Why Having an Affair Made Me a Better Mother?

When I was single, I swore I’d never settle for less than I deserved. So when I married Brandon, I was confident I had found someone with whom I could build a life based on love and respect. And of course, the biggie: no cheating. My father had cheated on my mother and they’d split when I was young. Because of that, trust and honesty in a relationship were critical to me and infidelity was a deal breaker. Brandon understood this, so armed with what I thought was a mutual understanding, we began our future together.

In our early years together, I’ll admit that I overlooked some red flags. Brandon was handsome, charming, and overprotective although that protection sometimes came off as possessiveness. He was so passionate about pursuing a career in the arts that I decided to refocus my own artistic goals, knowing we needed a stable income if we were to start a family. Sometimes we fought, and at times Brandon could be mean and dismissive of my feelings, but all couples argue, so I didn’t overthink it. We had a good relationship, despite our ups and downs.

Five years into our marriage, when I was eight months pregnant, I discovered that Brandon had been having an affair for several months with a co-worker, after he accidentally left his email open. I was shocked and I began questioning everything about our relationship and, most dangerously, about myself. I knew that I should leave him, that I couldn’t move past this. But what would happen to me and our baby if I left? Could I start over now? Did I deserve this? I didn’t have the courage to find the answers, so I stayed.

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The only explanation Brandon could offer was that he “liked the attention.” He was full of reassurances that it was a “mistake” and promised that he loved me. I wanted so desperately to believe him, and was so scared of what divorce would mean for me and our baby, that I convinced myself that we could be the exception to my “deal-breaker” rule. I’d be the perfect wife so Brandon wouldn’t think about another woman again. I busied myself preparing for our baby’s arrival, making our house into a home. I cooked, did laundry, and cleaned, confident these actions would solidify my worth as a wife and woman. If everything external were organized and perfect, somehow the rest would be OK. Because this marriage — no, this life — was going to work out just as I’d planned.

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The years that followed are a blur. I worked a stressful 9-to-5 county job that provided us benefits, gave birth to a second child, and ran our household, allowing Brandon to follow his dream in the arts. I kept myself so busy that I became numb to my emotions. Then I reconnected with an old friend, Ryan, and everything changed.

We reconnected through social media in the typical “Wow! What are you up to?” way.  At first, I thought we’d just be friends — we were both married with children and lived in different cities. An affair never even crossed my mind. Besides, there was no way I’d ever put Brandon or another woman, another wife, through the pain I’d experienced.

Our affair began several years after our first email exchange. Eventually, emails turned to texts, texts to calls, and suddenly we both had crossed an emotional line. We talked about everything and, for the first time in years, I felt heard. Ryan reminded me of who I was and of all the dreams I had put on hold so my husband could follow his. We knew each other’s histories and demons, and we accepted each other completely. He made me feel more beautiful than anyone ever has. And the sex — my God. Before Ryan, I had forgotten what it felt like to feel wanted or worthy.

Drawing on my renewed confidence, I began expressing to Brandon what I’d been suppressing for years — how alone I felt, that I had been trying so desperately to be who I thought he wanted that I felt lost and I needed his support to find my way back. I begged him to go to marriage counseling and explained that our sex life needed frequency and openness. I needed his help with the kids and for our family to come first. Brandon claimed to hear me but continued to bail on family events and prioritize his career.

I went running back to Ryan and this time, it became a full-blown affair. We found ways to meet in different cities and on nights Brandon worked late and the kids were asleep, we communicated via Skype. 

Our affair lasted almost two years and ended when Ryan confessed to his wife after my sister, unbeknownst to me, threatened to do it for him. I told Brandon too. He was shocked, angry, hurt, and humiliated, unsure if he could forgive me but worried that I’d leave him. He wanted answers, just as I had years before, but, unlike him, I could explain how I got there. We finally started therapy, took responsibility for our betrayals, and, at first, I thought we’d get through it. But ultimately, nothing had really changed — except that I knew my worth again. I filed for divorce.

Cheating didn’t give me a cliché happy ending; it gave me much more. Before the affair, I had the husband, the kids, the house, but it was a façade because Brandon and I weren’t in love. My affair, however, showed me that feeling desired breaths life into us, that sex and passion are part of what being in love is. That my opinion matters and that I’m deserving of respect and happiness.

Society tells us that once we commit to a marriage, only the most egregious sins should be cause to break that union. But in truth, there isn’t always a terrible, distinct reason to end a marriage. Sometimes people just aren’t happy, in ways that really matter. It may turn out that the person you’re with stopped being right for you or never was, and you meet someone who shows you that. And while that’s difficult and sad, especially with kids involved, it’s also lucky. I’d become so unhappy in my marriage that I couldn’t really enjoy my time with my kids. Worse, they had begun internalizing my unhappiness, mistakenly believing it had to do with them. By separating, Brandon and I can better ensure that our children feel loved and secure even under different roofs.

People say that some couples can survive affairs; maybe they can, but I’ve never seen it. After Brandon’s affair, our marriage was profoundly broken and we were living a lie. I might’ve kept living that way forever, had I not gotten a glimpse into how things could be. Now I’m strong enough to never settle for less again; for these things, I will forever be grateful. The strength I didn’t have when I found out about my husband’s affair, I found through my own.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Editor’s note: This essay has been written under a pseudonym and all names have been changed due to the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Scientists say this simple psychological shift can help you achieve your goals

Statistically speaking, there's a good chance you'll fail to keep your New Year's resolutions.

