When it comes to men, I suck. I know that it stems from my dad abandoning our family when I was 2, a horrible stepfather who emotionally abused me and then tried to sexually abuse me at 15, and basically just a childhood full of bullshit. I just don’t really deal with that stuff, because I was sent to counseling as a child, and I feel like it was the only thing that kept me from turning into a hooker on a street corner in Vegas. It just seems ridiculous to dwell on the past. Plus, I think I turned out pretty good … but …

I am coming up on twice divorced. I got married at 18 and left him at 20. I was the 4.0 kid in high school, extremely shy, had never dated before, and getting married at 18 seemed like my best bet. He was emotionally abusive, so I left at 20. I had fallen crazy in love with another guy who didn’t want me once I left, and so I was single for a brief time. Then I met my current husband, fell crazy in love, we moved in together and got married within a year, and now here I am all these years down the road and we’re getting divorced. I consider him one of my best friends, but we made horrible marriage partners. Now we’re trying to live together, raise our kids, and have our own “modern family.” It’s going OK. Some days are great. Some days I want to stick a fork in my eyeball. We’re doing this because we think it’s not only best financially, but it seems unfair to punish our kids when we can get along and maintain the family unit.

Now, here’s my biggest problem. God. I cringe to write this. I fell in love with a very unhappily married man. Of course, I see him on a daily basis. Can’t escape it. Would totally get fired for seeing him. I thought he would leave months ago. Shocker! He hasn’t.

I just want to be happy, Cary. Oh my God, I so just want to be happy and I feel like the moment I get happiness then I go and do something stupid, mostly with a man, and fuck myself over again. I don’t know how to escape this. I’ve tried reading self-help books and I saw a counselor, whom I didn’t really like at all, and overall I think I’m an incredibly insightful and curious person about myself, but when it comes to actually NOT doing this shit, I fail. I can see myself doing it. I can admit to doing it. Then I go and do it anyway. It’s as if I have to learn everything the hard way.

I’ll take whatever advice you have. Lay it on me.

Sincerely …

Me

Dear You,

Here is one concrete thing you can do right now: Call a moratorium on all intimate sexual relationships. Stop seeing this married man. Conduct your relationship with your husband in a platonic way. Spend time alone when possible. Care for yourself and your kids. Do your job, eat, exercise, bathe, read, clean your house, pay the bills. Stay away from romantic relationships.

Do this for a set a period of time, say, three months.

Don’t worry about having any great insights during that time. Just give yourself some breathing room.

This may really help you. It may sound like a drag, or downright inhuman, but give it a try. For one thing, it will show you that you really can live without romantic entanglement. That alone will broaden your choices.

So just try it. And if you find you just can’t do it, that will show you something, too. That will tell you that you have lost the ability to choose whether to get involved with men or not.

While you are going through this period of conscious abstinence, you will want some help understanding your past and how it affects you today. You mention that you’ve seen counselors. I suggest you seek long-term psychotherapy, perhaps for a year or two.

Nobody can say exactly how your early experiences are affecting your behavior today. But it’s a safe bet that what you are going through is connected to your experiences as a child. The only way to really understand those connections is to take the time to unravel your past. It is a kind of learning. It involves experimentation, observation and adjustment, and then more experimentation and observation. The only arena to really practice this in is your actual life. So you meet with a good therapist and talk about what is happening, then you go out into your life and when you repeat your problematic behavior, you take note of that, and then talk about it, and together you evaluate what happened, and visualize new solutions, new behaviors, new ways to handle the same situation, and then you go and try that out, and report back. So it’s a long-term process. There’s a lot to learn.

Dwelling on the past may seem illogical until you consider the logic of the unconscious. The unconscious is not logical in a thinking way, but in a poetic or mythic way. It seeks dramatic solutions. It seeks poetic justice. Having been wounded, we seek out people like those who wounded us, not because we seek to be hurt again, but because  the irrational, poetic, dramatic unconscious believes we can set things right if we reenact the past.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy can often help with this sort of thing. It helps us to find the thoughts behind this behavior. In choosing a therapist, ask about CBT, and whether the therapist uses it and thinks it may help.

Is it true that you need to be in a relationship, any relationship, no matter how perilous, chaotic, dangerous and unsatisfying? I think not. I think you can prove that to yourself by abstaining for a period of time. Then, having gained some breathing room and some self-understanding, having learned to take care of yourself, you can eventually begin to date again, choosing carefully.

