The Finale You've Been Clamoring For: After Secretly Binge Reading His (And Her!) Affair Journal, I Finally Confronted My Cheater Husband.
For months after discovering the diary full of disgusting details about their romps, I kept quiet. And kept reading. Until I came up with the perfect place, time, and method to show everything I knew.
Hi there, spectacular Monday people!
I’m super impressed with (well, with all of you, my favorite group of readers of any publication I’ve done and that’s saying a lot and is exactly like choosing my favorite child) those of you who recently took out paid subscriptions or took advantage of that seven-day trial that gives you access to everything for a week. You specifically are incredibly prescient or lucky or both, because on AJPT today (right now) arrives the most anticipated story in our entire existence!
It's the final conclusion of a nail-biting, tear-jerking, hair-tearing (those are based on actual reader responses – and my own) series that has been unspooling here over the past months, so you will likely want to read parts one, two, and three first to get the whole background, if you haven’t already.
The writer, Leslie (originally known to you as Amelia before she decided to reveal her identity), and I worked on these installments in real time so it wasn't like we had all four parts and just spaced them out to torture you. I got near-daily progress updates from Leslie and then learned the story just before you learned it. I couldn’t wait either. And Leslie beautifully wrote every part in the time it took to publish them for you (which contains a pretty phenomenal feat in itself, writing a whole interrelated saga like this and not wanting to go back and change something that you wrote at the beginning because of something you wrote at the end, etc.).
Anyway, if there ever were a time to skip an intro, I'm sure this would be it, so I will shut up and let you get on with the good stuff.
You all are beauties, and I love having you in my life. Thank you so so much for all of it!
-Jane
By Leslie Ward
A NOTE FROM THE WRITER TO YOU:
Thank you all for going on this ride with me. Thank you for your words of support, your kindness, and your sense of humor. This has been a healing experience for me.
Jane mentioned that many of you would like to know more about my mom, which could be a whole book in and of itself, and I will get to that if it is something you want. [Say you want it - because I do! -Jane]
I wrote this installment a few paragraphs at a time, writing, taking breaks, then returning to the keyboard. Going back into the experience of this one night, the culmination of a very crazy and intense six weeks, activated my nervous system in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
It was 100% worth it.
PART FOUR
In the several years preceding my husband’s affair, I had, on a few occasions, suggested we seek couples counseling to address the issues we faced in our marriage, which almost always boiled down to communication, or the lack thereof. Things can get dicey when, as an adult, you find yourself in an argument with your partner, you’re at an impasse, you’re both angry, frustrated, and hurt, and your ten-year-old selves jump out of the closet to do your bidding because you were never shown how to navigate conflict in a healthy manner.
Every time I asked him to give counseling a try, my husband declared all therapists to be quacks. What do you say to that? It was a conversation killer. Sometime in 2009, after one last-ditch attempt, he finally relented and agreed to accompany me to a session with my therapist, Jerome. We had barely dipped our toes in the shallow end of the therapy pool when, after two or three sessions, my husband declared that we couldn’t afford it (untrue) and that he was too busy (also inaccurate).
By October of 2010, approximately one year before the affair began, I was entertaining the idea of divorce. I was still in therapy, but I knew that I alone could not fix what was wrong in our marriage, and I was tired of trying. About a year later, he announced he was thinking of going to therapy, and did I mind if he saw Jerome? (I was no longer seeing him.)
I was surprised, but hopeful. I believed at that time that my husband and I still liked and respected each other; we just weren’t able to make our marriage work. I didn’t want to wait until we hated each other to accept the inevitable.
Yet, at some point during that year, defeated and lonely, I had suggested to my husband that we call time of death on our marriage, part ways amicably, and find places to live close to one another to make the transition easier for our son.
He seemed surprised to hear that I had been thinking about divorce, but the conversation ended there — until one random night in November, one month after he started therapy, when he came into our bedroom and asked, “Hey, did you mean what you said about splitting up and finding places close to each other?”
“I thought about every single deceptive act and lie I had unearthed since first discovering the journal in December.”
“I did,” I said, wondering why that conversation was resurfacing now, months later, but I still hoped that this might be a workable, best-case solution. We went into our office and began researching rentals and neighborhoods. One night, soon after that conversation, my husband came home from his weekly therapy session and said, “Jerome offered to help us navigate the divorce conversation with (our son) when the time comes.”
BOOM.
The universe, through Jerome, had just hand-delivered an engraved invitation to my reveal. “That time is coming sooner than you think.”
I thought to myself. “Great,” I said. “Let’s make an appointment.” The opportunity to confront my husband in a place I felt safe, with someone I trusted, under the guise of a meeting about our son, was the answer to my prayers. The final pieces of my plan were falling into place like dominoes.
On the evening of January 26, 2012, I drove to the top of our canyon, snaked east across Mulholland Drive, and descended into Studio City. The sprawl of the San Fernando Valley was sparkling with a million lights. “I wonder what all those people are doing tonight,” I thought.
I was nervous and scared. Adrenaline coursed through my body. Finally, I was minutes away from putting an end to this Shakespearean drama.
The day before our appointment, I typed out a list with bullet points of everything I needed to cover in our meeting because my brain shuts down when I get too overwhelmed or scared, and I didn’t trust myself to make it across this tightrope without a safety net.
As I made the list, I thought about every single deceptive act and lie I had unearthed since first discovering the journal in December, and I finally allowed myself to truly absorb the enormity of it all.
I had been so busy just trying to keep my head above water and do what I needed to do that I hadn’t taken the time to reflect on the past six weeks in their entirety - the elaborate gifts, the time and money spent on hotels and meals, inviting her into our home, even going so far as to meet her daughter in person - and it was overwhelming.
I had met Jerome at the Esalen Institute seven years prior, in a workshop he facilitated. It was the first of many trips I would make to Esalen over the next twenty years. The focus of the workshop was on mindfulness-based meditation and applying mindfulness-based practices to eating and food. I spent years believing that if I could just fix my outsides, my life would be perfect.
All that stood between me and the life I imagined was twenty pounds; once I lost that weight, my real life could begin; I would have the confidence to follow my dreams. I would have less social anxiety. My mother would be nice to me. Approve of me. Love me. I was sure of it.
The weekend was deep and transformative. Sometime during that weekend, I learned that Jerome had a private therapy practice not far from where I lived, and I became his client. Although I had a long history with Jerome, I didn’t know what to expect; would he shut me down mid-ambush, once it became clear what I was there to do? Would my husband interrupt me, storm out, or lose his temper?
“‘Your day is about to get wild,’ I thought to myself.”
I might have only a few minutes to say what I needed to say. I was the first to arrive for our appointment. I sat on the brown velvet love seat in the waiting room, closed my eyes, and focused on my breath. When I opened my eyes, I took in the poster on the opposite wall with a photo of a beautiful pink lotus blossom and the words, “No Mud, No Lotus”, an aphorism by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist Monk whose work Jerome had introduced me to during that weekend at Esalen.
“No Mud, No Lotus,” I whispered to myself. It was a small, but much-needed bit of encouragement that on the other side of this mess, my life might bloom and blossom into something beautiful and good. I repeated the words quietly to myself until the sound of my husband’s footsteps outside interrupted my ersatz meditation. He walked in, smiled at me, and flipped the toggle switch on the wall to alert Jerome that we were both there.