I remember the moment my husband (now ex-husband) introduced me to his mistress.

Formally, that is.

When recounting the story of their spouse’s suspected affair, many have said that they had met the mistress multiple times, unbeknownst to them. The mistress was in their home as a guest or at their workplace or at their family events; wherever it was, she was in the fabric of life.

My experience was no different.

There were plenty of times I popped into my husband’s workplace when I was on break from my work and she was there, but I didn’t notice much, because at first, she was there as a customer.

She went from being his customer to being his “intern.”

One day, I walked into his workplace, I brought him lunch as I frequently did during the week.

“Hello, honey!” I went to him, hugged him and kissed him, and then handed him his lunch. I liked who he was at work and looked forward to seeing him there because it was the only place he seemed emotionally regulated. Otherwise, he was a creator of chaos.

That day he possessed an odd energy. His intern was sitting next to him and he was jittery.

“Barbara, meet Poppy, my wife. I was just telling Barbara about you. I think she should come to your class and that she could benefit a lot from you. She has some exams to prepare for and I think your class could help her.” When he said this, I was gazing at him warmly and I had my arm around him.

I went over to her said, “hello, a pleasure to meet you. Tell me about yourself. What are you working on?”

She was a young blonde Lithuanian student from the local university. She mumbled a bit and looked at me intensely searching my face, then at the end of mumbling, her facial expression changed abruptly to an expression of hatred.

I gazed upon her and thought, “what was that about?”

I had never seen anyone’s face transform into such hatred from a placid expression before, a moment that cannot be forgotten.

I didn’t linger long since I was on my lunch break and had to eat lunch quickly and go back to work.

Later that day, I messaged three friends and said, “I think my husband is having an affair.”

I messaged my friend Marion and she said, “totally possible, I can see that happening. Your husband is an asshole.”

Another friend, Sebastian, whom I argue with about everything said, “oh no no never, he wouldn’t do that.” My friend had met my husband briefly and spoke with him for about 20 minutes in the last year of our marriage. I said, “oh good, you think I’m wrong and disagree with me, which means my husband is in fact having an affair, since you are usually wrong about human affairs.” My dear friend is fabulous at post-colonial theory but not at assessing human relations.

I messaged Naomi, who is a therapist. She said, “often when spouses are having affairs they are in a better mood and things at home seem easier.”

My husband had done a few things that astonished me that week — he had paid some bills and went grocery shopping. Two things he refused to do for the duration of our marriage, he started doing. I found his actions fascinating and perplexing; none of it made me want to stay married, nor did I find any comfort in his actions.

I did find it amusing that he was operating as a textbook example of marital infidelity, given that he prided himself in being a profoundly creative and unique person and believed he transcended psychological patterns.

A week later, I went to my husband’s workplace in the morning because I had left something there by mistake. I walked in and Barbara was there.

Seeing me, she stormed out of the office and he chased after her. She was pulling the office door closed and he was trying to pull it open to keep her from fleeing, he whispered to her, “I need you, I want to see you, please…when are you coming back?”

She whispered back to him, I couldn’t hear what she said and they stood there whispering to each other, both were oblivious to the fact that I was standing there witnessing this intimate moment. If she really wanted to leave, she could have left, but this was cat and mouse.

That was an interesting dynamic they had there, the dramatic push-pull relationship with a foundation in lying, sugaring, and more. He probably was telling her already that we were separated and that he hated me and she was trying to grapple with the fact that it clearly wasn’t the case and trying to make sense of the dissonance.

How did I feel about what I witnessed?

I felt uncertain. I felt — “what now..?”

I didn’t feel the storm of jealousy or anger of betrayal. It didn’t feel like betrayal at all on some level and sometimes I wonder if I lack the ability to feel betrayed. I wanted out of the marriage and I knew that my husband’s neediness had no bounds and the only way I would get out was if he had an affair.

My husband was also incredibly vengeful, so I knew that his attention would have to be diverted in a powerful way in order for a divorce to take place.

