Broken

Christine was cheating on me. He was a coworker she had only known for three months, but she wanted to try new things. She wanted to see where things went with him. She liked him. She had been talking and flirting with him for the past few weeks. She wanted a break with me.

I remember thinking that she was only kidding. Everything that she was telling me couldn't be true. We were three months away from celebrating our ten year anniversary, but on the night of August 26th (It's like you're hyper aware of dates during a crisis), she was breaking up with me for some guy I had only heard about a few times. I knew his name, but nothing more. I had never met him. I didn't know what he looked like, but he was obviously better than me in so many ways.

Breaking up was a weird thing for me. She was calm and determined with leaving me. I was a mess. I couldn't stop crying, yelling, and breathing hard. My first instinct was to get away, which I did. I drove away, and was gone for maybe 30 minutes before returning and begging for her to stay. I was not one to beg because I always felt it was a waste of time and pathetic. But there I was, begging and crying and so angry. I had never felt so many different emotions in such a small time frame. Regardless of what I said and how I felt, she left me.

I'm horrible when it comes to advice and comforting somebody. I never know what to say, so there was no "a-ha!" moment for me where I knew I should just move on. I didn't have any advice for myself. I had never been in a situation like this, but now that I was, going downhill was an understatement. I lost weight. I had no appetite whatsoever. I took a leave of absence from work for two weeks. I couldn't sleep. It was like my entire life was completely stopped and shoved into a different direction; I didn't know how to handle it. I refused to speak with my family and my friends—they couldn't possibly understand. But one of my friends did reach out to me on a daily basis to make sure I was okay, in some sense. It was his words that got me through some of the toughest weeks of my life:

"You were just fine before her. You'll be just fine without her."

I kept repeating that to myself, and I did eventually believe it. Other than sadness, I felt this anger. The funny thing was, it wasn't directed towards her, but towards the guy. I couldn't hate her. That's not the kind of person I was. I treated her as best as possible, and so being so angry with her was, for lack of a better word, weird. I also was not used to feeling so much anger. I grew up with my father teaching me that anger was a waste of energy and time. It wouldn't benefit me in any way. I needed to let go and move on, because anger would just slow me down in so many ways. But in a situation like this, the anger I felt towards him was indescribable. He hurt us. He ruined us. I know it takes two people to cheat, but again, to me, it was all of his fault. I ended up reaching out to him, telling him to back off—almost like a warning. He didn't. So I focused my energy on showing Christine (we still talked) how he was using her. I realized that even if I couldn't be with her, I still loved her, and I didn't want to see her get hurt.

I can't really say the outcome was so much of a happy ending. I think my persistence in trying to "win" her back paid off. She eventually realized how much of a horrible person he was. He only wanted sexual gratification. We decided to start things over, but at what price? I didn't trust her completely anymore, which was such a foreign thing to me since I never doubted her whatsoever before. I was always suspicious about her texting, who she was speaking to, what she was laughing at. I didn't want to leave her alone because, in my head, that was giving her a chance to find another love. I was becoming a person who I didn't recognize because of her infidelity. So we went to counseling—couples and individual. We tried and tried, and built our relationship again from the ground up.

Love is such a strong thing. It controlled a lot of my thinking and actions. In the end, I wanted to continue to be a better person than him. I wanted to show her how love is supposed to be, and the difference between true emotions and simple infatuation. I made a promise to love her, and I definitely did, despite her leaving. So I tried. I wasn't begging her, but I also was not going to give up what we had. All of the years we spent together, building our life and love, was not going to be for nothing. For sure, it's different now, but we are better. Our communication is a lot stronger, and she is so much more open with me. I know she made a choice, but it was also my choices that drove her away, and I realized that. We are trying our best on a daily basis for each other, and for the commitment we made to each other years ago. Giving up was not an option for me, but even if things didn't work out, I went out fighting for a love I knew was definitely worth fighting for.

Everything was broken between us, but putting the pieces back together is a journey and experience I'm ready to go on with her. We are going to come out so much stronger and so much more in love.