I’m thirty-three, married for six years to a woman named Lily, and we have a daughter who just turned one. I grew up watching my parents tear each other apart, and I swore I’d break that cycle. I wanted to be the husband my wife could count on and the father my daughter would never have to heal from. Lily talked about getting a master’s degree and chasing her dream career.
I was all for it. After we got married, I encouraged her constantly. I had a good job, and I could support us while she studied. But she kept putting it off.
Then I got a major job offer in another city, a completely different region of the country. It made no sense to turn it down, and after some initial anxiety, Lily got excited about the move too. Once we settled in, I brought up the master’s program again. We had more money than ever.
Paying for it wouldn’t have been a problem. She told me she wanted to do her master’s in the city we’d left. I pointed out the schools here were objectively better for her field. She said our move had ruined her plan.
I even told her she could go back for the one–year program and we could handle a year of long distance. She said she hated long distance relationships, and she knew I knew that. I tried to lay out her options: a new school here, or a year back there. Neither worked for her.
Eventually, I dropped it entirely. We never talked about it again, at least not until after our daughter was born. That pregnancy wasn’t an accident. We both said we were ready.
We had the usual new–parent struggles, but we found our rhythm. I thought we were okay. Then a friend sent me a video. She spotted Lily at a bar on a Friday night—a night Lily had told me she was taking our daughter to her sister’s place and staying over.
That wasn’t unusual. Relatives loved spending time with our little girl, so I didn’t think twice. But in the video, the lighting was bad, but I could recognize her outfit, and I could see her talking to a guy, being extremely touchy with him. It was enough to know something was going on, but I wanted the full truth before confronting her.
I didn’t want to give myself room to make excuses for her. I went through her phone when I got the chance. It didn’t take long. She had a Tinder account.
The man from the bar was one of at least three men she’d been seeing over the past few months. When she told me she was taking our daughter to her sister’s place, her sister was basically serving as a babysitter while she went out. I don’t know if her sister knew or was an unknowing participant. I hope it’s the latter.
She seems like a good person. But so did Lily. I knew I had to confront her. I know I should have prepared for the divorce first.
I respect people who can plan things out perfectly. I’m not one of them. I was dying inside, and I had to let the emotions out. The next day, when our daughter was asleep, I told Lily I needed to speak with her.
She could tell it was serious from my demeanor. I told her I knew what she’d been doing behind my back. She tried to act like she didn’t know what I was talking about, which made me mad. I told her I already knew everything and that all I wanted was one last bit of honesty from her.
She was quiet for a long time. Then she asked if I really wanted to hear her be honest. I said yes. She admitted she’d cheated.
She said she was sorry, but she didn’t do it because she hated me or because she was bored. She said she did it because she didn’t have a spark in her life anymore, and new people gave her excitement. She knew it wasn’t right, but that was her reason. I told her she’d never even mentioned feeling that way to me.
There was nothing I could have done to fix it. That was when she told me there was nothing I could have done—because I was the reason she felt like that in the first place. I recoiled. She noticed, and she defended it: “You said I should be honest.
That’s me being honest. ”
I asked her how I was the one who caused it. She said I held her back from her dreams. I told her I’d spent our entire romantic life supporting her.
I’d been the one talking about her master’s even more than she had at some points. I only stopped because she acted like a master’s anywhere but her dream school wasn’t worth it, and because she refused to endure a year of long distance. I asked if I should have turned down the job offer. Our lives were so much better because of it, and that extended to our daughter.
I told her she was just trying to make me the bad guy because she couldn’t handle the fact she’d messed up on her own. She felt like a failure at thirty–two, and instead of doing something about it, she went nuclear and slept with other men to feel better about herself. I told her there was no direction for us to go but divorce. She didn’t say anything.
She started crying. I didn’t feel sorry for her. It still hurt so badly that she thought I was the one who ruined things. When I stood up, she asked if I was sure.
I said yes. My yes became even more solid when she said,“Even though it was you? Even though you pushed me to this? ”
I had so many horrible things to say in that moment.
I’m not that kind of person, so I just walked out. I knew getting her to move out would be hard. She wasn’t going to move out without our daughter, and I didn’t want to be away from my daughter. So I decided we’d live in the same house until the courts decided who would have it.
