The Spectacular Betrayal: A Story of Love, Infidelity, and Starting Over

On a sad day in November, I was sitting at DK Donuts in Boise, Idaho, talking to my London therapist. My husband was there for work, and I should have been there too if I hadn’t fallen in love with another man and turned our world upside down.

It was a spectacular betrayal. I had been close to David’s wife for years as he had been to my husband. We shared long Sunday lunches, end-of-year holiday meals, had five decades of marriage between the four of us and five children. There had always been a little attraction between David and me, but we never talked about it.

However, between my husband’s departure for London and the end of the school year in Idaho, when I was to join him with our then teenage children, David and I crossed a line. One night we were in an old western bar after a fundraising event. A band was playing, we danced a little too tightly and said things we couldn’t forget. We tried the next day and again and again, but the attraction was too strong.

Were we not happy enough?

From spring to summer, we debated whether to tell our spouses, the harm we would do them if we left them, the happiness we risked missing out on if we didn’t. Despite his frolics, I shared with my husband a rich intellectual connection, a great life. Our children felt safe. David’s were at the beginning of their adult life. We had made compromises in our respective couples, had stifled certain parts of ourselves, we had often felt alone, but like everyone else. Were we not happy enough?

We tried like mad to reason with each other, but reason was no match for our frantic, raw desire.

One morning, shortly after I had moved to London with the children, my husband asked me bluntly if there was anyone else. I had been lying to her for four months and I couldn’t take it anymore. David spoke to his wife the same day.

That was the day I saw my therapist for the first time.

I made my way to his practice through pretty Edwardian neighborhoods with autumn colors and trying not to collapse. He opened the door, he was a tall, elegant man, with silver hair, a firm handshake, soft brown eyes. He offered me a seat in an alcove surrounded by trees, a place where I could breathe.

In the fog

I told him the story shakily, trying to show myself just for what my husband must be feeling.

“Each of you has an equal share of responsibility for the failure of your marriage, he declared. This does not change anything.”

I was amazed by