My wife didn’t come home last night. She went out with a couple of girlfriends, which is pretty normal for her. She’s normally back around 2AM on these nights, so I waited up. Around 2:30, I called to check in. She answered, and I could hear people in the background. She told me they went to a party but were leaving in a couple of minutes. She wasn’t home by 3 so I texted. It delivered, but no reply. Around 4AM I called again, it rang a couple of times before she sent me to voicemail.
My wife finally came stumbling through the door at 6:47AM this morning. I know the exact time because I was worried. She was wearing a dress she didn’t leave the house in, with mesh leggings I’ve never seen either. The leggings had clearly been torn, and her makeup was smudged.
My heart sank when I saw her. My immediate worry was that she had been assaulted. She only shook her head no when I asked her that. I asked her what she had been doing then. She only said that I knew what she had been doing, and that kind of confirmed what the voice in the back of my head had been screaming since she walked in. My wife cheated on me last night.
I asked her who it was, she shrugged almost casually and said it was somebody they met at the club. She went back to his house and hooked up with him, then Ubered home. She then said she didn’t want to fight and just wanted to sleep. So that’s what she did.
She’s still asleep now, and didn’t even take a shower before passing out. Suffice to say our relationship is over. We don’t have any kids, and we rent so it shouldn’t be an extremely complicated process. I keep trying to reason myself out of it, pretending there might be something to salvage here. I’ve always maintained that cheating would be a red line for me though. I think I need to stick to that now.
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.