Jessi

And I felt like I was dying inside because I couldn't talk to anyone about this because the risk of it getting out was something I was completely petrified of.

And I think she was petrified of it as well.

Both.

I think during that six months, I was probably coming at it from more of a selfish standpoint.

I think that I was so embarrassed and felt a lot of shame if people knew what my wife had done.

And I wasn't even worried about what I had done to put her in a place where she felt that that was a need.

Does that make sense?

Not a need, or maybe... Drove her to a state of mind.

Drove her to a place where she could even be in that place, yeah.

I would say that that slap in the face that you're talking about was the day that we separated.

That was the biggest aha moment, but I would say it was like an onion.

I had to peel those layers back over the next week, two weeks.

I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but for me, it was the whole time I was so hurt and so traumatized by what happened that I couldn't even see my wife.

I couldn't see...

Her pain or the way that she felt because I was so upset and distraught about what she had done That it only got it only magnified the issues that we had

Yeah, you know, I think in those moments, I felt, are you talking, just so I'm very specific, at what point are you talking about?

Are you talking about prior to the affair, after I found out of the affair, after, you know?

So something that Jesse and I have talked, you know, we've been doing lots of therapy for like the last, you know, it's been almost a year.

You know, one of the things that, you know, our relationship got to a place after the affair where all of our issues were magnified, right?

And before that we had issues.