Perfection Vs. Forgiveness

Perfection Vs. Forgiveness

By

Amber Solis

Author's note: no sex in this one, sorry. Just a truckload of emotion as some folks learn some tough lessons.

There's an end note for this one, as well.

Our marriage of twelve years was over. I had cheated on my husband. It was the age-old story: I was out of town, on the East Coast, for training at work. The class was six weeks long. I had married when I was 17 and Steve was 22. So it was no surprise that the guys in the class would all come and talk to me. Men did it all the time. Some women, too.

One of the guys, Mark, a classic stocky, tanned, fit, alpha male, had caught my attention. On the first day of class, we split into two-man teams, and he made a beeline to me to ask me to partner up with him. I said yes.

I'll admit it: I liked him. Right from the very start. I felt comfortable with him. He wasn't as handsome as my husband, Steve. He wasn't quite as fit as Steve was. He was in his early 40's. So what was it that made me like him so much, so quickly? I don't know. I couldn't explain it. But I looked forward to spending the day with him every day.

The time we spent in class quickly progressed to time spent going out to dinner together. Either with the whole class, as a group, or just me and him, alone. Getting a drink or two, and dancing for a while. I had so much fun with him. I felt so relaxed and at ease with him. But we didn't have sex. Oh, sure, I thought about it. Who doesn't? Every night he'd walk me to my room, we'd share a hug, and go back to our separate rooms. In only two days, I came to consider him a very dear friend. That's how quickly my feelings for him developed.

But none of that excuses what I did. I take full responsibility for having sex with him.

The last night of the class, after dinner, he put his arm around my shoulders for the first time as we walked back to the hotel. And I stepped in close to him and put my arm around his waist. And that was how we walked back to the hotel. It just felt so natural.

At the door to my room, I found myself holding his hand and welcoming him into my room, into my arms, and into my bed. I knew it was wrong. I didn't fully understand why I was doing this. I hadn't even had anything to drink that night.

But I did it. I cheated on my husband. I told myself it would only be this one time, and no one would ever know otherwise. No one would be hurt. In that moment, I wanted to be with Mark more than I wanted to be faithful to Steve.

That was all it took. A circumstantial opportunity and a bit of rationalization. That was all I needed to do something I knew was wrong.

He was sweet. The sex was far better than with my husband. Add to that the thrill of the newness. In terms of making love, all I will say is: in terms of size, Mark was somewhat less well-endowed than my husband, Steve. So, no, it wasn't that he was in any way better, or worse, physically, than Steve. But with Mark, sex was fun. No, it was joyous and wonderful! He made me come four times! I had never experienced an orgasm with my husband when we made love.

As enjoyable as the evening was, it was not worth the pain that followed. How I wish I had done things differently. But what was done was done.

The next morning the rising sun brought a friend with it: guilt. The guilt hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. Guilt for betraying my husband, guilt because I didn't know if Mark was married, and I had just thrown his marriage a deadly blow. Guilt for the orgasms, even. I could hardly bear to look at myself in the mirror!

Mark left early, and I never saw him again.

All that day, it was like I was moving through a thick fog. I don't know how I managed to find the airport and my flight. On arrival, at the baggage carousel, there was Steve.

I faked a bright smile and a happy, enthusiastic greeting hug.

"Jesus, Sarah, you look like Hell." These were Steve's first words to me. "We have to get you out of here, I don't want anyone seeing us with you looking so terrible. Did you sleep in those clothes?"

We grabbed my bags and headed home. The entire way, I managed to keep myself from crying.

But when we pulled up to the house, I almost lost it.

And when I walked through the front door, I did lose it. I dropped my carry-on bag and my purse and just started sobbing.

"Steve, there's something I have to tell you..."

###

It went about as well as you can imagine. He utterly blew up. He called me a whore, a slut, a bitch-in-heat, and just about every other derogatory name you can think of. He asked me if I was on my period. Is that why I did it? Then he started wondering if I was telling him the whole truth.

"Was it just once, though? Sarah?" he said. "How do I know that?"

