I Busted My Boyfriend With Another Woman—And Married Him Anyway

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Javier Marquez 46887746-S

For years I was the queen of censure, the mistress of mercilessness.

If anyone ever cheated on me—forget boiled bunnies or revenge bodies—I swore that I’d rise up like Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. a force of vengeance who planned her own husband’s murder.

Until it happened to me, that is, one summer morning, when I busted my boyfriend having an affair on the West Coast, where he was working on a six-month telecommunications contract. Figuring out that something was amiss was the easy part—as with most things, technology giveth, and it taketh away. The irony being that my guy, a telecom engineer, was the victim of his own professional prowess.

I was sipping coffee in a New York City screening room waiting to sit through, of all things, the rom-com of the year, 500 Days of Summer. I obsessively checked my phone, waiting for a text from Justin, who was working remotely in Seattle. Normally I’d get a ping at first light, telling me loved me, sending me a silly idea about a mad business venture he was hatching to open a winery in Tuscany, checking on my dinner plans.

Just sweet words connecting across state lines. Today, nothing. Same deal with the day before. Last night also, no text or call. Just oppressive maddening silence and no response when I called or texted. The dots started connecting. Oh, and that time a few days ago I tried to buy something using his Amazon account and the password was inexplicably changed. Surely not? Oh, but maybe.

My synapses fired and my brain roamed in a direction that I tried to roadblock. Justin always, always had his phone in hand. He’d kept his passwords the same for years, since we had started dating in 2004. His devices, be it laptops or iPads or phones, were always charged. Always within easy reach. It defied logic that now, his behavior had changed. Unless it was for the most obvious, most clichéd reason in the world.

I got up. Found the stairwell. Strode onto 49th Street, teeming with exhaust and cabs and hordes of sweaty tourists wielding their devices. I marshaled my courage, told myself the truth was better than self-delusion. And I called him. He picked up. “Hi, baby,” he murmured, “what’s up?”

So I went for it because subtlety has never been my forte. “Are you fucking someone else?”

Maybe I blindsided him. Maybe somehow he’d been expecting it. Or maybe he wanted to be busted. No matter the reason, he responded with a terse yes, but it wasn’t what I thought, I needed to hear him out, it wasn’t anything major or serious.

Hell to the no.

“So this means there’s nothing else for us to talk about and we’re done,” I told him, blindly drifting toward the apartment we shared uptown. I called my friends, rallied them to a pity-party dinner on my behalf, and turned off my phone for the rest of the night. Their responses ranged from rancor (“He’s an ass, and you can do better”) to pragmatism (“Everyone makes mistakes—hear him out and give it a chance.”). Given my past stance on monogamy, I went with the former. Damn right, I could do better. For the rest of the week, I veered from rage, ignoring his calls and texts, to desperation, sending him meandering, accusatory missives about how he’d ruined my life.

About two weeks into my self-created state of emotional emergency, my friend Carol and I went bar-hopping in the East Village. It was meant to be my single debut, proof that I could be giddy and radiant and hilarious all on my own. We met two guys. And I dedicated the next two hours to whining to my unfortunate impromptu date about my ex, regaling him with every last sordid, sad, miserable detail until he finally sighed, bought me a final drink, and said that maybe I should just call Justin and tell him how I felt. I told him the idea was absurd because I was totally, utterly, absolutely, unquestionably over him.

Over the next few weeks, Justin called and emailed. With 2,863.1 miles between us, there was very little room for artifice or further deception. What was the point? And we had some of the most honest discussions since our first date (a set-upat a health food restaurant, of all places, for two people who devoured burgers and steaks). He told me the other woman was whimsical and free-spirited; she didn’t want marriage or children; he felt like with her, his dreams were up for grabs, instead of rooted in my needs and wants. And most of all, when I almost reflexively said no because of a deep-rooted fear of the unknown coupled with laziness, she screamed hell, yes. Like the time he asked to spend Sunday at the International Center of Photography but I had an event I opted to cover instead. Or when he wanted us to learn to make Arrabiata penne at the Institute of Culinary Education but I opted out because it sounded like a chore. Or when he took a few months off and relocated to his home state to build his dream house in Austin, with his dad as the architect, and I was so peeved by the disruption that I refused to even visit, much less look at blueprints or sketches. I realized that I was, perhaps, the least-impulsive, most joy-killing person I knew, someone who talked herself out of everything—so I booked a trip to Finland (yes, that Finland) with my friend Liz, because it was totally out of character and I wanted to be someone untethered for a minute. Lo and behold, I loved it.

