It Was The Dog's Fault

So here's how I found out:

It was a Sunday night and she'd gone out to do an errand. The Child was chasing the dog around the house and they both crashed into the kitchen table. My wife has a Big Important Job and as such, is constantly bringing home lots of files and paperwork and other things that get piled up on the table. When Child and dog crashed into the table, a pile of paper went flying.

After shooing them out of the kitchen, I got down on my hands and knees to try and make heads or tails of the paper, make sure nothing got lost and to attempt to put them back in some order. The first piece of paper that my eyes settled on was a piece of green notebook paper, torn from a tablet. There were two columns - pros and cons. About someone who was not me.

I'm not going to recount the gory details - mainly because I'd probably vomit all over the keyboard if I typed a couple of the things I read - but suffice to say, it was clear that she was having an affair.

My body went entirely cold and I started shaking. Very, very cliched. The Child came over to offer help in picking up and I muttered something about it being okay, I had it taken care of. I tried to read more, but I couldn't focus. Some day, I will probably regret not focusing and reading more. I actually remember very little of what I read because I just sort of zoned out.

I finished picking up the papers and stacked them back on the table and began walking in slow circles around the house, trying to stop the shaking. Couldn't do it.

Like I said yesterday, I wasn't furious or angry at that moment. I was just crushed and all I could think about was how we were going to fix the marriage. Which was really confusing because I'd always just assumed that if I found myself in that kind of situation, that I would go berserk. But it was exactly the opposite and that weirded me out, too.

She came home and I stayed away from her. She knew something was up, but I kept her at arm's length. We eventually put The Child to bed and I jumped in the shower, as much to warm up as it was to get my thoughts together. When I got out, I got dressed and she was sitting in a chair in our bedroom and I looked at her for a long time and she asked what was wrong.

I said "When you were gone, your shit on the table got knocked on the ground and when I was picking it up, I read something I wished I hadn't."

Her face flushed, but she tried to act like she didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"Pages from a notebook. I read them. You're having an affair."

Her face flushed again and she looked away, then nodded. My stomach convulsed at the actual confirmation from her.

"That's where I was," she said, still not looking at me. "When I went out earlier. I called him to end it."

Oh, well, good - that's awesome. SOOO glad it's over!

The rest of the night turned into a blur - lots of crying, some yelling, some vomiting on my part - the entire thing literally made me sick to my stomach. Didn't sleep for a second. She apologized a bunch of times. I apologized a bunch of times. (More on me later.) We hugged. We pushed each other away. We kissed. We pushed each other away. I went upstairs to get away from her. She eventually came up in the middle of the night. We came back down to our room in the early morning hours and had sex. Why? I'm still not sure. I wanted to be close to her and I think she felt guilty. It was easily our most awkward sexual experience ever. I cried when we were done. I think she did, too, but I honestly don't recall now. The entire night sucked.

It. Was. Bad.

The really awful part is I knew. In the back of my mind, I knew. (Can't get enough of the awful cliches!) There were some explanations over the previous weeks that just hadn't made sense and she was just a bit off. And there were several times where I almost blurted out "Are you having an affair?" but the idea of actually asking it seemed so ludicrous that I couldn't bring myself to say it. I talked myself out if, thinking she'd never do anything like that to hurt me, that I was letting my imagination get the best of me, that she was just working long ass hours like she always has. She was always the one person that I trusted implicitly, with no reservations, the one person I KNEW would never do anything intentionally to hurt me.

Wrong.