"I can't believe you are saying this, Steve! Of course it's the only time! I told you about it. If I hadn't said anything, you'd never have known!"

"What does he have that I don't?" Steve demanded. "Was he good in bed? Did he have a bigger dick than me? Was he better looking? What, exactly, was it that he had that I don't that made you flush twelve years of marriage down the toilet?"

"I don't know!" But by this time, I did know. I had figured out on the plane what it was about Mark that made me forsake my marriage vows. He was fun. He made me feel good, relaxed. He was much more considerate in bed than Steve had ever been. But I knew Steve would be out the door if I said those things.

"I want a divorce," he said.

"Steve! Why? I made a mistake! I admit it. I take full responsibility for it! I'll do anything to fix this, I swear!"

"No longer interested. I just can't believe you did this! Why? What does he have that I don't?"

Oh, God, I was so tempted to tell him. Spit it out in his face. "I don't know!"

Steve wasn't finished, however. "Am I not good enough for you?" he demanded yet again. "Jesus, what will all our friends and family think when we divorce? Do you know how this makes me look? Everyone's going to know we weren't the perfect couple!"

"Does that matter so much to you?" I asked.

"YES! God, how do you think we got to where we are? Because I worked hard to make us perfect, and keep us perfect! No, this is all on you. I'm telling everyone you cheated on me, so at least I still have a reputation!"

"Steve," I said, pleading, "Can't you at least sleep on this for one night? I tell you this, and not even five minutes later, you're talking about a divorce?"

"You're God damn right, I am!"

"So, just like that? You don't love me anymore?"

"No."

"Can I earn your trust and love again? Can you forgive me? I'll do anything, ANYTHING, to fix this!"

"I can't forgive you when I don't know why you did it because I don't know what I'm forgiving. I don't want to see your face anymore. We are done."

"WHY?" I shouted.

"Because we had a perfect marriage, and apparently that was not good enough for you, and you cheated on me. You can't say why you did it. So you cannot say you know it will never happen again. Even worse: if you don't know why you did it, then the odds are that whatever set of conditions caused this still exists. And that means you might cheat again. So, no thanks, I don't want my heart carved out a second time."

"But we know that won't happen!" I said.

"We know? Fuck you, Sarah! I knew you would never cheat on me! Until you did. So we don't know that it won't happen again. I feel like I can't trust you or anything you say, and I'm done with living with that uncertainty. And I'm certainly not letting your whorish behavior reflect on me in the eyes of the community."

"Steve, this could be anyone's story, not just ours! This has happened to many couples, and they got through it. It's nothing more than the same risk you would take with anyone you might marry! It's just life, and we sometimes have to roll with the awful crap it throws at us. Steve, I swear to God, I will make this up to you if you let me! "

"This wasn't some horrible event of life. This was you stabbing us in the back with your "little mistake." And that's a risk I do not intend to expose myself to a second time."

"You can't be serious!" I said. "We wanted to have kids!"

"I know."

"You're going to throw that away because I cheated one time? Having a family? Being a father? If it were you that cheated, I'd forgive you under these circumstances! I'd try to work it out, find out where we went wrong, and try fixing it!"

"No. You threw all of that away, and there's the risk you might do it again."

"BUT I WON'T!"

"We've already been over this. Your words aren't good enough."

Suddenly I was in a blind rage. "God damn you, Steve! You think you have this all figured out? You're going to throw away all our time together, and the family we might have raised, for this one thing? Because you're worried about how you will look in the community?"

And then he was saying unforgivable things. "God damn you, Sarah! WE HAD IT ALL! We had such a GREAT life! We were the envy of all our friends. And you go and do this and destroy our marriage, and you can't even say WHY? You know God damn well WHY you did it! You wanted to. You were horny, tempted, figured you wouldn't get caught, and thought it would be fun! YOU threw away our life that could have been. And you cannot even say WHY! So fuck you very much if you think I'm going to sign up for more!"

And then he said it. The worst thing ever. "Thank God we didn't have any kids, yet. Thank God this happened before we had any. In that sense, your fucking around has been a blessing. So thank you, Sarah."

