She cried for exactly ten seconds. Then she wiped her tears, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “I’m going to milk you for alimony if you try this.” We’d been married for nearly twenty years,…

When I walked in the door, I asked her how Randall was without wasting a beat. She nearly jumped in her seat, and I knew she knew she was done for. I asked again when she didn’t say anything. She just stared at me, clearly trying to figure out which answer would do the least damage.

Then she started to cry. Her first instinct was to unleash the waterworks, hoping it would earn her some sympathy. It didn’t. It infuriated me even more.

I yelled at her to stop crying. I rarely raised my voice, and that only made things worse. I told her she had no reason to cry when she’d been keeping a long-term affair alive, fully aware of the consequences. She refused to say anything that mattered.

So I told her to go to the bedroom and pack her things. She’d get the chance to grab the rest during the week. I was too old to drag this out any longer than necessary. She got up, still weeping, and started heading to the bedroom.

Then she froze in place for about ten seconds and turned back around to face me. This time, she was wiping her tears away, and she looked ready to say something at long last. Only for the first words out of her mouth to be, “You know, I’m going to milk you for alimony if you try this. ”

She delivered it like some kind of gotcha.

Then she talked about how she was going to take half of everything I’d built, and I wasn’t going to like that. It felt like she was threatening me with consequences for divorcing her. I already knew I was going to lose some things before I even started the process. I was just glad there wouldn’t be a custody fight.

Thank goodness our children were grown. I told her I knew I’d have to pay alimony and give her a split. And I told her it would be well worth it to be rid of her. She huffed off to the bedroom, and about an hour later, she dragged a suitcase out the door and drove off.

She didn’t spend a second acknowledging me. Not that I would have wanted her to. She came back a few days later to pick up a few extra things. I don’t think we said more than two words to each other.

I was happy to have it that way. I had loved her for essentially half my life. But I am not ashamed to say that I hated her at that point. It didn’t matter that she was the mother of my children or that most of my happiest moments had been with her.

After a betrayal like that, there was no reason to hold on. Things got complicated when I got a call from my oldest daughter. She sounded angry, asking why I kicked their mother out of the house and why I was accusing her of cheating. Apparently, Amy had told her that I’d been acting paranoid and treating her like crap.

That made me furious because she was trying to turn our children against me. It was a ridiculous tactic, but it didn’t necessarily surprise me. I’d thought about letting the kids know ahead of time, but I decided to wait until the divorce was finalized. Even then, I hadn’t planned to air her dirty laundry.

But she brought it to that point, so I played by her rules. Right there, I told my daughter I wasn’t being paranoid. I had evidence of the affair, and her mother hadn’t denied it when I confronted her. Amy was clearly trying to get their support ahead of me, so she cooked up a story.

I sent some of the pictures from the PI to my daughter so she could see the truth. I’d been cheated on. I was getting divorced, and Amy was still trying to make me the bad guy in the eyes of my children. That last part was unforgivable, so I was going to return the favor.

My daughter was quiet for a long time on the other end of the phone. Eventually, she said she understood and that she was sorry for blowing up at me. I accepted the apology and moved on. I wasn’t going to hold it against her that she initially sided with her mom.

Now, to understand the full picture, I need to go back. My ex-wife Amy is 48 years old, and I’m 50. We’d been married for nearly 20 years when all of this happened. I built a roofing business from the ground up when I was about 21 or 22, and it’s still here today, doing amazing.

Amy is a realtor. Over the years, we both became pretty solid at our jobs, which allowed us to live amazing lives and give our kids a good home. I supported her with her job on so many occasions, especially when I had clients doing roofing ahead of selling their houses. I’d send them to my favorite realtor, and because of the trust they had for me, most would end up using my wife.

Her job ended up being what messed us up. Over the years, we moved houses three times. There was the apartment we got married into. Then the house we bought after building ourselves up financially.

Most recently, considering our comfort, we got our retirement home in an upscale community. It was all pretty nice. We weren’t retired yet, and living there gave Amy the opportunity to network with some pretty solid personalities. She got more than a gig or two thanks to high-profile people in the neighborhood.

There wasn’t much roofing for me to get done there, but it was never meant to be a competition. The problem started with a man named Randall. I’d seen him when I took walks through the neighborhood, but we never had more than basic how-do-you-dos and comments on the weather. We’d been living in that community for about two years when Amy told me Randall was moving to Europe and wanted to sell his house.

Considering the pricing of most houses there, it was a good opportunity, and I was really happy for her. She’d walk over to his place about twice a week to talk about progress and pricing and offers. But it didn’t go on for more than three weeks before the house was sold, so I wasn’t too suspicious. It seemed like her usual sale.

Looking back now, I realize how often Amy found things that took her out of the house after that. It wasn’t a big concern at first, but saying my suspicions weren’t piqued would be a lie. I’d been married to her long enough to know something was up. It was when she started getting defensive with her phone that cheating first crossed my mind.

