Words.

Today I found, unexpectedly, a card my husband gave me in early 2003 - a few months after we met and a few months before we were married.

It made me cry, because of the words he wrote.

If I had only known.

Perhaps if he had remembered, he wouldn't have had an affair.

Here is what he wrote to me:

Rose,
I love you cannot even justify the feelings I have grown to have for you. You mean so much to me & I hope you can see that. I think about you (us) all the time. The life we have & the life we are looking forward to. I know I can be a "slimhead" sometimes & hope you can forgive me for that. I look forward to your touch when we are apart. You are my future and I look forward to it. I am so proud that you are happy. I like when your smiling & not being a turtle. Ha, ha! but to wrap this up all I can say is
From the bottom of my heart,
I love you!

Yours always,
Nathan

New love. I remember that feeling well. I still had that "new love" feeling for him, even after all these years together. I would get flutters in my heart when it was time for him to come home from work, and I missed him while he was gone. Our intimate life was amazing, always full of love and true soul connection.

I had no idea that he had someone else on the side. I didn't know he preferred the company of another woman over me. (He says he didn't prefer her company, but that's hard to believe. If he had preferred mine, he wouldn't have given those moments to me.)

How did we come to this?

How did we get here?

Pulling apart the tangles of our life together, I can see that there were times when I was not as attentive to him as he would have liked. But during that time, I had a nearly two year old, a nearly one year old, and a baby due any day. I wasn't attentive to him because I was attending to our very young children.

I still don't know where to go from here, as far as my marriage is concerned. I don't know if I'll stay with him or divorce him. I do know that I don't really want to be with anyone else, but for now, all of that is still undecided.

It hurts. His words that he wrote so long ago really, really hurt. Because even though I know it isn't true, it feels like they are lies.