Story Time with Chantal Ep.1: How I found out my husband was cheating on me

This is the very first instalment, or chapter, if you will, of my latest podcast within a podcast. Story Time with Chantal features the real life, can't make this shit up, stories from people just like you. I narrate them in the first person, using me/I, my children, my ex, but these are not my stories, they are yours. I do change some identifying markers, to keep you all safe from your ex's scrutiny. 

And reminder- that men and women can be victims, which also means, that men and women can be abusers, liars, stealers and cheaters. 

I hope you enjoy!

Visit: https://chantalcontorinescoaching.com to learn how to work with me. 

And find it all here at: https://linktr.ee/chantalcontorinescoaching

Follow me on Instagram: @chantal.contorines.coaching

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Story Time with Chantal This is the podcast within a podcast. So the big Umbrella Parent podcast is a survivor's playbook, and this is an offshoot of that called Story Time with Chantal in which I, Chantal will be telling you bedtime stories and these are real. Can't make this shit up. True life stories sent in by all of you. I will be narrating them as if they were happening to me or had happened to me. They're gonna be in the first person, so you're gonna hear a lot of I, my ex-husband, my children. This is to say that they are not my stories necessarily. More often than not, they're your stories, and I'm simply relaying them from the first person to make it easier for me. This doesn't mean that these are not stories that have happened to men or have not happened to women. They're both men and women as we know, can both be abused and can both be victims and survivors of abuse. So these are their stories relayed in the first person for me. So welcome to the first installment or maybe the first chapter of Story Time with Chantal And this is a story of how I found out that my husband was cheating on me. Let's rewind about 10 years ago, and my husband had moved the children and I to a different city, and he had done that with the intent of closing down his business in our hometown and then relocating to where. The children and I lived, and in the interim, he would make it work for us and he would sacrifice a lot and he would come visit us every weekend. And in this arrangement, we actually saw him more in those 12 to 24 hours on the weekends than we ever actually did when we lived under the same roof as him. And this went on for about, let's say 10 months. And there was a holiday, there was a four day long weekend. And the original plan was that my girlfriend and I both had kids, both lived in the same new city. We're going to bring our children to our husbands who lived in our hometowns, and they were gonna take the kids and do their own things, not together. Separately, and they were gonna be super dads for that weekend, and the moms, my girlfriends and I wasn't just the one. Were going to go away and enjoy ourselves for four days, kids free. Because you have to remember that while my husband was sacrificing so much for all of us in the family, I was stuck being a single parent in a new city. Having to make new connections and build new community, not only for my children, but also for myself. And so the bulk of adulting fell upon my shoulders. And I was also trying to build my business, which I'd had to leave when we moved from scratch in a new city. Not knowing anybody. Not a single person. I had no friends there other than a friend who didn't live in the same area as me. So she wasn't very helpful. 'cause as you know, when you have children, your life typically revolves around, those who live in your area. It's just ease of proximity. So the plan was we were going to take our kids together and we were going to bring them to their dad's in our hometowns, and then we were going to travel and go away for four days. Just the ladies. It sounded so beautiful. I was so excited. I love my kids, but having a little time away really does make or more relaxed. Mom, parent and I can show up better for everybody, myself and them. Oh, so the night before we were slated to go, I got really sick. I called my husband and I said, I am really sick. I can't get out of bed. I have a fever. I have the chills. I'm super achy going to the bathroom as a chore. I'm not gonna be able to do this. And he was adamant, adamant that I needed to do this. He said, you've been looking forward to this. I've got great plans for the kids. You need to go. And I thought to myself, first of all. I can't even get out of bed. I don't know how I'm gonna travel for eight hours. Second of all, I don't think anybody is gonna wanna be around a sick person. And I do not want to get anybody sick. And I will, if I'm in a car traveling with these people, and if I'm in a hotel with these people, I will get them sick. I will infect these people. This is a lose lose. Nobody's gonna win. I'm gonna have a terrible time. They're not gonna have fun. They're gonna be responsible for me. Who wants that? And he was like, no, you have to go. You have to go. And I was like, no, I