Sitting in the Dark

Not a lot changed following Jon's revelations that Valentine's Day week. At least outwardly. Inwardly, I was navigating life like a person who has survived a bomb going off. You know how they portray that in movies? The high-pitch ringing, teetering camera angles, muffled speaking or sounds in the background, unrecognizable bursts of light? It was like that. Ultimately, I was the one who had to determine what was going to happen next. But I had no idea what to do. So I chose to "sit in the dark."

Sitting in the dark meant accepting there simply was no direction at that time, that I had no clue what to do. So often in life we're expected to make these kneejerk decisions, especially ones where emotions are running high. If you or a loved one are deeply offended, you need to strike back instantly. You're expected to almost lash out. But that just isn't me. I'm not an impulsive person. So I continued to live each day as if nothing had changed, all while waiting for a light to appear and lead me out of the dark. I figured there were two different lights that could appear, and by "light" I mean a future I could imagine happening. Because at that point I really couldn't imagine anything beyond surviving in that status-quo, fugue state of pretending nothing had happened.

There were two different "lights," almost like opposing ends of a tunnel, I waited on while sitting motionless in the dark middle. At one end, the light that would lead me out of the dark would be a life where I moved forward with forgiveness, reparations, counselling, and remaining married. At the other end, the light would be moving forward with separation, divorce, and single parenthood. Until either one of those lights began to shine, I let myself become comfortable in the dark. Here are some things that happened while I sat in the dark:

> I waited for Jon to make an ounce of effort. There had been no apologies, no signs of remorse. He did begin speaking with a counsellor, so good for him on that, but by and large Jon was a case study in apathy. I recall one time speaking with him and trying to make sense of his actions. He told me, "I thought our marriage was over," as if we had both been on the same page and it justified what he had done. Every so often after our kids were in bed, he would broach the subject of, "Have you decided what you want?" I can't begin to express how big of a mindf**k that question was. It makes my blood boil now just remembering it. There I was, nursing a broken heart, running a home, caring for kids, providing the only income, and now it also fell on me to determine the outcome of our eternal marriage. Well gee Jon, I wanted you to stay faithful. It was all up to me to make a massive decision while Jon remained apathetic and not showing a vested interest in remaining married. I mentioned that I couldn't make a decision because I had no idea if he wanted in or not, to which he neither confirmed nor denied. I'm under the impression that he perceived doing the bare minimum of continuing to exist in the same home as me and the kids meaning he was willing to entertain staying if I told him that's what I wanted. But that wasn't enough, so I waited and waited, giving him chance after chance to redeem himself. One of our last "have you decided what you want" conversations I snapped in a way. I told him I was waiting for him to show a sign he wanted to remain married, and then I listed a bunch of ways he could have shown it: you could actually delete her from your phone, quit messaging her; you could ask to be switched out of her clinical group at school; you could apologize and show remorse. To which he said nothing and continued to do nothing. He would later attribute this to being mentally unwell, which I frankly find offensive to people who have or do actually struggle with mental illness. Like myself, the spouse who was diagnosed with depression yet never once ever entertained ideas of infidelity. There's a difference between being mentally and morally unwell.

> I spoke with a beloved cousin who also happened to be a counsellor. After summarizing my situation and answering some of her questions, she began to explain how things that I had just accepted as Jon's idiosyncrasies were actually forms of abuse. I shudder to write that word though. There's a spectrum of abuse and I rightfully reserve the word to more accurately define the unfathomable acts of verbal, physical, or sexual abuse. But what I had accepted to just be parts of my marriage were actually forms of emotional abuse. Stonewalling, or the "silent treatment," in particular. For years, whenever I tried to have difficult conversations or bring up grievances I would be met with the silent treatment, which would last until I couldn't take it anymore and apologized to Jon for bringing up whatever I had. This in turn conditioned me to keep things to myself because whatever I felt or had to say honestly wasn't worth the inevitable silent treatment. 

> I brought on another emotional pallbearer. While walking laps of a church, I shared the sorry state of affairs with a friend. She was horrified. I still had no idea what I was going to do and I asked her, "Is it even possible to stay married after two affairs?" To which she responded that she actually knew a couple that was still together even after more than one affair. And me being me, a comparative and competitive lunatic, took this to mean that if someone else can do it, then so can I! Mind you, that was all me - at no point did my friend make it seem like I should because someone else she knew did.

