This is one of those things I never pictured myself writing about. Honestly, I thought I’d be the kind of woman who would say, “nope, deal-breaker, pack your bags.” And yet here I am, still married, still with Rex, and… okay, it’s complicated.
When it happened, when I found out, I thought the world just caved in on me. My heart pounded so hard I swore everyone in the neighborhood could hear it. I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw plates. I just went cold inside, like a part of me switched off. And then came the questions. Did I do something wrong? Was I not enough? Too distracted with the baby? Too tired, too cranky, too “mom” and not enough “woman”? I was relentless with myself. The blame sat on me like a cinder block.
For the longest time, I carried that weight like it was mine to hold. And Rex… well, let’s just say he didn’t fight me much on that at first. Maybe it was easier for him if I took the blame. Maybe he didn’t have the guts to face his own mess. And then there was the drinking. God, the drinking. Nights where he’d numb himself and I’d feel invisible, sitting next to someone who was physically there but miles away in every other sense.
But then something shifted. Not overnight. Not in a movie-script way where we hugged it out and lived happily ever after. It was small. Messy. Human. He stopped drinking. For real. No more “I’ll cut back.” No more empty promises. He got honest, brutally honest, with himself. And slowly, painfully, I realized something: the affair wasn’t my fault. It never was. It was his choice. His mistake. His responsibility.
I think that’s when forgiveness crept in. Not the Hallmark card forgiveness where you smile and everything’s fine. This was jagged forgiveness. Ugly forgiveness. The kind where you forgive someone and then wake up the next morning still furious. The kind where you forgive them, then doubt yourself for forgiving them, then forgive again anyway.
People love to say forgiveness is for yourself, not for the other person. And maybe that’s true, but I found that forgiveness also rebuilt something between us. Not the same thing we had before—honestly, that marriage died the day I found out—but something new. Something fragile but stronger in weird ways, too. A marriage with no alcohol clouding the picture. A marriage where we talk, sometimes awkwardly, but honestly.
Do I trust him completely now? I don’t know. Some days yes, some days no. But what I do know is that I stopped punishing myself. I stopped looking in the mirror and asking, “what did I do wrong?” And that’s the biggest shift of all.
We had Anthony after that storm, and looking at our family, I sometimes think—if we hadn’t broken and rebuilt, would we even have made it this far? Would Rex be the dad he is now if he hadn’t hit rock bottom first? Life doesn’t always give clean answers.
What I know is this: forgiveness wasn’t weakness. It wasn’t me letting him off the hook. Forgiveness was me reclaiming my sanity, saying, “I’m not going to carry this weight anymore, it’s yours.” And watching him actually change, actually fight for sobriety, actually show up… that’s what made it real.
So no, I didn’t just “get over it.” I don’t think you ever do. But I moved forward. We moved forward. And for all the cracks and scars, there’s still love here. And that love is enough. Maybe messy love, maybe imperfect love, but love that feels like home again.