Take baby steps. No rushing. You’ve got time.

The kids in bed, I turned down the volume on the TV in a futile attempt to shield them for just one more day. My colleagues in the press, with whom I’d jockeyed for position at many a crime scene, were now covering a crime that would deal my kids a blow unimaginable. “The accused is charged with three counts of statutory sodomy stemming from a series of sexual encounters with a teenage boy at a high school field house.”  For years I’d been blase about broadcasting the worst day of someone else’s life. In one minute, I knew what that felt like.

What would I say to my children? How could I prepare them? I had one son in college, a 17-year-old, a 14-year-old and my youngest, barely 13. How does a mother explain sodomy to a seventh grader? How does a mother suck back into the cylinder the toxic cloud that has just exploded all over her family? How could he?

Disbelief turned to maternal rage, like jet fuel in my blood. I would not let him ruin my children’s future. I would not let his indefensible addiction stain their beautiful lives. And in this flashpoint, I seized the strength of a righteous fury long trapped.

I had been one of those kids once, a victim kid. A little girl caught in a hopeless game of duck and cover. I remained silent for decades, until I simply couldn’t hold down the bile of violation and secrecy any longer. I was in my 40s when I finally told my mother that my stepdad had molested me. By then he was was dead. I’d even delivered the eulogy at his funeral, skipping over his ignoble deeds. Little did I know that the man I was married to — the man in the first pew, dabbing his eyes — would end up in prison years later for committing some crimes of his own.

I had no clue when I married him that the very thing I was running away from, I was actually running to. This happens sometimes to people who were sexually abused; we tend to behave like refugees. We don’t assert our rights, because we’re not sure we have any. We lack confidence in scrutinizing others, because we feel like damaged goods ourselves.

But in time, I stood up for myself, challenging the endless hours he spent on the Internet, his increasing disengagement from our family.  Backed into a corner, he told me he was gay. I told him to get out. But they don’t lock people up for being gay anymore. No longer under the wary eye of a wife, or the threat of being discovered, he took greater risks. He was found out by a mother who made a painful discovery about what was keeping her son so busy on the computer.

After a 14-month IV drip of news coverage, my former husband was sentenced to seven years in prison for having sex with that teenage boy. I spent those seven years trying to convince my children that the sins of their father were not carried on their backs, seven years of trying to help them deflect the shame by association that I had endured firsthand. Seven years; I was like a widow with no death benefits, no child support, no moral support, no “every-other-weekend” relief, no one to call in the middle of the night to meet me at the hospital with a sick kid, nobody else to ante up for college or cars, braces or bail money. Nothing. We inherited nothing, except enough pain and financial hardship to throw us all into a bottomless well with no rope, just the bucket tossed in behind us, smackin’ us on the head. But guess what?

We climbed out. We climbed out of that dark, slimy drowning hole by our bloody fingernails, each one, pushing up the next, back into the sunlight, where we sat on the side of the well, flicking off the mud. We made it. Three of my four kids are now out of college, the fourth will graduate next year. They’re amazing: loving, resilient, remarkably well adjusted, and a funnier lot, I have never seen.

I just didn’t realize how tired I was. It’s hard to process stuff while you’re holding up a car. When my brother died not long ago — the second of my brothers to die inside a few short years — I hit the mat. I couldn’t rally. I found myself asking, “Is this it?  Really? Is this what my life is about?”  Have you ever felt that way? Like you just might lose it?

So I did something radical. I set the car down, got behind the wheel and drove — all across America. I blew off my soul-killing, 60-hour-a-week job, took every last dime I had in savings (which wasn’t even enough to get back home on), loaded up my dog and more baggage than I realized and hit the road. We drove all over the country last summer, traveling through 21 states, from Missouri to New York to California and back again. I needed a defibrillator as big as a nation. I went to reconnect with every place and every person I had ever loved. I went to find a half-brother I had never seen. I went seeking solace.

