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Taken aback by his question, she responded honestly, “If you’ll remember, I wasn’t sleeping in your arms every night. That only happened on the nights you chose to come home.”
“I came home almost every damn night, so don’t go acting like I was splitting my time between the two of you. It wasn’t like that.”
Taking a deep breath, she chose her words carefully. “You have it in your head that because you spent most of your time with me, took me on vacations with you, and spoiled me with expensive gifts that I should be happy to stay put and consider myself lucky.”
“I was always so careful about taking good care of you.”
It was clear that he honestly didn’t get it. “Where in our wedding vows did it say you could crawl in and out of other women’s beds, as long as you were real nice to me? I must have missed that part.”
“Why do you care so much about the affairs?”
“I married you because I loved you and I thought you loved me too.”
A frown creased his expression. “You thought that because I slept with another woman here or there that meant I didn’t love you?”
“It became increasingly obvious that I wasn’t what you wanted. If I was enough, you wouldn’t have been cheating.”
“I can give up the other women.”
“Too late.”
“I kept telling myself that you were just making empty threats and that you’d never leave me. When you left, I told myself that you’d be back. My first thought after getting served with divorce papers was that you were bluffing and would never go through with it. I signed, thinking you would chicken out and come running back to me.”
“None of that is true. When I said stop, I meant it.”
“You don’t regret leaving me, even just a little?”
“Honestly, I regret not just walking out the door the very first time I discovered you were cheating. Instead, I stayed. I’m ashamed of all the begging and pleading I did, trying to get you to stay faithful. I feel stupid for thinking that you would change. We both wasted a lot of time on a relationship that was doomed from the beginning.”
His head came up and his expression turned shocked.
Sighing, Barbara unloaded the information as unemotionally as possible. “Did you ever wonder why I left that day and not the day before or the day after?” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “You forgot to close your e-mail account. I saw the valentine she sent you. I clicked open your messaging center and it was all there in black and white.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry.”
“All day long, while you worked, I read the conversations you had with those women. I can’t believe it took seeing how you talked about me to them for me to finally get it through my thick head that you honestly didn’t love me.”
“But I do love you.”
“I’m not sure you understand what love is, David. The reoccurring theme in all your chats was how simple I am, how you can hardly stand having a conversation with me, and how unsatisfying our sex life was for you.”
“You have to know that none of that was true. It’s just the stupid shit men tell women to get what they want.”
“How do I know you weren’t lying to all of us—them to get sex and me to get a nice little stay-at-home wife.”
“It wasn’t like that, and you know it.”
“In the end, it didn’t matter. Either you were grossly unhappy with our marriage or you were a compulsive liar, willing to throw the woman you loved under the bus to lure another woman into an extramarital affair. Either way, it was a deal breaker for me. I packed up and left before you came home from work because, as far as I was concerned, there was nothing left between us.”
“We can work this out.”
“The bottom line is you don’t love me, nor are you the kind of person I’d choose for a friend. Therefore, the only course of action that makes sense for me is to move forward on my own and try to make something of my life.”
“Why don’t we just meet up for dinner once a week and see how we feel in few months?”
“No, I’m finished trying to piece back together a relationship that was never meant to be in the first place.”
“How can you say that?”
