Tough Love

By Aalia Lanius

This is the journey of Aleyna, who is known for being a confident, smart and pretty brave considering her past battle with cancer. Aleyna hides from the world an unhealthy relationship with her less than faithful husband in order to maintain the picture perfect image and hopes for saving the marriage on life support. Then the phone call comes that the cancer she once beat has returned, this throws her into deeper conflict; her health or making others happy with a false image. This is a journey of self-discovery, strength, healing and courage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aalia Lanius
• Release date: Mar 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780692999226

Aalia Lanius

For over 20 years Aalia Lanius has been sharing her personal experiences with audiences of all age groups and diverse backgrounds, speaking to the world, taking on the challenge of conveying the right message. Known as a successful business entrepreneur, author, and founder of non-profits rooted in helping society deal with heavy topics, she is dedicated to empowering others, sharing tragedies and triumphs, both positive and negative, allowing others to realize that there is always hope in the dark. Having been homeless and abandoned by her parents at 14 years old, it comes as a surprise to most that she launched her first company by 25 years old, graduated university with Honors, obtaining a BA in International Business, Managerial Leadership and Entrepreneurship, followed by attending Concord Law School. During this time, she also experienced personal and health challenges such as battling cancer three times, an unhealthy marriage that eventually ended but not before enduring domestic violence and emotional abuse. Lanius feels compelled to teach people that being “perfect” is an unrealistic idea and that everyone deserves the chance to change their circumstances, if they are willing to put in the effort. She has supervised youth ministry and founded two non-profit organizations: (1) One Day at a Time Cancer Foundation (2) Unsugarcoated Media. Lanius is the author of Tough Love, a biographical fiction novel based on her life and the historical fiction novel, Jugend, releasing March 31, 2019.

Book preview

Chapter One

All that glitters is not gold. I never thought this phrase would apply to my life, especially when I try to live life genuinely. With all my might I try, but the image that people see of my life; a happily married woman with a picture perfect life couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s just before noon at the gym; my favorite time to work out. It’s after the early morning madness, before the lunch bunch, and totally avoids the crowds blowing off steam after work. It’s still early December so the gym is less busy with the holidays but that will change soon. January always yields groups of people newly committed to resolutions of losing weight or being healthier. They tend to fall off after a few months, but not after filling the gym machines with their die hard commitments, making it seem more chaotic than peaceful and I prefer a peaceful environment when I work out.

I love this time to myself. It’s my time. I exercise as part of my goal to obtain what in my mind is a version of a perfect body. If not all, most women can relate to my self-image issues. This is only one facet of the illusion I put on for everyone else. Outwardly, I am confident to a point, but inwardly I have struggled with my insecurities. I hide it by wrapping it in modesty when someone pays me a compliment. I am quick to point out my flaws and the need to lose more weight, even though I don’t, have better hair, or perhaps better skin, even if my skin is flawless. I look at other women and say to myself, If only I could look like her. I am confident knowing that I am an attractive woman, but it has been totally lost upon me that I am in fact a beautiful woman.

I’ve only recently started to flirt with the concept that I am not as bad as I think I am, but continue to be a work in progress. With my ear buds in, I hear the music pump through them, moving my lips to the words of the song. I keep upbeat music on for motivation as my feet pound on the black belt under me, turning and turning, seemingly endless. Like a path somewhere, but I can’t seem to get there and I would really like to be there because these days I would like to be anywhere but here.

The gym is nearly empty. I look around at the vacant treadmills, stair climbers and stationary bikes while I jog at a steady pace. I think about the upcoming month and the craziness that usually comes with the holidays. Traditionally our family – my husband, our three children and me – forego the tree and presents and make the holidays about togetherness. I cherish memories of making snow angels, gathering sticks to put on the snowman, snowball fights before hot chocolate and roasting marshmallows for smores. Family was the focus and last year was difficult, but at least we didn’t have relatives staying with us, preventing us from traveling, and that is perhaps a good thing because I don’t think that I could fake emotions that I don’t have. I am not merry and it is the furthest thing from a joyous season for me as we head into the new year of 2014. To be frank, 2013 has sucked, even worse than 2012. I had hoped it wouldn’t, but it does.