Fortunately, you'll have plenty of opportunities to redeem yourself, even before January 1, 2017.

The key? Be on the lookout for days that seem like transition points.

In doing so, you'll be harnessing the power of what researchers call the "fresh-start effect." Whenever we feel like there's a chance to leave our old, lazy selves behind and become our new, ideal selves, we're more motivated to make progress on our goals.

A team of researchers led by Katherine Milkman at the Wharton School discovered the fresh-start effect recently, when they found that visits to a university fitness center spiked around turning points, like birthdays, the beginning of the semester, and the beginning of the week.

To follow up on those findings, the researchers conducted another series of experiments, published this year in Psychological Science and cited by the Association for Psychological Science.

In one experiment, researchers asked participants to describe a goal they would like to pursue. Then they prompted participants to imagine that they had just moved to a new apartment. Some were told that this was the first time they had moved since coming to this city nine years ago; others were told they had moved every year.

All participants were asked to indicate how motivated they would be to pursue their goal, and how different they felt from their past, imperfect selves.

Sure enough, participants who imagined that this was the first time they had moved in nine years were more motivated to make progress on their goals, and experienced more distance between their current and past selves.

Taken together, these findings suggest that "new beginnings" can prompt us to tackle personal goals. That's likely because we feel empowered to leave our past selves and all their failures behind, and embrace our new selves and their potential for success.

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(Flickr/Tama Leaver) Recognize the opportunity for a new beginning.
This research has some important implications for anyone hoping to adopt healthier habits. The study authors write: "For individuals who hope to curtail bad behaviors but struggle with initiating goal pursuit, temporal landmarks that open new time periods may prevent vicious cycles of impulsive behavior stimulated by 'what the hell' rationalizations."

In other words, the perception of a new beginning can give you a boost when the motivation to pursue your goals is flagging. And there are dozens of new beginnings throughout the year — from big (first day of your new job) to small (first day of the month). All you really need to do is recognize that it's an opportunity to try again.

As Milkman told Stephen Dubner on an episode of the "Freakonomics" podcast, "You sort of can't hit a home run if you don't swing. So it's never going to work if you don't start, and I think that, that suggests that we want fresh-start moments to motivate people and hopefully eventually they'll actually hit the home run, even if they fall off a bunch of times."

David Foster Learns the Peril of the Real House Husbands

David Foster is reportedly angry that his RHOBH wife and her kids are outpacing his own fame. Welcome to reality TV’s weird man-burning spotlight.

Oh! But he tinkled the piano keys at Yolanda’s swanky gatherings so beautifully!

He surely took great pride that his wife ran such a surreally perfect fridge—a fridge with visible contents that was its own character, with its own Twitter account!

She took such cooing care of him!

It is true, David Foster’s many successes speak for themselves: the St Elmo’s Firesoundtrack, Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing,” and many, many more. Foster has won 16 Grammys and was Oscar-nominated.

However, reality television’s very own weird success-measure means that this astonishing career in popular music mattered little next to his wife Yolanda’s squabbles and make-ups with Lisa Vanderpump and Brandi Glanville, and more recently her distressing illness.

And yet now, perhaps, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fans, who had never heard of Foster before his appearance alongside his wife, know why we were treated to her emphatic reaffirmations of his fame and standing.

Page Six reports—under the headline, “Foster Family Torn Apart By Fame”—that Foster reportedly feels his success has been eclipsed by that of his wife’s model daughters, Gigi and Bella.

“A source explains that after Yolanda married David in 2011, she took the RHOBHrole ‘to help her daughters rise in the modeling industry.’”

Also in 2011, says Page Six, Foster “was named chairman of Universal’s Verve Music Group, but now, ‘David’s record label is shutting down... and he is blaming her for this failure because he thinks the Housewives show has hurt him.’”

Worse, while the Hadid girls are all over the place as super-famous models and gadabouts, Erin and Sara, Foster’s daughters, star in a VH1 reality show, Barely Famous, and remain—Page Six bitchily notes—“just that.”

This comes after the couple announced to People last week they were to divorce: “Sadly we have decided to go our separate ways. We’ve shared nine beautiful and joyous years together. During that time we experienced love, friendship and the inevitable challenges that come with managing a marriage, careers, blended families and health issues.”

That last matter is central, presently, to Yolanda’s place in the show—she isbattling Lyme disease, and another Page Six story recently posited that Foster saw the attention being paid to this was eclipsing him too.

Men, see the titles of these shows: This is what you are signing up for. Know your place.

“David thinks everything revolves around her and her illness. It’s become the biggest narrative of her show,” Page Six quoted a source as saying.

He certainly wasn’t present for his wife in last week’s season opener—she had decamped from Malibu to live in an apartment nearer to her doctors in Los Angeles.

Yolanda explained his absence in sympathetic terms herself: He had a life, and was busy, she said, with no hint of any marital discord. Indeed, Yolanda recently praised Foster as a “courageous husband” for “standing by” her as she endured her illness.