"Who is she?" I asked.
"You don't need to know. It's not important" was his reply. Well, it was very important to me. My mind was spinning, trying to make sense of what he was telling me. How did this happen? Why did this happen? So many questions running through my mind I couldn't speak coherently. What did matter? What did I need to know? How much did I want to know? I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. This could not be us!
He finally told me who she was. Not a young pretty girl but a woman our age not really pretty at all. Not that I was anything great to look at, but don't you figure that if your husband is casting you off it would be for a more attractive woman? At least that is the stereotype. After all, certainly this was a mid-life crisis, wasn't it?
One year before this he had broken his hip. He loved to ride his bike and fell one day when he got a flat tire. She worked with him and called to see if he wanted to go to a bike race with some people from work. He was laid up for 10 weeks and I was teaching school. He was climbing the walls. They became friends. I often cautioned him about being alone with another woman. His response "she's like a guy friend. I could never be interested in her in any other way than a friend." He underestimated, or didn't believe in, the power of Satan to confuse and control.
One day she walked in to his office at work and simply said "I want to take this relationship to another level." He thought about it briefly and figured that sounded intriguing. And to another level it went. They started walking to their cars together (they worked swing shift so it was always late) talking and hugging and occasionally kissing. He would feel the knots and she would get frustrated that he couldn't handle it. About a month before he told me he had gone to our Bishop, who was our friend, and told him the situation he was in. The Bishop counseled him to end the relationship before it progressed any further. I was not told about it.
But the relationship was an addiction. He couldn't stop and really didn't want to. It was new and wonderful...except for that nagging knot.
We spent that Sunday morning talking, crying, trying to understand. Among the things he told me was that he couldn't be married to a fat woman. His new friend was athletic and lean. They both biked, skied, snowshoed, hiked, cross country skied. I went to work, served in the church and collapsed whenever I could.
His new friend was not LDS. I, he told me, would do anything for the church. "That's a bad thing?" I wondered. None of this was making sense to me.
"What about our children?" I implored. "They are raised" he told me. "I have always planned that when they were raised I would leave." Yes, I could recall him telling me that several times. But I always figured that was just on a bad day and he didn't really mean it. We had many wonderful times together.
"You mean you think this won't hurt our children?"
"No, they won't care."
How could he believe any of these lies? To say I was crying would be like saying a monsoon was a rainstorm.
Our daughter had spent the night at her grandmothers after attending homecoming at the high school she had graduated from in the spring.
When she returned home that morning she saw us in intense conversation with my eyes swollen from incessant tears. She didn't know what to think of that and left us alone.
We left and went on a ride to continue what felt like a fruitless conversation. But I was obsessed with making him see how crazy he was being. I was determined that he would see that he must give up this insane notion of leaving his faith and his family.
I told him that even if he did have his name removed from the records of the church he would not be able to have this relationship without any guilt. He didn't believe it. We talked all day until we had to go to a church program that our daughter was "starring" in. It was about temple marriage. It didn't touch him at all.
We talked half the night and got up early and went on a walk and continued to talk. I can't remember what I said but at one point he replied "why does what you say make so much sense?" That gave me some hope.
It was then I knew I was being guided in all I was saying to him. I asked him to give us another chance. I recognized that while this was his choice and I didn't "make" him do it I could still make changes in my own life and in my own behavior. He said he just couldn't work on us, but that if I wanted to that would be up to me. I asked him to give us some time. "Two months" he said. I said two months was nothing...give it at least 6. He couldn't commit to that.
After all the emotion and being up all night I called for a substitute and stayed home.
"She" called that morning as she apparently did every morning. My daughter often answered the phone. That made me sick.
This morning I answered. She sounded startled and asked for him. I gave him the phone, walked out of the room and closed the door. Our daughter asked me what was up. I thought I could soften the reality by telling her that her dad was having an "emotional" relationship with someone. After all emotional is better than physical, right? She was devastated. She began to cry and said she felt like her whole life had been a lie. Who was this man she had called daddy? I wished I hadn't told her.
He told his friend that their relationship needed to end. She didn't take it well. I was hopeful.
But this was only the tip of the iceberg! The journey had barely begun.
"How can there be later magnification without our enduring some present deprivation? The enlarging of the soul requires not only some remodeling, but some excavating....How could there be refining fires without our enduring some heat." Neal A. Maxwell.
The heat was just beginning.
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