SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

One of the obsessive thoughts I had to work through during my recovery was that my wife's affair wasn't about the AP, the times, or me. It was about my wife. My wife was not happy, and therefore she was vulnerable, and there was not much I could have done about that. There are plenty of bad apples in our world. Had this AP not come along, I believe another AP would have.

I wouldn’t and couldn’t have stopped it. It was going to happen if and when he found her again. He spent two years actively searching for her. The intention and desire was there from the moment he saw her name on Friendsreunited. He and they had already decided when he invited her over to his hotel for dinner – conveniently just a few miles from her house. I can certainly imagine the sexual frisson of anticipation at the dinner table.

I only understand it inasmuch as he wanted to and he could. I imagine he was full of his own selfishness and smug arrogance when he came home. He expected to get away with it and so he did.

I do know that there was some kind of inevitability about it. I gave my WH far too much credit for boundaries, personal integrity and respect than he actually had. He lost all sense of decency. His fall from grace was spectacular and complete.

If I could have a sliding doors moment and slip into an alternative universe, I think my own lightbulb moment would have been two years before d-day when we had a huge row about nothing. I would have done some detective work and somehow discovered the affair. And confronted him. Preferably in flagrante delicto. A personal remake of when Helen sees Lydia (the ex-gf) sitting across Gerry in Sliding Doors. “You really shouldn’t stop like that – you can put a woman back three days.” Ah, the world of fantasy and rewrite!