I took a long moment before answering, aware that whatever I said next would carry considerably more weight given how carefully she was clearly weighing my sincerity. I’d rehearsed some version of this answer many times in therapy, though saying it directly to her felt entirely different from rehearsing it alone in Dr. Alderman’s office.
“That I chose cowardice over honesty,” I said. “That I was dissatisfied with choices I’d made in my own career, and instead of addressing that honestly, even if it meant disappointing you or disrupting our comfortable life together, I found it easier to seek validation somewhere else entirely, while still keeping the comfortable life intact.”
Naomi nodded slowly, absorbing my explanation without immediately responding.
“I appreciate you actually doing the work to understand that,” she said finally. “I’m not offering forgiveness right now. I don’t know if I ever will, fully. But I appreciate that you’re not simply performing regret without any actual reflection behind it, the way I half expected you would.”
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” I said. “I mostly needed you to know I understand, now, exactly how much damage my cowardice actually caused, to you, to our marriage, and honestly to myself as well.”
We didn’t rebuild any kind of close relationship following that conversation, though something between us settled into a more honest, if still distant, understanding.
I ran into Naomi occasionally over the following two years, brief, civil encounters at mutual acquaintances’ gatherings we both apparently still felt some obligation to attend, careful conversations that never quite ventured beyond polite, surface-level updates about our respective, separate lives. I found those brief encounters oddly comforting despite their inherent awkwardness, small proof that whatever devastating rupture had occurred between us, some baseline mutual respect had genuinely survived it.
