same things with you in our bed and you never know, you’re never meant to find out. And when this happens with him, after he has cuddled me, held me, f*cked me, you come home from work and I kiss you and put dinner on the table, and help the kids with their homework, talk to you about normal things and go to bed like absolutely nothing has happened.

Imagine me holding his hand, stroking his face, biting his fingers when enters me, all exactly the same way as I always have with you. And then imagine trying to believe that when I tell you I love you, that I actually do despite the fact that this man is now consuming me completely. Can you believe that I still love you in the same way I always have? Imagine me having an orgasm with this person-- because of the way he licked and touched me and stroked me and made me feel - and then imagine me telling you when I had been found out that I didn't really enjoy it, it was mechanical. You can’t and don’t really believe that it was. Imagine me afterwards, sweaty and naked in his arms, and then try to believe I didn't really have a physical and emotional connection with him. That I didn't really want to do it, that I tried really hard to keep it from happening again and again. Imagine me telling him when I would be away from home so that we could meet, imagine how we both would plan our business trips carefully, so we could be together to have dinner and drinks and to f*ck each other, and then try to believe me when I say I never planned or chose for this to happen.

And all the while you are at home, the compliant husband, worrying about the change in me, worrying that my job was draining me, tiring me out, making me short-tempered and distant with you. You can’t understand what has got into me, you ask me lots of times if I am ok, but I brush you off with silly reasons. I even ask you if you are seeing other people, as a ploy to try to make you feel guilty in a way to help me manage mine – oh yes, I do feel guilty of sorts, but not nearly enough to stop my relationship with this other man, the guilt will pass, as soon as I see him again because I can bury it where no-one will ever find it. After all you are never going to find out. You trust me, You would never believe I could do this to you, that I could be so untrustworthy - after all I am your wife. You truly love me and think I truly love you and that nothing so destructive could ever come between us. You can’t imagine that I actually think I can be this destructive. Imagine you look me in the eyes with love & care but unbeknown to you I stick the broadsword in your heart every time I see this man.

Imagine at times you completely don’t understand my venomous replies to anything you talk to me about. I see the hurt in your eyes but I turn away from you. You don’t realize it is because he is now the centre of my world, He is feeding my ego, and I love the excitement and I love the power I think I have over you both. I almost have no regard for you, such is the strength of my fantasy life with this other man. We are invincible, you don’t count. You haven’t counted for a long time. But I keep telling myself it has to end. I tell myself for four long years. But I can’t. I like the excitement too much and you will never find out. Besides, I think you don’t want me anymore, I have a notion that you don’t love me anymore, you make me feel lonely. I deliberately don’t connect with you or talk deeply with you so I can perpetrate these false feelings I have created to cover my guilt. I don’t ask you about it of course, nor do I ever try to have a conversation with you about our marriage, but I think you will never find out about me and this other man………………….

Imagine me sharing intimate details of our marriage with this man. Imagine I tell him how much money you earn, the car you drive, about our children, our holidays, about the friends we have, about our family and the things you do and say that make me angry. Imagine me telling him things about you that he will later bring back up. He will say your name with disdain, because now he has developed feelings for me and wonders where our affair is going. He wants me to make a commitment to him. I tell him I won’t leave my family, and this is going nowhere, but I still want our affair to continue. As long as he is happy for it to be that way, why does it matter?

He will be annoyed when I tell him that we are doing something as a family. He will start to manipulate me, causing arguments and then wheedling his way back under my skin - but I don’t see that because I am now blinded with the excitement of our affair and I care nothing for you, because I "think" you care nothing for me. And I don’t worry about contraception because he told me had had a vasectomy. So I don’t worry about getting pregnant. And I don’t think about my health because I think he is a clean person, a nice person, a friend, a director of a business, therefore he couldn’t possibly have any sexually transmitted diseases could he? I don’t think about his past partners, I don’t even ask. I never give a passing thought about you or your health either, not once, not ever.

Imagine me waking up in his arms. In his hotel bed. Imagine me on the phone with him or texting him as soon as I leave for work, or you leave the house. Imagine me racing through my calls to you so I can hang up and immediately call him. Imagine me switching my phone off when I am with him, so you can’t get hold of me because I don’t like to upset him by talking to you when he is with me. It kills the moment for both of us if I have to talk to my husband.

Imagine us slipping away from everyone else at the Christmas Party to kiss and f*ck in my hotel room. Imagine that and then try to believe he meant nothing to me. Imagine finding a poem he has given me, hidden away, that I never mentioned to you. Imagine that you smell his aftershave in my car, it’s not yours, and you can’t imagine whose it is, but you ask me and I brush you off with a lame excuse that it could be anybody – I look you in the eye when I say this to you and you believe me. I am your wife.