What I got was healing. Eight weeks and more than 8,000 miles later, at a scenic overlook alongside a lonely, two-lane highway, it all got settled. Gazing out at the endless Utah desert, I sat on a huge, flat rock with my dog watching the sun go down. We were safe and dry, but out on the far horizon brewed a huge thunderstorm. Rain in the desert comes down in grey, vertical shafts from giant pink and purple clouds. Looking out at what felt like infinity, I was inspired to let it all go. I simply let it go.

All the egregious offenses that had been hurled my way — a betrayed wife, an abused child — over time, had ceased to matter. They were like a downpour on the desert, dark stabs into a porous surface. I absorbed them to make my life better, yes better, because along the way, I’d been blessed with the wisdom that there is far more surface than there is rain.

How quickly the pain can vanish if we are open to the healing. Mile by mile, house by house — at the end of this road trip in which I’d been embraced by friends, family, strangers on the highway, and yes, my found brother, I realized how fortunate I really am. The grimy corners of shame and bitterness had been scrubbed clean by love. Victim, no more.

We’ve heard a lot about victims in the news lately and the staggering abuse that came from people who were charged with helping them, not hurting them. Heads should roll. But, in the cacophony of competing sound bites, with the accusations, denials, demands for retribution and pleas for justice, there is a vital message that isn’t breaking through.

Healing is possible.

It takes time. It takes courage. It takes trusting another human being enough to  open up your mind and your heart to speak your truth.

If I had a chance to yell from a mountaintop to anyone whose life has been marred by sexual abuse, here’s what I would say: There is a place where it’s safe and dry. Come see how fleeting the rain can be.

During my campus years I matured to become quite social, especially as an activist, since I knew that at least campus was a more stable environment than I ever had at home. After graduation, my family coming from a very traditional Asian background with rather strict moral and religious values, arranged a marriage with the girl who would be my wife, and after months of bitter disagreements (I prefer not to use the word argue) I finally gave in.

From the start, I realized I would start in a loveless relationship and that I would have to learn to love her eventually, and I did learn to love her. Things started to take a slow but dark turn as my wife then started to control my life, especially when it came to women (she had serious abandonment issues) and rather than risk breaking up my marriage, with the obvious socio-cultural fallout it would definitely create, I chose to suck it up and simply let it slide. Eventually it progressed to the point that she became paranoid about every single person (male and female) that I knew, convinced I was having an affair with them. This got worse over the course of her pregnancy, and this to me was literally a living hell. For the sake of my child, I stood by like an idiot going along, but in the end after she gave birth, SHE said she couldn’t take it anymore and packed up and left with my son when I was overseas. I tried going after her and my son, but now she’s staying with her family and they refuse me access to my son. Any contact I have with them is simply via their lawyer. For weeks I couldn’t sleep or concentrate. I even managed to mess up an important project that got me fired from my job.

I just don’t seem to have the energy or focus to pursue anything now, and have distanced myself from everything. I started to drink rather heavily as well as smoke (I used to campaign against smoking companies). I realize that this could be classified as clinical depression but I just don’t see any solution.

My few remaining friends keep telling to get back out there, but every time I do it feels awkward, especially after having such a controlling person so central to my life for the past two years. I can’t seem to fight the urge to blame others for it all, especially my family, but in the end I know it was my fault. I can’t help but imagine what I’m putting my young son through, imagining what kind of life he’d have growing up without a father, since I had mine all along the way. In the end even though I feel an intense anger to them, I still feel I’ve let them down. I’m just clueless about what to do and that frustrates me even more since I’m usually a very driven and focused person.

As incoherent as it is, please help.

Clueless and HOMEless

Dear Clueless and HOMEless,

I have felt the same way you do. The exact things that have happened to you have not happened to me, not exactly, but I have felt the confusion and sense of betrayal, of having tried to do the right thing and have it come out badly, and the sense of not having a home.

So I speak to you with tears in my eyes. That is probably not the most disciplined way to write a column, and it may seem as though I am being melodramatic or currying sympathy but it is simply the truth, and I say not so much to arouse emotions in others but because, actually, I would like to bring tears into the written discourse of elite American society, so that over time it might become acceptable for a male writer to say from time to time that as he writes there are tears in his eyes — just as a statement of fact, not as a device. There are many traditional strictures under which a male writer writes, and for a long time I have followed most of them. I came across a line from Strunk and White the other day to the effect of, “Keep yourself out of it,” and I thought, my, how far I’ve drifted from the true and orthodox practice of “good journalistic writing”! (It’s complicated, trying to introduce things into language, as they quickly become their opposites. Yet it interests me, the notion of trying to normalize certain phenomena; it seems like on rare occasions it might be one small way to change how we talk with each other in writing. In more grandiose and hopeful moments one might think it could change how we men habitually process emotion and thus decrease the incidence of depression. But that’s pretty far-fetched. All I’m really saying is that I’ve been very emotional lately and your letter stirred me up again.)

