I woke up in bed around an hour after I’d fallen asleep reading, and I noticed Angela wasn’t beside me. That was strange because I’m a heavy sleeper, so she wouldn’t have crept in without waking me. I checked the living room, but the TV was still on and no one was there. Her car was still in the driveway and the front door was locked from the inside.
The only person left who might know where she was was my brother Patrick, who was staying in our guest room. I knocked on his door. I heard scrambling. My alarm bells went off instantly.
I tried the handle, but it was locked. I kicked the door three times until it broke off its hinges. Angela was pulling on one of her house t-shirts while Patrick stood in just his boxers, like he was trying to block my view. A pack of condoms was poking out from under the bed.
. “What the hell is going on here? ” I asked, even though I already knew. It was so obvious it made my stomach turn.
. My brother tried to calm me down and pull me out of the room. I wouldn’t budge. My wife had been cheating on me, and she had chosen to do it with my own brother, in my own house, while I was sleeping one room away.
Part of me wanted to destroy him. Part of me wanted to destroy her. But I couldn’t decide who deserved it more, because I expected loyalty from both of them and they both stabbed me in the back. “How long has this been going on?
” I forced myself to ask. “A few weeks,” my brother said. “This is the first time,” my wife said at the exact same moment. I could obviously tell which answer was closer to the truth.
Somehow I found the presence of mind to just turn around, get in my car, and drive. I drove for three hours in the dead of night. I parked somewhere, sat in the driver’s seat, and cried. When I finally fell asleep, I had nearly forty missed calls between them by the time I woke up.
They had texted even more. I called off from work and just kept driving, blasting loud music to keep my mind off the disaster waiting for me at home. It was nearly twenty-four hours after I’d left the night before before I finally drove back. .
They looked shocked and relieved to see me. I didn’t feel the same way when I saw them. They tried to act concerned, but their concern meant nothing, because they hadn’t had concern for me when they chose to sleep together. I told them both they needed to pack up and get out of my house.
. My brother said he had nowhere to go. I told him I didn’t care. I had been his lifeline, the roof over his head, and he had still chosen to sleep with my wife.
He could follow Angela wherever she went, but I doubted she’d want anything to do with him now. She tried to come up to me, begging, repeating the lie that it was the first time. She said she didn’t have an explanation, it was just a whim she shouldn’t have followed. I was exhausted by her excuses, so I walked past her and went upstairs to sleep.
. By the time I woke up, she was gone. He was packing the last of his things. He asked if I could drop him off somewhere, saying we were still family.
I told him that the family I knew wouldn’t do something as horrible as what he did. I told him he could find his own way to whatever couch he was going to crash on. A few hours later, he was out of the house. I knew the pain I was feeling wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I’d been married for eleven years. The only thing I could do was start moving toward the divorce, so that was my first step toward healing
I met with a divorce lawyer and paid him to get things started. I had no idea who to tell, so I only told one close friend. I didn’t want to bring my parents into it yet, even though they deserved to know, because their other son was the reason my marriage was ending.
I wanted to get everything handled first before I let them understand what was going on
When the divorce process started, I encouraged my attorney to go all in. I didn’t want her to end up with anything of value, because she had ruined my life and there was no reason she shouldn’t face consequences. In the end, I kept the house, though I expected to sell it at some point, because I didn’t want the memories baked into those walls. She didn’t get alimony, but I left her business untouched, because I didn’t need things to get messier than they already were.
We each kept our own cars and we split our joint savings down the middle. It felt good to finally be able to call her my ex-wife. Still, the whole saga kept nagging at me, because it felt like she had destroyed my life and then walked away from it almost scot-free. .
The divorce was just the right consequence, though, not a punishment. I felt like she needed to feel pain, and my brother as well. I let my lawyer send her the papers through a process server while she was at work, because I had no idea where she was living after I kicked her out. She called me crying, saying she knew she had messed up real bad.
She said she’d do anything to show me how much she regretted it, that it was a lapse in judgment, a pure physical craving, that she had no feelings for my brother. I asked when she had last seen him, and I noticed a moment of hesitation before she said she hadn’t seen him since the day I kicked them both out. I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t waste my time arguing. I told her there was no point trying to convince me of anything, because there was no way I could be in a peaceful marriage with a woman who had slept with my brother.
She needed to move on, because I was already learning to
A few hours later, my brother called. I didn’t want to pick up, but I wanted to hear what he had to say. He told me Angela had said we were getting divorced, but he claimed it wasn’t that serious. He said he had been the one who came on to her strongly and that it never would have happened if not for him, so I shouldn’t put the blame on her.
I could smell what was going on. She had put him up to take the bullet for her, since he had so little to lose. Unless he had forced himself on her, which I knew hadn’t happened, there was nothing to talk about. It was consensual, and that was all I needed to know I didn’t want either of them in my life.
I hung up and blocked his number. After that, I reached out to my entire family, including many of our closer extended relatives. I told them Angela and I were no longer together, and I made it clear that the reason was that Patrick had slept with her under my roof. The calls came in for the next two hours.
A lot of them were incredulous, but I told them it was the entire truth,and that Patrick wouldn’t have the balls to deny it if they asked. Many of them said they were going to reach out to confront him. I didn’t care about that part. I was just glad everyone now had an extra reason to be disappointed in him.
Maybe they would stop supporting him. As for Angela, I made sure she got it much worse. I went straight to her relatives and friends, and I doubted she had told them the truth, so I made sure they knew exactly who she was. I even told the two employees of hers whose numbers I had.
I made sure everyone knew that if they expected loyalty from her, they should look elsewhere. She hadn’t been angry when I got the papers to her, but she was angry now that I had ruined the image of being the sweet, elegant woman with the solid marriage. She called me, angry, saying I didn’t need to go that far. I told her I only did the right thing, that she wasn’t a person to be trusted, and the people closest to her deserved to know she could stab them in the back at any time.
She had done it to me, despite us having the closest bond two unrelated people are meant to have. I told her I was going to block her after the call, because nothing was ever going to bring us together again. Then I did
My brother showed up at the house, telling me how incredibly tough things were for him. He said he regretted everything, that if he could take it back, he would, that all he needed was a place to stay.
I told him he wasn’t going to find it with me. He kept begging. I told him I was going to call the police if he didn’t leave. He asked if he could at least get twenty dollars.
I told him it would be better if he got a job like we had been hoping he would for years. I told him to never come back or I would get a protective order against him. That scared him enough to stay far away so far. It’s going to be incredibly hard for me to bounce back from this.
I didn’t just lose a wife. I lost a brother, too, my only sibling. But I feel like I’m already making the right steps toward healing from the whole mess that got dropped in my lap. I wish them both the worst going forward.
He’s been cut off, the divorce is handled, and everyone who matters knows exactly who they are. No alimony games, no drawn out drama. Just cutting them out of my life and letting the consequences hit where they should. They deserve every bit of that fallout.
.
