We're still married. I'm still friends with her.
I thought I'd feel outraged. I didn't. I felt sad and lonesome. The
thing that bothered me most was that they never gave me the opportunity
to talk about it. They just assumed I'd be against it, hurt, angry,
bitter and may even ditch them because they were making out behind me.
That made me feel like an outsider. I've always felt like a bit of an
outsider, but they were the inside circle...I was an outsider in my own
house.
It was hard. I felt like everything about me was insufficient. I felt ashamed of being not enough - of not being important enough to remember when they were together.
I heard the little voice in my head say the same things it always had about how I was ugly, awkward, ineffective, disappointing...all those little doubts and insecurities that sometimes creep in...except instead of saying, "no, I'm not really so bad," I said, "yes, I know." It's took me a couple of years to stop feeling like that.
Look. A lot of people might have stopped the relationship right there. Nobody would fault them. I looked at it like this: I love these two people. They love me (truly). They did something that wasn't part of the agreement, but that wasn't about me. Why should I break up my family and turn my life upside down and lose half of the people I care about over a point of general principal that I don't actually care that much about?
Walking in on them forced me to take a hard look at things many folks never really question. I thought I knew how I'd feel and I was wrong. It turns out that I cared the least about the having sex thing. I've never felt strongly about that. I tend to feel that monogamy is right for some people but not everyone, and that love is not a finite resource. There was nothing about that relationship that diminished me. The problem was the secret, not the sex.
So I'm still married. I'm still friends with her. I don't feel bad about it. My marriage has room for friendships that include intimacy, and that's wonderful (for me too). I might never have discovered that without walking in on them - I would have preferred something a little less distressing, but life is like that sometimes."
~ Anonymous
It was hard. I felt like everything about me was insufficient. I felt ashamed of being not enough - of not being important enough to remember when they were together.
I heard the little voice in my head say the same things it always had about how I was ugly, awkward, ineffective, disappointing...all those little doubts and insecurities that sometimes creep in...except instead of saying, "no, I'm not really so bad," I said, "yes, I know." It's took me a couple of years to stop feeling like that.
Look. A lot of people might have stopped the relationship right there. Nobody would fault them. I looked at it like this: I love these two people. They love me (truly). They did something that wasn't part of the agreement, but that wasn't about me. Why should I break up my family and turn my life upside down and lose half of the people I care about over a point of general principal that I don't actually care that much about?
Walking in on them forced me to take a hard look at things many folks never really question. I thought I knew how I'd feel and I was wrong. It turns out that I cared the least about the having sex thing. I've never felt strongly about that. I tend to feel that monogamy is right for some people but not everyone, and that love is not a finite resource. There was nothing about that relationship that diminished me. The problem was the secret, not the sex.
So I'm still married. I'm still friends with her. I don't feel bad about it. My marriage has room for friendships that include intimacy, and that's wonderful (for me too). I might never have discovered that without walking in on them - I would have preferred something a little less distressing, but life is like that sometimes."
~ Anonymous
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