-A Lie
I decided to focus on family, choosing to believe-and have faith-that everything else would fall into place. I wasn't comfortable-or good-at lying to her.
So, when Samantha surprised me one day by swallowing her pride and asking directly if a...
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For years, I entertained the idea of leaving—but never got as far as planning how. I became adept at suppressing those feelings, convincing myself they didn't require action. I didn't pursue love elsewhere—lessons learned from the affair with Pippa—but I often fantasized about being in a different relationship.
I suppose that's how it happened again. I'd meet someone, feel an attraction, and eventually find myself daydreaming about her. It was innocent—or so I told myself. What harm could there be in entertaining a thought? I pacified the loneliness by clinging to those fleeting fantasies. Eventually, they always faded.
Until Nina. The fantasy didn't fade. It grew legs.
What might seem like a thin justification for an unforgivable practice in a married man, I mention only to frame the long period of passivity that preceded my second affair. In truth, I was already primed to love Nina long before we met. I drew a line in the sand—no physical betrayal—but kept redrawing it when it came to emotional boundaries.
The Stories We Tell
Our lives are made up of the stories we tell ourselves. These stories start in childhood and shape our beliefs about who we are—what we deserve, what love looks like, what we should endure. Over time, they solidify into a kind of personal myth. Mine had always been rooted in marriage and family, and in doing right by both.
That story kept me in my marriage to Samantha for nearly twenty years.
Some of the best moments of my life were with her and the boys. I wasn't pretending all those years. We had our good days. But as time wore on—and the weight of everything we'd been through took its toll—we began drifting into something quieter, more distant. I kept telling myself we were doing it for the kids, that love changes, that this is what long-term commitment looks like.
But underneath, I had stopped believing it.
Even on good days, something quietly gnawed at me. I began to picture Samantha and me as empty nesters, living in isolation and pretense—a partnership reduced to polite performances at family events or when the children visited. I stopped believing in together forever and instead began telling myself, just hold on until the youngest turns eighteen.
Even that narrative shifted—unsurprisingly, after my involvement with Nina. I started imagining hypothetical future conversations where my grown children admitted they wished we had divorced sooner, saying our decision to stay together had only made their lives harder.
Again, it's all in the stories we tell ourselves—first to survive, then to justify, and eventually to excuse.
What I didn't foresee was how deep the betrayal would land—or how far the fallout would reach—when I finally told Samantha I wanted a divorce.