can't go. And so we devised a plan B. And the plan B was in the morning when we're supposed to be going, I would bring my children to my friends and she would take them to my husband, and then he would have a spook in with the kids. I would stay at home and convalesce. When I woke up in the morning, I felt like 95% better. My fever had passed and I knew my fever had passed 'cause I was up all night, sweating through my clothes, my pajamas, my bedding. So I drove my kids to my friends. I didn't plan on going anywhere. I was gonna still stay home and be sick. So I didn't have anything other than my driver's license and I think a debit card. And literally I was wearing my lounge pants, which is. Fancy terminology for PJs. I was wearing PJs. I wore PJs in the car to drop off. My children hadn't brushed my teeth. My hair was slick back. I had an oily face, get to my friends and she's like, let's go, let's go. Let's go have some fun. And I was like, ah, I don't have anything. I don't even have underwear or toothbrush or socks or swim suit. And she's like, you know what? We can just buy everything that you need when we get there. And I was like, giddy up. Let's do this. And so we did. We dropped the kids off at their dad's. We went on our road trip. We got to our destination. We had the best weekend. It was so much fun, so much sun, fun laughter. Great food, delicious drinks, and no responsibilities. I could go to bed when I wanted. I could wake up when I wanted. I could do what I wanted during the day. And during this time I got the best updates from my husband about how much fun my children were having. And I got pictures and there was these two kids who kept being in every picture and he'd had this really great plan. He was going to take our kids to a place that required water transport to get to, and it was a long weekend, so it was busy and. I didn't know who he was going with, I just knew that he had a friend there and they were gonna have, they, this friend had invited them to go to this big party at the beach. And I was so excited for my kids to spend so much quality time with their dad and experience so much fun. And I got all these great pictures and my girlfriends were like, Hmm. And I was like, so who are you with? And he's like, oh, my friend Sarah. And I was like, oh, okay. That's wonderful. And those are Sarah's kids. Yep. I was like, is Sarah's husband there? Oh no. Sarah's husband had to work this weekend. I said, oh, that's too bad. I'm so glad you guys are having fun now. He forgot to book water Transportation home. So he booked it there, but then got stranded on this island and couldn't return. So we had a sleepover. He had to have a sleepover. And he had to have a sleepover with his friend Sarah, and her children, and my children, and that's fine. I believed what he was telling me because he was my husband and why would he tell me anything that wasn't truthful? And my girlfriends in the background kept going. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. And at the end of this weekend, one of my besties, the one that I traveled with, turned to me and said. What the fuck are you doing with this guy? Why are you with him? You do everything and he does nothing, and he just comes and goes when it suits him, shows up when it's convenient for him. But really, you do all of the work. You run a business, you take care of your animals, your house, the garden, the garbage, the kids, you volunteer, you do everything. Why are you with him? And I defended my man. I was so angry with her. How dare she be so audacious and call him out when he worked so hard and a sacrifice so much for us, especially this year, how much he sacrificed for us and we left and I was angry with her. And I couldn't believe she had been so horrible about my husband, a man that I loved, and I defended and I wrote love notes to almost every day and thanked him for all that he did for us. And I picked up my kids and then the kids and I went home and we went back to normal routine. Within a week, I think the following weekend, my daughter was younger. And I still had to help her with the shower. And so she was showering and I think I was helping her rinse out her hair. And she's like, mommy. When we went away with daddy, his friend's children were there and I said, yep, I know we had so much fun. They looked like wonderful children. And she said, you know, but the girl was really sad. And I said, oh, bobs, why was the girl sad? And she's like, oh, because her mommy and daddy broke up. And I thought to myself, well that's interesting because when I asked my husband where his friend, Sarah's husband was, and I used the word husband, he didn't correct me and say, oh, you, her ex-husband. He simply said, oh, her husband had to work. That's why he's not here. So he lied by omission and I was like, okay, that feels weird. And again, this was like a split second. I was with my child. I didn't have time to ruminate. I just processed this at lightning speed. I said, oh, bobs, I'm so sorry. What did you do when she was sad? And she said, I just gave her a hug and console her and told her that she would be okay. And I