> I woke up one night to Jon touching my waist. It repulsed me. I shifted out of his touch and gently pushed him back over to his side of the bed. Yes, this entire time we continued to sleep in the same bed. When you go to sleep at vastly different times and share a king size mattress, this is feasible. Another day Jon texted me asking if I ever thought of being intimate with him because he was "struggling." I was speechless. I guess this meant he was no longer having romantic rendezvous on campus, but how in the heck was I supposed to feel drawn to someone who had hurt me so badly and done nothing to repair our relationship?

> I visited my sisters. As I've said before, sisters want blood. If there was anyone whose own remorse and pain came close to my own through this ordeal, it was my mom and sisters. I was strongly urged to kick Jon out, to throw all his belongings out the door. One sister even offered to pay movers to come and take all of his stuff away and change the locks. I was chastised for not doing anything, for letting Jon continue to make a fool out of me. There were tears. One sister even excused herself with, "Being around you right now isn't good for my mental health." Later that day I revealed to the remaining sister my motive for being slow to act. We both couldn't help but laugh at how messed up it was that I was pregnant. When the other sister learned about this factor, she became more understanding of my impulse control.

> I eventually came to the conclusion that Jon needed to move out. And like the kind and thoughtful wife I was, I said he needed to find a new place to live when his current semester of school ended. Because what kind of wife would kick her unfaithful husband out while he was in school? 

> Another night I woke up to see that Jon had fallen asleep with his phone still on. In all of our almost 11 years of marriage, Jon had always been open about what his passcode was to unlock his phone. Now it was a secret. As I navigated away from the video he fell asleep watching, I realized he had installed the "screen time" app blocker, something he had never used before. This still didn't deter me, as I knew I could open his blocked messaging apps for one minute. Except, sometime between his blocker turning on and then he had already opened those apps for one minute. I was truly blocked from seeing anything. He was still truly keeping secrets. As a last resort, I decided to look at his texts. What I found was an exchange between him and his sister. He was lamenting what his life would be like if we ended up separated or divorced. His sister's response was damning. 

We All Start Out Knowing Magic

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I know I said I was done this week, but I just remembered another story from this week I want to document. 

While speaking with my aunt on Valentine's Day, she mentioned a couple whose marriage had survived a spell of infidelity. I knew them, but who I really knew was the sister of the wife in that marriage. In fact, she was a good friend and we worked together.

I don't recall exactly what day, but sometime that Valentine's Day week I found my friend in the Junior High School staff room. I honestly had no idea how to broach the subject ("Hey! So your brother-in-law cheated on your sister, eh? How'd that go?), so I didn't think I would. In any case, I was happy to sit a moment and just have some company.

My friend was getting ready to teach a class on writing (she's a beautiful writer, I loved wandering into her classroom during the lunch hour and reading any examples she had slapped on the whiteboard). She had prepared a handout with a segment from the book "Boy's Life" by Robert McCammon to help them see how storytelling can be lyrical, beautiful, more than just getting a reader from point A to B. Since she was busy, I knew now probably wasn't a good time for a conversation so I asked if I could read the handout. This is what I read:

"I wanted to set my memories down on paper, where I can hold them. You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn't realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by the silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present, and into the future. You probably did, too; you just don't recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.

"After you go so far away from it, though, you can't really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it's because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they're left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.

"That's what I believe.

"The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know it's happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you "sir." It just happens."

I don't think I made it to the end of the first paragraph before the tears started to fall. I didn't know the words to describe it, but I too have always believed in magic. My patriarchal blessing describes me as "having an exuberance for life." I love it here, and I've done my best to carry what little magic remained from my childhood into my parenting and adult life. But there I was, every day that year getting "... farther away from the essence that is born within us." My magic had been stripped and broken down into something unrecognizable. I didn't even realize it until I read that. I was in survival mode and I didn't know if I would ever feel the magic again.

Imagine my friend's surprise when she looked up to ask if I liked it and she found me with tears running down me face. Part of me thought I could pretend I was crying because it was such a beautiful passage, fortunately I was saved from playing the fool when my friend asked, "Oh no! What's wrong?" And I just went for it, "How did your sister and brother-in-law stay married?" 

Truthfully, I don't really remember a lot of the conversation that followed. I summarized the state of affairs in my marriage. I explained how my aunt mentioned her sister as the gold standard to follow. She shared how hard it was as a sister to watch her endure that pain and remain faithful (there's something about sisters I tell ya, they want blood). I took two things away from our conversation:

1. The transgressing spouse has to have a massive change of heart. They have to want back in. They have to also choose to repair the marriage.

