How do we end up as we do? Most of us started out as young naïve idyllic teenage girls without a care in the world, happily looking for our Prince Charming. Then IT happens we meet a guy and we believe he is the One, we fall head over heels in love, and he becomes the man of our dreams, our future husband, and father of our babies. We dream of a perfect home with white picket fence, 2 children, and a dog. A man who will love and honor you until the end of time, a man we will grow old with, but as the years pass, the ideology starts to dissipate and by then we are tied down with children, bills, and a man who only resembles the boy we fell so deeply in love with. None of us plan on being middle aged and in a loveless marriage…none of us plan on having our hearts and soul ripped out by an adulterous affair, none of us plan on starting over so late in life. There is nothing sadder than lying beside the man who promised you the moon, the man who swore to protect you from harm, the man who said he would always love you, the man you dedicated your life to, the man who saw easy sex more valuable than all you have given him over the years, the man who so easily risked it all for his own carnal pleasure.

No one knows the shame and humiliation a woman feels after learning of an affair unless they have experienced it, it kills something precious inside you. The affair plays over and over in your mind like a movie. The words he said to her are burned into your brain. You can’t unring a bell! As women we are competitive in nature, we want to be the one he loves, wants, needs, and desires and when the truth is he wants/ wanted another there is no coming back from such a loss. Our self-esteem is destroyed and no matter how much time passes, there will always be a reminder that for whatever amount of time it lasted “we” were last, we were a second thought, we were just someone in the way! Starting over is not easy particularly when ¾ of your life is entwined with this man however there comes a time that our own self-respect, self-worth, and self-preservation kick in and demand action. Honestly as a strong woman it is beneath me to simply forgive and forget. How does one forget that this man lied, cheated, and purposely broke your heart? How do you forget that this man spoke of you to his fling? How does one forgive a man that has done these same things in the past? The answer is we don’t! How do we accept his excuse that “it was only a game”, a game he was playing, and a game in which I was the pawn and unknowingly being played, a game I guess I lost!