The trouble with lying to yourself is that eventually you begin trusting your own excuses.<\/p>\n
I had done that for a long time.<\/p>\n
By the time Claire stopped answering my calls, I could barely separate what I had told myself from what I knew was true.<\/p>\n
I knew I had cheated.<\/p>\n
I knew I had embarrassed her.<\/p>\n
I knew Jasmine Cole's name was no secret in the part of my life I had tried to keep under control.<\/p>\n
What I didn't want to consider was how far the consequences might reach.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about my marriage.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about whether Claire would speak to me again.<\/p>\n
I was still treating the whole situation as a personal crisis.<\/p>\n
Something between a husband and a wife.<\/p>\n
Something I might be able to settle with the right words.<\/p>\n
That thinking lasted until Michael began asking questions I wasn't prepared to answer.<\/p>\n
He wasn't interested in whether I felt guilty.<\/p>\n
He wasn't trying to help me write an apology.<\/p>\n
His concern had a different shape.<\/p>\n
The company.<\/p>\n
That was what I began to hear beneath everything he said.<\/p>\n
At first, I found it irritating.<\/p>\n
My marriage was falling apart, and Michael appeared more concerned with records and procedures.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to understand that Claire was my wife.<\/p>\n
That whatever had happened between us belonged to us.<\/p>\n
Even then, I was trying to draw a boundary where it suited me.<\/p>\n
I had spent three years refusing to respect Claire's boundaries.<\/p>\n
Now I wanted everyone to respect mine.<\/p>\n
I sat at my desk, turning my phone over in my hands.<\/p>\n
The screen remained dark.<\/p>\n
Michael was nearby.<\/p>\n
He had the expression of a man deciding how much bad news someone could accept at once.<\/p>\n
I didn't like it.<\/p>\n
I was accustomed to seeing him composed.<\/p>\n
He could disagree with me without becoming nervous.<\/p>\n
He could explain a difficult matter without stumbling over his words.<\/p>\n
That steadiness was one reason I listened to him.<\/p>\n
But that afternoon, he seemed unusually cautious.<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"Is there something you're not telling me?"<\/p>\n
He didn't answer immediately.<\/p>\n
I became impatient.<\/p>\n
"Michael?"<\/p>\n
He looked toward the desk.<\/p>\n
I followed his eyes.<\/p>\n
There were papers in front of him.<\/p>\n
For a moment, neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
I understood that he had come to discuss something specific.<\/p>\n
Not rumors.<\/p>\n
Not an argument.<\/p>\n
Something written down.<\/p>\n
That should have made me more careful.<\/p>\n
Instead, I became defensive.<\/p>\n
It was easier to feel offended than to consider what I might have done.<\/p>\n
I asked whether this had to do with Claire.<\/p>\n
Michael's expression gave me enough of an answer.<\/p>\n
I leaned back.<\/p>\n
Of course.<\/p>\n
I had been expecting anger.<\/p>\n
I had been expecting a demand.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a message passed through someone else.<\/p>\n
I had not expected Michael to look so troubled by the matter.<\/p>\n
"Whatever she wants to say, she can say to me."<\/p>\n
The words sounded reasonable when I spoke them.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at my phone.<\/p>\n
Claire had not said anything to me.<\/p>\n
I had tried over and over to reach her.<\/p>\n
She had chosen not to respond.<\/p>\n
The contradiction was right there.<\/p>\n
I wanted her to approach me in the way I preferred, while I was refusing to accept that she had chosen another way.<\/p>\n
Michael remained quiet.<\/p>\n
I felt my irritation rising.<\/p>\n
There was something humiliating about realizing that another person knew more about my wife's intentions than I did.<\/p>\n
For years, I had assumed that knowing Claire as my wife meant knowing what she would do.<\/p>\n
I had mistaken familiarity for understanding.<\/p>\n
That afternoon exposed the difference.<\/p>\n
I thought about calling her again.<\/p>\n
I resisted for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then I picked up the phone.<\/p>\n
Michael watched without comment.<\/p>\n
I selected her number.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
The call ended without a conversation.<\/p>\n
I set the phone down harder than I meant to.<\/p>\n
"She's ignoring me."<\/p>\n
Michael didn't argue.<\/p>\n
That made me angrier.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to agree that Claire was being unreasonable.<\/p>\n
I wanted someone to tell me she would eventually calm down.<\/p>\n
He offered neither reassurance.<\/p>\n
Instead, he kept his attention on the papers.<\/p>\n
I noticed that.<\/p>\n
I had built much of my confidence on the expectation that people would tell me what I needed to hear.<\/p>\n
Claire had done that too often.<\/p>\n
When she disagreed with me, she sometimes became silent rather than continue a fight.<\/p>\n
I had used those silences as evidence that I was right.<\/p>\n
But I had never asked what happened to the anger she didn't express.<\/p>\n
I never asked where it went.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to know.<\/p>\n
Now something had changed, and I could feel it without understanding it.<\/p>\n
Michael wasn't treating Claire as someone who had merely lost her temper.<\/p>\n
He was treating her as someone whose next steps mattered.<\/p>\n
That disturbed me.<\/p>\n
"Has she contacted the company?"<\/p>\n
I heard the tension in my voice.<\/p>\n
Michael looked directly at me.<\/p>\n
There was no comfort in his expression.<\/p>\n
I began to understand that the conversation wasn't going to end with a simple explanation about my marriage.<\/p>\n
The ordinary sounds of the office seemed louder.<\/p>\n
A paper shifting.<\/p>\n
A hand moving against the desk.<\/p>\n
My phone touching the wood.<\/p>\n
I watched Michael arrange the document in front of him.<\/p>\n
He appeared to be choosing his words.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to hurry.<\/p>\n
I also wanted him to stop.<\/p>\n
I had spent so long avoiding uncomfortable facts that even the sight of a prepared document made me uneasy.<\/p>\n
A spoken accusation could be argued with.<\/p>\n
A rumor could be dismissed.<\/p>\n
A conversation could be redirected.<\/p>\n
A document was different.<\/p>\n
It remained on the desk after everyone stopped talking.<\/p>\n
It could be read again.<\/p>\n
It could be handed to someone else.<\/p>\n
I wasn't ready to admit how much that bothered me.<\/p>\n
I asked Michael what Claire had done.<\/p>\n
He didn't immediately answer.<\/p>\n
I could see that he knew the answer would change the conversation.<\/p>\n
Until then, I had worried about losing Claire's affection.<\/p>\n
I had worried about losing my marriage.<\/p>\n
I had not seriously considered that my conduct might have placed my professional position under scrutiny.<\/p>\n
The possibility began to form before Michael explained anything.<\/p>\n
It made my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n
I had always kept my public reputation separate from my private behavior in my own mind.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be respected at work.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be regarded as capable.<\/p>\n
Reliable.<\/p>\n
Successful.<\/p>\n
I could tolerate thinking of myself as a disappointing husband more easily than I could tolerate the idea of being publicly questioned as an executive.<\/p>\n
That alone should have told me something about my priorities.<\/p>\n
I was more afraid of exposure than I had been of hurting Claire.<\/p>\n
I looked at Michael again.<\/p>\n
His face had changed very little.<\/p>\n
But I finally understood why his caution frightened me.<\/p>\n
He wasn't preparing to discuss what Claire felt.<\/p>\n
He was preparing to show me what she had put in writing.<\/p>\n
The trouble with lying to yourself is that eventually you begin trusting your own excuses. I had done that for a long time. By the time Claire stopped answering my … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37345,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37325\/revisions\/37345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}