2. The importance of emotional "pallbearers." You never see a casket being dragged to the final resting place by one person. I don't think the task can even realistically be accomplished by less than four people for a deceased adult. All I did was talk with a friend for roughly 10 minutes and the figurative coffin of my dying marriage felt more bearable. There was nothing she could do for me besides listen, maybe pray, but just by her knowing what I was going through, I felt lighter. We really aren't meant to carry heavy emotional loads alone, just like a casket cannot be transported by a single person. At this point going forward, I began to slowly invite loving friends and family members to be pallbearers to the heartbreaking burden I was carrying. I'm so, so grateful to the people in my circle who stood beside me, took a handle, and made my burden lighter.

Where Things Get Hazy

As you can tell, a lot happened this week one year ago. And quite frankly, I'm not having a lot of fun writing it all out. But it has been good for me. Writing is so cathartic. I'll admit that I had been craving the release of writing about all this for quite sometime, probably since last summer. But I couldn't bring myself to put things into words because I knew how poorly Jon would be portrayed. Despite everything, I felt like I needed to protect him. I needed to make his life easier. I needed to keep him happy. For so long his negative behaviors dictated my actions. So even while he was actively hurting me and destroying our marriage, even after we had separated, I couldn't detach myself from that way of thinking and acting. Today, if you tried to talk crap about Jon with me, I probably wouldn't engage. I would smile and let you say what you want. Probably nod and half-heartedly agree. But still, deep down there is this urge to placate him, even when I really owe him nothing. 

I have tried really hard to write factually and not emotionally. It is not my goal to make you hate my soon-to-be ex-husband. If anything, please realize I am entrusting you with something almost sacred. My darkest moments and the burning, white hot coals of my refining fire. If even I can say I have forgiven him, I expect only "he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone." Jon will be a part of my life in its entirety. For my kids' sake, I demand that he is treated with the same dignity you grant a stranger. No child deserves to see their parent spat upon and scorned. My children have been robbed of some of their innocence throughout this ordeal, I ask that they be the ones who come to terms with the details of their parents marriage ending when they are adult enough to read this blog and ask their dad some hard questions. 

With all that being said, this is the part where things get hazy. At the beginning of 2023 I was determined to start journaling regularly again. Ironically, for the first time in years, I was writing daily in a journal at the same time that my world came crashing down. If you've found yourself wondering how I could remember things so well, that's why. At this point my entries became understandably sporadic. So, to ease the burden of blogging with so much detail and summarize what happened next, I'm going to bullet point things. I need a break.

> The day after Valentine's, I found the gumption to ask Jon to let me look through his phone. I found deleted texts, which included I love you's, and a deleted screenshot of an Instagram post. The picture was of her with her boyfriend, one of those obligatory Valentine's Day posts. I asked Jon what that was about, did it upset him that she posted that? He told me that he had called things off, that it was over, he broke up with her on Valentine's Day in the afternoon. Honestly, to this day, I don't know what to believe and Jon didn't offer up much else. This is incredibly confusing, because it was that night, Valentine's Day evening, that Jon told me the thought of a future with this girl excited him. Truthfully, if Jon had told me more in explanation of how things "ended", I probably wouldn't have believed him. This is the point where I began to not believe a single thing he said.

> Since Jon had "broken up" with the other woman, I found myself suddenly at a loss. On Valentine's Day it was easy to start telling myself that we were getting a divorce. He dreamed of a future with someone else! But hearing that he was no longer "with" her made me assume he probably didn't want to leave anymore. And if he didn't want to leave, then what? Correct - it was my job to make him happy and take care of him. 

> My oldest daughter Sheriff's baptism was scheduled for that Saturday. At that point in time, only my parents and sisters knew about the dumpster fire happening in the Ruiz home. There was a part of me that genuinely thought we could all put on happy faces for her as we gathered Jon's family and mine. My mom pointed out how unfair it was to my family that we had to pretend to be happy just for the sake of Jon's family. That they deserved to know too. I told Jon he needed to tell his parents and sisters. Following that it was easy to realize that postponing Sheriff's baptism was in the best interest of everyone.