Our marriage was unfixable.

Even though we had some warm moments, the real substance of our relationship was immobilized by a chasm that could never be narrowed.

All we could do was to move on, I couldn’t do that unless he had an affair. Or at least, I didn’t think I could do it safely without him having an affair.

She may have been beautiful and young and I know a lot of women feel terrible about their spouses having affairs with younger women, but this person my husband was having an affair with was a child, or at least she seemed like a child to me even if she was over 18.

She was a college student.

It seemed ridiculous to me.

Though my husband did say that I was wrinkled and too old to be alive, I didn’t take that to be a fact but just attributed that to his ability to be cruel. I knew I was beautiful in my early forties and even his cruelty could not take that from me. And I think even if beauty matters, it also doesn’t matter.

A lot of people were whispering at my work about my marriage and I saw them eyeing me furtively.

One day, I jumped on a chair and said loudly, “Hey everyone, look here. I am going to make a speech. I see you all looking at me and wondering what the hell is going on. I will tell you. My husband is having an affair with a college student. He’s doing the most clichéed thing. He’s turning 50, he bought a red BMW, and now he is sugaring a younger woman who does not possess capital, a poor young woman who has no idea what she is in for.

For me to be distraught, he should have had an affair with a ballsy, frumpy, self-confident wild feminist fifty-year-old scholar who is more published than me and does critical theory like a motherfucker. That would have been like having an affair with sexiness incarnate. THAT is how I would have felt defeated and discarded. But that’s not what happened. There is no eros in this story, it’s all dysfunction. Boom. You can stop whispering now.”

My coworkers broke out laughing, I was laughing too. I found my husband’s affair hilarious on some level, even though I did experience a whole host of emotions — relief, confusion, fear, grief, joy.

Joy at being able to concretely contemplate divorce instead of vaguely wishing for it.

When I looked back at this period and I did some archaeological excavations on the timeline, I realized that they had already been having an affair for at least 5 months at that time of these incidents.

Knowing my husband, he must have been saying terrible things about me to her, since he was saying terrible things about her to me at home long before I suspected their affair. He was saying how money-grubbing she was and how she was a stupid blonde, terrible things — I think to make me think he didn’t like her to pre-emptively prove that there was nothing going on between them. It was all twisted.

I think it’s fascinating how he found her “money-grubbing” when he was sugaring her.

Usually, sugar daddies think more positively about their sugaring and understand the capitalistic transactionality of their behavior with some positive regard. Perhaps, he felt negatively about sugaring her because he could only sugar her with my earnings, and as soon as I left he would have to make drastic changes in order to continue sugaring her. I imagine he told her I was money-grubbing when I was the one earning the majority of the wages.

I asked him directly whether he was having an affair and he vehemently denied it. I wrote him a letter saying it’s ok to admit it to me, let’s talk. In return, I received a five-page tome on the depth of his virtue, which seemed a bit long for innocence.

I would not have attacked him or gotten angry if he told me had an affair; especially because I wanted a divorce and I didn’t want to stay married.

He denied the affair even though they walked past me downtown holding hands. They walked right past me and didn’t see me.

He never admitted the affair even though she had already moved in three days after we separated and I hadn’t moved my belongings out yet. Frankly, I had never encountered a person who could deny as he could. I think it’s his superpower. And it’s also what creates distance and walls and chasms in relationships.

I don’t think that he can be filled with denial and function through denial and suddenly be in a new relationship and suddenly also be a different person who is able to speak frankly.

I think it takes a lot of internal work and commitment to get to the point of not using denial as an easy out. In the end, I think denial takes away much more through its ease and its automaticity than what it gives. Worlds are lost in denial.

There is nothing more humbling than disclosing the reality of oneself. Sharing oneself, in an atmosphere of trust and safety. I don’t think there is anything more beautiful than that.

Even after we got divorced he never admitted to having an affair.

In the end, it was not about the affair, and it was never about the affair. It was about denial running the show on every front which closed the show.