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This article is an edited version of one that originally appeared on Avalon's Substack. Sign up here.

"When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with." - Anais Nin

We'd just finished our breakfast of banana pancakes, bacon, and orange juice with the boys. The kitchen had been tidied, and the dishwasher was running. I was midway through making the bed when I sensed his presence in the doorway.

The feeling of being watched had become both familiar and quietly threatening.

I paused for a moment before I continued, slowly smoothing the cotton sheet before reaching down to pick up the pillow from the floor, his pillow, moving a little more deliberately than before.

Watch: How self-betrayal affects relationships. Post continues below.

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But Are You Happy: Self Betrayal

Our counselling sessions had not been going well.

Over the previous nine months, we'd been through three different therapists, and I was repeatedly failing to give him what he wanted most: certainty. My insides continued to slowly bleed out, permanently staining every surface they touched. I had tainted the white fabric of our existence, each uncomfortable truth creating fresh wounds. Blood, some brown, some bright red, was oozing and leaking everywhere.

I was making a mess of everything.

The tender moments of vulnerability where he would comfort me had faded, and he had become increasingly impatient with the changes in me. The picture-perfect identity we'd constructed was being dismembered. This, coupled with the unintended vagueness of what my revelations meant for our union, was making me a threat. The conversation would regularly narrow back to him, to us, to demanding facts instead of discussing the larger and far more uncomfortable realities they exposed.

How many times.

Where.

When.

How long.

Then, silent, baleful judgement.

YOU BROKE THE RULES!

HOW DARE YOU!

HOW DARE YOU HOW DARE YOU HOW DARE YOU!

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

I am guilty. A whore and a traitor, not just meeting but falling in love with another man while his ring was on my finger. And, now here I was, blowing up our life with my too-late honesty, changing the rules we'd signed up for long ago yet never spoke about.

I had an affair with a man I met at a meditation retreat. Image: Supplied.

Who DID I think I was?

When our marriage came up again the other day, I told him I thought I needed to be married to my own self.

I am a bad, awful, horrible, terrible girl.

After these outbursts would come his urge to reconnect, like a simpering little boy, crying, begging, sometimes forcing himself on me after we turned out the lights. I would lay there quietly, us both in the dark, tears running from the corners of my eyes and pooling in my ears as he pushed himself into me, trying to make himself feel okay.

"You need to tell me you want to be married to me for the rest of my life, or I'm leaving," he stated, from the threshold.

Listen: A guide to having a "good fight" — one that's free from criticism, defensiveness and other high-emotion traps. Post continues below.

I paused, pillow in hand, absorbing both his words and the clarity with which they were spoken. It wasn't too late to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness. I could promise to keep my legs shut to anyone but him, to stop all this bleeding and take responsibility for this problem I created. To put my drivel back in the box, dust myself off and buck up. I was trained in how to do this, I'd been doing it my entire life. We could carry on in our starched white existence, going to dinner parties, high school basketball games, and charity fundraisers.

He told me before — nobody even had to know. It could be our little secret.

I slowly turned to look him in the eye, saying nothing.

"I'm calling your parents," he said, as he turned and walked out of the room.

This article is an edited version of one that originally appeared on Avalon's Substack. Sign up here.

Feature Image: Supplied.