Authors: L Maretta
I moved into his arms without saying anything, snuggling into his side when he moved on to his back to accommodate me. His one arm wrapped around me as I lay my head on his shoulder, placing my hand on his chest right above his heart. I could feel it beating a little too hard for this early in the morning. He took his other hand and put it on top of mine, holding it to him while the one wrapped around me stroked my messy hair.
“What are you thinking?” I questioned.
“How much I’ve missed holding you like this. How last night was the first night I’ve slept for more than a few hours straight. How scared I was when I heard your voice when you called and I wasn’t there to take care of you. How terrified I still am that I might lose you.”
“We have to do something, don’t we? It’s been almost three weeks and the way we’re living now is doing harm to both of us. I can’t even remember the last time I had an attack that bad, can you?”
Gavin thought on that for a moment. “Right before we were married. When your father wrote and said he heard we were getting married and asked if he could come.”
He was right. That had been the last time. I had gone five long years without a panic attack. I suddenly pictured myself wearing a sign that read “Days Without Incident” with the number fifteen hundred slashed out in red and replaced with a number one. I giggled and shared my vision with my husband. He chuckled with me. It felt so good, sharing a laugh with him.
“I’m sorry I made you drive out here so late last night.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. But you’re right we have to do something, Emma. I deserve to be in this hell, but you don’t. I have to tell you something.”
I stiffened, fear gripping me immediately.
“No, no, no,” he said, turning us so that I was on my back and was looking down at me. He stroked my hair out of my face and then caressed my cheek, trying to alleviate my worry. “It’s nothing bad. I’m seeing a therapist.”
“When?” I gasped. I had no idea.
“I’ve gone three times, during my lunch at work. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away but I know how you feel about them and I didn’t want you thinking I was pressuring you to see one.”
I let that sink in. While I wasn’t keen on head shrinks, I didn’t object to him seeing one if that’s what he wanted. And it did make me feel better that he was taking the initiative to work towards making things better. I told him that and asked if it was helping.
“Somewhat,” he said, still stroking my face. He didn’t elaborate and I didn’t press him for more information. What happens between a therapist and his patient should be between the two. “He would like to see us together, of course, but I told him how you felt about it.”
“Thank you for not pushing me,” I told him. “It’s something I will consider though.”
He smiled at me. “Thank you.”
Again, we went quiet and just lay there, looking at each other. Finally we heard Yvonne putzing around down stairs.
“She’s not going to be happy to see you,” I said. “She knows.”
Gavin nodded. “I understand. I made this mess, Emma. I’ll deal with how your friends feel about me and only try to show them that I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right again.”
We left the bedroom and descended the stairs, me walking in front of Gavin.
When Yvonne heard my footsteps she called out, “It’s looking like rain today. You wanna go-” Her sentence cut off when she saw Gavin was behind me.
Without missing a beat, Gavin walked over to her standing near the refrigerator and kissed her cheek.
“Hello, Yvonne.”
She stood frozen on the spot, looking at him, no sign of what she was thinking on her face. And then she turned slightly, raised her hand in a fist and punched him in the gut. Hard.
She swiftly strode out of the kitchen and through the back door leading to the beach before she could even register the grimace on Gavin’s face.
“Are you okay?”
Gavin nodded, rubbing the spot where she’d hit him. “I was expecting that.”
I let Yvonne stew outside and had a quick cup of coffee with Gavin. We both decided that it was best that he leave. I told him I wanted to stay at least one more night and he was okay with that. I’d come home Sunday evening and we’d start moving forward with whatever our plan was on Monday.
I walked him out to his car and he pulled my prescription pills out of his pocket.
“Just in case,” he said. He then reached into the back seat and withdrew something. “I had planned on having this delivered to you.”
He placed a large vase in my hands, but instead of it being full of flowers of course, it held two neatly rolled up colorful beach towels. I laughed and put my nose to them, inhaling as I would have done to a rose. Yup. Freshly laundered.
“I love you,” I told him, aware that it was the first time I had said it since he confessed.
His face fell in complete and total relief and then he smiled. “I love you, too.”
I kissed him and told him I would see him the following night and then went back into the condo, vase in hands, before he could drive away. I couldn’t watch him do that again.
I met Yvonne on the back patio, taking a seat across from her in one of the two white, plastic chairs she was not occupying. She took a drag from her cigarette and then handed it over to me. I took it from her but didn’t smoke it yet.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She exhaled a long, slow stream of smoke before answering. “Are you?”
I explained to her what had happened last night and why Gavin was here.
“He left though,” I told her when I had finished the story. “I told him I’d be home tomorrow night. I can’t keep putting off having to deal with this, Yvonne. Are you okay with us leaving a day early?” I took a pull from her cigarette then, savoring the minty flavor. God, I missed smoking.
“Sure.”
“Yvonne, I know how angry you are with Gavin and thank you for punching him,” I laughed, “but if I am going to try to get past this I need you to try and do the same. I don’t want you hating him forever.”
“I won’t,” she promised me. “He’ll spend some time on my shit list, but if you’re going to try to forgive him I sure as hell can, too.”
I blew her a kiss and she blew one back to me.
“So, it looks like we’re going to have crappy weather today. What do you want to do?”
“Actually,’ I said, rising from my seat, “there is something I need to do today and I’m going to need your help.”