It was the second anniversary of my father’s death last week, and I was not able to fully grieve his death at the time, so that is surely part of it. But your loss is your loss, and it’s real. There is loss and pain and these things are real and that is what crying is for. I hope you are crying from time to time because it makes you feel better afterwards. It lets you know what you are feeling. In fact, it seems that certain things can only be felt by crying; we may think we are feeling something but until our body begins its desperate heaving and sobbing we are more just observing it, knowing it is there, but not immersed in it. With the crying, one feels the emotion in one’s whole body; it passes through us, leaving us more alive. There is no doubt or confusion in the moment when one breaks down and cries; there is only the feeling, and the body suffused with that feeling, hot and awake to sadness and anger.

So when this feeling comes over you, do not be afraid to cry. You may cry for your boyhood, too, that lonely time of wandering, left to yourself, trying to become a good man against difficult odds, working to become a modern man in a family that practices ancient customs. It must have been hard for you growing up like that, especially since you seem to have a modern mind, the mind of an activist, the mind of a man who knows that society can change and people can change. So there must be a split between what you know intellectually and the demands of your family. To marry this girl in fact, therefore, must have required you to renounce a large part of yourself, the inquiring, socially aware, critical side. Yet you did it. You did it out of love and respect for your family. So you sacrificed a part of yourself and then this sacrifice was devalued, or annulled, by your wife’s decision to leave and take the baby.

Having no outlet or solution, you have turned this anger and frustration against yourself. That is likely one source of your depression; the way out will be to undo that act, by accepting that you are not the cause of this, but simply an actor with good intentions and a good heart, caught in a powerful system beyond your control. A good therapist can help you do that.

So do not blame yourself. You have done what you could. You have tried to do the right thing. Now your job is to take care of yourself, to get help for your clinical depression.

When we are depressed, we don’t think logically. Our thinking is clouded. So do not trust your thoughts on this. Trust medical science. Trust other people who are not depressed. They can see things a little more clearly than you can right now.

Now it is time to get help for your depression. You may find yourself putting it off or thinking of reasons not to do it. If so, I suggest taking certain simple, direct steps. Think of it this way: You have a new job. Your new job is to treat your depression. Call a hotline, find a psychiatrist or psychologist who can help you.

Take heart. There are a lot of us out here, and we do understand each other.

The affair went on for a year before I became suspicious. I never suspected him but I knew something wasn’t right. I watched her cry at our 13th wedding anniversary dinner. It looked like she was crying over a breakup. She was. His wife had just found out but the three of them were not telling me. I went through the phone bills and quickly confirmed my suspicions. I confronted her, she admitted it and I was crushed.

We went to counseling, yet she refused to admit that what she had done was in any way wrong. In fact, she said that until she got caught it was the best year of her life, having a happy home life and a secret lover.

Nonetheless, I started trying to put the pieces back together for the sake of our three children. But I was still suspicious. She left her computer on at home one day and when I peeked at her email I found that she was planning a rendezvous with another married man (out of town) with whom she had had another affair several years earlier. We went back to therapy and the therapist advised that she “come clean” about all of her affairs. The number quickly shot to seven including one-night stands with my daughter’s gymnastics coach, an old college boyfriend and a threesome (two guys and her). Needless to say, I now can’t get the images of all of these guys out of my head and it has significantly impacted my ability to perform in bed. We also argue a lot now. When she argues she says the most horrific things. She recently told me that I am the worst lover she has ever had. She had all of three before we were married and in the first 10 years of her marriage she used to tell me that the main thing we had in common was great sex. I guess that changed when she started getting some strange.

