Have you ever heard of karmic retribution? We all know actions have consequences, but this is the concept that anything evil or wrong that you do will cause you to suffer, while if you act in a way that is kind and compassionate, you will reap the positive rewards.
She’s worried that her newfound hatred for her husband is karmic retribution, since he actually started out as her affair partner, and she cheated on her first husband with him.
Four years ago, this 39-year-old woman tied the knot with her husband, J, but she’s known him for close to two decades. Back when they first met, she felt an instant attraction to J, and J was not single (he opted not to tell her that he was engaged to another woman).
J made it seem like the relationship he was in was nothing serious, and since she wasn’t seeing anyone, she decided to just have some fun with him.
“Not long after, I became pregnant, but not by him. I lost the baby halfway through my second trimester. The loss sent me into a very dark place,” she explained.
“Surprisingly, he was there for me in a way no one else was. He would sit with me, comfort me, [and] let me cry without expecting anything in return. That’s when I fell in love with him. But he was still with his fiancée (now his ex-wife), and I knew it was wrong.”
“I should have gone to therapy, but instead, I tried to start over. I moved away, got a new job, stopped seeing him, met someone else (M), and eventually got married. J and I stayed friendly over messages, but kept our distance at least physically.”
However, her mom suddenly grew quite ill and was diagnosed with cancer. She flew back to help her mom out, since her dad had passed away a year prior.
She was exhausted emotionally, stepping up to be there for her mom. While she was home, she ran into J, and then they slept together, even though they both were married to other people.
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While all of this was going on, she and her husband M had been trying to have a baby without any luck. After undergoing a bunch of tests, doctors told them they had one choice: IVF.
In the month she was home with her mom, she got pregnant with J’s baby. She was surprised, terrified, elated, and mortified. She didn’t know how to break the news to her husband that she had a baby on board, but it wasn’t his.
Due to the two miscarriages she’s had in her life, she truly did not anticipate that she would be able to have a healthy baby, and then the panic attacks started.
“Before I could confess, everything came out anyway. After my child was born, J’s wife told M the truth. She eventually divorced him. I divorced M,” she said.
“I moved back home to be near my mom. J and I talked about building a family together. I told him I wanted our child raised in a loving, stable home, something I didn’t have growing up. He said he wanted the same.”
“But once I moved back, I discovered J was still talking to his ex-wife, seeing another woman, and involved with multiple other women. I felt destroyed but also like I deserved it…like it was karma for my choices.”
She and J argued nonstop, and she can’t tell you why she remained with J. One year after she chose him over M, she got pregnant once more, and things were less rocky with J. It did help that he quit speaking to some of those other girls whom he was interested in.
When she hit the five-month mark in her pregnancy (which was in the middle of the pandemic, by the way), she left J, thinking it was for good. She was taking care of her firstborn all alone, working from home, and feeling too burdened by it all.
J blamed her for cheating on him, but he was just projecting his own issues onto her. She was not unfaithful to him; she was just done.
“He said he would marry me when and if he wanted. Only when it benefited him medically did he agree to marry me. I still don’t know why I agreed to any of it,” she added.
She landed a job in another country, and J hesitantly came with her, since he was not working as he bounced back from some medical problems.
But the move proved to be anything but a fresh start for them and their family, and instead, her life turned into a nightmare. J accused her of cheating on him with her coworkers.
J prevented her from speaking to her friends or leaving the house. She was the breadwinner, and yet, J treated her like she was the bad guy.
In reality, she worked so hard to improve herself for the sake of her children, and she put in the work. She can admit she was an awful wife to M, but she made an effort to be a better person.
Following a holiday party, J put his hands on her for the first time and hurt her so badly that she had to stay home from work for a whole week. She couldn’t go into the office and see her coworkers with a swollen face.
A year after that attack, J put her in the hospital, and she can’t remember what actually occurred that day. She never pictured that she would find such a horrible man, and she feels stuck and full of shame, like the universe is punishing her for marrying her affair partner.
“He’s cruel, even to our children. We live walking on eggshells around his moods. He destroys the peace in our home. My work has suffered. My mental health has suffered. And I feel so much guilt, like this is what I deserve for my past mistakes,” she continued.
“Now, I’ve secured employment elsewhere, and it’s almost time to move again. I’ve found a new job. I don’t want to go with him. I want him to go back to his family. I want out. I can’t do this anymore. I just want a safe, peaceful life for me and my children.”
“If you’ve made it this far, thank you for allowing me to scream into the void.”
We love to believe that people get what they deserve, and that karma keeps score. But life isn’t that clean. Good people do awful things. Horrible people get second chances.
Sometimes the punishment doesn’t fit the sin, and it just finds the person least equipped to survive it. I don’t think that she deserves what’s happening to her. She just hasn’t forgiven herself enough for what she did to M to walk away from J.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