> I FaceTimed my parents one last time before they came home. I said I needed to tell them something and then started bawling. My mom guessed it - "You're pregnant." And my answer was, "I'm so screwed." Mom, Dad, I know you're reading this. I'm sorry for ruining your Arizona trip last February. I'm pretty sure my mom cried in Arizona just as much as I did back home. She at least had a pool to cry beside. I'm lucky I have the parents that I do because that call ended with them reassuring me that I have nothing to worry about. That they would look after me and my kids. And they have ever since.

> My sister texted asking if her name was Marissa. I replied with, "Yes, it is, but please don't message her. Leave her alone." And in my heart of hearts I truly believed that simple request would be respected. I must have forgot that saying about how Hell hath no fury like a woman... whose sister has been cheated on. An hour or so later, Jon marched into the room I was sitting in and chewed me out for telling our sisters Marissa's name. It took me a second to even remember that I had confirmed it, and before I could even really compute what was happening, I was apologizing. "I'm sorry! I told them not to message her! I didn't think they would." Followed up with, "Tell Marissa I'm sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen." The irony of this situation is suddenly hitting me as I type this. I apologized to the other woman.

Valentine's Day 2023

Valentine's Day is a doozy to navigate when it comes two days after your husband admits to an affair. Honestly though, I had a good day. It was around 8pm that night that my heart started to break. I needed to talk to someone, anyone. I needed a hug. I felt a loneliness and despair I had never felt before. One of the hardest parts about this whole unravelling was how my parents were in Arizona. I've never asked Jon, but part of me wonders if he intentionally waited until my parents were gone to spill the beans because it was easier for him. It made things monumentally harder for me.

I was at a youth activity that night and as it drew closer to ending, I began to panic. I didn't want to go home to Jon. I didn't want to keep the Bishop away from his wife any longer than he had been. I tried to see if a friend at the church wasn't busy and could talk, but she was swamped with her own activity stuff. And so I got in my van and just drove. Drove with tears in my eyes wishing I had anyone who could help shore up all the hurt I felt inside.

My aimless driving took me to my Aunt and Uncle's house. They had been my second parents growing up, their home my second home. I broke down to my aunt and got a hug. And then I got advice. She spoke of reconciliation. Told me about another couple and how they had managed to keep their marriage intact through similar circumstances. Encouraged me to go to the temple and that Heavenly Father would tell me what to do - that Heavenly Father wants families to stay together. Truthfully, at this moment in time I was beginning to accept that divorce was my best option, it was clearly what Jon wanted and it's what I had told him would happen if this happened again. So hearing this advice was disorienting. 

Eventually I drove home. Jon greeted me with asking how my aunt and uncle were, since we had "Find My Friends" on our phones. What came next was wildly different from every other conversation Jon and I had up to this point. He did most of the talking. He told me how the things he used to look forward to with excitement in our marriage, things we'd do together, he now dreamed of with her - that a future with her excited him. He said how me taking care of everything was actually not good, I should have let him take care of things too because he's also an oldest child and likes to take care of people. And he brought up something the professor said in the psychology class we took together as newly weds. Remember how he said that an oldest marrying and oldest is the least compatible marriage? Yeah, I get that now. I sat there listening to him justify all the ways that our marriage couldn't work. When he finally ran out of reasons, the only thing I could think to say was, "Our marriage is dead." I then added, "You are the bad guy in this situation. No matter how this story gets told, you are the bad guy. When are kids are old enough, they will find out that you are the bad guy." And then I left the room.

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The Years Between

It might be easy to assume that all the years between the two stories in my last post were sad and hard. This was not the case. In terms of punctuation, Jon's infidelity in 2014 and then nine years later in 2023 were not an opening and closing set of brackets that held years of heartache and hardship in between. They were more like "periods". The affair in 2014 ended a blissfully unaware stage of our marriage for me. But a new sentence followed. I forgave, but I also gave myself space to grieve and always openly communicated with Jon when any moments of insecurity took hold of me. The new sentence was different, but it was still the story of what I thought was a happy marriage. When it happened again in 2023, it took me a long time to decide if another sentence would follow, or a new paragraph. But I'll get to more on that later.

When I say that I forgave Jon, I mean it to the fullest extent of the word. And I mean that I did it both times; I've forgiven him for the second transgression as well. The best way I can describe forgiving a spouse for being unfaithful is through a hiking analogy. Because who doesn't love hiking?

