DEAR Emily,
Recently, I caught my wife of 25 years sending this SMS to her ex: “I know what I am doing is not right for me (us). We should end this ‘friendship’ though it offers comfort to us. I know it takes incredible strength of character to break up and even more strength to remain resolute.”
She is eight years younger than me. I’ve doubted her fidelity all these years, and it was reinforced when I caught her sending that SMS to one of her many exes. I am now planning to have DNA tests done to one or two of my children.
PAT
Marriage is full of ups and downs, turns and twists, laughter and tears, unexpected bumps that rattle and shake couples, to test whether they can hold steadfast to each other or just let go without a fight.
Oftentimes, it also takes three to make a marriage work. Or four, occasionally? Affairs happen, no matter how immoral or decadent they are. Instead of wagging that judgmental finger, people should forgive such affairs because they have saved quite a few marriages.
No matter how many how-to books there are on saving a marriage, or trips to marriage therapists, there is really no sure formula on how to make it work.
In your 25 years together, and having had this foreboding of your wife’s infidelity, didn’t you ever ask yourself what could have caused it? Didn’t you ever suspect that her need for a lover could be symptomatic of her unhappiness with you?
Surely, you two must have been in love once upon a time. That love couldn’t have flown out the window without cause. Something must have gone awry along the way, and sadly, neither you nor she tried to fix whatever it was that was disappearing before your very eyes.
So you caught your wife sending an SMS to her ex. You’re also planning to have DNA tests done on one or two of your kids. What now? She, as you allege, has been at it all these years. Couldn’t she have just upped and made her life more bearable by taking in a lover or lovers over time, and that kept her from leaving you?
And you, whether from fear or laziness, must have watched it all from the wayside, and just kept mum and fumed quietly.
Have the DNA done on the kids if it will quiet your belligerent mind. If it’s found that one or two aren’t yours, what then? Will you throw out the mother and the kid, or kids? After finding the truth, can you then find it in your heart to keep what you’ve discovered to yourself?
Must you destroy the lives of those so young, who had nothing to do with the sins of their parents? Will you really exact vengeance as tit for tat for being bamboozled by your wife? Or will you be magnanimous and put a stop to this downward spiral of unhappiness once and for all?
Can’t you to pick up whatever sliver of kindness is left and forgive and forget the hurt wrought upon you?
The fact is, something must have kept you from separating from her, despite all your dark thoughts and unhappiness with her these past 25 years. Could it have been that you never stopped loving her?
Easter is upon us. In this season of renewal, find the path to restoring some happiness in your lives. It’s just your pride that was wounded, and nobody died. Swallow it, charge it to experience, and be Christ-like in forgiving, however difficult it is.
E-mail the author at marcelo@inquirer. com.ph or emarcelo629@gmail.com