I am distracted for a moment by the few guys working on their muscles over in the weights area. I inwardly giggle, as a goofy little smirk comes across my face. Even with my music blaring into my ears I can hear the periodic, intense grunts coming from one guy. He is ambitious as he lifts his body repeatedly completely vertical on the pull-bar like he is training for Captain America. I guess the standard up and down pull-up is too simple, because what he is doing with his body right now seems so unnecessary for everyday life unless you are a ninja. I inwardly poke fun at his grunts and then scold myself. To his credit, I admit his strength and very well defined body are impressive, but I can’t help but wonder; at what cost has it come, to be the physical specimen that he is? I can’t help but wonder if there is anything else about his personality that I could admire.

My husband Kyle loves to work out. He wasn’t a gym rat when we met fourteen years ago, but then again we were in our twenties. Maybe it’s why we got along better then; because he wasn’t so obsessed with himself. Kyle was never obese by any means, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t pack on a few extra pounds around the time our son was born in 2005, about thirty, to be exact, on his six foot frame. It started off with just a simple goal of getting into better shape but somehow morphed into full blown obsession. It’s been a several years now and we have both done some of the most intense workout programs and have even been known to work out twice a day. Sometimes we work out together, alone or with friends. I try to use it as a way to stay connected to him. They say a couple that works out together, stays together. I am still waiting to see how much truth this saying has.

I see myself through my husband’s eyes, and that is part of the problem. I wonder if I can ever measure up to what he feels is good enough for him. Kyle is a confident guy, who dresses well, and by no means an unattractive man. He revels in that. If he gets spruced up for an evening out on the town and I pay him a compliment on how handsome he looks, you can often bet his response is Thank you. Seems cordial enough, until the next words come out: I know.

I could stand in the same place waiting all night waiting for any mention on my efforts to be sexy and attractive to his liking, but it likely won’t come, not these days. Kyle is very much into himself and his ego and I always interpreted that to mean that he is a guy who has high standards. I always thought that my competition was like women that you see in magazines with that elegance and extraordinary beauty, graced with poise and intellect. The type of woman that makes you wish you could die and be reincarnated as. A woman I could be jealous of.

Instead I catch my husband screwing the teenage girl I hired for our retail business. Not that this is a woman. She is still merely a girl, in fact she is just a couple of years older than my own daughter of sixteen. This girl had barely graduated from Compton High school when I interviewed her. She was young and already tattooed up, but I found her to be what we needed; a bilingual person who could work in our stores as a customer representative. I was hiring her to sell mobile phones, car chargers and faceplates, not to screw my husband, but she did and I found out. It’s been over a year and I still can’t tell you if I feel more betrayed or just flat out offended.

To cheat is one thing, but when you have filet mignon at home, I thought the philosophy was that you don’t go out for a ninety-nine cent hamburger. I am not trying to toot my own horn and sound conceited but somehow I am what most men consider a catch, being physically attractive, intelligent, and loving. Men chase me and women envy me because of it. I glance at my reflection as I run. I do not consider myself a great beauty but I know I have been blessed with DNA that has given me this youthfulness I can’t explain. My Mediterranean roots have given me graceful bone structure, an hourglass figure with curves in all the right places on naturally olive skin that looks sunkissed year round. I have long dark curls pulled back into a pony tail showing my defined chin, pouty full mouth, delicate nose, and flawless skin with no wrinkles. Though I am nearly four decades old, this skin still holds tight and doesn’t bear the marks of child birth three times.

There is a lot packed into this petite, five-foot-two frame that weighs about 105 pounds right now. I hardly see myself as exotic, but I am just recently becoming aware that I am. That isn’t all there is to me; there’s my personality. I live my life by the guide of people may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel. It is because of that line of thinking that I love making people feel acknowledged. If I go through a line at the supermarket, I consciously put my phone away and ask the cashier how they are, give them a smile and engage them. If I ask someone to do something, I ask with a please and thank you.

People should feel appreciated and not commanded. I apply this belief into my marriage one hundred percent. I learned that what I wanted out of my marriage; I had to first be willing to give it, just like any relationship. If I wanted love, I had to give love. If I wanted patience, I had to show more patience. Things like this are at the forefront of how I handled our marriage on a day to day basis and what drives me is the desire to have an amazing relationship.

Kyle, on the other hand – the affair was a match to his ego and he relished in the flames of desire and forbidden lust in his new interest, like most cheating men. They don’t do it because they have to; they do it because they want to. She was this lowly girl who saw him on a pedestal, feeding his narcissistic personality. Those rushing emotions as you try to hide your secret in plain sight from everyone. I get it on some level; Kyle felt free again. For him the affair was an escape from our adult life full of responsibilities and commitment.