She still makes no apologies for her cheating. She has this bizarre sense of entitlement and feels that no one man could ever fulfill her completely so she should be able to get what she needs emotionally and physically from multiple people. She has said, “Wedding vows are a joke because pretty much everyone cheats anyway,” and I am “naive and a prude” and the only one of my friends who doesn’t cheat on his wife and that’s because I am “sexually repressed” whereas she is “fabulous” and “great in bed” and everywhere she goes she can instantly tell how many men want to sleep with her. She is quite beautiful, I will give her that. She’s also a narcissist.

Recently I was on the road for business and couldn’t get in touch with her. I subsequently learned that while our kids were in school she had traveled out of town to have lunch with someone. I don’t know who, but I soon found out that this lunch was preceded by dozens of hour-long phone conversations to and from a private number. She will not come clean about it, only saying that she is allowed to have “friends” and that there was “no sex.” She claims that she’s done with the “cheating phase” of her life but should be allowed to have male friends. The more I type the more sickened I am that I am still in this relationship but I have three wonderful children and I want to continue to live with them and guide them into adulthood. I have no desire for them to end up living with some random guy that wants to be called “Dad” and has his own views of parenting.

After a few too many glasses of wine a few weeks ago, she matter-of-factly stated that if we divorce she will sue to be the custodial parent (which she will get because she’s a stay-at-home mom), that I will have to “pay up big” and if I “try to hide any future income” that she is owed, she will get the best lawyers to find it and get me “thrown in jail” until I pay her every nickel. I apparently deserve all that because she gave birth to our three children. She has a college degree from a big-name university but hasn’t worked since our first child was born.

Do I really live in a country in which I have to stay married to a woman who has remorselessly admitted to cheating rampantly (no-fault divorce!) or be resigned to seeing my children every other weekend and writing her checks for half my net worth upfront and up to a third of my gross income for the rest of my life? And don’t tell me that at least the alimony part will end when she remarries. What woman who says she can’t get what she needs from only one man would ever remarry?

Screwed for the Rest of My Life

Dear Screwed,

You have to get out of this relationship.

You’re going to need help. The High Conflict Institute would be a good place to start.

Dr. William Eddy’s book “High-Conflict People in Legal Disputes” may also help.

You don’t have to lose. There is help for you.

You’re not the only man in such a situation. Perhaps you will relate to the following scenario, posted by “SusyP” on the Daily Strength discussion forum under the headline “Predatory Female Narcissists“:

“Narcissistic woman selects the power professional — handsome, well educated, high income, socially polished, near the top. She maneuvers herself into meeting him. He finds her dazzling, gorgeous, attentive to him and filled with the right chemistry. Her detailed plan is unfolding. He is enraptured. She cleverly feigns her inability to resist him. The two are inseparable. In a few months she is pregnant. He is surprised but subject to his instincts and impulses. She wants marriage, money and lifestyle. He acquiesces. They marry. For a while it’s appear idyllic. Then the worm turns. The marriage begins to falter (part of her plan). He was so taken with her, there is no prenup. After a while, lawyers are hired. She knows the cleverest ones since she has directed this movie before. She gets more than half of the money and possessions. Narcissistic divas use a living human being they call their child as collateral to ensure their financial security and the success of her enterprise.”

She recommends The Narcissist in Your Life site.

So, this is not hopeless. But you need to act. Consult with an attorney. Not just any attorney. Consult with an attorney who knows how to deal with high-conflict individuals and also is familiar with the personalities and biases in his or her venue.

You may believe that social services and the family law justice establishment are biased against you. But how could a judge or social worker reasonably disregard your wife’s deceit, erratic behavior and disregard for the feelings of others? Call me naive, but do not lose hope. Learn what you can about dealing with high-conflict people in divorce proceedings, get some counseling for your own well-being, and get on the road to recovery from this nightmare.

I know that you can emerge from this. After all, though she has treated you cruelly, you are not the sick one. You at least have the capacity to live a life of reason and care for others. Take some consolation in the fact that her inner life must also be a kind of hell, whereas you are a decent man, capable of honest, caring relationships with others. Get some help for your grief. You’ve been through a lot. Don’t assume that she will prevail.

No matter what happens, you, at least, can be happy. You can live a fulfilling life. That cannot be said for a person driven by anxiety, fear and delusion, incapable of loving in a healthy way.

Good luck to you, sir!

