The very short version of a very long story is that, as we kept stalling out during the recovery program, we eventually just gave up on it. We never finished it, but he and I just started talking. Really talking. We stayed up after the kids were in bed and hashed everything out – and I mean everything. We talked so much that we went nearly two years without ever sleeping more than five hours a night. He also requested and was allowed to be moved into a job that would keep him home for a while, which gave us the time we desperately needed to repair our broken relationship.
Which gets me to point #2. (Don’t worry. The other points are much shorter!) We are still married. Yes, I did file for divorce, but those documents expired almost four years ago. Now we celebrate the day our divorce expired, just like we do our anniversary.
Point #3 is probably the main reason I’m writing this. Every time I read something about a service member cheating online, I see comments from military spouses saying something to the effect of “their marriage was doomed”; “my husband isn’t like that;” and “well, maybe if she was taking care of her man…” You know the comments I’m talking about. I used to make them, too – back when I thought my marriage was hunky-dory and affair-proof. Now I think of those comments as blame the victim comments. They are so hurtful and they only serve to make the commenters feel a tiny bit more secure in their own marriages – but at the expense of someone who is already in the worst pain of her life.
Here’s the thing: Sometimes marriages – and especially military marriages – can go totally bad and the injured spouse never had a clue. I know that I didn’t – and I know that probably scares a lot of you. Again, it is not my intention to scare you. But if you don’t already, some day you will have a friend who will finds out that his or her spouse has cheated, and that friend will need your compassion, not your judgment. They will need to be able to look into your eyes and see someone who isn’t blaming the victim just to steal for herself a sliver of solace. They will need someone with wisdom and compassion. That’s what I hope you will take away from reading this.
Finally (whew!) point #4. It is extraordinarily difficult – like childbirth-difficult, but way longer and without the popsicles – to fix a marriage after an affair. Not everyone is able to do it and I pass no judgment on couples who decide that too much damage has been done. I also would never advise an injured spouse to stay with someone who wasn’t a thousand percent repentant and who didn’t work at least as hard as the injured spouse at fixing the marriage. If the cheating spouse isn’t willing to make MAJOR changes and accommodations in the weeks and months after being caught, that person isn’t worth keeping. Period.
But…if that cheater is willing and repentant, and if that injured spouse thinks she has it in her to forgive, it can be beautiful. It’s an eyes-wide-open beautiful. Never again will they be able to put that relationship on a “that could never happen to us” perch, because the reality is that it has happened. But there is power in recognizing the truth, and with that power they can build something even stronger.
