Ethan, my husband, always said he worked long hours. He’d come home late with tired eyes and the faint smell of someone else’s perfume on his shirt. For illustrative purposes only
At least, that’s what he claimed.
I wanted desperately to believe him. But then I found the texts — the late-night messages, the hearts, the emojis, and the name saved as “Mike from Work,” which turned out to be a woman. And she wasn’t the first.
He simply shrugged, as though I had told him we were out of milk. “If that’s what you want,” he said. But what I wasn’t prepared for — what completely blindsided me — was how fast his mother Carol launched herself into the middle of our separation.
Carol and I have never had a good relationship. From the very beginning, she watched me like I was a mistake Ethan hadn’t gotten around to fixing yet. Every parenting decision I made, she questioned.
Every boundary I set, she pushed. But I never imagined she would go as far as she did. The tension had been building quietly, thickening the air around us.
And soon, it would erupt. One night, after putting the kids to bed, I walked into the living room. Ethan sat on the couch like nothing in our lives had changed — the TV loud, his feet up, not even bothering to look at me.Continue reading…
