Morning sorry I did need to sleep it was 1am and had to see my son this morning before my husband drops him off to his parents for the day as they’re taking him to summer day camp for the day.
I’ve read a lot of the different perspectives, and honestly, I understand them. If people think I’ll get my karma for what I did, I’m not offended by that. I probably deserve whatever consequences come from the choices I made back then. I’m not here to argue that I was a good person, or to convince anyone that what I did wasn’t wrong. It was wrong. I’ve said that quite plainly, and I’ve never really tried to pretend otherwise.
What I don’t think I need to do, though, is publicly lay out every detail of my life or every consequence I’ve faced just to prove that I understand the seriousness of my actions. I know what I did. I know who I hurt. I know that saying “I was young” or “a lot of time has passed” doesn’t undo any of it.
I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago, and I suppose that has made me reflect quite a lot. I’m not the same person I was in my 20s. I completely understand why some people won’t believe that, and I don’t expect anyone to owe me forgiveness or trust because I’ve changed. But I know myself now in a way I didn’t then. I know what I was capable of, and I’m much more honest with myself about the kind of person I was at that point in my life.
There wasn’t some big, calculated plan behind what I did.
There wasn’t an elaborate explanation that makes it more understandable. The truth is much less complicated and, in some ways, much uglier than that. I was selfish. I didn’t think enough about the people I was hurting, and at the time I cared far too much about what I wanted and far too little about the consequences for everyone else. Sometimes people do genuinely shitty things because they are being shitty, selfish people. That was me.
As for DH meeting her, she did ask him years ago after the divorce. He didn’t. He was in counselling at the time and after everything they had already discussed, he came to the conclusion that meeting in person wasn’t a good idea. I can’t give anyone a better explanation than that. I don’t think there necessarily is one. He made his decision, and that’s his to own.
I also understand why people say, “once a cheater, always a cheater.” I can’t sit here and tell anyone that they’re wrong for thinking that. I chose to build a life with someone who had cheated, and I accept that people will judge me for that too. We started our relationship from a place of hurt and bad decisions, and I’m not going to rewrite history and pretend otherwise.
But it has also been more than a decade. We’ve had a marriage, a child, another baby on the way, and an entire life that has happened since then. People can believe that people never change if they want to. I can only speak for myself and say that I’m not who I was then. That doesn’t erase who I was. It doesn’t make the past less painful for the people I hurt. It just means I don’t believe a person has to remain permanently defined by the worst things they did in my case this was in my 20s.
And I want to be careful about something else: I’m not looking for sympathy by saying that losing my friendship with her was painful. I know I caused the situation. I know I don’t get to make myself the victim of consequences that came from my own actions. But I can still be honest that losing someone who had been my friend for a very long time hurt me too. Both things can be true. I can accept full responsibility for why the friendship ended and still acknowledge that it was difficult for me.
She has said that she misses the friendship, and I’ve thought about that quite a lot. I don’t realistically expect a friendship to come back. I completely understand why she would never trust me again. I wouldn’t expect her to. Trust isn’t something I can ask for simply because I’ve changed or because enough time has passed. There’s just no possibility of trust from her end based on our history that’s just a given.
What I can do is ask if she wants to have a conversation over the phone. No expectation that we can somehow go back to being who we were. I’ll take a few days to think about properly though.
But after all this time I think the most honest thing I can do is acknowledge what I did without trying to soften it, acknowledge that it hurt people, accept that some consequences will never be mine to control, and still allow myself to believe that I am capable of being a different person now. I don’t believe I need to hate myself but also I’m not the victim in this situation.
I was selfish. I hurt people. I regret it. I can’t change it, and I don’t expect anyone else to forget it.All I can possibly do is make sure the person I am now isn’t the same person I was then.