The Forgiveable Journey Of The Cheated

10. Sabotage

It has been two weeks since the planned “stay or leave” decision day. It came and went and Eve dares not analyse her observations, to the disappointment of this writer. Eve instead senses that she is chained to her initial decision and realises that she is incapable of leaving Dan, at least for now. She will never understand why, so no need to burden you with hypotheses.

Since Eve’s enlightenment, as far as Eve could discern, the life of Dan’s ex-mistress carried on as usual aside her negative reactions to the end of their tryst. As for Dan’s life, it had logistically improved significantly, especially with a Stepford wife in the portrait. In fact, Eve, having taken on the daunting task of Stepfording, is now more attentive to his emotional needs, proactive in household tasks, and family activity oriented. She also goes out with friends less often and takes better care of her appearance. Best of all, she caters to his sexual needs and desires, sometimes surpassing his capabilities. At this point in time, these advantages outweigh his intolerable guilt towards both Charlotte and Eve, as well as his distaste in witnessing their reactions to his every move and word. 

It is easy to think that one in Eve’s position would have left such a man or at least endeavour to make his life miserable, but then you would be making a quick judgment of a complex situation. Eve did not leave him, and paradoxically, since finding out, has been attempting to be a perfect wife and provide him with the near perfect relationship. Unfortunately, Eve has not been able to accept, let alone allow herself to fully experience her anger towards her husband because the discordance is too great between it and her decision to stay with him and worse yet, adjust her actions according to his whims and needs regardless of her own. Alternatively, she redirects a large portion of her anger toward Charlotte. 

 Despite overwhelming support from her friends, Eve knows of no one but Lisa who has been cheated on for more than a one-night stand. So she turns to Lisa for advice about how to deal with her anger, and “how to survive” the blow of “finding out” and the ensuing grief while choosing to remain in the relationship after such a betrayal. Unfortunately Lisa, who has an excellent grip on Eve’s reactions, has not progressed much in her own healing and manages only to echo Eve’s catharses. Lisa’s responses are punctuated by multiple swear words, exclamations and denigration of men’s behaviour and of their “homewrecking whores”. With Lisa, Eve feels less lonely and more free to speak of her anger and issues surrounding the notion of “vengeance”, and by “vengeance” she means “informing the spouse” (in this case, the ex-spouse) of the “whore”. Lisa encourages the notion, stating that Liam probably thinks he’s the bad guy in his relationship, and “enlightenment” would be helpful in so many ways.

Eve easily finds Liam on Facebook: An ordinary but handsome man with light brown hair cut short, clear gray eyes, and a confident thin-lipped smile. The photo is too small for her to tell if he has crow’s feet or dimples, if his teeth are crooked (they seem straight), or if he has smooth skin. She could imagine him tanning easily and wearing a baseball cap and concert t-shirts during down time. The photo seems to have been taken in a restaurant where he presents a clean-cut image of himself dressed in a well ironed button-up shirt without the tie. Unfortunately, this one photo of him grinning with happiness is the only picture that will ever be available to her. Based on this rather limited portrait, her first impression of him is positive, but he would have been easy to like without the photo for Eve had already begun to envision him as a fellow victim and ally. 

With passing days, instead of trying to muster the courage to leave Dan, she simply continues to fantasize about “vengeance”, even though her fantasies become increasingly contorted. When she feels anger towards Dan and the desire to leave him wells up inside of her, she imagines herself on an airplane headed to a resort in the Caribbean where she would join Liam. Of course, in her fantasies, their relationship would not evolve into something serious, for her imagination does have its limits, but they would find happiness in their respective lives while Dan and Charlotte would sink into despair. 

These fantasies fortunately divert her away from the notion of providing enlightenment to Liam. Though she does not know Liam or his story, after having considered such improbable and friendly projects, she found it hard to fathom inflicting such pain on him, even if her vengeful anger continued to harbour ideas about seeing Charlotte pay even a small price.

But apparently Eve is not the only person aware of Dan and Charlotte’s affair who considers providing enlightenment. The world was created in seven days, but Mike Smith was probably created in 15 minutes. Who is Mike Smith everyone asks? Even years later, all of the characters of this book will still be asking the question, though each one will have their preferred suspects. Dan thinks it’s a colleague, Charlotte thinks it’s a friend of Eve’s, Liam thinks it’s Eve, Eve thinks it’s Charlotte. There are plenty of Mike Smith’s in this city, so one more on Facebook is not too conspicuous. Who is Mike Smith? Mike Smith is WikiLeaks with personality and purpose: enlightenment of Eve and Liam. He (or she) is faceless and anonymous. 

The first step to the creation of Mike Smith was the creation of an email address. And so it was created. The next step was the creation of a Facebook account. So it was created. Then, Mike Smith had to say something to someone. And so he (or she?) did. 

A clear and unambiguous message of course. 

 “Dan has been cheating on you for more than 3 years.”