So, we're all on this great big hike called life and it is awesome and amazing. Sometimes it's all uphill and hard, sometimes there are breathtaking views, and sometimes it's as fun and easy as sliding down a great stretch of trail on snow. And then sometimes, for the sake of the analogy, you're handed a giant boulder to carry. These giant boulders are handed to you when you've been hurt by another person, whether it's infidelity, betrayal, abuse, etc. Now the hike doesn't feel very fun because you're stuck carrying this immense burden on top of the already taxing journey of your hike. So you have a choice: you can keep carrying the boulder or you can set it down, take a picture of it, and continue on your hike. The people who choose to carry their boulders aren't very fun to be around. They like to tell you how heavy it is, how rude it was for so-and-so to hand it to them, or maybe even brag about how strong they are for carrying it around. The people who take a picture of the boulder and leave it behind are happier. Because the boulder isn't taking up all their attention and energy, they're able to move forward faster and further. Sometimes though, when the trail gets tough or they're contemplating how far they've come, they might pull out that picture for a minute to remember: That was a hard boulder to carry, I remember when so-and-so handed it to me. If so-and-so is still on the same trail, they might show them the picture too. Not to hang it over their head though - if they're marching around waving the picture for everyone to see they might as well still be carrying the boulder - but to say, Remember? This hurt. Please don't hurt me again.

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So when I say I forgave Jon, I mean I set that boulder down and took a picture of it. I let go of any feelings of resentment and anger, but I still allowed myself to grieve and I spoke openly with Jon as I did so. Jon also actively sought my forgiveness. He was apologetic and remorseful. He stayed by my side. Slowly but surely my heart healed, and slowly but surely our relationship was nursed back to health by the both of us. What followed were some of the best, but hardest, years of my life. We had three more babies together. We relished parenting and spending time with our kids. We moved to southern Alberta. We eventually moved out of my parents house into a little farm house of our own. We went on the greatest road trip to Tofino. But we also navigated Jon going back to school. Jon searching for jobs. Ups and downs in my mental health. Jon unsuccessfully applying to medical school. Me navigating a hard year of babysitting. Me serving a big calling. And Jon tearing his Achilles tendon. 

Throughout these years, there were a small handful of times that I grew anxious, that I brought the picture out and talked to Jon. The most recent time was shortly after Jon began nursing school. After a summer spent healing his Achilles tendon, Jon was finally cleared to exercise again and he did so with a vengeance. It wasn't a good day unless he had worked out twice. Weights and a swim. Weights and a run. And then there were all these new people he was suddenly best friends with. I'm planning laser tag for my class. I'm going out to eat with my class. What I had initially perceived as excitement for forward momentum and new found confidence, I began to see as Jon changing. On a rare night where we were both going to bed at the same time, I confided in Jon that I was feeling insecure. That I worried I would be set aside and hurt again. Jon quickly dismissed this, I promised I would never do that again. I love you and the kids too much.

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2014

I'm 25 and pregnant with our first child. Jon and I are expecting a girl at the end of June. Both of us have finished our degrees; mine in Recreation, Jon's in accounting. I work the opening shift as a Team Lead at the Mount Royal University pool, Jon works as a Registries Agent. The tumultuous beginning of our marriage has levelled into smooth sailing, my depression is treated and I'm thriving, we're thriving. We're making friends, a co-worker of Jon's had us over for dinner and games not too long ago. Pooja made the most delicious curried chicken and she gave me a beautiful anklet from India, where her and her husband are from. Life is good.

Except I'm growing uncomfortable with how often Jon communicates with Pooja on an app called "Snapchat." What do you even talk about? He shows me a picture he took of the kitchen counter with a finger-scrawled smiley face and "Hi!" written across the screen. It seems harmless enough, but why not text? Why even message a co-worker outside of work? I know Jon would lose it if I messaged a male co-worker the way he does with Pooja, he's even told me he's afraid I'm cheating on him with a guy from work. So despite my reservations, I let it go. When you're the spouse that almost destroyed your marriage with your poor mental health, you'll do anything to make amends and keep the peace.

Eventually I reach my breaking point. Blame it on the pregnancy hormones; my discomfort has reached a place where I need to say something. I calmly communicate that I'm uncomfortable with how often he messages Pooja, I'm uncomfortable with their relationship in general. Jon dismisses everything I say, I'm stupid to have tried to speak to him about this while he was gaming. I leave and cry. Fortunately, Jon clues in and finds me, sees my tears and comforts me. I'm so sorry, I promise I'll delete Snapchat. Nothing is more important to me than you. I'm grateful, I'm mollified, I'm in love.

