Barbara “I Had Been Betrayed, Duped, Flouted By The Man I Thought Was The Man Of My Life”

One Sunday morning, as she was getting ready to start her washing machine, this school teacher emptied the pockets of her husband’s jeans, a lawyer in western Paris, and found a crumpled credit card receipt that hit her like a cold shower.

The can of worms

Infidelity: “A few days earlier, Alessandro had paid a bill, with his personal bank card, in a restaurant in the heart of Paris,” she says. “Except that evening, he was supposed to be at the office – at least that’s what he told me – to finish a very urgent file.” When she grills him, in the afternoon, her sweetheart doesn’t even try to deny it: he has been in a relationship for almost eight months with one of his clients, a woman, also married, who doesn’t leave him indifferent, even if he doesn’t really say he’s in love with her.

Farewell to the fairy tale 

Alessandro feels lost, because, he swears, he hadn’t planned anything. This story fell on him unexpectedly, but he loves Mathilde deeply and doesn’t want to make her suffer. The thirty-year-old is devastated . “After five years of marriage and almost ten years of living together, my relationship suddenly collapsed like a house of cards,” she says, still hurt by her other half’s confessions. “I had been betrayed, duped, scorned by the man I thought was the man of my life. He had played a comedy on me, for months and months, as if nothing had happened. And I was the poor girl, the cuckold, who hadn’t seen it coming.” The young woman wonders above all how long Alessandro would have continued to play her if she hadn’t discovered the truth. “I wanted to call him a bastard, spit in his face and beat him up,” she recalls. “In short, to hurt him as much as he hurt me.” But Mathilde pulled herself together.

Remake the movie

Even if she has to be a cheated woman, she wants to remain a dignified, classy cheated woman, and not a raging madwoman who makes plates fly. She asks her partner to step away for a while so that each of us can think on our own. “Our break lasted a little over eight weeks,” she continues. “Days and nights of thinking and crying in my bed, when it wasn’t in the arms of my best friend. I wanted to understand how he and I had gotten to this point. Like many couples, we were a little overwhelmed by everyday life, but we were happy and, above all, in love. At least, that’s what I thought. We had even planned to have a child.”

Jealousy

When she thinks about this woman who took her man, and she imagines her more beautiful, sexier and more intelligent than her – otherwise Alessandro wouldn’t have cheated on her, right? – Mathilde can’t help but have sordid thoughts: where and when did they make love? How did she make him come? Did he think she was better than me? And, above all: did he whisper words of love in her ear, like he did with her when they met? Their story obsesses her. Mathilde also blames herself for not having paid enough attention to the changes in her partner’s behavior. “For several months, he hadn’t let go of his cell phone, even taking it to the toilet,” she recalls. “It’s true that he also increasingly often pleaded in the provinces. And when he came back from a trip, he would shower me with gifts, which was not really his habit in the past.”

But the young woman couldn’t have gone so far as to ask herself questions and imagine that her man has someone else in his life. Especially since she and he still talk and make love, albeit a little less than before and especially more when she takes the initiative… still.

Rebuild yourself

During the two months of their separation, Mathilde has, every day, bursts of hatred towards Alessandro, who swept their story aside, like that, without thinking beyond the end of his nose (or his penis, in this case), but she is forced to admit that she misses him. Terribly. He, meanwhile, has moved into the Parisian apartment of a friend who has expatriated to Singapore. He doesn’t dare call her, but he writes her long messages on Whatsapp to ask for her forgiveness. He is devastated by what is happening to them. He has understood that if he has “mistaken”, it is only to reassure himself, to validate his power of seduction. What he felt for his mistress was not love, it had nothing to do with what he feels for his wife. He ended this relationship.

Forgive? 

Little by little, Mathilde, who until then thought she was incapable of forgiving the slightest indiscretion, has mourned the loss of the perfect couple and feels ready to accept the unacceptable. “I realized that I loved him too much for our story to end,” she explains. “And, above all, I couldn’t imagine being happy again without him.” The reconstruction of their relationship happened slowly. Very slowly. “We talked for hours and hours on the phone,” she says. “And then, one evening, he came home and never left again. I don’t know if I’ve forgiven him, but one thing is certain: our relationship has survived the infidelity. We’ve found each other again, not exactly as before – I’m more on my guard and he still feels very guilty – but we’re moving forward… and expecting our first child.”

*First names have been changed