14
I needed to get going on a plan on how to work through this and since I had no idea where to start I did what any good librarian would do: research.
I pulled out Yvonne’s laptop that she brought with her and started with Googling “my husband cheated on me”. Three million, nine hundred seventy thousand results. Swell.
I started scrolling through the articles, blogs, and sites that held all kinds of information when it came to a cheating spouse. Most of them were pretty depressing, giving me statistics like more than half of the relationships that suffer from infidelity end in divorce. Some were more hopeful, like a blog written by a woman who told the story of her husband having an affair but they worked through it and now their marriage was stronger than ever. I ignored the comments by visitors that warned her, “once a cheater, always a cheater”. The majority of the articles though defined the cheating by the spouse having an affair. I wouldn’t count what Gavin did as an affair. Affair implied a long-term relationship. I believed him when he told me it had only happened once.
I refined my search and had better luck. This time I came across more websites written by actual therapists and after I weeded through the ones that were trying to sell a ninety day program for only three easy payments of thirty-nine, ninety-nine, I found one to my liking.
It listed steps, seven to be exact, on how to find happiness after a spouse cheats. I started reading them off while Yvonne took notes for me.
Number one: Give yourself permission to forgive.
That was a tough one right off the bat. I wanted to forgive him but I also felt that forgiving him made me weak. Was I a doormat for allowing our marriage to continue after he betrayed me? Moving on.
Number two: Let go
Seriously? Just let go? Just like that? I continued reading the little blurb under the rule and then it made more sense. According to the good doctor, I had to look at it as because it was so painful I had to let go, not I can’t let go because it was so painful. And while I didn’t have to magically change the way I felt I had to be willing to work towards that. Okay, that I could do.
Number three: Change your emotional response
According to this step I was to stop seeing myself as a victim and start seeing myself as a survivor. Making that shift in my head instantly had me feeling more optimistic about this. Maybe this should have been step number one.
Number four: Give up your “shoulds”
I wasn’t supposed think about what Gavin should have done or should have not done. Thinking in “shoulds” would keep me in a fantasy world where people would live up to my expectations. Okay, so expecting Gavin to be faithful to me was wrong? This was getting harder again.
Number five: Try to forgive
This I could do. I needed to make efforts, no matter how big or small, and that would eventually lead to the complete act of forgiveness. I had Yvonne jot things down that I could do that would work towards this, like responding when Gavin texted me.
Number six: Practice small acts of forgiveness
This didn’t have to do with Gavin but with other people who wronged me in some small way. For example, if I am able to forgive my sister for not returning a phone call I made to her, I should have the ability to forgive Gavin. In my head there was a slight disconnect between those two but according to what I was reading forgiveness was forgiveness, plain and simple.
Number seven: Start each day forgiving
If I woke up every morning with the positive attitude that I would be forgiving it would make it easier to actually forgive. It would also let me experience the forgiveness myself. Holding on to the anger was doing as much damage to myself as it was to Gavin, that was for sure. This one was an easier one that I could start immediately.
“I will forgive Gavin,” I said out loud to myself. “Wow, just saying it is like a huge weight off my shoulders.” That second part was directed at Yvonne.
“It’s going to take some work but put in that perspective, it does sound doable,” she agreed.
I did some more reading and by the time I was finished I was on my way to feeling a lot better about this whole mess. For the first time in three weeks I actually had hope that we’d get through this.
Օ
I arrived home the following evening just around dinner time. I had called Gavin the evening before to say goodnight and had responded to all of his texts yesterday and today. I felt good about it too, like I was finally learning to let go.
He met me in the garage before I even had the chance to get out of the car. He held his hand out for me and I climbed out of the driver’s seat and pulled me into his embrace.
“I’m glad you’re home,” he said. He looked better than he had the day before, more rested, clean-shaven, and relaxed in khaki shorts and a green polo shirt.
He removed my luggage from the trunk and followed me directly to the bedroom where he began helping me unpack. Even though I smelled something amazing cooking in the kitchen, Gavin said nothing about eating dinner yet, knowing I wouldn’t be able to do anything until bags were empty and everything was put away. It didn’t take long between the both of us and after I started a load of wash we sat down to eat.
Gavin had made my favorite, penne
a la
vodka, one of his mother’s recipes. He also had salad and crispy Italian bread, still warm from the oven. The meal was heavenly.
We chatted while we ate, me talking about my trip with Yvonne, him talking about work. He also reminded me about his cousin Kaitlyn’s wedding that we were attending in three weeks and that he had spoken to his Uncle Dominic and our arrangements for the trip were finalized. The wedding was being held a few hours away upstate. It was a big to-do wedding with festivities lasting for three days, Friday to Sunday, and his entire family would be there. Even though Gavin was an only child, he had lots of relatives, sixteen first cousins alone. While we were on the subject of his family I had to ask the question that was pressing in my mind.
“Did you tell your uncle?”
“No,” Gavin said, his face falling a bit with my first mention of the cheating. “I haven’t told anyone. I figured if we were going to tell anyone that should be a decision we should make together.”
“I had to tell Yvonne, Gavin.”
“I know,” he explained quickly, “and I’m not upset about that at all. I don’t expect you to keep this to yourself. You need to talk about it. Have you told Diane?”