The due date is near, I go to stay with my parents since I'll be delivering in the Raymond hospital. Jon stays behind a few more days for work. When he finally arrives it's with a giant bouquet of roses in hand. I'm so excited for you to have our baby. I'm happy, I'm excited.

I'm a mother. Labor drags on into the early hours of the morning, between contractions I look over at Jon and ask him if he is okay. Our little girl is here, we are a family of three. Those first couple days of motherhood are a blur; I stare at my baby, I'm careful with my tender body, and I'm filled with joy and gratitude. 

My baby is three days old and we have a family reunion to attend. We're still at my parents and they have a cistern, water is to be conserved. Jon and I hop into the shower together, I barely recognize my body. Everything hurts, everything sags. And soon, everything is anguish. Jon chooses this moment to tell me that he didn't stop messaging Pooja. That he actually download Snapchat again and kept it hidden on his phone. That eventually they started sending each other pictures of their bodies. That she kissed him at work. That his boss could even tell that something was happening and told him to, "Think about Kristen."

I am ugly crying, sobs wracking my body. I can no longer stand, I sit in the tub as the shower continues to run. Jon is crying too, repeating again and again that he is so sorry. That he never meant to hurt me. My family can hear me, they're knocking on the door trying to shout over the sound of the shower, "Kristen? Is everything okay?"

The joy of new motherhood is muted now. My happy misty eyes have been replaced, tears stream down my face as I struggle to bear another pain. I'd rather have given birth twice, physical pain I can handle. This new pain of betrayal, a broken heart and crushed spirit, is crippling. Somehow I find the strength to tell Jon that if this ever happens again, I will take our baby and leave. Through tears he swears it will never, ever happen again. He loves me and our new baby too much to lose us.

2023

Life is still heavy at the moment due to our marital issues, but I am confident and optimistic that Jon will choose me and our family. Jon will "get out of Vancouver." It's the Sunday before Valentine's Day. I have a Ward Council meeting to get to, Jon will stay behind and finish getting himself and the kids ready for church. We're both standing in our bedroom and I need to leave soon when Jon says he needs to tell me something. Remember how I told you I have a crush on a classmate? There's more I didn't tell you. And by "more," he means he lied to me.

It's more than a crush. We've kissed. We sext. We make out in study rooms at the U of L. She's 22 years old.

I am blindsided. And I'm going to be late for a meeting. Fortunately, going into shock is an excellent way of masking all of your emotions. I tell Jon that I need to tell the Bishop everything because I have a really big calling and ask him if that is okay. He says it is and then I leave. I sit through Ward Council. When it ends I ask my Bishop if I can talk to him. And as soon as the door closes and we both sit down, I start to cry. Jon is having an affair. This is the second time he's done this to me. I don't know what to do.

He tells me I have some tough decisions to make. He tells me how much he loves me and my family. To illustrate this he explains how he believes that in heaven he'll be able to look out a window from his family's mansion and see the mansions' of the people he loved on earth. You're going to be next door to me in heaven, just like you are now (but relatively speaking, because we both live on farms - our daughters walk across a field to play with each other). And then he tells me how he could see Jon was distancing himself from the church and had been doing it for quite sometime. 

Somehow I manage to clean myself up and calm down. I carry on. But inside my mind I can't stop thinking about the 25 year old Kristen who mustered up all the strength and courage she had while holding her newborn baby and said: "If this ever happens again, I will take our baby and leave." Except this time, there are four of them and one on the way. 

A Break Through

When a marriage becomes strained there comes a point where you both begin navigating on autopilot. You take care of the kids, the chores, the home. You compartmentalize the aching side of you that has no freaking idea what is going on. Sometimes the aching breaks through and tries again to ask for answers.

The next time I tried asking for answers was an average February evening. The kids were in bed. Jon and I sat on separate couches. I asked how he was doing, to which he responded, "Not good." I don't know what was different about this time, about this question, but he eventually opened up and we had an actual conversation that shed some light on our situation. He asked if I remembered that time back in December when he accused me of having a crush on a lifeguard I supervised. Uh, yes, of course. You don't exactly forget being accused by your spouse of having a crush on a kid.

It turns out, Jon had been trying to strike up a conversation that night about how he had developed a crush on a classmate in his nursing program. And what better way to break the ice on such a topic than to first accuse your wife of doing the exact same thing. Surely she could relate? Well, turns out I couldn't, but finally having an explanation for his behavior the past couple months trumped any need to set him straight in that regard.