"You know what?" I said. "Maybe you are right. Maybe my cheating was a blessing in disguise! You want to know why I slept with him? He made me feel good! He was fun! I could talk to him without having what I said critically evaluated and dissected. And that was before I slept with him! And you know what else? He was better in bed than you! He cared enough to make it good for me, as well as for him! So if my "fucking around" makes you LEAVE so I can find a better man? Then it was a blessing, and I thank God for it!"

"Well, good news. You've already eliminated two candidates."

He left the house that night. We never spoke again, except through our lawyers, and when the divorce was settled, he moved out of the state and didn't tell me where he had moved to. His threat to tell everyone it was all my fault? It turned out to be just a threat. He didn't tell anyone we knew, not our neighbors or our friends. He couldn't have himself be seen as a man who had been cheated on.

###

For the next three months, I'd go to bed every night wishing I would just die in my sleep. And in the morning, when the sun rose again, it dragged me, kicking, screaming, and unwilling through the day with it. Life. It just keeps on going, no matter what happens, what we do, or how we may feel about it. I made my way through work on autopilot. I spent lunches at my desk with the door to my office closed, just crying my eyes out.

You can't cry forever, though. Shit happens, often vastly in excess of requirements. And life goes on. When my grief for what I had done was over, when my grief for my lost husband, my lost marriage, my lost chance at a family and a great life had run its course, I began to come back to my more usual self. Well, I'd always mourn for what I had lost. And for how I had lost it, for how Steve and I both had lost it. But I eventually became able to handle myself in public. I began to be happy to see the sunrise once again. I started looking at men again!

A few years later, I learned from his mother that Steve had gone into a decline. He'd become nearly impossible to work with, intolerant of any mistake or mishap anyone made. He would over-analyze any project at work to the point that the project would become paralyzed. Then he made a series of disastrous decisions at work, costing the company millions. He was fired. He became an alcoholic. With no job and spending everything on cheap whiskey, his bills got away from him, and the bank foreclosed on his home. The day he was evicted, he ran into traffic and threw himself under a large truck. It seemed he couldn't even forgive himself, much less anyone else. He had never remarried.

I cried for days. It was like losing him, losing my marriage, all over again. It all could have been so different. It all could have been so much better. I put our marriage in jeopardy with my bad decision. That was 100% my fault, forever.

But Steve ended our marriage and his life due to his absolute unwillingness to forgive, and by being more concerned with his image in the eyes of everyone else on Earth except ours. I cried for all of that and more.

Over the days and weeks that followed, our story made it out to all our friends and neighbors. I wasn't going to lie about any of it: mine or Steve's. A few friends blamed me and never spoke to me again. But the big surprise to me was how many of our neighbors and friends remained friends with me. They all told me the same thing: they had never liked Steve; he was too much of a "look how perfect I am" braggart. He was always quick to point out what he thought was a flaw in anything our friends and neighbors did. Everyone we knew mostly only associated with us because they liked me. Most of our friends said "good riddance" to Steve and that I was better off without him.

One of my biggest supporters was my mother-in-law. She came to the house demanding an explanation. Trust Steve, her own son, not to tell her why his marriage had failed. I told her everything. When I finished, she walked up to me and very lightly slapped me in the face. "That's for cheating on my son." Then she gave me a long, tight hug and said, "That's for being rid of him. Good for you. I'm sorry I didn't raise a better man for you." We held each other and cried for over an hour.

Tears were my most frequent companion over the days and weeks immediately after. I had a lot to cry over.

But soon enough, those tears ran their course, too.

###

Time heals all wounds. A few years passed, and I was remarried and happy, with a little boy and a little girl. I never cheated on my husband again. But then, I never loved my first husband, Steve, like I do my second husband, Fred. This time around, being older and wiser, I picked a man who made me feel good, like Mark had. A man who didn't have a perfection complex.

