Reply #78: I think of myself as having made a grotesque

[crim son]

mistake. However, had the man I loved and cheated with loved me back I would be with him now. My husband has shed ten tears over the revelation of my love for the other man, and they are tears of offended pride and nothing more. If we had a loving marriage, none of this would have happened. But my response has more to do with my contempt for generalizations than anything else. I've been asked to apologize for sounding harsh, and I was having trouble because I have personal integrity. I have been an unusually fine wife and mother for sixteen years and you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who disputes this, including my MIL, who knows of the lover. My husband, who wants a divorce, also comforts me virtually nightly for the fact that I fell so horribly and ruinously in love with another man who didn't love me back, for how much pain it has caused me, and for how it has forced us to face the reality of our failed marriage. My husband, the offended, does not question my personal integrity but rather the integrity of the man who used me to repair his own disastrous situation.

You know part of the story and it's goddamned complicated. But it's only one tale of woe and there are so many. The generalization wasn't fair.

Anyhow, I accept your apology and offer you my own, for sounding angry when I was. I have no doubt you did not mean to offend me personally and I am sorry for attacking you when you were offering your honest opinion. -Lisa