The lady was a national service personnel. She reported to work while I was on honeymoon. I was told about her coming before I left the office so When I returned and saw a new face around, I wasn’t surprised to see her. During the day she came to my office to officially introduce herself.

We had a lot in common. She attended the same senior high school that I attended. During her time, my mom was the headmistress of the school. All day, we talked about my mom. How strict she was and her favourite punishment for wayward students. I called my mom and they spoke. It’s been years but my mom remembered her and called her by name. From that day we had something to bond on.

The bond grew to the point she had unrestricted access to me. Mostly it wasn’t about work. It was about personal stories and how to go through them.

Our relationship for a very long time remained in the office premises until one late night when I commented on her status. I thought she was sleeping and was going to get a response the next morning at work. But she responded instantly. She told me she couldn’t sleep. I welcomed her into the insomnia academy that night.

Every night she would be online for me. We would talk until very late in the night. One day it got personal. “How’s your boyfriend?” and “I don’t have a boyfriend” turned into, “Let me be your boyfriend.” We were very playful about it until it no longer was playful. Our first kiss happened in my office when everyone was away. From that day, there was no slowing down.

When you compare this lady to my wife physically, she doesn’t come anywhere close to my wife. My wife is taller, fairer, more elegant and graceful than her. The only thing she had more than my wife was nighttime. My wife sleeps at 9 pm while I struggle in bed. This girl came alive after 9pm when my struggle was at its peak.

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She offered me a window through which I could see a different world to help me while away time in the night when slumber was far away from me. While my wife lay beautifully in her sleep, I was busy dreaming of the next escapade with a girl I should have no business dealing with in the night.

My wife wasn’t always asleep but I was too busy to notice. She was watching me at some night through squinted eyes. My phone’s light might have been too strong for her eyes so she woke up often to see what I was doing. Because she saw me chatting and smiling discreetly to myself in the awkward hours of the night, she picked up suspicion. Our marriage wasn’t even a half-year-old.

It happened too quickly, like the tsunami that enters your house and blows everything apart. This tsunami blew down my walls and destroyed my security. The only things that survived were things that could float. I deleted most of the messages after every round of chat but that night I don’t know what happened. I slept while I was holding my phone, in the middle of typing, “I love you…” The ‘I’ was there. I spelt the ‘love’ wrongly. I couldn’t add the ‘you’ before I was overtaken by sleep.

In the morning, my wife handed my phone back to me and said, “You couldn’t finish typing your last statement. Here you are. Continue.”

My heart skipped a beat. My temperature went up. I looked through the messages and all I could see were invisible annotations my wife had made on every single message we’d exchanged. I couldn’t talk for minutes while she stood there shaking and asking me to answer her questions. Before that day, I called myself the head of the house. I was strong and firm on family matters. Once she caught me, I became a roasted vegetable. I couldn’t even speak audibly.

She asked how many times we had done it. She asked what the girl had that she didn’t have. She asked what the girl brought to the table. She asked how much of our money have I spent on her. Too many questions but one answer; “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

I was desperate for forgiveness but most importantly, I was desperate to save my marriage. I took the rest of my leave days to work on my marriage. The very day I was caught, I sent a message to the girl that I couldn’t do it any more. Her response was, “Why? What happened?” I didn’t respond.

It took me three months to hear the words, “I forgive you” from my wife. After three months of sleepless nights and incessant apologies from me, she looked into my eyes for the first time and told me I’d been forgiven. “No conditions attached. It’s a phase and I hope we don’t meet it again,” she said.

I nodded and promised to water the turned leaf every day so it would always be greener.

My marriage from that day split into two periods; before the cheating and after the cheating. The sad thing is, before the cheating period has only seven months but after the cheating period has forever, that’s if we don’t break up at some point. Every conversation of ours takes their reference from these two periods. “Darling, you’ve changed,” I would say. “Before the incident, you were not like this. I thought you said you’ve forgiven me.”

I call it an ‘incident’ because I’m too ashamed to call it what it truly is. She has forgiven me, it’s obvious. She doesn’t refer to it when she’s angry. She doesn’t remind me of it or even bring a hint of it into our present but listen, things are never the same again.

I’ve lost all favours in her eyes. Our marriage is now the lite version of what it used to be. The depth of our conversations has changed. The way she relates with me has changed. She locks the door when she goes to the bathroom. She covers herself when dressing up around me. It’s like she doesn’t belong to me again. There are crazy things we used to do during intimacy but all have stopped.

If you’ve not cheated on your wife before, please don’t start. If you’re doing it and you haven’t been caught, please stop before you’re caught. You might be forgiven but things will never be the same again. Sometimes I’m scared to sleep or even eat her food. “What if…” then I stop thinking about it and do it anyway.

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All I wish for today is to delete that line that puts our marriage into two periods but I can’t. We’ve been told to seek counselling. I’ve suggested it to her. I want a place where the two of us can lay it bare and reset our lives. All she said was, “When I’m ready, I’ll tell you.”

Before the incident, my wife wouldn’t have said this. This is the change I’m talking about. Things never go back to being the same again once the cheating line is crossed. I’ve learned my lessons.

— Jack

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