I am a 40 year old businessman. My father was in the army and my mother used to be a housewife. My father, a strict disciplinarian, somehow always made me feel inadequate, during my childhood and in later years. My mother was a very loving person who really took good care of me but I lost her after an illness. That’s when my much younger sister was sent to live with my aunt. My father, then in his 40s, was greatly admired for his decision not to remarry.
My father took premature retirement and started a business. After college, I joined in. The business of making me feel inadequate continued even at work.
I felt better when I got married. We had a great courtship and felt we were genuinely in love. I always felt we were a match made in heaven. She is a professional, much more confident than I am. She used to always motivate and pep me up. We had a nice time in bed too. I always tried to help her achieve satisfaction whenever we had sex.
[restrict]Imagine my shock when, 6 months back, I came to know of her affair with an old school friend of hers. The affair had begun two years ago. She lied to me and met him and even had sex with him on her annual visits to her parent’s home. That she could hurt me like this!
But there was more. After some pressuring she revealed that she had even had an affair with my father. This had started after our first child was born and had continued for a few years. We had moved in with my father around this time and they had continued the affair, under same roof. I had once got suspicious but she had strongly rebutted it. I did not doubt her again.
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Now she says that while initially she was infatuated by him, later he exploited her, boasting that he’d had sex with several married ladies of our acquaintance.
Shattered, I asked my father to leave home and business. Since the past one month I have allowed him to rejoin business but not to stay with us at home. A few close relatives know, but my father still does not admit to any wrong doing.
For me, the last six months have been full of turmoil, doubts about myself and my whole philosophy of life. She says she never wanted to leave me and does not know why she did what she did. All she says is that it was her fault and that I was blameless. I was on the brink of breakup several times but did not take the step because my wife bore all my abuse yet refused to leave me.
Related reading: My husband had an affair, but it’s me who can’t forget
I realize that though I consider myself a mature and rational person, I also took some impulsive decisions, which in hindsight were avoidable. If ever you face such a situation, expect your mind to go into overdrive but don’t do anything drastic. I really pushed my wife but she bore my rantings with tenacity.
The affair has ended. We are trying to make it work. My children are vulnerable and their future will be affected severely if we breakup and they learn the truth about their mother. Why should they pay for her infidelity? Even though I have doubts about having fathered them, I just can’t destroy their lives for no fault of theirs.
To my children and to outsiders, we look like a normal family but there are times when my heart cries tears of blood at the betrayal by two of the closest people in my life. Yet, I am trying my best to find a renewed purpose to my life as I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason.
I think this trauma is part of divine learning. I had to undergo all this to learn the values of forgiveness, patience, love, gratitude and more. Life is too precious to waste or to lose prematurely.
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