Why Emailing With My Husband?s Mistress Gave Me Peace

So when I got that initial email from his mistress back in October, I was civil. I apologized for having written "home wrecker" all over her very public Facebook page, although, truth be told, that's what she was and continues to be. But it was when she sent me the poem, one about me, in which she called herself "a little girl," painting herself an innocent child in love with this 48-year-old man married to a woman who was not just destroying her husband, but standing in her way of being with her soulmate, that I cracked a bit. It also didn't help that the poem was riddled with references that only Henri could have told her about me. It was a betrayal on top of a betrayal.

Then things were quiet for a bit, at least on the outside. Inside, I was reeling.

On Christmas Eve, I got a another email from the mistress. In not so many words, she explained to me that things with my husband, financially speaking, are dire. Which, to be honest, was one of the reasons we often fought. A man of his age shouldn't be working only 15 hours a week, in general, and if he chooses to do so, he shouldn't be surprised when things become dire.

She also explained not just her love for him, my husband, but how he "used" to love me and I should take some sort of pity on him. (Pity regarding the messy divorce proceedings to come.) I rolled my eyes and groaned, but kept reading. I read as a 20-year-old girl, someone almost young enough to be my daughter, told me what I was supposed to do in regards to my husband. She compared our relationship to that of when her sister broke up with her boyfriend and other things that made little sense to me, although I imagine if I were in her shoes, so wrapped up in the idea of being in some sort of bohemian love story that actually has a happy ending, they would have seemed deep and profound.

I took a sip of wine and decided to respond.

I wrote of my disappointment in Henri. I wrote about how these things do not concern her and how comparing the breakup of her sister to my marriage was insulting. I wrote it as if I were an older sister trying to make her see clearly, pointing out that someday she would understand, because there was a very strong likelihood that she would mature past him. She would see that, although enchanting at first, the romanticism of living with a struggling musician fades fast.

She responded as if she didn't really process what I had said, although she was adamant that it did concern her. She wrote of all the things that supposedly Henri wished he could tell me. About his concerns and his struggles. From there, she went on to mention something about how there are two sides of every story, justifying again how she belonged with my husband and he belonged with her, like she did in her poem about me a couple months ago, the one in which I was the villain.