My Husband's Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me (14 page)

What if I didn’t have to be right?

What if I chose to be dysfunctional?

What if I had never met you?

What if there was no such thing as regret?

What if I were dead?

What if the sun shines for you tomorrow?

What if it never shines for me again?

DEIDRA ROBERTSON, A PERSONAL FRIEND

FIRST TIME PUBLISHED

Another morning, another day. Another day I didn’t want to live through. I sat in my bed drinking grapefruit juice, staring at the white walls of our bedroom. Our landlord wouldn’t allow us to change the colors in this rental house, and the lack of décor served as a subtle but constant reminder of our past financial failure, and the fact that we still couldn’t afford to buy our own home. The blinds on my window were closed, yet the daylight was seeping through the cracks reminding me that I would not be able to hide from reality for very long. The shadows in the room reflected the darkness in my heart.

I opened the Bible on my night table and read, searching for an answer, searching for hope, and searching for someone to love me.

Once again tears found their way down my cheeks, as I thought about Brian’s deceiving me with lies, being intimate with Helen, and not loving me anymore. Closing the Bible, I returned it to its home on the night table. I could not see the words anyway. My tears obstructed my view.

“Dear God, I need your help and your strength,” I began to pray. Sliding sideways off the edge of my bed, I landed on my knees and continued. “I don’t know what to do. I feel so alone. All my life I tried to be good. I tried to be a good wife. I tried to be a good mother. Why is life so hard for me? Why can’t I do this? Why have I failed? Why doesn’t Brian love me anymore? What have I done wrong? I don’t understand.”

As I voiced my inner heart to the silence of the room, I began to feel a little stronger. I was slowly gaining clarity.
I am a wonderful, beautiful person. I will make it through this.

I rose to my feet and began to pace the room, remembering some powerful prayers from a book given to me by a friend. These prayers were like formulas for fighting evil. And here I was fighting for my life, my children, my marriage. Pacing around, I began to feel like a warrior, fighting a war, like the leader of an army, leading the troops out to battle.

With my hands on my heart, feeling the vibration and energy inside me as I spoke, I began to voice out loud the things I wanted. I claimed my husband’s affections back. I was going to fight for my marriage. I was not going to lie down like a doormat and let some woman walk off with my man. I was the marriage warrior.

When I looked at the old brown clock radio that had followed us around since Brian’s bachelor days, I saw that an hour had passed. Helen’s number lay beside the telephone on the night table I had nothing more to lose. It was time to call.

Still I stalled. I got dressed. I rehearsed in my head what I would say. Hello, Helen. This is Anne Bercht. I understand you want to marry my husband. I thought it might be a good idea if we met. No. Lame.

I cleaned up the kitchen, continuing to stall. Maybe I didn’t have to plan my dialogue before I phoned. Maybe the right words would come to me in the moment. I had a clear goal. I wanted to get her to agree to meet with me. I would trust my instincts and I would not stall any longer.

Carefully I dialed the number. Time seemed to stretch into slow motion as the phone rang. Once. Twice.

“Hello,” a man answered.

“Hello. Is Helen there?” I asked.

“No she’s not. Can I ask who’s calling?”

“Yes. This is Anne Bercht, the woman whose husband Helen has been sleeping with,” I said. “Is this Helen’s husband?”

“Yes, it is. My name is Richard.” Silence. I waited for a signal, not sure what to say next. “I’m glad you called.”

He sounded nice, not like the jerk Helen had painted him out to be when talking with Brian. Brian told me that during his first lunch with Helen, his intentions were simply to help Helen with her marriage, since Brian and I had considered ourselves quite knowledgeable in the area of making relationships work.

Brian had told me how horrible Helen claimed her husband to be. This had somehow, in his mind, justified his actions. Now I was speaking to this “horrible” man, and he sounded quite sensible.

We discussed our common pain, when and how we found out, and how we were coping. We shared information about the times we knew our spouses had been together. Richard told me how he felt sick when he thought of his wife having sex with another man in his own bed where they had had sex together so many times.

We talked about how Helen had invited Brian to have lunch at her place, which was close to Brian’s building site. All this while her husband was away at his own job, and her daughter had been in school. At least the stories Richard and I had been told matched! I could understand how the two of them having sex together in Richard and Helen’s bedroom had made Richard feel even more violated, than had it been a neutral location.

Since we lived so far away from Brian’s work, Brian and Helen had not had sex in our bed, and I was grateful for that. If they had, I knew we would have to sell our bed, even if it was the beautiful handcrafted bed that Brian had designed and built just for us. I would not have been able to sleep, much less have sex, in that same bed again.

Richard and I talked about how awful it was that our spouses lied as they had.

He shared how heartbroken he was when he heard his daughter talk about how wonderful someone named Brian was, only to discover his wife was sleeping with that man. When I told Richard it wasn’t surprising that his daughter liked Brian, because Brian was great with kids, it made him feel worse.

Richard told me also how hurtful it was to discover that Helen and Brian had spent a weekend together in a small city only a four hour drive away. Helen had taken Brian there to visit relatives, and she introduced Brian as the man she would soon be marrying. She said that she and Richard had not been getting along and were getting a divorce.

I was shocked. My own husband is going around making wedding plans with another woman, and I don’t even know he’s having an affair! I must be the stupidest person alive. I felt humiliated beyond description!

What kind of people were Helen and Brian? Did these relatives know Brian was already married to someone else? Or had he just pretended to be single?

