In what I now view as an odd twist, DeAnn and Chad—two of our core couple friends—split this year. The odd part is that their timeline mirrored ours almost exactly. We’ve been married almost exactly as long, and they hit the wall in the same month I discovered Mark’s affair. The key difference is that DeAnn moved out and filed for divorce and Mark told his affair partner he loved his wife.
DeAnn has never been honest about the role her affair partner played in the divorce–not even to herself. And though I believe her that she didn’t cross any physical lines, her split with Chad was due to her emotional affair. Sadly, everyone can see that but her.
Chad and Mark played softball together tonight and Chad shared a story about going to his daughter’s sporting event and DeAnn bringing her affair partner—who she is now openly dating. He talked about how awkward and uncomfortable that was.
In the early days, that was a key crash trigger for me. I couldn’t believe Mark would bring someone else into our family. The natural end to leaving your spouse for the affair partner is family events split in two.
Tonight, Mark held me tight and said he was so grateful we weren’t walking DeAnn and Chad’s path. That he didn’t want to share any of our big family moments with anyone but me.
I was grateful too.
[...] 7, 2009 by Emmy Blue I wrote about Chad and DeAnn who took the road that Mark and I didn’t [...]