said, that's perfect. That's what great friends do. That was a really good friend thing to do. And we went about our day. Now remember, my husband and I didn't live in the same city, so the following weekend he came to see us as he did almost every weekend, I think every weekend even. And we had just dropped off our children at their respective activities on a Friday and we were driving to the grocery store and I turned to him and I said, what are we gonna do? He was like, pardon? I said, what are we gonna do with our relationship? And I have to preface this by saying that I had tried to leave him several times before, and every time I tried to leave him, he would always make promises of change. And I would take him back and he would change temporarily for sure, an amount of time. But he would always slippery slope back into. The husband that he had become, which was a very absentee husband who was out more than he was in, who left the bulk of adulting and parenting to me, who really was a bachelor living as a married man. But I was a single mom with a partner who wasn't a partner. And this time when I asked him, what are we gonna do? Do we wanna work on ourselves or on us, or do we wanna end it? And he said, without even hesitating, he said, let's not work on us. And I was shocked because I tried to leave before and it never worked. And all of a sudden he was like, without even hesitating, without even begging, he said, let's just not do it anymore. And I said, okay. And we went to the grocery store and then we picked up our kids. And because we had just moved that year, we didn't wanna have the talk with our children that first school year. We wanted to wait for them to at least graduate their first year in their new school. And so we didn't tell the kids, but we were officially separated as of that. That moment. And that was about a week, I think a week after, we had gone away and several weeks later it kind of dawned on me. What was going on, and yet I was still not a hundred percent. I didn't have any backstory. I'd always believed him. I didn't really know what I was dealing with at the time. I knew I wasn't happy that I was the loneliest I'd ever been in my life, that I cried myself to sleep more nights than I didn't, but I didn't know what I was dealing with. And so I called him up while I was driving. He was on speaker phone, and I said to him, point blank, were you cheating on me with Sarah? He said, absolutely not. We realized we had feelings for each other that weekend, but we were very respectful of you, Chantal and I said, well, that's really interesting. You must have a different definition of respect than I do. I said, you have to be honest with me here I am dealing with children. I have to show up for them. I have to be present for them. And if you're not honest with me now, I won't be able to to do that. At some point I will find out the truth. 'cause the truth always comes out. But I know a lot of people and people talk. And what I do find out is going to be hard for me to show up for our children. So I need you to be honest with me. And you know what the man said to me, and I use that word very loosely, man, I can't talk about that right now. I'm having a panic attack. And he hung up on me. Oh, put, he was so upset. I was actually trying to hold him accountable for his actions. And then, you know how I found out? Through his mistresses ex. That's right. He is the one who clarified the relationship and how it actually transpired and how it wasn't just a one night stand. It didn't just happen that long weekend when they went together and sparks flu and soulmates connected. It had been going on for years, years. My own nose. I was literally the last person to know. Even my parents knew because her name kept coming up in conversation. And when I actually admitted to my parents the truth, my mom said, oh, I knew, I knew, but it wasn't my place to tell you because you didn't even know and you hadn't had that discussion. And I didn't want to plant seeds of doubt, but I knew I knew. My instinct was telling me that her name is coming up too much in conversation, both with the children as well as with him, and also with you. And that my friends, is how I found out that my husband was having an affair, but an actual longstanding affair with a colleague. And I had to really grieve quickly. Again, I was single parenting it. I didn't have support. It was just me in a new city with children and animals and a life and a community, and I had to grieve the injustice of that, the betrayal. But it's the best thing he ever. Did for me. I had tried to leave so many times, but now that he found somebody better, somebody younger, somebody richer, somebody with bigger breasts than me, he could actually take off. He could actually set me free. I could actually escape the living nightmare that I was in, and that my friends, is a story of how I found out that my husband was cheating on me. Goodnight. Sleep tight. And never forget that if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. And these people pray on kind, loving, generous, loyal, trusting people. It's not us, it's really them. Goodnight.