Publications
Partners
- A woman shares how her husband was fired but pretended to go to work every day for months.
- It also turned out that the 'company car' he drove was a gift from the other woman in his life.
- These revelations led to the discovery that the husband had a second home with another woman and would stay there on weekends, saying he was on a business trip.
Most of us have faced betrayal in some form or the other. It's one of those things that causes people to put up walls, and some never quite recover. One woman shares her story of how her seemingly happy and stable marriage was anything but perfect.
Gayle Edwards* and her husband Greg* became empty nesters this year after their youngest daughter left for university.
"I was looking forward to us spending more time together as the last few years have been really busy. We both worked long hours, and my husband usually worked weekends as well. But with all our kids now living on their own, I figured we would have the house to ourselves and be able to spend more time together," she tells us.
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But that was not to be. "When my daughter left for university, Greg worked even longer hours and took frequent business trips, especially over the weekends," Gayle says, adding that she did not question it as he was a salesman and travelled a lot.
"When Greg did come home, he would spend hours in the garage or the garden. He was always pottering about, fixing things, and never really sitting down with me, even for five minutes."
But their marriage was good. Their family always commented on what a good husband Greg was. There was no reason to worry.
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By chance, Gayle bumped into Greg's boss one morning and, during casual conversation, discovered something shocking – Greg had been fired from his job nine months earlier. Even though he had been fired, he had still been paying his part of the bills at home, so Gayle was not suspicious.
"I was in total shock. He had been getting up every morning at five. I packed his lunch and ironed his clothes. He would leave for 'work' and would be back in the evenings after 6 pm. His boss was surprised to find out that I didn't know anything and apologized that I had to find out this way," she says.
Gayle didn't say anything to Greg immediately as she tried to process the news. But the nightmare was just beginning.
"The next day, I received a call from one of Greg's colleagues. He also apologized to me for Greg's deceit, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. He then proceeded to tell me that my husband of 30 years has been in a relationship with someone else for the last five years and that they had a child together. Those weekend 'business trips' were spent with her at a flat they bought," Gayle says.
When confronted, Greg did not deny it. For the past nine months that he had been pretending to go to his regular job, he had, in fact, been going to his mistress. She ran her own business, and it seemed it was working with her. Even the car that he had been driving for the last few months was hers. He told his family it was a company car.
"I asked his ex-boss why he still had the company car when he had been fired, and he confirmed that Greg had never been given a company car," she says. Greg moved out a few days after his double life was discovered. "He didn't even say goodbye to the children. I had to break the news to them. He just left us to pick up the pieces."
Gayle and her kids have supported each other for the last few months. "We are all still trying to process everything, but we will survive. I thought this only happened in movies. He had a whole other life apart from us. I don't know how he managed to pull it off for so many years without slipping up – until now."
* Names have been changed
