Healed
I am a senior and a big fan of your Facebook community. I do not comment on your posts but I read everything you share. I want to speak to the young ladies who come to you with their stories. I remember the first time I found out my late husband was having an affair. I remember the first time he denied the affair when I confronted him. I recall the night he made a decision to leave me. He did not divorce me; he just packed out one evening and never returned home. I could not fully comprehend his decision. I could not understand what his actions made me experience at that time.
I had done nothing wrong to him to deserve that level of rejection and abandonment, yet I was the one waking up at dawn, screaming and crying. I was filled with so many emotions. The mixture was a bit of shock, anger, fear, guilt and shame. Our nine-year-old daughter was the one who would hear me crying, and come running into my bedroom to comfort me as I wept against her shoulder. My daughter could not understand why I felt broken in many ways and couldn’t be strong for her. I felt so let down, because I had given years of my life to a man who didn’t see the reason in fighting for our marriage in the end.
I loved my late husband. I cared about him and wanted the best for him. I gave him everything a woman in love could lay at the feet of her man. When our daughter turned 22, she asked her father why he left me. He assured her he was in a reasonably, emotionally healthy relationship and marriage with me. He told his daughter how much he loved me, cared about me, and had no desire to hurt me the way he did. So, I was right when I stated I did nothing wrong to the best of my knowledge. She asked her father why he left us and he confessed that he wanted to explore a repressed part of himself. The core of who he was, was he liked being with other people. And being married constrained him.
He was curious about what his life could have been if he had chosen a different path. He also told her he initially felt I wasn’t meeting his every need and desire in the marriage. My girl asked whether all of his affair partners managed to meet his standards, and his answer was no. What he kept saying was, he felt he deserved more. David, when I vowed on our wedding day to be faithful to my late husband, I was indirectly saying I was willing to sacrifice all other better options out there and the pleasures thereof, to and for our marriage. What my husband did instead, was to view fidelity as something to be worked around.
He also made the attempt to make our daughter believe cheating is built into the fabric of the male psyche. That is a lie I want every woman reading my submission to stop hearing or believing. My daughter got married when she turned 29. She divorced her ex-husband at the age of 32. Like my late husband, he was also of the belief that the grass is always greener. And because he couldn’t bring himself to scar my baby girl by asking for divorce, he intentionally let my daughter discover his infidelity, so she could do his dirty work for him. They would rather deal with the shame of being caught, than try to explain why the marriage isn’t working for them.
My late husband left me when he was 36 years. He died when he was 51. I got married again when I was 52. I am 76 and still married to my wonderful husband. My daughter got married again at the age of 37. She was a mother of two. She’s still married to her second husband.
This is what I told my daughter when she was 31 years old and at that point, cohabitating with her ex-husband. Do not mistaken a man who is offering you breadcrumbs for a feast. Being disrespected in any form is not the kind of behaviour you should expect from any man. The woman you are is not a decorated figure, in the name of a wife who is just there, waiting on her man while he sows his wild oats. Do not put your relevance, self-worth and healing in the hands of any man who chooses to drop, break and hurt you. If he could shatter you that easily without care, then you are not waiting on him to also put you back together.
Image Credit: Elly Shots