Weeks later, you smell that same smell again, but this time, you smell it on my blouse in the washing basket. It’s a definitive smell, male, definitely not my perfume. One time, you make love to me and you smell that smell on my skin, near my breasts and thighs and you think the worst, but you don’t mention it because it will cause a problem or even a row between us. I will brush it off again. You start to think that you are imagining things, that you are going mad, but still there is that nagging doubt. But eventually you brush it off, because I am your wife and you trust me. I wouldn’t lie to you, would I?

Imagine that I chose to do this. I now actively encourage our affair, I choose to spend time with him to the detriment of my family, I choose to let him touch me. I choose to touch him, intimately, I choose to kiss him and hold him and make him orgasm. I choose to turn my back on you, I choose to have a secret relationship. I choose to put my energy into spending time with him, and not you. I tell him every day when I see him that he looks good and I fancy him like mad, that I can’t wait until we can spend some more time together. I promise him I will try to stay away from home when it’s convenient for him to be with me. You think I am working, I am conscientious in my work, you know it is important to me. You have no reason not to believe me - I am your wife, you trust me.

Imagine then, you have been watching me and him for months now, checking up on me and you know something is not right. Something is very wrong. You can’t get through to me any more, I don’t appear to be listening to you, I don’t pay you any attention at all. I often don’t answer you when you talk to me. You sense something this wrong. You ask about my relationship with him, and I say we are just friends. You ask me outright if I have had an affair with him and I look you right in the eye and tell you I am not having an affair with him, we are just good friends. Imagine me telling you that it wasn’t what you think. We are good friends, we get on well. We are work colleagues.

But imagine something tells you that you don’t believe what I am telling you. You now start observing me much more closely. You ask me questions and you absolutely know I am lying, because you have evidence of my affair. You catch me out eventually and confront me and I cry. I tell you I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to hurt you because you weren’t meant to find out. I tell you that none of this was planned, that is just happened. That I felt lonely and bored and he filled a gap and flattered me. It made me feel good. But I did all of these things outside our marriage, while coming home to you and being your wife, but I never meant them to affect you. I wasn’t ever going to leave you, or follow through with anything, even when he asked me where we were going, where our relationship was going. He was just such a good friend that I didn’t know how to end it without losing his friendship. Because I think I really really believed that his friendship and our affair was far more important than you and any marriage vows I had made to you.

Imagine that I lie to you about the details at first, I minimize the affair, I minimize our relationship and the length of time it has been going on actually, I don’t minimize it - I just lie more to you because I am now such a consummate liar. I tell you it was not a big deal – we were just friends, but when I find out just how much you know, how much pain I have caused you, I cry and apologize over and over. Imagine I promise it's over. I won't talk to him anymore. I won't have any contact anymore. And I am angry when you won't trust me the same way you did before. I am pissed off with you when you ask me questions and I don’t know how much you really know so I lie and tell half truths, or answer your questions with I don’t know or I can’t remember. I tell you that I didn’t mean to hurt you, that it just happened, and I don’t know why I continued it for so long, lying to you and carrying it on for years. I tell you that you were never meant to find out and that if I ever thought you would find out, I wouldn’t have done all those things to you for four years. Never. And all you want to know is what went on between me and this man, so you can put some context around this destructive thing that I have caused. But to try to push the blame on you, I tell you I thought our marriage was shit anyway – even before the affair. That I was bored. And the affair filled the void, I just didn't tell you what I thought of our marriage before the affair, because it is also a lie, to try to justify my behaviour.

You slowly start to realize that that last 4 years of your life have been a lie. You think back to all the things that we have been through in the last four years and its all a lie. Holidays, family days, good times, ordinary times. You have been here in this marriage all through that time and not known that I could do this to you. Imagine you think you don’t know me anymore, who I am, what I am capable of, why I have changed. Imagine that everything you felt was real and safe is no longer. Imagine that your world crashes in around you.

Imagine that nothing in the last 4 years feels real . You look back at happy times and cannot comprehend the level and depth of my deceit. You look at me and everything feels fake. All the times I have been with you, all the things we have talked about and all the things we have done. All fake. And you just want to start understanding why, because none of this is believable. You can’t believe it. You look at me and you can’t believe I could hurt you this way, your pain is unfathomable. You can’t believe it, because I am your wife, you love me and you trust me. This wasn’t the deal we signed up to. But imagine this horror that I have now created is very real.