I became the other woman without even knowing it. Though I did know immediately when something was wrong. I sensed a shift in the energy between us and it wasn’t long before I grew suspicious, and I even guessed it was her. To this day, he never believes me that I just somehow knew it would be her. Call it intuition or perhaps it was that I was actively invested in keeping our marriage on the happy train that we had been on for a while, keeping my finger on the pulse, which the minute I knew something was wrong, I could feel it.

My world came crashing down around me when I finally caught him with undeniable proof. Instead of getting a divorce, we did what many couples do; we agreed to try and save our marriage. It’s been fifteen months now, and we are in a marriage that is on life support, barely hanging on. I think we both know what we need, but neither one of us wants to be the one to do it. I would prefer to be telling you that the affair was actually a good thing, that has brought us closer, but it hasn’t. It has fractured our family and today as I run on this treadmill, I still feel very lost and unsure of what the future holds and that scares me.

People respond to being caught cheating in different ways. Believe it or not, even for a cheater, there is an honorable way and a despicable way to handle being caught. Some are remorseful and beg their partners to forgive them. They might cry and make grand gestures that try to restore the broken trust to the relationship but they are desperate to be forgiven. Then there are the ones like Kyle, who never even shed a tear of regret or offered a show of sincerity. Not then and not now. He reminds me of a kid, that isn’t really sorry for something, but the teacher is making him apologize. This is Kyle. A man who says to me, men cheat and get over it. A man who tried to convince me once that I was too supportive and that it was one of the things that led him down his path of deception and self-gratification. Kyle has a hard time with telling the truth and over time all of his sins came to light. The revelations of what was really going on while I patiently waited at home with the kids, trying to be the perfect wife and mother, while he was off traipsing around town with his mistress has shifted our universe.

My husband became a cheater and he did things that cheaters do, such as lie about going to a conference the same weekend as a family vacation. He started working later than normal or missing family dinners I had slaved over because it’s easier to grab a bite alone. He even took me to her birthday party! It’s the lies that drive you crazy about being cheated on; you feel like an idiot, amongst other things. It leads to one of the biggest questions related to infidelity; how do you fix humiliation and restore trust? I know I sound bitter. I am. I try not to be, but I am because when he got caught, I expected him to be sorry. I needed him to be a repentant husband who values and loves his family. Instead, he has shown himself to be more narcissistic and selfish than I ever knew he is capable of being in the fourteen years of our relationship. Even now, he still calls me crazy, just like he did when I would ask him to admit to the affair. He does a good job at making me doubt myself at times. Maybe I am crazy? The fact he makes me question myself sends me further down the hole of bitterness.

Technology is what finally outed him, as cliché as it sounds; he forgot to sign out of his email on the iPAD. Kyle had left the house just hours before during a heated argument. The memory rushes back and makes me shake my head as I jog. He had called me delusional after confronting him about the affair, which he denied and then left dramatically saying he wouldn’t be coming home. The kids came into my room over an argument about the device. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with them arguing and took it from them and sent them to play outside. While I am guilty of looking, I didn’t want to find screenshots of them video chatting with her nude, but I did. My heart sank and my body turned cold. I was so confused. I had suspected it but to see it with my eyes, it confused me so much. I began walking in circles in my room as I tried to figure out what to do. I called Kyle on his cell phone and when he finally answered, How could you do this to us? I cried into the phone.

What? You are crazy I am telling you! Nothing is going on with me and her! I am not coming back until you stop this craziness! You’re crazy! he shouted back at me, still unaware of the evidence I held in my hand.

I found the pictures in your email, Kyle, I said flatly.

What pictures? as if he doesn’t know.

The ones in your email, Kyle. The ones of you and her skyping. I see she is nude, I can send them to you because I am sure can guess that I have copies now, I said, somehow calmly.

He had denied other things but he couldn’t deny this. He fell silent and finally I was vindicated. I wasn’t crazy and he was lying. I didn’t find much comfort in this. All I had done was give my marriage a stay of execution, for the moment. We are a traditional family, so he could leave a crazy wife and people would understand, but he couldn’t be caught having an affair and then leave his wife and kids too. This would be scandalous. This was when I became his enemy, I think, because he feels that I had gained the upper hand. In my pursuit of truth, I exposed his sins and little did I