When I realized the timing of their romantic getaway, I felt outraged. I remembered feeling lucky to have such a loving husband when Brian had offered to give me a break (just after my sick bout with bronchitis) and take Tamara to her volleyball tournament himself. I had felt delighted seeing him so excited to pack his clothes, feeling blessed that my children had such a wonderful father. Because Brian had not revealed this important detail when he had disclosed his affair, I felt betrayed all over again. Learning the truth from a stranger made me feel even more embarrassed, foolish and ashamed.
Why had trusting my husband been the wrong thing to do?

Richard said he would like to meet me in person and talk with me more. I agreed, but said that there would have to be other people present. I would not meet him one on one, making the same mistake our spouses had made.

Richard promised to let Helen know that I had called, and that I would like to meet with her in a civilized way, that I thought it would be mutually beneficial. I thanked him for the talk, and didn’t question him about his call to us a few nights earlier. I understood. He probably had intended to assault Brian or at least confront him, but had changed his mind, I reasoned. Hanging up the phone, I realized we had talked for forty-five minutes.

The conversation left me feeling a little better, but wondering how to spend the rest of my day. I thought about Brian. Perhaps I should show up unexpectedly at his work at lunch time, and see if he would take me out for lunch on the spur of the moment. Brian loved surprises. At least he used to.

There didn’t seem to be much animosity between us, despite the heartbreaking situation we were in. Maybe he would see how sweet I was, and remember the fun times we shared, and it would make him want to come home. Maybe I didn’t have to be a reminder of his responsibilities anymore. Helen was becoming his responsibility, the very thing he was trying to escape from with me. I knew that one of the things that had made being with Helen fun for Brian was the fact that they weren’t doing “life” together. No problems with kids, worry about bills or tiredness after a long day, just fun. But now that they were planning their lives together and she seemed to be replacing me as “wife,” I reasoned that I could take on the role of the fun one providing the escape from reality.

As I thought further about this possible surprise rendezvous, I thought I could dress like an absolutely irresistible babe. I would turn on my feminine seductive powers full blast. I had the power to be irresistible to Brian when I wanted to be.

It was a risk, no doubt, but I had nothing to lose. I had already lost it all. I stood only to gain. With only a short hour to spare, I made my decision. I would do it.

Starting with a quick bath, I shaved my legs to a satin smooth finish. After drying off, I started getting dressed by putting on a sexy white thong. Pulling out my new skirt and top purchased nine days earlier, I got dressed and examined myself closely in the mirror. Having lost ten pounds in nine days, and twenty since January, I felt sexier and younger than I had in some time. My striking dark brown hair waved past my shoulders in gentle curls. The fake sun tan I had been working on since Day One gave me a healthy glow. I gave myself a quick manicure and pedicure, choosing a full bodied red color to accent my look. Men always seemed to prefer red nail polish. To finish off, I added subtle, but definitive make up, creating a natural yet alluring presence. I had one goal alone. To turn every head on that construction site, and when I left, I wanted the other workers to ask Brian, “Who was the absolute babe?”

The one-hour drive was along a pleasant country road, and it was

a beautiful summer day. The drive gave me some time to think, but also time to be anxious. Brian had finished the project where he and Helen met, so there was no risk of running into her, unless of course they were having lunch together.

Driving my car into the construction zone, bumping along the unpaved dirt, I parked by the other vehicles and headed towards a mobile office trailer, using my limited acting skills to appear confident, like I belonged there.

A couple of guys working off in the distance saw me and looked up from their work, indicating that I was meeting my goal. My presence there had not gone unnoticed.

I found Brian alone in the office, leaning over a set of architectural drawings. It was 11:55 AM. Perfect.

“Hi,” I greeted him cheerfully as I walked in the door. “I thought I would surprise you and take you out for lunch.”

“Well, I’ve already had lunch. I had lunch early today,” he said, looking unimpressed by my arrival. “If you wanted to have lunch with me you should have phoned in advance, so I could make plans.”

I felt condemned already and found myself apologizing. The disappointment in my eyes pierced him, as I stood not knowing what to say next.

“Well, we can talk here for a while if you like,” he said, switching to a merciful tone of kindness.

He offered me a bottle of drinking water, my normal lunch these days.

“Are you still fasting?” he asked.

“Yes. I can’t really eat anyway. The thought of food turns my stomach.”

He looked concerned. My eyes surveyed the well-organized but dusty office. There were blueprints and stacks of paper all over. The trailer actually had two windows, which, although dirty, brightened things up considerably. On one wall there hung a large calendar with all sorts of writing on it, but no pictures. On another wall there was a bulletin board, full of schedules and people’s business cards, but again no pictures.

Brian always ran a respectable jobsite. He didn’t allow the workers on his jobs to pin up pictures of scantily clad-or not clad-women anywhere on site. Some of his workers teased him for his Christian faith and moral convictions, but Brian always stood his ground.

Even though he worked in construction, Brian took pride in appearing clean and neat-never a hair out of place. The only thing that hinted at the fact that he worked hard physically was his extremely muscular, lean and attractive physique, especially his big arms and broad shoulders.

“So what do you want to talk about?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I thought perhaps we could just have a nice time together.”

“You didn’t seem too concerned about having nice times together two weeks ago,” he said.

“Brian, how could you say that? I’ve always wanted to have good times together,” I said. “You are the most important person in my life. Times have been hard lately, with Danielle acting out and everything. I can’t help that.”

“See, that’s the problem with you. You’re always thinking about yourself,” he said. “You don’t care about me. You never ask me how I’m feeling. All you care about is your own hard time. Why don’t you ever ask me why I say that? Because you don’t care.”