I waited until the kids were asleep. My hands couldn’t stop shaking, so I did the dishes just to keep them busy. She walked in halfway through — hair damp from a shower, loose shirt, no bra - nipples poking against the thin almost translucent fabric, that casual intimacy that used to make my chest ache with love. Now it just made me feel sick.

She stood at the fridge and opened a bottle of wine. Poured one glass. Just hers.

“Want any?” she asked without looking.

“No,” I said. “Sit down.” Gesturing with my free hand, the double pour of Bookers in the other.

She turned, sensing it. That tone in my voice. That absence of affection, only transactional.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Not concerned — cautious. Like she already knew.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and dropped it on the counter. The screen was still lit. Her text thread with Matt was open.

Her face drained. No confusion. No attempt to deny. Her mouth parted slightly like she was about to say something, but the words didn’t arrive.

“How long?” I asked.

She pulled out a chair slowly, sat down across from me, and stared at the floor.

“It was one night,” she said.

“Bullshit.”

“I swear—”

I interrupted, reading particularly selected texts back to her:

"'I can't wait to feel you inside me again. Feeling you run down the inside of my leg when he came home last week gave me such a rush.'"

“I read everything,” I said, my voice deeper, more condemning. “I know what he did to you... what you did to him... for him... that you never did for me. I know where. I know how many times. How many times you called him Daddy, and he called you his whore while I was in a hotel three time zones away, sleep deprived and just wanting you, trying to talk, trying to be intimate in any way possible, but you were 'just too tired.'”

She closed her eyes. Her lip quivered. I wanted to slap the wine glass off the table but didn’t. Although the idea of the shattering glass and her momentary fear would have given me some solace, I knew it was fleeting. I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw my flesh from my body just to be someone else that this wasn't happening to. I wanted to make her fear equal to the pain I felt, but I didn't. Instead, I leaned forward, elbows on the table, and spoke like I was reading a eulogy.

“In our kitchen, Emma. Where I taught our daughter to make pancakes. Where I held you while you cried after your father died. You bent over that island and let him treat you like a toy. And then you wiped down the counter and made our kids dinner like nothing ever happened.”

Her eyes snapped up then. Defensive now. Angry.

“I needed something. I needed to feel alive again. You haven’t touched me in months. You barely even look at me unless it’s about groceries or who’s picking up who from school.”

“You haven't let me touch you in months! And thank God, knowing what I know now!" I retorted, my voice assertive but still calm. "Every time I tried you were either too tired, not in the mood, going out later, some... any God damned excuse! And now you want to be the victim? Go fuck yourself! Oh wait, you fucked Matt instead!” I said, more aggressively than I meant to. “That’s your solution? That’s your grand rediscovery of self?”

“You were gone!” she shouted. “You’ve been gone!”

"And you kept me gone even when I was here," I said, now calm and with a sense of finality.

I stood. So did she. The chairs scraping in unison against the tile floor. We were two feet apart now, years of resentment coiled between us like a lit fuse.

“I was raising our kids,” I said. “I was providing for you and keeping this house from falling apart while you posted curated smiles on Instagram and forgot how to talk to me unless it was through sighs and sarcasm.”

She crossed her arms and looked away. I stepped in closer, voice low again.

“Did you even think about what it would do to me? To the kids? Or were you just so desperate to feel wanted that nothing else mattered?”

She didn’t respond. Just stood there, chin trembling, eyes wet.

“I hope it was worth it,” I said finally. “Because you just torched everything. I don't care what I walk away with from this, just so long as you suffer. Your reputation, your mother's respect, your perfect image. I'm taking it all."

With that, I left the room. I didn’t slam the door. I didn’t cry. I went upstairs and packed a bag, each item going into the bag, giving me clarity. That night, I slept on the daybed in the upstairs loft

In the morning, I texted the screenshots of her conversation to her mother, then Matt's wife, and finally my lawyer.

Life was tense for the next few weeks. I paid maintenance for Emma's apartment while we began the divorce proceedings. I figured a judge would look favorably upon me for not just burning her outright.

The kids understood what was going on. As teenagers, they were old enough to know why their parents wouldn't be living together. They took it surprisingly well, at least on the surface, having several friends with divorced parents. The real challenge, for me at least, came as the court proceedings began.