Maybe, just maybe, I had to accept some of the responsibility for the straying, because what we had had gone astray as well. And Carol referred me to her therapist, a thorny broad with a hard New York twang who didn’t suffer fools. There wouldn’t be any tissue-tearing or hand-wringing, she warned me; this lady wasn’t about taking your money and feeding you foolish lies. But still. I walked in and launched into my diatribe of despair. My boyfriend, working on the West Coast, had been cheating on me with his colleague. He admitted as much, didn’t even care enough to lie. And now my life, as I knew it, was toast. How could I go on? Why would I want to?

Because, said the therapist, far worse things happen to people every single day. Things they can’t control and often can’t fix. Because some of the most fortunate people have choices in life. And I was lucky enough to belong to that category. Mine centered around forgiveness. I had to decide, on the spot, whether I could get past Justin’s straying and let it go, without ever throwing it back in his face when he didn’t take out the trash or buy me sushi. Some people could. Others clung to grievances like Velcro. And if you listened to your inner voice, if you didn't vacillate or try to shut it up, you’d realize right away which person you were.

I thought of my mother, a grudge-holder of immense tenacity, and realized I couldn’t and wouldn’t live my life that way, letting toxic resentments fester and ultimately rot away my insides. That I loved Justin so deeply, so forcefully, that it would take more than an affair to break a connection in which we finished each other’s sentences and laughed so hard during a screening of Borat that we simultaneously fell out of our chairs. That in truth, our relationship had been slipping for a while, with us sniping and bickering and taking one another for granted. That he’d given up his dream of working in a winery in Europe so I could continue being an entertainment reporter in New York and he’d never thrown that back in my face. That where he was spontaneous, I could be rigid and inflexible, opting to attend the 2008 inauguration of Obama for work instead of skipping across the pond for an impromptu London vacation with him—that he had booked as a surprise for me.

Something had to give, and what it was, was my bullheadedness. So I bludgeoned my pride. I annihilated my ego. And I called Justin and asked him if I could fly to see him for the weekend, to meet eye to eye, face to face, and figure out whether what we had could or should be fixed. The onus, this time, would be on me because—well, what did I have to lose, except the love of my life?

I descended into a weird state of delirium during that six-hour flight to Seattle. Truly, I have no memory of getting on that plane, of reading something, of even thinking. But I do remember getting off at the gate, grabbing my bag, and wandering to arrivals. And when I saw Justin, I knew I was home.

I won’t diminish the damage done to our relationship, but our honesty extended beyond those cross-country calls. Justin had started keeping a journal, chronicling in painful detail why he cheated (boredom and frustration and a need for what he realized was manufactured excitement) and how he felt (at first euphoric and desired, and then rotten). He told me he’d removed all his passwords, and I could check anything, anytime, if I so wished. I, in turn, told him we’d spend the next summer in Texas, living in the home he’d built, because it was my turn to support his dreams and sideswipe my own ambition for a bit. And we’d finally, yes finally, go to Tuscany and visit all the vineyards on his wish list. And then, of course, there was the friendsplaining—telling my ride-or-dies that in fact, all the back-and-forth drama notwithstanding, and despite my earlier grandstanding, he and I were giving it another go. And to their credit, they accepted my decision and came to our wedding.

Yes, Justin and I got married in the house he built in Austin. We had a son, who is a clone of his father in every sense, from his love of putting stuff together to his inability to pick up his own mess or find his shoes. And Justin passed away from brain cancer in April 2012—ironically, my willfulness and mulishness served us in good stead when dealing with the morass of insurance and finding the best doctors. To this day I thank whatever fates guided me to that therapist and let me see past my own rage and spite and ego to embrace that most elusive thing of all: forgiveness.