Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [41]
‘What do you mean “What”?’
‘You looked like you were going to say something.’
‘No, no, go on…’
‘I’ve forgotten what I was going to say now…Anyway another part of me just wants to cut his balls off.’
‘If I hear about him doing it again I will personally cut his balls off for you. I don’t care if he is my brother.’
He put his arms around me and I sunk gratefully in. He even smelt like Tony and for a few stolen seconds I was able to pretend he was my husband, the one from the past who still cared about me.
***
Mum phoned me first thing the next morning and said, ‘Give me Claire’s number. I will make the appointment and I’m going to personally escort you there, too.’
Claire was wonderful in the beginning, so quiet and soothing and non-judgemental. She directed me to books and chat groups for victims of adultery and once again I found comfort amongst strangers. Many of their stories were remarkably similar to my own.
One reason why I was so floored by all of this was because, even allowing for his high risk profession, I’d never thought my husband would be the type to have an affair. I thought he was too much of a control freak for a start and he’d had an almost…well, not exactly prudish…but certainly conservative attitude to sex, to people who slept around a lot and all that. For Tony, sex was an important part of his life but not the most important, I think. I’m pretty certain that if he ever found himself in the unenviable position of having to choose between giving up sex and giving up flying he would choose to give up sex every single time. I’m not saying he would have liked that choice but I still think he would have made it.
Of course, when I read the experiences of other women guess what most of them said: ‘I didn’t think my husband would be the type to have an affair.’ Shows what I know.
Claire asked me one day, ‘What do you want, Ellie?’
‘I want my old life back. The one before this happened.’
‘You know that’s not possible.’
‘Then I want my old husband back.’
She looked at me patiently. ‘We can only work to improve the present and hopefully the future. How are you two getting on?’
‘We’re not even sleeping in the same room.’
‘What are you going to do about that?
‘I don’t know…but I know I’m not ready for any sort of intimacy with him. I can’t get the other woman out of my mind.’
‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘it’s clear to me that even though you’re hurting badly right now you do want to stay married. If you were planning to leave you would have done so by now.’
‘Mmm.’ I knew she was right. My prince’s armour might have been looking a little shop-worn but I didn’t want to give up on him just yet.
‘But there is only so much we can do unless Tony agrees to go to marriage counselling with you. You’ve asked him?’
‘Yes,’ I lied.
I did so that night.
His response was predictable. ‘No. I don’t need counselling.’
‘It would be we - couples’ counselling.’
‘Even worse - airing our dirty laundry in public.’
I refrained from saying that he was the only one with dirty laundry as far as I could determine.
‘Anyway I know what would happen,’ he went on, ‘You two would gang up and blame me for everything. Anyone can tell that that Claire is a man hater from way back.’
‘We could find someone else.’
‘No. The problem is over. We just need to move on. No actually - you need to move on. You need to let me move back into our bedroom and start being a proper wife again.’
‘You don’t understand…I’m not ready for that.’
‘Well you could start by cooking dinner occasionally.’
I reported this back to Claire.
‘It’s not a good sign. We can work on your own self-esteem issues but unless he’s prepared to come to the party there’s only so much we can do.’
‘But he hates talking about these things.’
‘You’re making excuses for him, Ellie. He has damaged your trust and your marriage and unless he’s prepared to acknowledge