It’s funny how I start to unravel certain things in my head. The layers upon layers within relationships. The cracks that start out small and turn into canyons. That break up a marriage.

My ex and I are still in the process of finalising our divorce. And it’s been a rollercoaster, if I’m honest. Everything fell apart for the last time 4 and a half years ago and we’re still walking through the steps of splitting our lives from each other. It’s been complicated and I won’t get into the details. But I was thinking the other day how it all should have happened 15 years ago.

I’m coming up to a very personal anniversary. It has nothing to do with my marriage or any relationship I’ve had. It’s an anniversary about me only. And it was in the thinking of how I will celebrate this anniversary that I remembered that this thing happened.

I met my ex husband online many years ago. And at the same time in the space online, I met a friend of mine. Perhaps I should put friend in quotes there but no. He was a friend. And he was a good friend for a long time. What happened wasn’t about him and all about me. I met my ex husband and this person at the same time. And for awhile when things got serious between me and my ex husband, my friendship with this other person obviously took a step back.

I got married, my life as a partnership started. And there were always cracks. Always. I’ve talked about this at length in therapy but there were always things that I’d consider red flags that I didn’t see, didn’t consider, didn’t concern me at the time. And yet I persisted. Because there was a lot of good in my relationship, in my marriage.

But when things started becoming not so great, my friendship with this man reignited. We’d email every now and again, mostly to update each other on the overlap of the people we used to know. He had kept in touch with some of them and I had kept in touch with others. We were never particularly close, never deep friends. Until we were. I remember it happened gradually in the year or 18 months before The Thing happened. I’d slowly change our once monthly emails into more frequent messaging. I’d ask him more questions, I’d bring up subjects that would dig deeper into who he was as a person.

I look back on it now and can see with clarity what I was doing. I was blind to my own loneliness and I was seeking out meaningful emotional connection with whoever was available, whoever was amenable to me chipping away at their walls. To get closer, to burrow into someone else. And this friend of mine wasn’t innocent. I definitely developed some feelings for him and objectively speaking, even though I didn’t say anything nor did he, I feel like it’s safe to say that so did he. We crossed a line, him and I. And it all came to a head shortly before my anniversary 15 years ago.

We had been talking online for hours that night. The only thing I remember specifically is that I brought up this anniversary. He thought it was really cool and asked how I’d celebrate, what I would do to commemorate this day. And I said probably nothing? and he objected to that very strongly. He said he refused to let such an important day go unnoticed and uncelebrated. He was going to buy me flowers and have them delivered on the day. I remember feeling pleased and like an actual spark had been lit inside me. He asked for my number so we could arrange the details another time. I gave him my number but then told him that I’d need to go, I was feeling pretty sleepy.

I turned off my computer, went into the bedroom I shared with my ex husband, plugged my phone into my charger and went to the toilet to brush my teeth. In the few minutes I was in the bathroom, it happened. My friend had sent me a text message because he’d had my number for all of 10 minutes. The text had read ‘Going so soon?’ with a winky face. And possibly a kiss. And the thing was, it was 2am and I’d left the ringer on so it made a noise to let me know that someone had texted me. But they’d done it when I was out of the room.

And things weren’t right between me and my ex husband. I don’t blame him for looking at my phone. To see who had texted me so early in the morning. But seeing that text it laid things fairly open as to what I’d been doing the last couple of hours. Talking to someone else. In a manner that warranted a flirtatious emoji, a kiss.

I look back on it now and wonder how things didn’t just end then. It would have been better, probably. Saving ourselves the slow death of our relationship for the next ten years. We stayed up very late that night not talking. Mostly lying next to each other in bed being inches away from each other but feeling like an entire ocean separated us. And there was distance between us. I hadn’t broken what was between us but I’d brought our broken parts into the light. But that night and the difficult nights after it we chose to resuscitate the dying embers of who we were.

Years later, and years after we should have, we decided to finally end things. And he said something to me that felt quite cold and awful but it makes sense in the context of everything happened. But he said he was always waiting for me to tell him that I’d cheated on him. That he always just lived with that feeling, knowing that it was possible. That it had happened. And that he was waiting for confirmation that it had happened again.

And I’ve carried that comment around with me for years. It’s been a heavy burden. I’ve always felt like I deserved the pain of that comment. That I deserved the guilt I carried, at hurting him. At the betrayal of what I had done. But it’s taken me actual years to also get to a point where I realise that there was hurt and betrayal on both sides. Am I excusing my behaviour? Am I excusing that I stepped out of my marriage? Am I excusing that I hurt my ex? No.

I’m just allowing myself a little bit of grace. That for every story like mine there’s also the story of my marriage. The one where I stopped feeling safe, where I stopped feeling supported, where I stopped feeling important. I give myself grace because I know the ways in which I told him that I was unhappy, that my emotional needs weren’t met, that I needed something from him. And I know that in hundreds of ways he did nothing, didn’t see my pain, didn’t see my hurt.

We did a pretty great job of hurting each other.