I began seeing a therapist in August, which I should have done sooner, and which I mention here because omitting therapy from stories like mine strikes me as a kind of dishonesty. You cannot go through what I went through without cost to yourself, and that cost needs somewhere to be processed that is not your children, your attorney, or your friends who have already given generously. Dr. Miriam Sato, on Wednesday afternoons, gave me a space to be something other than competent, and that space turned out to be necessary. I did not date for a long time. I am including that fact without apology or explanation because it is simply true and because the pressure women feel to demonstrate their recovery through new romantic attachments is something I find both understandable and exhausting. I had a full life. My children were adjusting with the resilience of kids who have been spoken to honestly and loved without condition. Mason’s sleep had returned to normal by October. Lily had a best friend she talked about constantly. They saw their father on his designated weekends, and I was, in all our exchanges, civil and correct, because they were watching and because they would carry the model of those interactions into their own adult lives.
Now for the part I want to tell carefully. Daniel and Claire moved in together in August, eight months after the divorce was finalized. By the following spring, things between them were reportedly not going well. The financial settlement had stripped Daniel of the cushion he had been quietly building. Claire, who had supplemented her income in ways that were now no longer available, was under pressure. There was, reportedly, a great deal of fighting. By the summer, two years after Daniel’s confession, they had separated. I did not feel vindicated. I felt a small and private sadness, because these were people I had once loved. But I also felt the particular peace of a person who did not cause this. Their unhappiness was the natural consequence of choices that had predated my legal response by years. I had simply declined to absorb those consequences on their behalf. That is a distinction I think about sometimes on clear evenings when I sit on my porch in Evanston and can see the water and the children are inside and my life is quiet and mine and real.
If this story has a lesson, it is this: trust your own intelligence. Not to predict betrayal. You can’t always see it coming. But to respond to it without surrendering yourself in the process. I didn’t win because I was ruthless. I won because I was careful, documented everything, and refused to let fear make my decisions.
