How Could She Think This Was Okay?

I could never be in a relationship without trust, and now my trust in you has been completely broken. I couldn't love you again wondering if you were thinking about me or fantasying about some other lover when we made love. As soon as you walked out the door you took all of the love, respect, trust, and friendship you claimed to have for me and washed it down the drain. I could never forgive you for that, trust you again, and even be friends with you. I have to cut you out of my life just like you cut my love out of my chest.

A couple of practical things to tell you. I have split up all of our assets, and paid the mortgage for the next two months. Your 50% of our joint accounts is the check I enclosed in this envelope. I have cancelled our Verizon joint account as of Monday. You will have to get your own. I have cancelled our insurance, and our joint credit cards. You will have to get your own. I have taken my name off the mortgage and written a quick claim deed to you putting the house in your name. You can do what you want with it, sell it or live there; it doesn't matter to me as it is not my home anymore and I'll never be back. I sold my car and as you can see, I have left in the RV. Sometime down the road I will pawn your wedding rings for gas money, and at least they will have served some purpose.

I should tell you about a couple things that I did in my anger and pain to spite you and your destruction of my love. As you can see, I took a box cutter to the wedding album and you'll see some pieces of the photos sitting in the fireplace. Go ahead and burn them; it's as fitting of a cremation of our marriage as any.

I also have penned an e-mail to all our friends, relatives, co-workers and contacts telling them about your decision to go outside of our marriage and cheat on me; and my decision that I can't tolerate that and I am leaving you. You have a day or two to get your story together on how you want to spin it, but just maybe you can start your new life by taking responsibility for what you have done.

The good news for you is you now have my permission to you ahead and fuck whoever you want to. Have all the sexual experiences or affairs you want. It would be nice if you didn't pick married men, because you've already fucked up enough lives, but go ahead and try and find whatever it was you were looking for that caused you to throw us away like yesterday's newspaper.

You can divorce me, sell the house, move, do whatever you want to do. I don't care and I will leave that all up to you. Should I be lucky enough to find a woman that actually does love me the way I deserve, then perhaps I'll worry about a divorce. I have quit my job, cashed out my 401K, and the only plan I have right now is to never see you again and to take a left out of the driveway when I leave. Other than that, I guess I'll forge out a new life and hope to leave your memory in the rear-view mirror. Goodbye.

Billy"

Molly had to read through the letter several times to really believe this was happening. She could see Billy's tear stains on the sheets as he wrote it. She got up, saw the damage to the wedding album and could barely make it to the sink before she threw up and nearly blacked out.

"My God, what have I done. How could I have been so self-centered and stupid. How could I destroy the only man I'll ever really love? I had it all and gave it up for the worst, most pathetic sex and an asshole that only wanted to get in my pants and didn't know what to do when he did."

Molly crawled to the couch in the living room, got on it, and curled up into the fetal position and cried herself out before falling asleep. She couldn't believe that she had been so stubborn and so fixated on her lust to try a new sex partner, that she hadn't heard or believed all of the warnings and ultimatums that Billy had given her. She had destroyed her life in the matter of a few weeks and she now knew she would pay the price of her betrayal for the rest of her life.

Epilogue

Billy ended up driving to the banks of the Mississippi and decided to follow it from Minneapolis/St. Paul down to New Orleans. When he got there, he would decide to take a left or a right. The long driving hours were wrought with thoughts of Molly and whether he was doing the right thing, but he decided that he wouldn't make any decisions about that for weeks to come.

At this point he couldn't even see being friends, much less marriage partners, but if his anger left him and if he got to the point where it was more important to him to be with her than without her, he would maybe open up a communication dialogue with her. But he gave it less than a 25% chance of happening and it would be a long road back.

Molly had to go through the humiliation and pain of explaining her ridiculous state of mind and reasoning about having a sexual fling to her parents, relatives and friends. She could tell that every single one of them would never understand her reasoning or take her side. She now really couldn't understand her reasoning either, much less explain it.

She had to admit how horribly she convinced herself that the fling wouldn't affect them. She had to explain how she just didn't understand until now the way it would destroy her marriage and how much it had destroyed her only love. She had to take responsibility for being incredibly self-centered and stupid about how important her fidelity would be both to Billy, and now to her. She could see how she had lost her family and friends respect for her, and how they started to back away in their relationships with her.

Molly called Billy's best friend Tom weekly, pleading with him to give her Billy's location, his phone number, or tell her anything about him. She begged him to tell Billy she loved him, had finally understood and taken responsibility for her cheating on their marriage, and would do anything to get him to talk with her again. "Tell him I love him, I miss him, I fucked up badly and really understand that and I'll do anything to get past this if he will let me try. I'll never divorce him and tell him I am committed to our marriage vows and will not date or have any male relationships while we are still married."

She waited every week hoping for a call or response, but it never came. She quit going out with anyone, led a lonely and solitary life at work and at home, and prayed that something would eventually bring Billy back to her and she would be waiting for him; faithful to their marriage.

About a month after Molly's affair, Andrew's doorbell rang and when he answered the door there was a man in a ski mask with a police baton that quickly beat him twice in the head and neck until he collapsed and then when he was down kicked him several times in his crotch. As Andrew laid there in pain the attacker told him that he should learn to never mess with married women, and then turned and walked away.

As time moved on, both Molly and Billy would think about what happened and both of them could never really answer the question of how could she think this was going to be okay.