How to Confront Your Cheating Husband About Your New STD

“I brought a surprise for you from the store.  Surprise!” I threw the medicine at Husband.  It was still in the paper white bag that was handed to me at the pharmacy.

He starred down at his hands.  His eyes were bloodshot and sweats clung to his body.

“Whhaat? What is this?” Husband asked.

“We have Chlamydia. You gave us Chlamydia!” I shrieked.

Insert long pause.

He stammered, “How? How did this happen?”

“You screwed someone else and got an STD is how it happened,” I remarked, “We are SO getting a divorce. What the hell were you thinking? I’m texting your f*ing friend Rachel.  She needs to know she has Chlamydia too.”

I picked up the phone.  He put his head down. His hands covered his face. He couldn’t talk or move. He sat there, on the couch, like a blob of shock and disbelief.  There was no lying to get him out of the situation. He was caught, and could not finesse his way out this time.

All I could focus on was the “Panasonic” label on the flat screen TV in front of me. I felt like I was in a bad Lifetime Original movie that had yet to be made. Everything around me was frozen and cracking.  I couldn’t believe what was happening.  The clouds of mist rolled over my eyes.  My body felt like lead.  How had my life turned into this? What had I done to deserve a marriage in pieces like this?

I couldn’t understand it.  In my mind, things between us had been fine. Things were not perfect, because we had two little people that demanded every moment of our attention and Husband was working all the time, but we still had each other I thought.

“Talk,” I said, “What the hell has been going on?  Tell me about the other half of my marriage that I had no clue about for the last year.”

Nothing. Silence and bloodshot eyes looking at the ground was all I got in return.  He couldn’t speak yet.  I assume he was processing the fact that he could not lie his way out and his life and family and house were soon to be gone.

Then it came pouring out. “Rachel.  I have been seeing her since November.  We bumped into each other at the store in October and then I started seeing her after that.  It seemed like you didn’t want to go dancing any more.”

Dancing? My marriage and life were ending because I was too tired from doing all of the grocery shopping, holding down a full time job, cleaning, cooking, cleaning some more, and taking care of a six month old baby boy to want to go dancing.  Now everything was different and I had no family. It was broken.  How did dancing ruin everything?

He was looking for an excuse I assumed.  Dancing must have been the excuse of the hour.

“It was the sex,” he continued.  “You told me you wanted to have sex before ten o’clock.  It seemed like you wanted to control the sex. I was frustrated and angry.”

I couldn’t comprehend what I was hearing.  I was the one who was up all night with baby E. who wouldn’t sleep, trying to manage a full time job as a teacher, and doing all of the cooking and cleaning. I told him we could have sex as much as he wanted but it had to be earlier because I was so exhausted from trying to run the household and work.

Husband was working hard too though. Last November he had been working until 7:00 or 8:00 at night and working on our half finished house in his free time and on the weekends.  He worked a lot. He provided very well.  Maybe too well.  There had been little time to connect and find time to be together.  But I guess I thought we were in this together and we would pull through when the kids were a little more independent.

Broken, sick. and Alone.  These were the new words that I used to describe my life. I looked at the stranger who was heaped in a ball on the other side of the room and shook my head, what a disaster.