I was the only breadwinner in our family, but I never complained about it. My wife and son had a great life, they were always able to buy new equipment and go on spontaneous vacations. They would often go away on weekends to a cottage in the suburbs, to roast shish kebabs and relax in nature. The son was always a homebody, so he often stayed home all day while his mother went out, but they ate dinner together. He had no idea, and neither did I, that my mother could spend all her free time with her lover. It came out completely unintentionally one Saturday, when our fourteen-year-old boy was called by the neighborhood kids to go for a walk. He reluctantly went with them because his mother insisted.
He didn’t have long to go out, because the guys were strangers and there were no other people in common, so my son ran home at the first opportunity. My wife did not count on her son’s return, so she brought her lover home. They were both sitting half-naked by the fireplace with glasses of wine when the son broke in without knocking. My wife didn’t deny it and even let my son punch her lover once, but ordered me not to say anything. Of course, he told me everything that night.
We got divorced very quickly, by mutual consent. I didn’t ask anything from her, nor did she ask anything from me. As far as I know, she got married just a couple of months after we broke up. She does not want to see her son, still considers him a traitor, and she does not want to see me either. The worst thing about all this is that my son thinks he is the one who ruined our marriage because he dared to tell me.
– If I scared her into telling, he’d leave her husband and come back to you,” he’d say occasionally.
But I don’t think there would be any good in such a lie. I myself would never want to live with a cheater, and I’m glad my son confessed what he saw instead of hiding it. He’s still young and doesn’t understand, but it would really weigh on his conscience and only make things worse if he told me in a week or a month or a year. I think it’s better sooner rather than later.