As a girl, a great deal of your conversations growing up revolve around crushes and feelings and affection you wish to bestow. You talk about it with your friends, your cousins, your siblings if you're lucky. It is a very surreal experience to ask your spouse these sorts of questions pertaining to someone other than yourself. 

Does she know? Does she have a crush on you too? "Yes, I think her feelings are reciprocated."

Is she single? "No, she has a boyfriend."

Does her boyfriend know? "She's told him she's not as invested in their relationship as she used to be."

Has anything happened between you? "No. We talk, she knows I'm not happy at home."

How did this revelation and these answers make me feel? Relieved. So, so unbelievably relieved. For almost two months Jon had lead me to believe that he was miserable just being married to me. That no matter how I tried to communicate and connect, it wasn't enough, I wasn't enough. I blamed myself for his unhappiness, chewing myself out for getting so tired in December. I should have never played Stardew Valley. I genuinely felt responsible for how our marriage had been crumbling. Now I knew the real culprit was the emotional affair he had begun. Realizing I wasn't to blame felt like a giant weight being lifted and I suddenly had an idea of how to go forward, how to start making things right.

Let's get away for Reading Week, my parents will watch the kids! "No, I don't want to."

Although I now knew what was going on, Jon still wasn't very receptive. Fortunately, I felt calm and confident, things were going to work out. It was then that I suddenly remembered something Jon had told me from when he lived in Vancouver and worked at a ski hill before we met. Due to his surroundings, he had begun to question things about himself. As his questioning became more intense, he realized he needed to leave and immediately moved home. I likened this experience to his current situation, he needed to "Get out of Vancouver." To remove himself from continuing any sort of relationship with this girl. And I was so, so sure that he would, because the last time he had cheated on me, he did.

Hanging in There

You may be wondering what the aftermath looked like from Jon choosing to not say he loved me. Here are some snippets:

- I tried to talk to Jon. Which was as productive as trying to have a conversation with a King's Guard outside Buckingham Palace. The most I ever got out of those conversations was, "I'm not good at communicating," followed by stony silence. Sometimes I got a half-hearted, "Should we try counselling?" which I realize now was his way of pretending to have an ounce of investment still left in our relationship. I must have sensed his apathy in the suggestion, because I immediately starting warning him that counselling was not a passive endeavor. It took effort, we would be given homework, and he would have to face a lot of uncomfortable truths about our relationship that he had taken for granted all these years (ie. I do EVERYTHING, you are a "silent treatment" savant, etc). Mind you, I was on board, but something felt off. This might have been where I realized I couldn't take the reins and do everything like I had for the past 10+ years. I needed to see some initiative. I have no doubt that if I had put my foot down and did everything, made the counselling appointments, forced Jon to engage in our homework, and kept up the appearance of a happy home, we would still be together. Jon had the gall to sabotage everything, but didn't have the guts to walk away.

- My family became fiercely protective of me. It didn't take long for my sisters to hear what happened. And then my phone blew up when they did. Leave him! You'd be better off without him! You could easily find someone better! Fortunately I had a lot more impulse control and really didn't believe anything they said.

- I tried texting Jon. Maybe he would have more to say if it wasn't face to face. This is the best I got:

To which I then got... nothing.

- My kids noticed. At least they noticed that mom was suddenly spending a lot of her time in bed napping and crying in the afternoons. Logan had a friend over to play and I overheard her say, "My mom cries all the time, ha ha!" Fortunately that was all they noticed at this point. I could handle being a crying laughingstock if it protected their little hearts and childhood as long as possible.

- I tried. I asked Jon out for a date. Even secured a babysitter that wasn't Grandma and Grandpa (because they had just left for 2 weeks in Arizona). I was ready to put everything I had into that date: try to make him laugh, flirt, connect, talk about lighter things. But as soon as he got home he let me know that he had invited another couple that were friends of ours. Okay. A double date isn't what I had in mind, but baby steps are okay. I could take him out again next weekend. In retrospect, I see now that another couple was a buffer. Even in my efforts to get closer, I was still being held at arm's length. But it felt like we had fun, the mood lifted a little, Jon seemed happier. And I would become lulled away into thinking things were improving.

If I had to sum up everything with one picture, I would choose this:

I was the cat, hanging in there. And Jon was shaking the rope.