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Unika’s question rubbed me the wrong way. I felt my temper rise up. I took a deep breath and for the sake of getting some help, I calmly responded, “No, I would never put my hands on my wife. Like I said, I didn’t want either of us to get hurt, so I left. I went to a hotel. Financially, it was not smart for me to keep staying at the hotel, so I moved into a rental property that we own.”
“Why didn’t you just go home if the hotel was too expensive?” Elijah questioned.
“She didn’t want me back, and I didn’t feel like I should be there,” I responded.
“Do you want to fix the relationship?” Unika asked.
“Yes, I want to fix it.”
“If your goal is to fix the relationship and continue to live as husband and wife, living like you’re single is not going to help. You have to go home,” Clyde said.
“I don’t know if I can…”
“It’s going to be very hard to be there every day and watch her go through the process that she has to go through knowing that you are the one that caused it. It’s important for you to see it, so you never do it again,” Elijah explained.
That made sense. One of the reasons I hadn’t gone back to the house was because I couldn’t stand to see her cry. It killed me to see her so sad, knowing that I was the one that caused it.
“Are you a serial cheater?” Unika asked.
“No, I’ve only cheated once. It was a mistake. I messed up.”
“Children?” Clyde asked.
“No.”
“How many years of marriage?” Max asked.
“Fifteen. We’ve been together for twenty-two.”
“High school sweethearts?” Ella asked.
“Before high school, actually. More like junior high sweethearts,” I answered.
“Wow, that’s a long time,” Gloria said.
“We all met each other at the same time, Bird and me and him and Keeva,” Larenz added.
“I heard you say you wanted your wife back. What have you done to get her back?” Ella asked.
“I apologized, more than once. I cut off communication with the person I cheated with.”
“Every man in this room has been in your shoes in one sense or another. I’ve never cheated on my wife, but the man before me did. I had to gain her trust over something that I didn’t even do so I understand the process. You’ve killed your relationship as you know it. It’s dead. Mourn that fact, forgive yourself and move forward. It will never be what you had before, but it can be better,” Clyde said.
“I said the same thing to Key the other day,” Bird added.
“In these type of situations, one apology isn’t going to work. It has to be an apology, followed by action. Another apology and more action and so on and so forth until her heart mends and her soul is back intact,” Ella said.
“That statement is so profound, Ella. Losing trust in the man that you love really does wound your soul. The soul has five parts; mind, will, intellect, emotions, and imagination. Infidelity affects the mind because the person who was cheated on tries to figure out where they went wrong. ‘What did I do to make him turn to her? Should I have done this differently or said that differently to make him stay faithful?’ Infidelity affects the will because we go through a tug of war with ourselves trying to determine if we should leave the relationship or if we should stay. Our intellect is challenged because we question how things got past us. We replay events in our mind to see if we missed clues that would have helped us discover the truth sooner. We go through a litany of emotions; anger, fear, disgust, contempt, and sadness. Sometimes all of those emotions happen back to back. The worst is the imagination. What the mind doesn’t know it creates. When we don’t have answers to questions like, ‘who is she? Where did it happen? Is she prettier than me?’ Our imaginations run wild. That takes time to mend and then eventually heal,” Gloria finished.
“I know you probably never thought that one simple thing could affect so much, but it does, and now you have the almost insurmountable task of making it right,” Max said.
“It can be done, though. You’d be surprised what a five-step program down at narcotics anonymous can do,” Larenz said in a raspy voice.
“Oh my gawd, Larenz! Now is not the time to be quoting Eddie King Junior from the Five Heartbeats!” Bird scolded.
“It’s Eddie Cane Junior,” Larenz corrected.
“No, it’s King,” Ella said. “That’s one of my favorite movies.”
