I BOARDED FIRST CLASS WITH MY MISTRESS. THEN MY WIFE WAS THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT GREETING US AT THE DOOR.
Those first several sessions proved considerably more uncomfortable than I anticipated, Dr. Alderman asking careful, probing questions that repeatedly steered our conversations away from simple regret over consequences and toward genuine examination of the choices themselves. “You keep describing what happened to you,” she observed during our third session. “I’d like us to focus more on what you actually chose to do, and why.” That particular reframing stayed with me long after each individual session ended, gradually shifting how I understood my own responsibility throughout the entire devastating situation.
“You chose the path of least immediate resistance,” my therapist, Dr. Alderman, told me during one particularly difficult session. “Deception felt easier than honest conversation, right up until the moment it became infinitely more devastating than honesty ever could have been.”
I absorbed that particular framing slowly, understanding its accuracy even as it remained painful to fully accept.
I reached out to Naomi roughly eight months after our divorce finalized, requesting a brief conversation, understanding I owed her a genuine apology considerably more thorough than anything I’d managed during our initial, devastating confrontation.
I drafted that initial message nearly a dozen times before finally sending it, terrified she’d simply ignore it entirely, understanding I had no genuine right to expect any response given everything I’d put her through. She replied within two days, brief but not unkind, agreeing to a single meeting though making clear it shouldn’t be interpreted as any signal toward reconciliation.
She agreed cautiously, meeting me at a neutral coffee shop rather than anywhere connected to our shared history.
“I’ve spent the last several months in therapy,” I told her. “Trying to genuinely understand why I did what I did, rather than simply regretting getting caught.”
“And what have you learned?” she asked, her tone carrying careful, guarded curiosity rather than any lingering warmth.
