R.B.-

Michael said you didn’t believe him.  When he told you that we’d only known each other for 6 months and that he took my panties down one time, you didn’t believe him.

You shouldn’t.

That’s not what happened.

I told him that if he was seeking forgiveness from you, then you ought to know why he’s being forgiven.

Will you forgive him for the 482 times he told me he loved me?  Will you forgive him for the tears he shed in my bed over the John Prine song he played for me?  Will you forgive him for those friends he said he was seeing?  He still hasn’t seen them in years.  He was with me.

Three years.

I found out the hard way that Michael is gifted at playing on people’s sympathies and even better at playing the victim. I see how foolish I was. I now recognize the cliche language designed to hide a cheating man’s narcissism in order to reel in naive women like me. And I was terribly trusting and naive. I’m sorry for that.

I did not know that you were married. The first time I ever heard you referred to as his wife was at dinner with his parents, by his father but never by him. Stupidly, I dismissed it as a slip of the tongue. You see, I was deeply in love with Michael and I thought, for sure, that he loved me, too.

Michael portrayed his homelife as a complicated, communal setup that involved an acrimonious relationship with you, your sister and your brother-in-law and, at times, their children. He once came to my house after a verbal altercation with your brother-in-law (over laundry or oil changes or something similar) and said he couldn’t take it anymore, that he was going to move out and couldn’t wait as he’d planned. It wasn’t just that one time; he said he was going to move out on a number of occasions, even meeting with a realtor and viewing properties near your home. His long-term plan, though, was to leave once your boys were out of the house.

His responsibilities to you would end then, he said.

Our relationship lasted over 3 years, and before me, he had other “girlfriends” spanning decades, one of whom I spoke with. When he & I briefly broke up in 2014, he immediately joined dating sites to find my replacement. He acted like a single man with a tight schedule of co-parenting and a busy homelife, including repairs on the communal, rambling home — a home I visited on several occasions and saw the guest bedroom where he claimed to be sleeping.

Your problems began long ago (in the 90s) when Michael actively sought connections with other women — connections he claimed he never made with you. It wasn’t just physical for him, he said. In fact, he claimed that I was the first he’d actually had sex with. I’m putting that in “The Lies That Michael Told” category, however. It’s a full list. Every day, for three years, a new lie was added.

I am sorry that it was ultimately my relationship with Michael that caused you so much pain. But…he’s a cheater. He’ll tell you that it’s in his DNA: his grandfather had a long affair, and his father had multiple, physical affairs. He claimed that he wasn’t intrinsically a cheater, though, and that all he needed was emotional and physical intimacy, which he also claimed he received from me. He swore that you and he were no longer physical, that sex “hurt” you, that you hadn’t been interested since your younger son’s birth.

He told me a story about your official breakup, how he moved out for a time before he came back because you were falling apart as a mother and he worried for his kids.

He met my family. We vacationed in Vegas with my brother. He took my daughter and her friend to Chicago. He and I won a couples’ Halloween costume contest in Chicago. We went to Philly. We went up north. We went to Atlantic City together. He brought chocolates to my mom after her breast cancer surgery. It was all, 100% fake, but designed to make me feel like what we had was real. His actions were manipulative, conniving and inauthentic. I see that now.

Michael was the problem. I also see that. You were never the problem. Neither was I.

I doubt everything he ever told me, including that he would love me forever — words he said in our very last conversation, after you found out. It was all bullshit. Every tear. Every kiss. Every time he squeezed my hand and told me he loved me. He knew from the very beginning what he was doing to you. He knew what he was doing to me. How someone like that can sleep at night is incomprehensible.

I’m sorry that I fell for him. I’m still picking up the pieces from that mistake. And it was a mistake — the biggest mistake of my life — to ever let him in emotionally. He destroyed my ability to feel anything beyond distrust for anyone.

You know, one of the initial reasons he was drawn to me was my easy happiness. Have no fear, that happiness is gone. There is no more for Michael to suck out of me and I, therefore, hold no further appeal to him.

Best of luck. With Michael, you will need it.