Don't Believe Him

by Monica Arya

There wasn’t much awareness; hell, there still isn’t. As mothers, we don’t realize we are drowning while trying to be everyone else’s anchor. I didn’t enjoy giving up my identity. Warren and my friends keep telling me I need

hobby, but where were they, telling me that, as I was in the thick of motherhood alone? Did anyone say, “Let us take the baby so you can paint?” No, no one did. Even when the children got older, I was racing around between carlines and extracurriculars. I was wiping noses and holding vomit buckets at three a.m.; I was cooking dinner, maintaining a clean home, and keeping up on the groceries. I was consumed by being a wife and a mother, and there was no room left to be me. And no one cared. Because I was filling everyone else’s cups, and when everyone else was hydrated and happy, they didn’t care that I was withering away. You’re just a stay-at-home mom, after all.

It was okay to feel disappointed. Something I had realized as a wife and mother is you can’t blame people for disappointing you when maybe, you were expecting too much from them. It was the sad truth, but sometimes that’s what people did; they’d disappoint you. So instead, in this moment, I decided to take control over this year of change. I could find myself and figure out who I was beyond what I’d always been expected to prioritize.

“If you see people by their actions, then you’ll never be fooled by their words.”

“Right now, he’s wrapping you up in his words, trying to make you think you’re crazy or being irrational. Gaslighting, my friend.”

adulterer? People on the outside of marriages are so quick to judge. They’ll tell you to leave him, to start fresh or question why you’re complaining and not doing something about what it is that bothers you. But the truth of the matter is that marriage is like a security blanket. It’s warm and cozy, familiar. At forty,

I didn’t want to lose my comfort and stability and be forced to start over. This was the time in my life I wanted to be on cruise control, not having to speed down a crowded highway.

My entire world and life as I knew it was on fire, and the scariest part of it all was that I knew the one holding the match. It was the man I loved.

I was realizing that I was exhausted from pouring from an empty cup.

My mother once told me when I was younger that there’s two types of men; good men and men who pretend they are good. The scary part is, you take a gamble and never know which one you’ve got until you’re too far deep in with them.

That’s human nature, though, wanting what we can’t have, no matter the immense destruction our actions will inflict. We get ourselves into situations and allow it to spin us around and around, gaining a high from the adrenaline of the excitement, but then what we see once we are expelled from the rush is nothing more than shrapnel and chaos.

as the other woman. Sure, he was separated, and sure, they

“I wouldn’t react; I’d play it cool and find out every single thing I needed to. You can’t pull the trigger with an empty gun.”

Shaking my head, I knew that was just another thing I’d never believe. His promises.

That’s the problem with young love, though; we are blinded to the logical aspect of the relationship because, in that moment, it is as if nothing else could matter. But it does matter. It could be the difference in marrying someone who might have killed his first wife or not. It could be the difference in marrying a serial cheater and a man destined to ruin your life.

lives—constantly thinking, worrying, and listening to them. It was true, marriage and being a wife took the backseat, but so did being a husband. He always put his career first, even above being a father. Society accepted that though. There wasn’t “dad-guilt”. If Warren took the kids out

so I

could catch up on laundry or housework, he was applauded as such an amazing and devoted father. Meanwhile, mothers did it all daily, with zero to little appreciation. This was expec...

As a

mother, you want to be able to put a band aid on every wound, but some wounds can’t be patched up. Some wounds inflict more pain because they aren’t external, but internal.

People joke about anxiety and depression. It’s easy to say you’re depressed or anxious when you’re really just feeling the normal range of human emotions. It’s okay to be unhappy or nervous and not be clinically labeled. It’s okay to not be okay. As mothers and wives, that’s a concept that quickly becomes foreign to us. Really, as women, we are groomed to never show those feelings of being completely overwhelmed or miserable. Many times, throughout my life, I had experienced the range of them all. Finishing college, getting married, and then getting pregnant. Postpartum hormones rampaged throughout my body, causing my entire mental state to be altered while no one even noticed. Well, even if they noticed, they didn’t

care. Because I was expected to care for a baby, I was expected to push through the sleep deprivation, debilitating anxiety, depression, and exhaustion. Sometimes, I would be excessively overwhelmed, and everyone would tell me that the way I felt was normal. So, I started to believe them. I believed that it was normal to feel like the world crashing around you was normal. Now, at forty, I knew better. I knew this dense, heavy storm-cloud about my head wasn’t normal. And most of all, the person who put it there was the man who should have only brought light into my life.

In the movies, you see someone catching their spouse cheating and it’s the huge, loud, dramatic scene. The wife throws the clothes out of the window, and she may even jump on the woman and pull her hair. She slaps her husband across the face and the entire neighborhood hears the fight.

I wanted him to feel this pain he willingly inflicted on me. I wanted him to understand how he wrecked me and killed a part of me. I’d never get these years back.

Yes, it’s easy to blame “the other woman” when your husband is having an affair, but he should know better. Our society loves to give endless hall passes to men and immediately chastise women.

He was unusually happier and actually showing interest in Ava. I guess that’s what happens when you have a mistress. You’re happier.

Beauty and the Beast set the stage for unrealistic expectations on love. It convinced us as little girls to believe that a beast could turn into prince charming, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We should have been taught to know that people don’t change, and the ones who are beasts will forever be just that. And there is nothing charming about that.

It’s a lie when people say everything will be okay. How could they possibly predict that? My life was about to go up into flames. It wouldn’t be okay.

“What is so funny, Nina?” Blowing out a breath of air, I turned away from him and grabbed my tube of bright red lipstick. Carefully lining my lips, I smacked them together and looked at him once more. “Your fucking face. You just raped me. I don’t need protecting from anyone but you.”

Marriage has unwritten rules, every single one. But our marriage only had rules that applied to me. Meanwhile, Warren was living however he wanted, without any concern on how it’d impact his wife, his marriage,

“Quae seminaverit homo haex et metet,”

I had failed my children. I had chosen to keep them around a man who was dangerous. Ava would fly back to London and Max would be at school… they were safe. Now, if I could just figure out how to get a clean break from Warren, we’d all be fine. As a stay-at-home mom, I had no work experience, I didn’t have a resume, let alone enough cash or money to support myself and the kids.

It’s not easy to just leave. Warren had me sign an iron-clad prenuptial agreement, and essentially with the kids being over eighteen, I wasn’t entitled to child support. Any alimony would be miniscule. I’d leave this gorgeous lake house with no place to go, and even my car was under his name. I hated how I had allowed myself to be this woman, the woman who trusted her husband more than herself.

It made no sense to me how we were conditioned to believe that a man could be with a woman less than half his age, but if a woman did the same, we should feel embarrassed or conflicted.

I chose to be with a monster, and worst of all, I was still standing by him.

We were raised to know women were inferior to us. Women were there for our pleasure, and they didn’t deserve the same respect as men.