A woman named Gina had caught her husband with their nanny. Another woman, Helen, had discovered her wife was having an emotional affair with someone online. A man named Charlie was divorcing after his spouse came out as gay. Everyone had a story. Everyone was hurting.
“The hardest part,” Gina said one night, clutching a styrofoam cup of coffee, “is that everyone else gets to move on. He’s with the nanny now. They seem happy. And I’m stuck here, still processing what happened.”
I understood that completely. Kevin was moving on. He had already found another place to live, a studio apartment across town. He seemed fine. Meanwhile, I felt like I was still falling apart.
“It gets better,” Helen told us. “I know that sounds impossible right now, but it does.”
“When?” I asked.
“Different for everyone. For me, it took about a year before I could get through a whole day without crying.”
A year. I couldn’t imagine feeling like this for another year.
But slowly, gradually, things did get easier. Not better immediately, just less raw. I stopped checking Kevin’s social media. I stopped wondering what he was doing or who he was with. I started focusing entirely on myself and the kids.
We fell into a new routine. Just the boys and me during the week. Quiet mornings, family dinners, bedtime stories. Then Kevin would pick them up on Friday evening, and I would have the weekend to myself.
At first, I didn’t know what to do with the solitude. I would wander around the empty house, feeling lost. But eventually, I started enjoying it. I went to the movies by myself. I took long walks. I read books I had been meaning to get to for years. I began to rediscover who I was outside of being a wife.
Six months after Kevin moved out, I ran into Brandon at the grocery store.
“Hey,” he said awkwardly, nearly dropping a carton of milk. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. You?”
“Good. Listen… I’m really sorry about everything. I was drunk and stupid and I never should have said anything.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’m glad you did. Better to know than to keep living a lie.”
He looked visibly relieved. “Kevin’s doing okay, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. But thanks.”
“He misses you. Talks about you all the time.”
“He should have thought about that before he cheated,” I said sharply.
Brandon nodded. “Yeah. He knows he messed up.”
“Good. Maybe he won’t do it to the next person.”
I paid for my groceries and left without looking back.
The divorce was finalized on a rainy Thursday in October. Patricia called to tell me it was official.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Empty, maybe?”
“That’s normal. The end of a marriage is like a death. You’re allowed to grieve.”
But I didn’t feel like grieving. I felt numb. That evening, I took off my wedding ring for the first time in ten years. I slipped it into a velvet jewelry box and snapped the lid shut. It felt symbolic. Final.
The kids took the news harder than I expected, even though they had known it was coming. The reality of it hit them differently.
“Does this mean Daddy’s never coming home?” my daughter asked, tears welling in her eyes.
“He’ll still be your daddy,” I soothed. “He’ll just live somewhere else.”
“But our family is broken now.”
“No, honey. Our family just looks different. But we’re still a family.”
She didn’t seem convinced. Honestly, neither was I.
Kevin called that night. I almost didn’t answer, but I picked up.
“I heard it’s final,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I know this is what you wanted, but I just need you to know that I never stopped loving you.”
“Love isn’t enough, Kevin,” I said tiredly. “It never was.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of all the things we could say—should say—hanging between us. None of it mattered now.
“Take care of yourself,” he finally said.
“You too.”
I hung up and sat there in the quiet house. I was alone, but for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t lonely. I was free.
The next morning, I woke up and realized I had slept through the whole night for the first time in months. No nightmares. No waking up in a panic. Just solid, dreamless sleep. It felt like progress.
I started making plans. Small ones at first. I signed up for a painting class. I started running in the mornings. I reconnected with friends I had lost touch with during my marriage.
Slowly, I began to feel like myself again. Or maybe a new version of myself. Someone stronger. Someone who knew her worth.
On what would have been our eleventh anniversary, I took the kids to the beach. We built sandcastles, collected shells, and watched the sunset paint the sky in shades of orange and purple.
My daughter looked up at me. “Are you sad?” she asked.
“A little,” I admitted. “But also okay.”
“I’m sad too,” she said. “But the ice cream helped?”
I laughed, a genuine sound. “Ice cream does help.”
That night, after the kids were asleep, I sat on the porch and thought about everything that had happened. The betrayal. The divorce. The aftermath. All of it had been terrible. But I had survived. And that felt like something worth celebrating.
I thought about Kevin and Felicity and wondered briefly if they had gotten back together. Then I realized I didn’t actually care. Their story wasn’t mine anymore. My story was just beginning.
