The day before the zoo trip, my husband of 10 years, the father of our children who had just days before entered 1st and 4th grade, announced that he had been having an affair all summer long. Not only that, but he loved her, and didn’t think he wanted to be a family man anymore. I remember him saying he wanted to want his family. It was a phrase I would hear often. After being a stay at home mom since our daughter was born, I was faced with the knowledge that my husband no longer wanted the life we had built. I had no idea what to do. It was clear that he expected me to leave him. Hypothetically, that’s what any self-respecting woman would do.
It was a Friday - the worst day of the week for bad news. I consulted with the family therapist we had worked with earlier in the year when our son was being diagnosed with autism (jackissomethingelse). It was not fair to me to have to deal with him in his “condition” – his “I want to want my family” condition. It was not fair to me to deal with him while he was pining away for some other woman. I told him he needed to leave our home. We told the kids he was going on an extended business trip.
With him out of the house, I had another more urgent issue to deal with. My children. They had no idea what had really happened. My husband had “coincidentally” started his affair on a business trip that started a day after learning that his father was dying. Was this really what this was about? We had moved to Colorado because of family drama over an affair in the family business back in Texas. Was he acting out because no one shared his indignation when this happened in the family business? I googled “what to do when your husband cheats” – and overwhelming learned – don’t make rash decisions. Based on that, I decided to keep quiet. I told one friend in another state, in another city from where our family lived, what was really going on. To my children, I needed to act like everything was normal. I need to really act like he was just on a business trip.
It was the hardest weekend of my entire of life, hands down. Were there times that I fell on my knees in the privacy of the closet and cried until I couldn’t breathe? Absolutely. But I would hear a knock at my bedroom door. I had to get up.
There were so many things I had waited to do. Thinking back now, I think I spent 10 years of my life waiting but that weekend, I didn’t know that. All I knew then is that I needed to keep my children busy. I went big – I needed things that didn’t just distract the kids, but distracted me.
On Saturday, I drove to Denver to take the kids Indoor Skydiving – not outdoor. I have never had a desire to skydive outdoors. Indoor Skydiving was always one of those things I wanted to do as a family and I suddenly realized that no matter what my husband did, my children were my family. There would not be any waiting around for him to make time for us to do the fun things I wanted to do. He had always had half days off on Fridays but had just spent the entire prior summer spending those days with another woman instead of with his children during their summer off from school. It turns out, we needed reservations which I made for the following Saturday. I quietly accepted that my life had changed. It didn’t matter if we stayed together or not, I knew things would never be the same. I would never wait for him again.
Our Saturday and Sunday continued. We went both to Brunswick Zone and the Denver Zoo. While at the Denver Zoo, I saw these peculiar but beautiful tiny antelope called the Kirk’s Dik Dik. Since that day, I have learned that there are just as many women who are uncommitted, game-changers, dare-I-say-cheaters, disloyal, or flat out selfish.
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