"I could never stay with a guy who cheated on me," declared the sincere young woman sitting across the desk from me in my counseling office.

I don't remember the conversation that led to that statement, but I do recall thinking, "Oh, baby, you have no idea what you can or can't do until it happens to you."

At the time, I was divorced and had been in a serious relationship for six years when "my man" "fell in love" with another woman. Out of the blue he told me that he thought we should see other people, and within days I realized that he was definitely "seeing" someone else. I was still very much in love with him, so when he told me, "I don't know what I'm doing," I became "the other woman". His lover didn't know about me - he'd told her we had broken up, and he was apparently able to maintain that charade for the better part of a year while keeping her at the centre of his life and me at the perimeter.

I wept, I raged, I rebuilt half a house, raging and weeping, smashing out old studs with self-destructive fury, letting my blood and sweat mingle with my tears as they dripped onto lumber, old and new, spending money I didn't have, believing I was building a home for us - for him and me.

The renovation was completed, he broke up with her, I sold the house and moved in with him. That was ten years ago, and I still haven't been able to "cope". Because nothing's changed. I'm still nowhere near the centre of his life. Yes he wants me to be with him - all day, every day, to the point where I have no life apart from him - but his work is more important than our relationship. His child is free to trample on my flowers and trash our home and I'm never to complain, and certainly have no authority to assume a parenting role. I'm expected to water his horses when I'm sick and he can't be bothered to put his shoes on and go outside.

The affair was just one symptom of a very dysfunctional relationship, one that I still haven't yet left for a variety of reasons, foremost of which is very likely fear: fear of poverty, fear of loneliness, fear of reprisal. But finally, after a decade of pain, I'm no longer "in love" with him. I told him I don't know when I stopped loving him; he told me he doesn't know when he started loving me. Unfortunately, we're way out of sync and there's no going forward together, at least not right now, not for me.

If he had come to love me sooner - before my love for him withered away - perhaps we could have overcome the damage done by the affair. I suspect that's how people cope with an affair - they discover that the love between them holds at bay the self-doubt and insecurity engendered by betrayal. I believed for many years that I was coping; now I no longer have any reason to.

Learn more about this author, Roberta Velyn.
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