Yesterday, my therapist made a comment that my situation is unique and that this isn't how pregnancy or divorce normally goes for most people. I know what she meant, that most women's husbands don't leave them while they're pregnant, and that most people don't completely ignore their spouses (as in refuse to communciate, even with a court order to do so) while going through a divorce. I responded by wondering what would've happened if I had been pregnant a year ago. My therapist warned me not to go down that What if? path because I could do that all day and it would only end up hurting me.
Now, I admit, in that moment, I was lamenting the fact that Wusband left me and that I'm facing this pregnancy and raising this baby without a husband. In that moment, after discussing some other aspects of our marriage, the pregancy, and the divorce process, I was sad. I was missing all the possibilities of what could have been. (Note that I did not say that I was missing Wusband. I accepted months ago that the man who I was in love with and who I miss is not the man Wusband is today. Whoever that is walking around with the face of my husband, it is not the man I started to build a life with six and a half years ago. This man is a complete stranger.)
Had I begun to ask all those What if? questions while sitting on my therapist's couch yesterday, I probably would have found myself back to Square One in this crappy Game of Life I've been forced to play. In this version of the Game of Life, there aren't stop signs for Get Married, Buy a House, and Have a Baby. No, in this version, those have been replaced with Get Cheated On, Your Spouse Moves Out, and Get Divorced. I've spent months progressing through the game to finally land on a Life Deed space that says, "Find some inner peace. Collect $250,000." Had my therapist not stopped me from taking the What if? card, I probably would've landed on Start Over: Return to Square One.
While I think my therapist was right in preventing me from going down that path of misery and self-pity, I do think there is some value to asking these What if? questions. I agree that yesterday was not the right moment to do so, but today, I have continued to progress through the Game of Life, and I'm feeling much more positive. So today I want to play the What If? game with the lens of brutal honesty I recommended in Tip 1: Be Honest.
Ready to play? Let's get started!
What if I had gotten pregnant a year ago? Well, a year ago, Wusband and I had just finished our first round of fertility testing and had decided not to seek fertility assistance. Had I gotten pregnant a year ago, I think Wusband's reaction would have been much more appropriate than the reaction I got a little more than two months ago, which was to have an abortion. (Yes, he's a total scum bag, I know.) I can imagine the scenario clearly because I had fantasized about it for a long time while we trying to get pregnant: We're both overjoyed at the miracle and excited about the prospect of having a child together. I cry. He cries (maybe - it was a fantasy). We call our parents to share the exciting news. I'm going to be honest here and say that there aren't enough words in the English language to describe how disappointed I am that this was not the reaction Wusband had when I told him about the pregnancy. And it does sadden me that I didn't get the experience of sharing my joy with my child's father.
But through the lens of brutal honesty, here's the real answer as to what would have happened if I had gotten pregnant a year ago: Wusband would've stuck around through the pregnancy and childbirth. He would have appeared to be a loving and supportive husband and father to this child. (I say appeared because the truth of my marriage is that he is actually nothing like the man he appeared to be. But that's a whole other story). But in the end, he still would have cheated, he still would've been unwilling to give up Other Woman #4, and he still would have left. The end result would've been the same. The only difference is he would have heard his baby's heartbeat, watched my belly grow, and felt the baby kick, all things he is missing out on now. His loss.
What if I had never discovered the affair? I've actually asked myself this one a bunch of times. Wusband was mysteriously suddenly miserable in our marriage when I confronted him about Other Woman. #4 Isn't it strange that he had never mentioned feeling anything less than happy before? That he had never articulated any emotions toward me other than love and appreciation? Newsflash: He wasn't unhappy in our marriage. He was unhappy that he got caught and that I had the nerve to expect him to give up the side piece. (How dare I!)
I have often wondered if he still would have left if I hadn't discovered the affair. I believe the answer is no. So I would still be married and I suppose happy in my ignorance. So now let's put on those Brutal Honesty glasses: Yes, he would still be here. But he would also still be with #4, too. So I'd continue to be in the sham of a marriage I had already lived in for two years. And inevitably, one of only three possible outcomes would happen: (1) I would discover the affair later on, so everthing would just get delayed, (2) I would discover another affair later on, so everything would just get delayed even more, or (3) #4 would have convinced him to leave me eventually, so again, everything would just get delayed. No matter how you look at it, the end result is the same. The only difference is the timing.
What if I had never discovered any of the affairs? This one is a lot trickier to answer. Wusband had four affairs (that I know about - I assume there were more that I never discovered). It was the second one that really changed our relationship. After that one, I began living my every day life as a detective, constantly checking his Google Maps timeline, emails, and text messages, trying to find evidence of another affair. I never trusted him again and always assumed he was cheating on me. But what if I had never discovered the first one, or the second, third, or fourt ones, for that matter, and therefore didn't live that way?
I'm not sure what would have happened. I believe it was the fear of losing me after the second affair that prompted him to finally propose after almost four years of dating and two years of living together. (Yes, I married him even though I knew he had cheated twice. Again, a topic for another post.) It's possible that had I not discovered any affairs, we may never have gotten married in the first place. So there's that to consider.
However, married or not, I think we'd still be together, and still be living together. And I would probably be very happy, thinking I had this amazing man who worshipped the ground I walked on. I can see that possibility like I'm watching it through a window into another dimension. And it makes me sad that I could have had that happiness and felt loved that way.
But let's look at this with brutal honesty. I think the question here is what could have happened, instead of what would have happened, because there is really no way for me to know how this what if would have turned out. Here are some possibilities: (1) He could have cheated way more than he already did because he never got caught. He could have had unprotected sex with these woman and given me an STD. (2) He could have cheated way more than he already did because he never got caught. He could have gotten another woman pregnant. That would probably be even more difficult for me to handle than him getting me pregnant and then leaving me for #4. (3) He could have cheated way more than he already did because he never got caught. We could have years or maybe even decades together before I discovered an affair. That would also have been more difficult to handle, as the betrayal would have been deeper and I would have felt like I wasted more of my life on him. I could go on and on with these possibilities, but here's the point: In all of them, he still cheats and I still get hurt. So I wouldn't have saved myself any pain by remaining ignorant of his affairs.
So what was the point of this What If? exercise? No matter how you cut it, no matter how many alternative endings I try to find, the story always ends the same way. He's a cheater, and he was always going to cheat, no matter what I did or didn't do. The only way to have a different ending is if I had married a different man.
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