The Fake Out
I recently began a stint moonlighting as a college professor. This is something I always wanted to do and felt fortunate to have been given the opportunity to interview and be offered the position as an adjunct at a nearby university where Sarah and I had met 18 years ago. It has always felt like home. The class I taught met one evening a week. I was two classes into the semester when I learned of Sarah’s affair. The shift in emotions I was feeling left nothing untouched, including this teaching opportunity - soon this would be all the more abundantly clear.
About two weeks after the revelation of the affair, I was in the middle of teaching when I received several texts from Sarah at a frenetic pace. It was difficult to view all of what was being sent to me in those moments but the sense was that Lauren may have “let the cat out of the bag”, these were the words I would use to ask her a few moments later. Sarah and I didn’t get a full description of what Lauren sent the group until some time later, this was in part because Sarah immediately left the group text as soon as she felt something was about to be revealed. As it turned out, it was not a big reveal. All of this boiled down to a shot across the bow moment - something Lauren presented was “just to fuck with her.” All she had done was send an old group photo with no real context to the confusion of the recipients of the message.
This “fake out”, as we have come to refer to it, made Sarah very angry and frustrated. The emotional exhaustion, lost sleep and lack of nutrition leading to weight loss for both of us over the last 16 days had boiled over. What Sarah did next, I found to be very odd - I wonder what our readers might think. Sarah texted an apology message to Lauren. She apologized for the affair. Having gotten to know Lauren a bit over the preceding two weeks, I was sure this was not going to go over well and, spoiler alert, it didn’t. Sarah’s apologetic pleas were met with Lauren stating that Brad “only used you for your pussy”.
I wasn’t sure what I was going home to but felt a great deal of urgency to get there. A lot of time had passed during all these exchanges and I had given my students some team assignments to do so they were presenting their work. This wasn’t exactly what I had planned but it allowed me an opportunity to multitask. When I got home, I entered to find Sarah in the in-person frenzy that texted me a few hours earlier. She presented as both upset and empowered. Her emotions were all over the place.
I was sitting in my car, picking up one of my sons from religion class, when out of the blue I got a text in group text that contained some of my coworkers and one number I didn’t recognize. “I just found this old group pic =)” Oh shit.. Is that Lauren’s number? I quickly fumbled through my text messages to see if it matched an earlier message from Paul which contained a screenshot from her. It is Lauren! (And her stupid looking smiley face!) Crap.. she’s going to tell my coworkers everything right here and now! My heart started pounding. I quickly left the group chat. I didn’t want to witness what came next. I was already planning my apology message to my coworkers. How do I explain this to them?
I didn’t know what to do so I messaged Paul telling him I think Lauren was about to tell everyone we work with. Paul quickly texted Lauren, “So, I guess the cat’s out of the bag?” “No, I’m just fucking with her!” Lauren wrote to Paul. I got pissed at the “fake out”. I knew I was far from being rational, but I was tired of her mind games (especially her manipulative conversations with Paul). I’ve also always felt that I’ve let strong-willed people take advantage of me so I decided to text Lauren myself with an apology. I just wanted to be honest with her about the affair and to tell her to stop interacting with Paul and myself. Well, I should have either blocked her immediately after I pressed send or I should have known better all together. “YOU PATHETIC SLUT... I pity Paul for having such a WHORE of a wife… (and it went on from there…) I will be thrilled if you die the most horrific death… If you text me one more time I’ll call the head of the police department… you don’t know who you are dealing with… etc… etc…”
That was a big mistake on my part, but for a little while I felt empowered and glad that I let her know the truth from my perspective despite the outcome.
One of the most difficult things we have dealt with over the past 10 weeks is the notion of letting go of what we can’t control. We can control with whom and what details we want to share about the affair. We can control our communication and honesty with one another. We can control how we respond to each other and others that may provoke high strung emotions. But we certainly cannot control how other people react to the revelation of the affair, in particular Lauren, who was clearly distraught, and rightly so, and wanted to “destroy” Sarah in every way shape and form. Not to say that Lauren could certainly have handled things differently and kept us out of her battle with her own adulterous manipulative husband. But Sarah quickly learned that Lauren’s actions were out of her control and either she had to accept that or accept the hideous offensive backlash that ensued as a result of Sarah’s irrational apology.
