He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Woman of Faith's Story of Love and Infidelity

By Kathleen Palmer Terry

"I became the keeper of secrets, and there were consequences. With my silence I protected my children and allowed them to forever see their father as a hero, but I had also given my husband a clean slate upon which he could rewrite his history, minus the embarrassing part. At first, silence was the glue that bound us together, then it was the weight under which we crumbled." *** "Cheaters are selfish people. In fact, the most damning thing about cheating is that it reveals a lack of caring for and commitment to the whole family unit, not just one's spouse. 'I'm cheating because I care about my family so much more than my selfish desires,' said no person ever." *** Infidelity and the drama it creates have been around since the beginning of time. As a result, there is no shortage of advice on how to prevent it, what to do once it starts, or how to pick up the pieces once it ends . . . if it ends. Why do some marriages survive and others dissolve in the aftermath? Is there some magic ingredient present in enduring relationships? Is it possible to heal as individuals, yet fail to heal as a couple? In this deeply personal and intuitive book, one woman of faith tells her story of love, disillusionment, and resilience in a down-to-earth, upbeat, and sometimes humorous style that reflects the strength that comes from knowing God loves us, that he is in charge, and that he has the desire and ability to shape us into better people through our adversity. It will persuade you that, although we live in an age of throw-away marriages, there are still those who believe traditional values exist, that a family is a sacred commitment, that giving up is not an option.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781641144834

Book preview

Introduction

When Adam found himself alone in the Garden of Eden, he asked God for a companion so he wouldn’t be so lonely. God wanted Adam to be happy and multiply and replenish the earth, so he described the perfect woman, someone who would provide him with children and his every possible want and need.

Adam was very excited and eagerly asked, Wow, what will a woman like this cost?

God replied, An arm and a leg.

Adam thought it over for a while and said, What can I get for a rib?

Let’s just get it out in the open. I have been an imperfect wife, and I’ve spent years beating myself up for it. Finally, mercifully, I am done with recriminations—for all involved, myself included. The time has come to close a difficult but important chapter of my life and move forward. I am ready to put years of pain, confusion, endless soul-searching, and indecision behind me and just be happy.

Although commitment (to God, to my marriage covenants, and to the children I brought into the world) was probably the driving force behind every decision and nondecision I made for years—time has modified and clarified my responsibilities to a great extent. The children that lived through what follows are now capable, loving adults who were shielded at every possible turn from circumstances they would not have understood as they were growing up. And while they certainly must have wished for parents who modeled a happier and more united marriage, they were stuck with a different reality.

I admire people who can look at situations in their life, make difficult decisions, and move forward with confidence. I have never been that kind of person. I was blessed/cursed with an over analytical mind that overthinks just about everything and drags every decision out until the end of time. One of the ways I do this is by writing. Years ago, I wrote something in my journal that is as true today as it was then:

I think one of my big motivations to write is my inability to make sense of my life and to look at what lies ahead with any optimism.

I started writing in grade school, beginning with brief, girlish confidences dreamily recorded on the pages of a small blue plastic diary and secured with a lock my nosy brothers could open with a pocketknife. That was followed by school writing assignments, chatty letters, and over the years, poems, stories, and always—journals.

It’s up to us to make sense of our own lives. Nobody is going to hand us the answers on a silver platter. And so, this is my journey. I tell it for others who find themselves on a similar journey, and also, I tell it to help myself turn the page on memories and feelings that are part of who I am but no longer have any claim on my future happiness.

I see women every day who are living their own versions of disappointing relationships, whose heartache is a closely guarded wound that never heals. Some observe a code of silence that makes it possible for them to move forward and function on some level—the survive-until-you-thrive mode. They are smart, strong, resilient women who will ultimately emerge from their individual refiner’s fires—polished, wiser, better.

Others, the brave—the kick-butt-and-take-names sort—go loud with their drama for all the world to see. God bless you! But I believe the majority of us turn inward and silent because that is the only way we know to work through difficulty. We are your sister, your daughter, your friend. We are the cashier at the market, the stranger on the soccer sidelines, the woman across the aisle at church.

My experiences may or may not be similar to others, but human experience is mostly universal, and I share it willingly and openly for what it is worth. What follows is raw, mostly uncensored, and occasionally irreverent, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I could apologize in advance for the pervasive sarcasm throughout, but it’s in my DNA, and apologizing for it would do no good. It’s my way of staying upbeat in the face of forever-painful memories.

What’s missing on these pages is the happiness, innocence, and hopefulness of new love and the sheer joy of welcoming each new family member into the world and watching them blossom into unique and wonderful human beings—all the irreplaceable, sweet memories that make a family a family. I could write that story. I have written much of it in journals.

But this is a story about the elephant in the room. It’s a "how-not-to more than a how-to" of relationships—possibly just a cautionary tale.

I wanted to tell a love story—the kind my parents had and one I once hoped for; but it is what it is—maybe nothing more than my personal learning curve. Feel free to scoff or disagree if I make an outrageous statement or two along the way.

Naked

The unexamined life is not worth living.

—Socrates

One morning I awoke after dreaming that somehow, my blouse and bra had disappeared. In the dream, I was a hostess attempting to distribute food and make small talk while trying to cover my nakedness and pretend nothing was wrong. As the dream progressed, I eventually discovered that my clothing was just down around my waist and all I needed to do was find a way to discreetly pull it up where it belonged.

Toward the end of the same dream, I was staring at a sofa covered with a white-on-white fabric that had a vague geometric pattern. The longer I looked at it, the clearer the pattern became.

I suspect the first part of this dream illustrates the ridiculous lengths I have gone to most of my adult life to cover up the true reasons for my difficult marriage and prevent exposure. Finding the pattern in the sofa felt exactly like one of those aha moments when we finally figure something out.

Dreams are odd things that might be mostly meaningless but occasionally give us bits of wisdom to help us navigate through life. My most memorable dreams are those from which I was able to learn something—those which gave me insight, ideas, or helped my brain to understand something my heart already knew.

I believe that a loving God helps us by whatever means necessary. It doesn’t matter if it comes through interaction with others, inspiration, intuition, or even dreams. He has promised that he will not leave us comfortless. (I hope that includes clueless.)

Human beings have an amazing capacity to love, learn, change, and adapt. It occurs to me that those four important functions of life are what constitute growth, and when we resist any or all of them, a part of us stops growing, becomes ill, and maybe even dies.

While I’m excellent at adapting and pretty good at loving (the last one to give up on it, anyway), I’m apparently a slow learner. For some reason, other people I know learn lessons in record time that I struggle with over and over. Maybe I’m slow to learn because I never learned to trust my own feelings or intuition.

That’s unfortunate, because so much of human behavior is a result of what we feel. Even in the absence of the truth, knowledge, wisdom, or experience, we can still feel. It’s a core sense, a belief or understanding from our very center, our gut. It’s understanding beyond what we