Dear Emily,
This Luzon-wide quarantine has been an absolute nightmare for me. Ever since the lockdown, I have had to endure ongoing emotional torture by my wife, because of one terrible mistake I made a few months ago. I cheated on her by having a drunken one-night stand with one of my female coworkers.
I felt so guilty with what I had done that I confessed to her five months ago. She was so angry that she left me and took our 2-year-old son with her. I called her many times to say I’m sorry and that I was willing to do anything to fix our marriage. She agreed to come back on the condition that she could do anything she wanted and I would not stop her. What she wanted was an “open marriage,” where she would be allowed to have sex with other men.
She would go out every Saturday night to be with her lover. I guess this is her way of punishing me for my infidelity. She said I’ve hurt her, so it’s her turn to hurt me back tenfold. Now, since they can’t see each other due to the lockdown, she would have phone sex with her lover while I am in our bedroom because she wanted me to hear it. But I would leave the room.
Ever since that one-night stand, my wife and I haven’t been intimate with each other. She said that only her lover deserves to have sex with her since I’ve broken our marriage vows. She was sweet and caring before, and now she is cruel and indifferent. The woman I married has become an entirely different person.
This is all my fault, and I’m suffering for my sin. I’ve agreed to this arrangement, but now I’m regretting it. Should I continue to let my wife punish me in this manner? —TORTURED HUSBAND
Has she given you a timeline on when she will forgive you for that one-nighter? Will it be a year, five years, a decade? It cannot go on forever because everything has an end somehow. A sentence has a period. She cannot punish that one-night stand by having a long-playing affair with this lover or lovers. Fair is fair, but this definitely is unfair! What she is basically showing you is that she will never forgive you for that one sin you committed.
Now that you’re locked down together 24/7, does she have to rub poo on your face and spit at you as well, by having this phone sex with her lover in your presence? If she hated you this much, why did she even agree to come back? It would have been much better to throw acid on your face or run you over with a truck if there was a chance she’d turn around and take you back.
It was a one-night drunken affair. You didn’t bring the woman home and canoodle in your bedroom. You didn’t get her pregnant or continue seeing her afterward. You even confessed to her and perhaps hoped to wash off that guilt that consumed you.
Did you expect a thank-you from her for your confession? Or a pat on the shoulder for your honesty? Had you stayed quiet and pretended nothing happened, nobody could have been the wiser. But she had no magnanimity in her heart. Instead she used your confession as her license to humiliate you and tell you she deserves to have her lover to spite you till kingdom come.
She had every right to possibly have her own one-night stand or two, to even up the hurt. And if she can never again find any forgiveness for you, so be it. Just don’t accept the humiliation of making you hear their phone sex in your bedroom.
She’s gone a bit too much. The punishment does not fit the crime. Stand up and take back what’s left of the self-respect she has shamelessly trampled upon.
