My ex-husband’s former mistress wrote a book after they split. It helped confirm a timeline I already suspected, and sometimes validation really does help. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I did read the chapter she wrote about him.
When do we ever get insight into the other woman’s point of view? Almost never. I’m human, and I was curious, so yes, I read it. And the universe handed me something I never could have imagined. I’ll get into that more on another post, but briefly.
In the book, she downplayed their involvement while we were still together. Social media told a different story. Months of relentless flirting, documented publicly, directly contradicted her version of events.
The Timeline Confirmed
When The Aussie and I separated, I had no idea he was talking to another woman. Any vague suspicion I might have had stayed buried. I was too busy grieving the loss of motherhood after his bombshell admission to imagine there was someone else waiting in the wings.
She was the last thing on my mind.
A few months after we split, I reached out to her. I had noticed she quietly removed herself from my Facebook, and it stood out. I assumed I had been too heavy online, sharing too much about a pending divorce. I sent a short message, apologizing for the tone.
“I’m sorry if I was offensive. My husband and I have split, and I’m a bit emotional.”
There was no response.
I deleted her profile and thought nothing more of it. We were casual Facebook acquaintances. The three of us had met at a festival nearly a decade earlier. I followed her blog and read her work from time to time.
Looking back, the irony is hard to miss. A piece she had written about meeting a “man who was available” was about my then husband. And the silence suddenly made sense.
I wasn’t on Instagram at the time, so I missed the posts, the flirty comments, the emojis. I probably would have caught on much sooner if I had been paying attention. But I wasn’t looking. Not until months later, when something told me to check her page, and I saw a photo of them together.
That’s when I went back and scrolled through her older posts and blog, piecing the timeline together. The wild part is, she gave me everything I needed. She documented all of it online. It was evidence.
Her posts about a “mystery man” started that summer. By January or February, my husband was liking everything she posted. She was sprinkling little emojis, butterflies, koalas, hearts, two stars on a rock and a post about aligning, etc. left and right. Flirting non-stop. He was the yin to her yang. Her twin flame. Her Scorpio with wispy hair and an accent.
I recall even seeing one that was posted that’s stuck with me. She wrote about finding a rock with two stars on it and said something about “two stars aligning.” We were still married, still living together when she posted that. I had no clue what was coming.
The Day We Split
On the day we separated, she posted a rewritten Rumi quote. It was clearly meant for him. Something along the lines of: run to her, you might not get the chance again.
She shared that Instagram post just hours after he made me say the words he couldn’t bring himself to speak out loud:
Do you want a separation?
He muttered yes. Barely. Like it took everything in him just to say that much.
He meant divorce. But by calling it a separation, I think he was leaving a door open. If things didn’t work out with her, maybe he thought he’d still have something to fall back on. One foot in, one foot out.
Naw…..
Honestly, I think he expected me to break down, to scream or fall apart when he told me he was sterile on top of indicating he wanted out of the marriage (at this point I still hadn’t known he was leaving for another woman). It came out of nowhere. I was furious. But mostly I was numb.
Wait… what? I thought.
I’ve never been the type to yell. It was never our dynamic anyways. I think at that moment he wanted me to be. It probably would’ve made it easier for him, easier to walk away, easier to justify what he took from me.
He had all ready told people I was a nightmare. That I was crazy. That I was a narcissist. He planted those seeds before he left, I discovered. But I was never going to give him the explosion he needed to feel like the victim.
It wasn’t my style. It never was.
“When you leaving?” I asked flatly.
No tears. No breakdown. No emotion. Nothing.
I asked again, just to be sure, to confirm that this was really happening. I still did not know he was already talking to someone else.
He said yes.
That was it.
When he finally left a week later, I made sure I wasn’t home. I wanted him gone before I got back. I took my time returning, I was away most of the day.
But he waited. He wanted to say goodbye I guess.
He hugged me tightly. I gave him a dead-fish hug in return. Arms slumped. Body heavy. You don’t get warmth from me any longer. In my head, I was thinking, Just go.
And finally, he did.
The moment he walked out, I blocked him on Facebook. I reactivated Instagram. I sat on the couch and started watching the final season of a show I loved, Legion. I had been waiting for him to leave so I could finally watch it in peace and decompress.
That was when I felt it. Relief. I could breathe again.
I was free.
This was the man who kept his sterility from me for over a decade. The man who made sure I would never have biological children.
I was numb. And honestly, that numbness was a gift.
Because if I had been in my right mind, this would have been a very different story.