They say everything happens for a reason. I don't know about that. Often enough, it seems like shit just happens, and everybody catches some, sooner or later. Maybe what I had told Steve in our last talk was true: that my one-time episode of cheating was my "get out of a marriage with a man who won't be a good father" card? I had thought Steve was the perfect man. But we had never been tested like that before. And when we were? He failed. In comparison, and in reality.

Until I met Mark and spent some time with another man, I never knew how much fun spending time with a man could be. Until then, I had never realized how rigid and unforgiving Steve was. Or how inconsiderate of a lover Steve was. Or at least I had not been consciously aware of it.

So, was my episode of cheating my subconscious's way of freeing me from that marriage? Or was it God's plan that I learn what it is like to have an unforgiving spouse so I better appreciate my second husband and understand the value of what can be lost when there is no forgiveness?

I wish, every day, that I had never cheated on Steve. I wish I had not dealt such a foul blow to our marriage. I wish Steve had been just a little more understanding. If he had stayed, I'd have done anything to make him happy. And I mean anything! But what was done was done. And it was in the next step, where we went from there, that Steve failed.

But I'd never have realized Steve's true nature if I hadn't made my horrible mistake. And once we had children, it would have been too late to leave without further pain. And I wouldn't have the life Mark and I and our children have now.

Did my first marriage have to fail for this to happen?

Maybe my episode of cheating was meant to be Steve's chance to learn and grow and move beyond the bad things that can happen in life? His chance to learn some forgiveness? At least enough to be able to keep a good marriage and life together? But he blew it. With no capacity to forgive, I don't think any of us will last for long in this world. Steve certainly didn't.

If these were lessons we were all meant to learn, I could wish it didn't all have to be so painful. And for Steve, so final. But we can all wish for whatever we want. God has His own plans for us. We may not like it, but we have to learn from it.

I don't know.

What I do know is: when my husband, Fred, came home from a long trip, I could see something was wrong. He confessed that he had slept with another woman while he was gone.

I hugged him and said, "Ok. I understand how this can happen. We'll find out what is wrong between us that caused this, and we will fix this. We'll work this out."

It took a while, but a lot less than I would have thought. Hurt feelings? We had a truckload of those to work through like anyone in this situation. But we met them head-on. Together. We had to see a marriage counselor to help us work through this, but even at our lowest point, we never even thought about saying the word "divorce." Our children never knew about our issues. We kept our marriage and our family intact, and we built a stronger, even more committed relationship than before.

And it was a good thing we did, because life isn't done with us until we're in the grave, and we had several more "life challenges" ahead of us as our years passed. Financial stuff. Work stuff. Illnesses. Temptation from others, for both of us! Issues with the kids as they grew up. Both of us made mistakes. But we forgave each other, and we went on. And that's what we taught our children, as well as we could: you're human. You're going to make mistakes and bad decisions. You're going to hurt others, intentionally and unintentionally, and you're going to be hurt by others. Your one saving grace, straight from God, is forgiveness.

Fred and I weathered all of life's challenges. We made a beautiful life together for ourselves and our children.

Perfection or forgiveness. As human beings, we can't have the former. And even if we could, I suspect it wouldn't suit us very well. And the pursuit of it would only lead to destruction. So thank God for forgiveness. You can have all of that that you want. The only thing limiting us in forgiveness is our own selves.

End note: This one was a true story of a very dear friend. When it all blew up, believe it or not, even the most judgmental among us were glad to see "Steve" leave "Sarah." Nobody could stand that guy! And no one was surprised she cheated on him with the first man who came along and showed her life could be better. Part of it all was that Sarah had married so young. She didn't know life and marriage could be any different. But that was a calculated move on Steve's part. The idiot figured he could boss her around, belittle her at every turn, and she wouldn't know any better than to accept it. We all used to say, "The only reason he married was so he could have someone to criticize who couldn't just walk away from him." The guy was the worst sort of asshole.

So, my darlings, be you husband or wife, take heed of the lesson in here: if you constantly belittle your spouse, don't be surprised one day when some random acquaintance comes along and shows them life doesn't have to be a pointless pursuit of impossible to achieve perfection.