Esther’s Story: Healing from Her Affair

Did I go on a tangent?
Did I lie through my teeth?
Did I cause you to stumble on your feet?
Did I bring shame on my family?
Did it show when I was weak?
Whatever you see, that wasn't me.
- Brandi Carlile

It all happened long ago, time being the blessing it is. The backstory is unoriginal. I was a woman approaching middle age. I had an intense career and shouldered a heavy load at home with small children. My husband didn't seem to notice how hard I was trying, and I let my resentment at not being magically understood deepen in silence. Two avoidant people in a marriage meant that love was dying of neglect in our house.

One weekend at a reunion—that old cliché—I had my first conversation in two decades with an old boyfriend. "I still love you, and it kills me," he said. He returned to his home across the country, but those words stayed with me like a constant question about life's paths taken and missed. I was restless and lonely.

Two years later, a local male acquaintance "slid into my DMs," as they say. It started as innocent small talk about who we were and where we were in life. "Your husband must be so proud of you," he said. My response was perhaps my most regrettable action, words that opened a door I could never close. "I don't think he has any interest in me." That was the moment I crossed the line into betrayal.

The next year progressed like most affairs do, from simple coffee conversations to shameful encounters and then the unavoidable explosion of discovery. At one point, it seemed like the relationship must be love. It is a common trick of the affair mind, the ego preservation required to keep moving through life as a "good person" who just found herself in hard circumstances.

The end result of an affair is always so far from the beginning, and so much worse than imagined. My affair partner got a divorce and pressured me to leave with him. I felt responsible for his life situation, but had misgivings about any real future together. Everyone knew about us, about the most shameful thing I ever did.

My husband and I started counseling, together and individually, as did my oldest child. Still, for several months, I dragged my feet on going completely no contact with my affair partner. I did not want to leave with him, but I also couldn't imagine staying in a marriage after humiliating my spouse and myself, and so publicly.

When I finally got decisive about the end of my affair, it happened in an instant with no looking back. My therapist later suggested that it was God speaking, but it felt like a deep knowing from inside myself. I had been experiencing suicidal ideation as an escape from the hell we co-created, and my affair partner was callous about that on the phone one afternoon. I knew I was done, forever, in that moment. Not just with the affair, but with the pattern of secrecy and avoidance and codependency I had cultivated all my adult life. I told him so, and I blocked his number, email address, and all social media accounts. My affair felt like a drug, and when that high was gone, I saw it as an ugly and self-destructive thing.

I wish I could say that was the last I ever heard from him, but he attempted occasional contact with me for two or three years via strange direct messages or phone calls to my office. Unexpectedly, I spent even longer blocking contact from my old boyfriend, the one who wasn't even an affair partner. His attempts persisted at least once or twice a year right up until he died, despite us never speaking. I did not want my husband to think I still had secret relationships with men, and I hated the idea of having to bring up the topic again, so a single unwanted message would make me feel panicky for weeks. To be clear, my motivation not to have contact with men came from myself at that point, not because my husband was enforcing behavior standards or monitoring me. I think that's the only way true recovery happens—from within.

I know I received undeserved grace from my husband. Of course, he had rage at the time of discovery, but he was also open to working with me on becoming friends again in those early months and on building emotional intimacy. I am deeply sorry about my affair. It took me far away from what matters in life. I hurt the people who are most important to me. It is like an axe wound across my soul. I am still haunted by the worst thing I ever did, and my husband knows what that is.

It feels self-indulgent to write about my experience as an adulterer, about my own pain, when my spouse is the clear victim. Most resources I found after discovery naturally centered on the betrayed—how to support them and how to make amends when possible. The cheater also has their own path to walk. Life is not over, even if it feels that way for a time.

If there is an upside to the shame of discovery, it forced me to address family-of-origin baggage and my own pattern of people-pleasing and codependency. There is irony in how I poured so much caretaking energy into my marriage and family that I felt depleted, so I found an affair partner and poured caretaking energy into him. Wherever you go, there you are, as Jon Kabat-Zinn famously wrote.

I am a better version of myself now, the most honest and trustworthy I've ever been. My husband and I communicate more openly. I better connect with and forgive people who have made mistakes because I know what it is like to be humbled and humiliated and publicly imperfect. I'm a lifelong work in progress, just like anyone else.

Do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet?
When you fall I will catch you on your feet
Do I spend time with my family?
Did it show when I was weak?
When that′s what you see, that will be me.
-Brandi Carlile