It has been miserable. We basically don’t talk unless it has to do with our girl. A big part of me wants to move out and just come see my daughter daily, but I’d probably lose my claim to the house. So I endure.
She was served with divorce papers about a week after I confronted her. When I did that, she came to beg one last time. She hadn’t had much to say during the silent treatment, but once she realized I wasn’t joking, she had to give it one last try. I stood my ground.
If I didn’t, I’d be too embarrassed to tell this story. There’s no space to forgive cheaters, not with me, at least. That’s pretty much where we were at the time of my last post. It’s not a fun position to be in, especially with my little girl in the mix.
When I realized she’s not even going to have a single memory of her biological parents loving each other, it hurt me. But there’s nothing I can do about that. I just have to hope to show her love in different ways. I will still do my best to be a fantastic father to her.
Update: I’m now a free man. I’m no longer tied down to a cheating wife. It’s hard to be single after so long. Incredibly hard.
But I prefer this to being with someone I can’t trust. Here’s what happened during the divorce process. We entered negotiation, and we were pretty close to coming to an agreement. I didn’t mind paying child support—it was for my daughter’s sake.
But I refused to pay alimony, and that was the sticking point. She wanted alimony, child support, and the house. She thought giving me fifty–fifty custody was some kind of gift. Eventually, we had to go in front of a judge.
My lawyer was great, but he gave me a realistic expectation from the start. He told me I might not get what I’m looking for, and I accepted that. Things weren’t all bad for me. She got the house.
I don’t mind, because I got my cut, and she’s stuck with the mortgage now, not me. Child support and alimony had to go in, which is annoying, but I got a very reasonable alimony obligation. It won’t take long to get through it. Custody was split fifty–fifty, which is what I expected.
Asking for anything more and getting it would have been a dream. Because of our daughter, I told myself I wasn’t going to try and get revenge on Lily. There was no point, and I didn’t want to put our daughter in a bad position. So I left her to her life.
It took quite some time. One day, when I went to pick up our daughter, she said she wanted to talk. For someone who usually had an attitude, she seemed soft that day, like she used to be. I knew something had to be off.
I thought it was going to be a favor to ask for money or something. But she told me it was more than that. She apologized for her behavior. She said she’d started going to church again, and she realized how much she’d hurt me.
She never should have blamed me for holding her back from her dreams, or for making her cheat. She accepted it was all on her. It was nice hearing that, whether she meant it or not. I asked what she wanted.
That was when she told me life was miserable for her. She thought she’d be free, but it didn’t feel that way. She was budgeting a lot more than she was used to, and dealing with our daughter alone was tough. She realized how much I contributed.
She was sorry for ever making me feel any kind of way. I acknowledged her apology, and I waited for her to get to the point. I wasn’t surprised when she started crying and asked if we could give things another try. Before I could say anything, she said we could start slow, that we didn’t need to worry about marriage.
She said she wasn’t happy with her life, and she knew it was her fault. She missed me. But I read through it. She missed the restaurants and the gifts and the vacations.
She couldn’t do that on her own, and she realized I was the major reason she had any happiness. But she chose to sell all of that just to sleep with other men. I told her there was no chance we would get back together. I told her we wouldn’t have anything to do with each other if we didn’t have a daughter together.
I despised her for cheating on me, and I would never do anything about it beyond letting her know. But she had to sit with the guilt of knowing how she’d ruined our lives, and ruined our daughter’s life. I told her our daughter was never going to grow up with two happy parents because of her. She started full–on bawling at that point.
I picked up my daughter and left. I feel bad for feeling satisfaction seeing her like that. But I felt a lot of it. A whole lot.
That’s life for you. Sometimes it throws curveballs, and you just have to adapt. I’m still trying to do that. I think I’m doing an okay job.
Edit: This will be my last post on this whole thing. To those concerned: I’ve done a paternity test on my daughter, and I confirmed she is mine. That’s a big relief. I don’t know how I would have gone on if she weren’t my daughter.
I don’t have to worry about that, though. I’ll just take things a day at a time from here. She wanted excitement? Congratulations, she found it.
Three different men while her husband was busy keeping a roof over her head and raising her child. And now she’s crying about how miserable her life is? Honey, misery is the price you pay when you cheat on the person who literally tried to make everything work for you. She cheated herself out of a life that could have been good.
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