You want to know what me and this other man talked about, what we did, when we were together, where we went, but I tell you I can't remember or I don’t know. I tell you it's only about you and me now. Its about us getting back on track and looking forward, not backward. I don't want to see him or talk to him. Imagine you know how long this has been going on, under your nose, and now despite lying to you and deceiving you for a very long time, I'm asking you to believe me now, that it was all a terrible mistake and that I never meant to hurt you, because you were never meant to find out. Imagine that the replies I give to your questions do not heal you, that they build walls for you, not break them down. And you can’t understand why I would do that to you, after what I have already done to you. Imagine I have broken your heart in a most unimaginable way. Imagine that I have had a relationship and jeapordised our marriage for someone who was just a friend, for someone that I thought I got on well with, with someone who did not really care about me or our relationship at all and with whom I consciously conspired to destabilize and even destroy the safe and secure feelings you felt you had in our relationship.

Imagine that you believed that by talking about this, understanding why and how some things happened with that man, it would make you start to feel better, and allow some of the trust to be rebuilt. Imagine if you could help me find a way back in, after everything I did to you. Imagine if every time you asked me about my affair you felt I defended both my relationship with him, and also my treatment of you. Imagine how you might feel and how it might impact on your ability to start to forgive me and trust me again. Imagine that you question everything I say and do, that you no longer trust your own judgement because you failed to see what was going on. That how this infidelity I invited into our marriage, has eroded your belief system, your trust of people and now you have a basic inability to be even warm towards people.

Imagine that you are now hardened to the world with the burden of what happened to you. That two people consciously conspired to deceive and lie to you. The one person that you should be able to rely on - your wife. Consciously conspired to deceive and lie to you, consciously put another man before you. Your wife that made the vows that bind you together - “and forsaking all others”. You can’t accept or even start to believe that your wife could conspire to do this with someone else, who was insignificant, against you, violating you, knowing in your heart who you believed she was and what she stood for. But you were never supposed to find out, and he was just a friend that I got on with.

Imagine that you are now terrified that you can look in my eyes and I can lie to you barefacedly. Imagine that you struggle every day with not knowing where the line between protecting yourself from my lies and my relationship with someone else, and trying to allow yourself to be properly part of the relationship.

The hardest part is that for you, my story is just imagination. But your story is actually my reality. I have to try fight those images and this knowledge every single day. I have to think about all the times you spent with her, building a relationship, f*cking her, flirting and laughing with her, holding hands with her, travelling with her, sharing a bottle of wine with her, sharing secret looks together, planning secret drinks and sex together to fit her kid schedule. And me - trying to believe that none of this was planned. But in reality it was planned and it was conscious and you made it your choice to do this to us. You did it because you wanted to, and you could and you couldn’t see the difference between doing right in your marriage or having the excitement of adultery. And all the time I am your wife, you came home to me for 4 years like nothing had ever happened between the two of you and you lie to me and deceive me and betray me. Every day. Over and over, every single day for 4 years.
I have to try to balance the love I have for you, have always had for you, with knowing that you are capable of hurting and destroying me this way, then burying it all deep for no one to find, and expecting me to pick up the pieces of my shattered life and carry on again to make you feel better, without really understanding what happened to you, to us, in those four years.

I am grateful that I haven't done these things not because I didn't sometimes imagine them or even have the opportunity for them, but because I don't ever want the responsibility of knowing I could ever hurt you in the same way . It truly is beyond imagination. I don't think, even if you tried very, very hard to put yourself in my place, that you could ever really know the depth of my pain. I was so proud of our marriage and our relationship. I was so proud of you and who you were and what we created together. I looked at our children and believed them to be a product of a joint and equal love-filled, committed relationship. I thought we both believed the same things and shared the same goals. I believed we were safe inside our own little bubble, that the difficulties that we sometimes had in our marriage were normal, like everyone else had, and that actually, we had the ability to overcome them, in a loving, adult environment and where we could always find solace from the outside world without anyone else ever being invited to able to intrude on that. I thought you knew better than that. I believed and trusted that you were better than that. I believed so firmly in you, in true love, fidelity, and your honesty.

You're ashamed of yourself and feeling guilty and get mad at me again for bringing it all up, for making you relive it. Because you believe that protecting yourself, is protecting me. But it isn’t. It just serves to frustrate the situation more and builds more walls of deceit. Remember, you agreed to do anything to help us reconcile. This isn't about you and your needs now, you had your time with her to be self serving. This is about trying to understand how I feel, and how you can help me overcome this terrible tragedy you and she caused.

It's not about you. This is where I am. This is why I struggle every day. This is why I am sometimes distant, this is why I cry. This is why I now struggle to give myself to you wholly and completely because between you, you both destroyed something in me. This is why I hate her and want her to feel as bad as I do. I already know that she is damaged beyond repair, that you protected her and encouraged this. That she is happy to settle for bits and pieces of men when it is offered and to use it to further her own needs is the act of a despicable, toxic woman. Allied to that her need to “acquire” someone else’s husband and to be so calculated in yet another marriage breakdown tells me that she will never learn to be a decent human being. She will never be able to enjoy the true delights of a relationship shrouded in love and wholeheartedness, What’s more, she will never deserve to.