There is a part of this story that I’ve never really known what to do with.
Her. The other woman.
Even writing those words brings up feelings I’m not entirely comfortable admitting to. Anger, disgust, sadness, resentment, curiosity and, sometimes, a level of hatred that makes me feel like a person I don’t particularly want to be.
Because the truth is, I don’t want to be a woman consumed by hatred. I don’t want to spend my life carrying anger toward another person. I don’t want to become bitter. I don’t want my husband’s affair to turn me into someone who judges other women, who assumes the worst of people, or who loses the ability to see humanity in someone who has hurt me.
But I also don’t want to pretend that what she did didn’t hurt me.
Because it did.
Deeply.
And somewhere between wanting to be the better person and wanting her to understand even a fraction of the pain I’ve experienced, I’ve found myself wrestling with feelings that seem to contradict one another and I’m still trying to figure out how to hold them all.
One of the hardest parts of this entire situation is that she wasn’t some random woman my husband met on a night out. She was someone I knew. Someone I’d met more than once. Someone whose face wasn’t unfamiliar to me. Someone who existed in the same world I did.
She was a mother, just like me.
And I think that is part of what made everything so difficult to comprehend.
While I was navigating pregnancy, motherhood, and a version of myself I was still trying to understand, there was another woman involved in a part of my husband’s life that I knew nothing about.
I was trying to build a family. Trying to be a good mum. Trying to navigate my own struggles, including postnatal depression, while questioning things I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
For almost a year, I had suspicions that something wasn’t right. I questioned things. I felt that something had changed. And when I tried to make sense of those feelings, I was met with denials and explanations that left me questioning myself.
I didn’t know the full truth then.
But I knew something hurt.
And when I eventually discovered what had been happening, I wasn’t just confronted with the reality of my husband’s betrayal. I had to confront the fact that another woman had been part of it, too.
Someone who knew I existed.
Someone who knew I was his wife.
Someone who knew I was a mother.
Someone who, from where I stood, had enough information to understand that there was a family on the other side of her choices.
I have often wondered what she thought about me during that time.
Did she think about me at all?
Did she think about the fact that I was pregnant? That I was at home with our baby? That I was trying to navigate motherhood while my marriage was something entirely different behind my back?
Did she ever picture me when she was with him?
Did she ever feel a fraction of guilt?
Did she ever stop and think about the woman who would eventually have to pick up the pieces?
I will never know all the answers to those questions.
And perhaps that is something I will have to learn to live with.
I want to be clear about something. This is not me absolving my husband of responsibility.
He made his own choices. He made promises to me. He was the person who stood beside me in our marriage, the person I trusted to protect the life we were building together.
He owed me honesty, loyalty and respect.
And he was the one who broke those commitments.
I know that.
I have spent a long time trying to understand how someone I loved so deeply could hurt me in such a profound way. I have had to confront the reality that loving someone doesn’t mean you truly know every part of them, and that the person you feel safest with can also be the person who makes you feel the most unsafe.
His responsibility is his.
But acknowledging that doesn’t mean I have to pretend she played no part in what happened.
Two things can be true at once.
He was responsible for betraying me, and I can still feel deeply hurt by her involvement.
I can recognise that she didn’t make vows to me while also wishing she had made a different choice.
I understand that they both played a part in the affair, and that their choices didn’t happen without consequences for the people around them.
I don’t need to make her solely responsible for my pain to acknowledge that she contributed to it.
And I don’t need to hate her to admit that I struggle with what she did.
There is a version of myself I want to be.
She is compassionate. She is emotionally mature. She understands that people are complicated, that nobody is perfect, and that the worst thing someone has done does not necessarily tell the entire story of who they are.
She doesn’t want to wish suffering upon another woman.
She doesn’t want to spend her days comparing herself to someone else, wondering what she had that I didn’t, or trying to understand why she was worth the risk.
She doesn’t want to carry this woman around in her head forever.
She wants peace.
She wants to move forward.
She wants to be able to think about the affair without feeling the familiar knot in her stomach. She wants to reach a point where this woman is simply a part of a chapter in her life that she has survived, rather than someone who can still take up space in her mind.
And I want to be her, I really do.
But healing has taught me that wanting to be a certain kind of person doesn’t mean you magically stop having feelings that don’t align with that version of yourself.
Sometimes I feel compassion.
Sometimes I think about the fact that she is a person with her own life, her own struggles, and her own story. I remind myself that I don’t know everything about her, and that I don’t need to reduce another human being to one thing she did.
And then, sometimes, I remember what happened.
I remember the timing.
I remember being pregnant.
I remember bringing our baby into the world.
I remember those first weeks of motherhood, when I was exhausted, vulnerable and trying to find my feet in a life that had changed so dramatically.
And I feel angry, really, really angry.
Sometimes I want her to feel ashamed.
Sometimes I want her to understand what it feels like to have your reality shattered by people you trusted. To question your own judgement. To replay moments in your mind and wonder what was happening behind your back while you were simply trying to live your life.
Sometimes I want her to know that there is a real woman on the other side of those decisions.
A woman who cried.
A woman who struggled.
A woman who questioned herself.
A woman who had to learn how to live with a truth she never asked for.
And then I feel guilty for feeling that way.
Because isn’t the goal to let go?
Isn’t healing supposed to mean becoming less angry?
Aren’t I supposed to be the bigger person?
Maybe.
But I’m beginning to think that being the bigger person has been misunderstood.
Perhaps it doesn’t mean never having an ugly thought.
Perhaps it doesn’t mean offering forgiveness before you’re ready, or finding a compassionate explanation for every hurtful thing someone has done.
Perhaps it means allowing yourself to feel the anger without letting it decide who you become.
Perhaps it means acknowledging that a part of you is still hurt, rather than shaming yourself for not being further along in your healing.
I can want to be kind and still have unkind thoughts.
I can believe in compassion and still feel resentment.
I can choose not to act on my anger without pretending the anger doesn’t exist.
And maybe that is what being the better person looks like for me right now.
Not perfection.
Just a conscious choice about what I do with the pain.
More to come on this,
– Sarah xx
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