The Intention of Writing

My purpose for blogging, for writing this stuff down, is not to make excuses or ever get sympathy. It is just to process, dissect and try to understand what happened. And secondly, to perhaps be a help and comfort to those who have gone through a similar experience.

I want to give hope.

Husband, he feels strongly that we can help people over come their experiences. He feels very compelled to share our experience and help couples heal and reconnect. Perhaps to prevent what happened to us.

One of the most reliable statistics on adultery comes from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In 1992 the center sent hundreds of interviewers to gather data on the sexual conduct of Americans in the National Health and Social Life Survey. In a face-to-face survey of 3,432 adults born from 1933 to 1974, researchers asked: ''Have you ever had sex with someone other than your husband or wife while you were married?''

A quarter of the married men in the United States and a sixth of the married women reported having at least one extramarital affair.

My therapist said that adultery is also very common in faith communities as well. Yet nearly everyone says that adultery is wrong, or almost always wrong. That is a lot of conflicted people, sinning and hating themselves.

I'd like to perhaps help people avoid my mistake. And that is why I blog, that is why I write and that is what I hope.

First commenting

I just made my first comment and now I'm very nervous. Nervous that somehow someone who knows me will find me and know what happened. But I really need to get over that. I do feel like I need to own this. If I can just take it and throw it out there, then there isn't anything else to be afraid of.

I'm not going to be afraid anymore. I have to own this and this is my first step. Hi, my name is Scarlet, and I was unfaithful. Now that I'm a year away from when it happened I think it will be easier for me to own. It isn't so fresh, it's easier for me to say that wasn't me. I'm not that anymore.

So I am slightly nervous. I think I would remain hidden forever but, as I said before, I think there are so many lost women and men out there. And if I can somehow help them find their way back to where they should be, to their happiness and love- if my experience can help somehow. Then perhaps more good could come from my awful deed.

Imagine the chigrine of evil forces! First, not only did my marriage not get ruined, but became so incredibly strong and good. That sure backfired (if you believe in evil as wanting ill for us). But if I could go on, with Husband, to help others. That would really irk the bad forces out there.

I sound like a freak. It was actually the Therapist who suggested that the evil forces out there are real. It goes along with what I was taught growing up, but had moved away from.

Anyway, I'm not a freak. I'm a girl who made an awful mistake but is healing from it.

Adultery

There, I said it. I committed adultery. I was unfaithful. If you haven't figured this out yet, that is what the Scarlet A is for.

For much of this time after the mark was discovered I have kept my wall up around myself so I don't have to acknowledge my sin. I don't know how to understand it. It was so unlike me. So opposite of who I am. I had never so much as broken a heart, and suddenly I'm nearly destroying whole lives, potentially destroyed one for certain, though not mine nor my husband's.

I am so sorry for the thing I did. Sorry to everyone. I will probably go into "the Other" and how he came into my life at some point. But not now. But he does play a role in my inability to let go because I feel such tremendous guilt and responsibility for causing the harm. Harm that cannot be fixed. This is hard on Husband, who I'm sure thinks it is unfair since he is the true victim in all of this. But I feel they were both victims of my treachery and that I was the villain in all of this.

In regards to the "Other", I feel like I led a starving soul into a place unnatural to him with a crumb of bread and a promise for something he was desperately hungry for. Evil. I was like the White Witch with the Turkish Delights. Husband had no idea about what was going on and I tried my best to pretend there was nothing going on. That I lived two different lives. But I felt like I was living outside my body, and that I went through daily life forcefully-only by willing myself to exist in my life.

It was hard for me. I loved my children, but I did not live here anymore. I lived in my head and I wanted so much to be "in love", to fulfill love. To finally live and be with someone I loved.

I guess I should point out that I married my husband out of mutual interest and companionship. That I never fell in love with him (although I am blessed enough to be able to say that I am finally in love with him). There was a person I loved, someone who left me-died. After his death I just gave up, I would never love again. But I wanted a family and I wanted to be with my dearest friend, so we got married. It seems terribly unfair, doesn't it? He sort of ambushed me, asked me to marry him very early in our dating relationship and I didn't know what to say. Couldn't say no. Maybe didn't want to.

Of course I never did tell him this. He never had any idea about this until he discovered the mark upon me. Then it all spilled out in great heaving gasps of unwanted and unsuspected truth. Truth I had never meant for him to know.

When I think to that moment, I feel such sadness for the pain I caused him in those revelations. I count my blessing he has remained with me and loves me even more than before. Just last night he danced with me and said "I love you, and you are forgiven." He says this to me with a loving smile on his lips. He knows I haven't forgiven, yet he has, and he wants me to move past this. I am a blessed woman. I don't deserve it. But my therepist would say that is what Grace is all about. And the longer I hold this, the longer I give it power over us.

This is all for tonight.

Why am I doing this?

Hello. I am Scarlet, I am married, I have two small children and I committed a terrible crime against my husband. Let me first say that he is aware and in his infinite goodness he has forgiven me. Truly and wholly. The problem is, I have not forgiven me. I don't know how to.


I think perhaps being forced to write what happened, have to look it in the eye will help me find a way to come to terms. Because I have to move past this. My husband is free from it, but as long as it keeps a strangle hold on me, we will never be fully free of the mark.

I carry the mark inside my head and on my heart and in my soul. The mark makes me want to rake my face with sharpened nails, draw blood, pull a steel blade across my arm, poke out my eyes. The thoughts come, wash over me and all I can do is pray.

I need to figure this out. I need to put this in the past and move forward. I need to stop being afraid.

I will explore here what happened, what is happening and what may happen. If ever anyone reads this, I welcome your comments. Your scorn is not welcome, I have enough of it in my own head. But if you are a wounded soul, if you have wounded others, feel free to come here and process with me. If you somehow figure out who I am in real life, I ask you to please keep it to yourself.

This scarlet letter is a destroyer in many ways, but for me it was a creator. Not it in itself, but it opened a door on an ugliness that needed confronting. I was made naked before God and my husband and in the moment I was my most naked, I whispered the words that mattered most.

From my lips to God's ears, my prayer was answered in that moment and my life was saved. My present and future was saved. But my past haunts me and I must find the way to make peace. To vanquish it, because I cannot settle with co-existence. I cannot live with the horror of my dark deed.

Therefore I must peer into my darkness and see what I find there. Only then will I find my freedom.

I also hope that perhaps someone who has found themselves in this situation, or finds themselves moving in the direction, might take some comfort from me. If I could help one person... I haven't fully decided if I should go comment as Scarlet or not. To bring readers in. But a big part of me says that I have something to offer to readers-something that might help them. Since this all happened I feel compelled to tell people, women especially, that there IS hope. There is a way! Life can be full of joy!

So that is me, take me as I am.