(p.s. In searching the Web for information on narcissism you may come across the postings of an unusual and controversial personality known as Sam Vaknin. His words may sound compelling but must be read critically and with caution. I found this discussion of his bona fides helpful.– ct)

Once reality sank in, there was no calming my anxiety. Even my regular meditation practice failed me. Or rather I failed at it. I was certain I’d be dragging myself around all day with a long face, vulnerable to spontaneous bouts of blubbering. So I immediately made a midday salon appointment. Wash that man right out of my hair, so to speak. It was a start, but only; in my mind a big day required something equally big to mark it.

My first idea — reenacting “Under the Tuscan Sun” — quickly fizzled out. Last-minute plane fare was expensive, and my kids were in school. As a single mom, I simply had too many things on my plate, not to mention guilt, to skip off to Italy.

Plan B included making a list of friends who had listened and returned my calls during the separation. I’d invite them all out for champagne and hors d’oeuvres. My treat. Days passed, however, and my invitations remained on the dining room table, untouched.

“You know, my 25th anniversary is almost here,” I said, pitching my party idea to my best friend Sadie one morning over breakfast.

“Just give me the date, hon,” she said.

“But what do you think about my plan?” I said, finally asking her point-blank the advice I had dreaded soliciting for days.

“I wouldn’t spend the money,” she said. “But if you think about it, there’s nothing to celebrate.” I was silent. “Whatever you decide, you know I’ll support you.”

I did know. Twice since my husband had left I’d gone into surgery alone. Twice Sadie had been there with a cup of Starbucks when I’d woken up.

Two seconds later I ditched the party idea. With only eight days to countdown, I was back to square one. I was petrified and certain I’d be spending my anniversary with the person I wanted to least be with: me.

Fantasies of how my husband and I might have once celebrated engulfed me the following week. It was a thoroughly useless gut-wrencher, I knew. As if continually punctuating my pain might somehow relieve it. I concluded Jake and I would probably have thrown a big party in the dream house we’d picked out 10 years before. We’d gone house hunting, and once I walked in and saw all that sunlight pouring in through the kitchen door, I knew the place was ours. Even Jake had been convinced. More than 25 years ago, we’d been as equally convinced about each other.

Jake had grown up in New York; I moved north from Maryland after law school to accept a job in the same company where Jake worked. The day we met he kept me standing in heels for nearly an hour while peppering me with questions before he finally offered me a seat.

“Let me tell you about myself,” he said. I hadn’t asked and wasn’t interested, big brown dreamy eyes or not. Only 25, I had just landed my first real job in New York City. The last thing on my mind was falling in love.

“I bet you didn’t know I was an actor, did you?” he said, opening his desk drawer and handing me his head shot, which gave me all his stats. I wondered how often he’d rehearsed that role.

“Really,” I replied, my tone flat, not wanting to encourage him one bit. Not that it mattered. He liked to talk and kept at it for another two hours.

“Jerk,” I said under my breath, finally freeing myself with pleas of work to do. But Jake never let up. Day by day he drew me in with some offhand comment that was just so funny I couldn’t help but laugh and toss something in return. He said he’d never met a girl who could give back as good as he gave, and soon I was blushing and warming to all his stories. Before long, I was hopelessly smitten.

Nine months later we were sealed in holy wedlock by my grandfather, a Southern Baptist minister whom my Jewish-born husband nonetheless approved of, at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Manhattan. Twenty years we lived in Brooklyn, enduring what at times seemed like more than our fair share of troubles, troubles to me nonetheless overshadowed by the two lives we brought into the world.

Within weeks of the seven-year itch, we conceived our first daughter. Equally auspicious, a few months before unlucky 13, we brought home healthy daughter number two. In between, we threw a grand party to celebrate our 10th anniversary and greeted guests all decked out in nuptial gear. Jake was handsome in his black tuxedo, and I slipped easily into my wedding gown. And damned if we didn’t look happily ever after, I thought, flipping through the photo album, never once doubting in all those years that, just like my mom and dad, Jake and I, too, would one day stand side by side, cutting our anniversary cake.

And then one day my 12-year-old daughter found me in the kitchen one morning, broken.

“Why are you crying, Mom?” she asked, rubbing my back.

“Your dad’s leaving, sweetheart,” I reminded her.

“I know, but Daddy still loves you.”

“I’m not so sure,” I’d said.

“Of course he does,” she assured me. “He gave you those emerald earrings you wanted for your anniversary.”

