Experts will tell us that there are signs your spouse is cheating – we’ve run a few of those stories here on Capsule where men start working out more, buying new clothes, suddenly worrying about their appearance, working later, going to the gym at night. But Emma’s husband wasn’t doing any of those things – in fact, the sudden change in his behaviour was something that made her feel more secure than ever in her marriage.
In our past instalments we’ve covered everything from when you’re most likely to divorce to whether they’re contagious to whether being on the contraceptive pill can effect your chances! and have now spoken to dozens of women – including one whose husband announced he was leaving her to have an open relationship with a 19-year-old, another who was quite literally ghosted by her own husband and one who discovered the real reason her husband divorced her was because he had a baby with her SISTER.
If you have a topic you’d like to discuss, share your thoughts, experience or advice about, drop a line to alice@capsulenz.com.
“I think it started about three months before our wedding anniversary – our fourth one,” says Emma.
“Pete came home after going to the gym one night and didn’t just give me a kiss on the forehead like he normally did when he got home. It was a full on kiss. Then he asked me if I could take our wedding anniversary off work – it was a Friday – because he had something planned.”
That time marked something of a change in Pete – he was suddenly a much more affectionate, attentive and generous partner.
“Like I said, he used to just give me a peck on the forehead or cheek when I’d leave in the morning or come home at night – but from then on it was a full on kiss every time,” she says. “He kept telling me how beautiful I looked or just complimented me a lot more.”
And then, three months later Pete picked her up from work – it was the night before their wedding anniversary. He had a surprise for her – in the boot were two suitcases.
“He’d packed a bag for me and said we were driving to the airport,” she says. “I couldn’t believe it. I’d never experienced anything like that – it was like out of a movie. So romantic.”
The happy butterflies in Emma’s stomach only intensified when Pete drove towards the international departures.
Then, after parking the car, he handed Emma an envelope. Inside was a picture – a photo of an overwater burre at resort in Fiji.
“I had looked at it briefly for a honeymoon but it was way too expensive,” she says. “We didn’t end up having one once our final wedding bills came in.”
But now, Pete had surprised her with a dream holiday – the honeymoon they’d never had. Their wedding anniversary fell on a long weekend, so he’d booked four nights in their dream Fiji resort.
“I’d felt a bit unsure about him packing my suitcase,” she says. “But it was perfect too – he’d brought the right clothes for it, my medication, skincare, even my pillow from home that he knew I didn’t like to be without!”
They spend four nights in absolute bliss.
There was only one thing wrong with the entire blissful holiday:
Pete was having an affair.
It’d be another six months until Emma found out and it would come as one hell of a shock, because for the entire nine month affair, it had seemed as though he was treating her like a queen.
“That trip makes me feel absolutely sick to my stomach now,” says Emma.
“When I first found out about the affair – I found out through looking at his phone – I didn’t want to believe it, I thought it must be more innocent than what I was reading. And when I started to come round that it was real, I thought it must have been a one-time, very recent thing. There was no way – he had been so loving. He told me how much he loved me all the time. Our sex life was better and more frequent than ever before.”
Emma says that Pete denied the affair at first but things continued to unravel to the point where he confessed to it – particularly when Emma found evidence that it had been going on prior to their wedding anniversary.
“In Fiji we had some big chats – we decided we’d start trying for a baby the next year,” she says. “In the last three months I’d started taking prenatal vitamins and we’d both stopped drinking to prepare. We were going to start trying, like, literally the next month. That’s one of the bits that’s the hardest to get my head around. Was he going to go ahead with it and really try for a baby while he was cheating on me?”
Emma says that Pete wanted to stay together and mend the relationship. He put an end to the affair and started seeing a therapist.
“I have full respect for women – and men – who stay after their husband or wife has cheated on them, but for me, I just couldn’t do it,” she says. “I couldn’t get over that level of deception and how much he’d lied.”
When Emma asked him why he’d been so affectionate and why he’d planned the trip to Fiji, at first, he was unable to give her answers.
“I asked him if it was perhaps guilt,” she says, “And he said, ‘probably’. There was no way I could trust him again after that.”
It’s now six years on from the breakdown of her marriage and Emma says she has no regrets about walking away.
“I’m glad I drew that line in the sand for myself – that I wouldn’t tolerate that behaviour,” she says. “I was lucky that we didn’t have kids together though, because otherwise I don’t know that I could have walked away.”
Emma now has one daughter with her second husband who she married a year ago.
“It took a long time to be able to trust anyone again after what happened,” she says. “But when I met Isaac if did just feel different.”
Emma says she wishes she could go back in time and visit herself in the aftermath of her divorce.
“Back then I was so lost in grief,” she says. “Grief about losing my husband – but mostly grief about losing the future I thought we had. I thought I’d lost my chance to have children. I was 35 when we broke up. I had this little voice saying maybe you should stay with him so you can have kids. It was hard to leave based on that. But, now, of course I’m so glad I did. I wish I could go back and tell her to stop crying so much and to get out of bed, because it’s all going to work out. You’ll have another honeymoon – proper, truthful one, and you’ll have a baby and a husband who is truthful and kind. You just have to trust your gut and if it says, ‘you’ll never be able to trust this man ever again if you stay’ then I think you should listen.”
 - but for Emma, this one came as a BIG surprise...){kind=link}