To Love Is To Forgive - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Eventually, she arranged to meet her lover. She disguised herself in an oversized, shabby sun-protective outfit, covering herself from head to toe as she slipped into a hotel.

I followed her, but I stayed outside.

What would have been the point of going in when I could already imagine the heartbreaking scene waiting for me?

Did I really have to storm inside, beat my wife, and drag us both into a courtroom before I could call myself a man?

I knew very well how easily people—women and men alike—can lose their way. When love becomes tangled up with responsibility for too long, weariness and disappointment can creep in almost unnoticed. The kind of love in which two people spend their whole lives longing for each other often exists only when they never get the chance to become a couple. Once two people live together for years, the weight of daily life, along with all its burdens and conflicts, can slowly distort even the deepest love.

I understood all of that, yet I still fell apart when I discovered my wife was having an affair.

Fortunately, I was calm enough—and perhaps dignified enough—to choose a different way of dealing with it.

While my wife was enjoying herself with her lover, I went home and prepared a warm bath for her. I also made dinner and arranged candles and flowers around the room.

When she came home and saw the romantic scene waiting for her, she was understandably overwhelmed. She stammered, unable to find the words to say anything.

It was obvious that she wasn't moved by some romantic surprise.

It was guilt.

I also knew one of the vulnerabilities of the human heart: it can be softened by tenderness. And no matter how far someone has strayed, the ties of family can still weigh heavily on them. It is rarely easy to simply walk away from a husband, a wife, or one's children.

Instead of forbidding my wife from doing this or that, I wanted her to remember that I could still love her with the same tenderness and romance I had shown her when we first fell in love.

Perhaps the only way to save a marriage is to keep reaching for each other when one person has already begun to let go.

But things were not nearly as simple as I had imagined.

My wife continued sneaking away to meet her lover. And whenever I responded with affection and forgiveness, she would return home filled with remorse and inner conflict.

I waited for a while, hoping she would eventually come to her senses.

She didn't.

In the end, I had no choice but to take a firmer approach.

That evening, when my wife went into the hotel with her lover, I drove our child there and waited across the street.

When she finally came out and saw her daughter and me standing there, she looked as though her legs were about to give way.

But I simply said,

“I took our daughter out for some fresh air. I came to pick you up.”

That night, the four of us sat down and had a serious conversation. My daughter was there too.

Fortunately, she was only a little over two years old at the time and had no idea what was happening.

I asked each person to speak honestly and say everything that was on their mind.

The other man was equally straightforward. He admitted that he had never intended to have a future with my wife. He had a family of his own.

He said that he had simply grown fond of her, and somewhere along the way, that affection had turned into desire.

Hearing him say those words, my wife broke down, sobbing so hard that she could barely speak.

I knew what she was afraid of.

She was afraid that I would cast her out.

Yet she couldn't bring herself to ask me for forgiveness.