There was one night soon after she got home from meeting a client. I tried to get intimate with her, but she recoiled from me as if I were some random guy. That happened in the kitchen, right after she poured a glass of water. Immediately after, she practically ran upstairs and jumped into the shower.

Honestly, I’d have to be stupid not to suspect cheating at that point. I had no idea who, but I knew things were off. That wasn’t the marriage I was used to. A lot of people go straight to checking phones and emails, but I’m too old to be effective at all that, and she was too defensive with her phone anyway.

So I hired a private investigator. I could afford it, and it would likely be a lot more in-depth than anything I could achieve by snooping. Over the next several weeks, I waited for him to finish his investigation. I made sure not to rush him because I wasn’t about to flush nearly two decades of love down the drain over a misconception.

During that time, I still noticed odd behavior from her. So it wasn’t some phase she was going through. Something was going on. Considering how close we were, I straight up asked her if she was okay or if anything was on her mind.

She gave me the impression there was nothing to worry about. I took her word for it, knowing I wouldn’t hear anything different no matter how many times I asked. Once the PI finished, I went down to his office, and that’s when I got the confirmation I’d been seeking. Amy had truly been cheating on me, and with none other than Randall.

That part came as a shock. I’d forgotten about Randall. He wasn’t someone I thought I needed to worry about. Yet I’d never given the PI his name, and he still found it out.

I knew he was good at his work, and I would have believed him on his word alone. But when he slid some photos across the table, I knew it was over for my marriage. I didn’t even have to go through them all. Something in me just broke.

The photos showed her and Randall at various places around the city. One in a parking lot. One in a restaurant. One in the lobby of a hotel.

There was one dark image that was hard to see in detail, but it looked like the two of them kissing in a car. There were several other photos of them in front of what I assumed was another house of Randall’s—unless his moving to Europe was just a lie. I’ve never felt as insecure as I did in that moment. I started thinking of every client Amy had ever had, every boss she’d complained about.

All of a sudden, my eyes opened to the actual level of trust in the marriage. Compared to what I thought was there, Amy didn’t find it hard to have an affair. That meant it was a trait of hers long before any of the Randall stuff happened. I knew I was going to confront her as soon as I got home.

There was no point in playing games. I had the evidence I needed, and since I knew things were heading to divorce, I was smart enough not to play my trump card early. That brings me back to the confrontation. And to her threat about alimony.

As we entered the courthouse for the divorce process, I remembered that threat, and it made me even more eager to take as much as I could from her. The process took a long time. She did everything she could to delay and frustrate me. I tried to get her to settle, but she refused.

Her demands were fifty percent of our cumulative savings split down the middle, which would favor her by quite a lot. She also wanted a pretty ridiculous amount of alimony, and she threw in the house to test her luck. When it became clear she wasn’t going to make things easy and we couldn’t agree, I brought in the proof of the affair. It was her first time seeing it, and her reaction was pretty funny in hindsight.

She became so flustered. Obviously, she knew I knew, but she must not have thought there was any hard evidence. There it was, right in front of her. She still didn’t make it easy.

She tried to settle on a notably lower split, but it was more than I felt she deserved. Eventually, we realized mediation wasn’t going to do the job, so we had to go in front of a judge. My lawyer did an amazing job. The affair was the only reason we split.

We had a great marriage besides that. The split was entirely her fault because there was no reason for me to grin and bear it and continue living with someone who had destroyed any trust I had in them. The pictures alone made it hard to prove the affair, and the one photo of them kissing in the car was scrutinized pretty heavily by the judge. But that one picture ended up being what swayed things.

The judge determined that the person in the image was her, and he chose not to reward her for her infidelity. In terms of alimony, she got nothing. In terms of our assets, the judge decided that while I had more in net worth, she had enough of her own money that she didn’t get to put her hands on any of what I owned. We both had very successful businesses.

Since I kept the house, my major loss was having to buy her out of it, though it was much lower than market value because the judge continued to prioritize her infidelity in his decisions. She bought her own car, so she kept that, and I kept mine. Thankfully, the judge didn’t even consider my roofing company fair ground for a split. Ultimately, I had to part with some money, but I can live with that.

The house stayed with me. Most of my money stayed with me, and alimony wasn’t even considered for that long. When we left the courthouse that day, I couldn’t help but ask her about the alimony she was so sure she’d get. All she did was glare at me.

That evening, I got on a group call with my kids and let them know we had split. I felt no need to show them why, so I gave them a vague response. My kids are close, though, so I’m sure the oldest let them in on the reason. Don’t let this fool you into thinking I was stoic throughout everything.

Amy broke my heart so badly, and I don’t know if I’m going to look for love again. But I had to do what had to be done, instead of dwelling on things. At least now I can start to heal.