Less than six months before, Jake and I had celebrated our 20th anniversary. He’d loaded the evening with surprises, including a small box containing the emerald earrings I’d seen in a shop the winter before.

What my daughter didn’t know, however, was that three months later her father had a girlfriend. That shortly after he started a new job, he’d begun having an affair with a woman in his office who had a 9-year-old son and two previous marriages behind her.

Still, it was my daughter’s words I hung on to, wanting to believe my little girl was somehow more capable of discerning the truth than I was. Weeks later, though, her father was gone. And five years came and went. And there I was, an A-1 planner without a plan, facing my silver wedding anniversary alone. A woman who had worked her way through law school, traveled the world and made it all the way to New York City, yet still longing for the one thing the women in her small, rural hometown had accomplished that she somehow hadn’t — an abiding marriage.

As I sat home, wallowing, I lifted from the shelf the white wedding album that I’d been avoiding since the day Jake left. My eyes fell on the fresh-faced blonde and her suitor standing at the altar, their future an open slate.

A year and a half before, I’d gone to a lecture one Saturday afternoon and realized I was within a few blocks of that very church. I figured there was no better time to venture a peek, fortified as I was from a two-hour Buddhist lecture, and so I strolled there, only to find the doors bolted. Disappointed, I walked away, avoiding the church from then on, even though the thought of going back lingered.

Suddenly the time seemed right to brave those wooden doors again. So a few days later, when my anniversary arrived, I hopped on the subway.

“Take as long as you like,” the church manager said, leading me inside and then excusing himself. In all honesty I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d gone or what I was going to do. As I looked around, stroking the red-velvet-covered pews, a few details came rushing back — the double aisles, one on either side, the rich wood. The rest was decidedly more majestic than I remembered — eight stained-glass windows, a cathedral ceiling, and a reredos adorned with intricate wood and gold filigree. The scale of my presence in the space where my husband and I had pledged our faithfulness exactly 25 years before was humbling.

Surprised to find myself wanting to recollect more, I strode to the anteroom on the left-hand side of the church where I’d once waited nervously with my attendants on a hot Saturday afternoon. Our flower girl had thrown a fit in that very spot, advising her mother she most assuredly was not walking down that aisle. I laughed, realizing that the little girl who stuck to her guns was all grown up and most surely an executive in charge of a vast number of underlings.

And then I walked through the archway, just as I’d once done, pretending to link arms with my dad, gone 20 years from a heart attack, my head held high, tears flowing, while I marched down the aisle.

It’s OK, I can do this, I said to myself as I reached the front pew and sat down. Brian, the church manager, appeared with a cup of water and left as quietly as he’d entered. Susan Sparks, the pastor, arrived next. I’d read about her online — a woman preacher and a stand-up comic. This was definitely not my mother’s Baptist church.

“Brian told me why you’re here,” she said. “What a brave thing to do. Perhaps you’ll even be able to reclaim this place in a different way.” I hadn’t expected to meet her but half thought she’d say something humorous to lighten the mood a bit. But she was somber, kind. And that’s when I realized that flying off to Europe or partying with my girlfriends would have been all wrong. This was a time for being alone and making peace with my loss. Susan left as quickly and quietly as Brian had done, and I resumed my meditation, breathing in bright white light and blowing all the dark smoky anger out.

As I ran my hands over the plush pews, my thoughts all at once became clear, and I took out paper and pen and started writing my husband’s girlfriend a note. “I imagine it will be as awkward for you to read as it is for me to write,” I began. A month before, she’d been diagnosed with cancer. And while I was still light years from forgiveness, what she and I had in common unexpectedly trumped the enormous gulf between us: We were both mothers. Surprised, I found myself wishing her a complete recovery, though in truth I hadn’t always felt that way.

“I hope your son is doing OK,” I added. “My girls say he’s a nice kid.”

When I finished the note, it was time to go. I’d reenacted my entrance on the left; it was time for my exit on the right. I turned my back to the altar and started as the words “come on Jake” flew from my lips. But once I gathered my wits, I stopped dead mid-aisle, turned round again, and said out loud: “On second thought, I’m going to do this part on my own.” And then I marched down the aisle and out the church, wondering who could possibly be channeling through me, feeling as light as the June air that greeted me outdoors.