After the initial discovery phase, the judge required counseling to determine if our marriage could be saved. Living in South Carolina, judges tend to focus on their views toward morality first and being neutral arbiters second.

Our first appointment was on Tuesday afternoon in October. The view from Dr. Levin's second-floor office was a steel grey punctuated by pine trees and the occasional hardwood clinging to its last few leaves. We sat on opposite ends of the beige couch like clients in a waiting room, not spouses. Emma crossed her legs, arms folded tight against her chest. I mirrored her without meaning to. Even now, even after everything, part of me was still syncing with her body language like some pathetic echo.

Dr. Levin was a soft-spoken, middle-aged man, glasses perched halfway down his nose. He had the tired eyes of a man who’d seen too many couples try to salvage something that had already burned.

“This is not about blame,” he said, gently. “This is about understanding what happened, so we can decide how to move forward — whether together or separately.”

“Separately,” I said immediately. “There’s no decision.”

Emma didn’t flinch. That stung more than it should’ve.

Dr. Levin nodded, scribbled something, and then asked her, “Emma, when did things begin to break down for you emotionally? Not physically. Emotionally.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Two years ago.”

I blinked. “Two years?”

She looked over at me, not apologetically — just flatly. “I started resenting you around then. You’d come home late. You’d zone out during dinner. Everything became about logistics. You stopped seeing me. I was just a function — a mom, a scheduler, a bed partner when it was convenient.”

“I was working,” I said, stunned. “For us.”

“You were building a life you thought we were supposed to want. But you never once asked me if I was still happy. You just assumed I was fine.”

“I did ask you!” I snapped. “You’d just say you were tired, or ‘it’s fine,’ or go on your phone while I was talking. Don’t rewrite it like I ignored you.”

Dr. Levin held up a hand to cool the tension.

Emma exhaled sharply. Then said, “You want honesty, right? Full honesty?”

“I want you to finally tell the truth,” I said.

She turned to the therapist. “The night with Matt… wasn’t the first.”

A pulse of silence thudded in my ears.

“What?”

She looked me dead in the eyes. No flinch. No tears. “That message wasn’t even the worst. You just found that one.”

My jaw locked. My hands curled into fists.

Dr. Levin’s pen stopped moving.

I swallowed. “How many?”

“Does it matter?”

“How many, Emma?”

She looked down, adjusted a loose thread on her sweater. “Three. Over the course of two years.”

I laughed. One bitter, disbelieving puff of air. “Were they all married, or was that just a fun bonus with Matt?”

She didn’t answer.

“And what about the stuff you did with them?” I asked, my voice cracking. “You gave them things you never gave me. The stuff you called weird or gross, or said you ‘weren’t into.’ You let them fuck your ass - I never got that! You let them cum on your face - you always said it was degrading. You never even let me finish in your mouth but all of a sudden these ass holes are worthy? And you’re doing it in our house? In our bed?"

Emma finally looked up. “Because I didn’t care how they saw me.”

That hit harder than anything else.

“I didn’t have to protect an image with them. I didn’t have to worry about being a ‘good wife’ or what they’d think of me in the morning. I could be selfish. With you… I couldn’t.”

I sat back, stunned. Hollow.

“So I was just a transaction... but with them, you could be honest? Me... your husband, a God damned benchmark? Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?" My voice now hollow with disbelief, a dam holding back the anger, tears, and disbelief.

"You saw me as your partner, your teammate. Which sounds nice,” she added, “but it also meant I stopped feeling like a woman. I felt… monitored. Praised when I played the role right. Punished with silence when I didn’t.”

I stared at her, mouth dry. “So you wanted to feel like a slut?”

She didn’t blink. “Yes. And I didn’t want to feel ashamed about it.”

The therapist scribbled something, said something forgettable. I wasn’t listening.

Everything I thought was sacred — intimacy, boundaries, what was ours — had been loaned out like it meant nothing. She hadn’t just cheated on me. She’d found some piece of herself she never let me near. And then shared it with strangers.

There was nothing left to salvage. No image of her I could keep. Not the woman I married. Not the mother of my children. Just a stranger who’d lived next to me for years wearing her face.

As we left the session, she touched my arm lightly.

“You asked for the truth,” she said. “I gave it to you.”

I shook her off.

“You didn’t give me anything,” I said. “You just kept taking.”

To be continued...