Happy Husbands Don’t Cheat

UGH…

This weekend has been filled with, well, just moments of “ugh.”

I have not had much grace. I am not being a good friend to him. I’ve been so sad. And the hurt just feels like it has been hurting a bit more these last couple of days. It’s honestly been so hard to keep it together and I’ve had several moments where it was impossible.

When my (ex) husband is home, and he’s being humble, filled with regret, and, therefore, kind, things feel “normal” and normal is super confusing to me. Sometimes, though, when he’s home, he justifies his behavior and utters my newest most hated phrase: “Happy husbands don’t cheat.”

Excuse me while I go rage out and break my other hand…

He traveled last week for work and was only home for about 11 hours between Friday night and Saturday morning before leaving for work again. Eleven hours, most of which were overnight, also happened to be sufficient time to trigger the heck out of me. And rather than respond with grace, I handled it with sarcasm, anger, and bitterness.

*sigh*

I am not always strong, nor am I always the bigger person. Sometimes I am very human and petty emotions get the best of me.

Then he’s gone again, traveling for business. But now I know exactly what he does when he travels for work. While I fully (logically) understand he is no longer my husband, I still struggle with his actions, though I now have no right to, since we aren’t really married anymore.

So it kind of all just breaks my brain. And my heart? Forget about it.

On Thursday he comes home again. Just in time to help me with our daughter’s birthday party, where we will entertain her (our) guests, together, like we have for the last 8 birthday parties. Except this time will be our last time. Next year, he’ll have his own place and I will host by myself. He’ll merely be a guest.

We’ll officially be a broken family.

God, that sentence hurts.

Logically, I get that we weren’t happy. We hadn’t been happy for a long time. There were many times where we barely liked one another – and it was obvious to the both of us. In a lot of ways, we’d both given up on the marriage.

But we’d started seeing a marriage therapist. I was working on changing my mindset, trying to focus on the good he brought to my world, rather than all the little (and big) ways he annoyed, hurt, and angered me. I was seeking advice on how to make our marriage work from anywhere I could get it. I wanted our marriage to work.

He didn’t.

The bottom line is that he wanted to do something so terrible that it would make me stop fighting for our marriage. He wanted out. I can’t help but continuously feel that I wasn’t worth fighting for. Our family wasn’t worth fighting for. And when he justifies his actions by blaming me, a very tiny part of me believes him. Because our marriage was really difficult.

Then I snap out of it. It doesn’t happen for long – me believing him. But then I get so mad for allowing myself to be manipulated that I end up handling the situation quite poorly. And then I feel guilty!

Ugh!

So, then I apologize because I am supposed to be living my life with grace. I am supposed to be understanding and forgiving. These are the bars that I have set for myself. This is how I am supposed to behave because it’s honestly the way I want to behave. It’s easy to respond with grace and class when he’s being humble and apologetic. It is so very, very hard when he convinces himself that I pushed him to cheat.

Because, he tells me, happy husbands don’t cheat.

*Deep breath in. Long, slow breath out.*

I believe I am on this path purposefully. I don’t believe that anything happens to us by accident. And it’s very obvious that I need to practice the act of giving grace to those who don’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve an ounce of grace. He especially doesn’t deserve it when he utters the stupidest sentence I have ever heard.

So, I continue to have opportunities to practice. I’m not great at it yet. I’m not even mediocre at it yet. I’m actually quite poor at giving him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Which means I’m sure I’m going to be presented with many more opportunities to practice being kind, understanding, compassionate, and forgiving. This is my chance to grow and be a better human.

I want to be a better human. So when he comes home on Thursday, I’m sure I will get an abundance of chances to practice giving grace and I will try oh, so very hard to embrace them.

I have to remember that he is broken. Anyone who believes the sentence, “Happy husbands don’t cheat,” must be tragically damaged. Whether or not he is going to work at fixing all of his broken pieces is up to him. It’s only up to me to give him the grace he doesn’t deserve.

So that is exactly what I will try to do, in between taking deep breaths to calm the rage inside when he says stupid things.

I know that one day, some beautiful day sometime in the future, I will be happier, and it’ll be because of this journey. Until then, I will make a conscious effort to embrace the low moments, remembering that it is through this pain and adversity that I will grow.

Mindset is everything and I have to choose to see this catastrophe as a gift he has given me. Seeing it through any other lens turns me into someone I don’t really care for and while I get that it’ll happen every now and then, I don’t have to live in that space. I refuse to.

This weekend has been challenging. That’s just the way this chapter is going to go. There’s no getting around crappy days. As I sit back right now, finishing up these last few sentences, and taking a deep cleansing breath, I’m ready to try to move forward again. Despite having all the reasons to hold onto my anger and hurt and disappointment, I will consciously move forward with compassion and grace for him.

For no reason other than I want to be better. I want to do better.

And so I will try my best, in all the moments, but especially the ones that are awful, to give grace to the man that believes, “Happy husbands don’t cheat.”