It Happened To Me: I Read My Husband's Journal And My Whole World Changed

Looking for the lease agreement for my husband's new car, the "paperwork" I found ended my marriage. PLUS: Your invitation from Jane

Hello, wonderful AJPT people!

I'm not going to take more than a moment away from you being able to start reading today’s piece, below, because it’s that good (in my humble opinion – tell me yours in the comments, of course).

So this is just a quick reminder that Zoom Party Number Two (with some new special Original Sassy Editor guests!) is on for tomorrow/Wednesday at my place at 8 PM Eastern Time. All paid subscribers will get the information emailed to you beforehand. There are no rules except to have fun. And if you do wear your Sassy T-shirt or if you are an annual or lifetime AJPT subscriber, you can leave the party with exclusive priceless swag from my personal Sassy/Jane/XOJane archives, as well as the golden opportunity to join me on a trip to my storage space in the Bronx to take all the memorabilia and designer clothes you want (size 8 shoes, by the way).

So I will see your faces live tomorrow and I cannot wait. Based on the one we all did last week, I am this time preparing for sore abs from laughing and a sore throat from screaming. (Oh, by the way, any of you who come back a second time are my kind of people! Please please rejoin!)

I love you! I hope you love this story, too.

Jane

After the ceremony.

By: Amelia Warner

I had never called my therapist on her cell, let alone late at night. My heart pounded out of my chest as the color dripped from my face. Like a scene from a movie where the subject remains in sharp focus as the world recedes into the background in a blur, time stops. I stood, transfixed, next to my husband’s desk in our shared office in our rented post and beam house in the canyon. Two orderly stacks of papers sat atop the desk, perfectly aligned with its edges and corners. A single Caran d’Ache pen sat in the center of one of the stacks, perfectly symmetrical, as if a ruler had been used to place it - the outward manifestation of my husband’s need for order and control. It was December 15, 2011, ten days before Christmas.

My husband had come home from work that evening, showered, changed, and spent time with our fourteen-year-old son before heading out to one of the several annual holiday parties that were ubiquitous in his business. That night’s party was at LACMA. He said he hated the parties, but they were a necessary evil. See and be seen. I hadn’t felt seen in years. I don’t know if I have ever been visible to anyone. In my hand was a small, leather-bound journal. The front of the journal had been covered over with a collage - instantly identifiable as the handiwork of my husband, who was, in addition to being an Executive Producer by day, a talented artist. In his unmistakable handwriting were the words, “The Story of Us.” I had gone into his work bag, the vintage leather satchel I had gifted him the Christmas before, to look for paperwork for the new car we leased two nights prior. We’d been out with our son, shopping for a Christmas tree, when we decided to stop at a car dealership.

We headed home with a Noble Fir and a new, silver Toyota FJ Cruiser. I couldn’t find what I was looking for in his tidy paper stacks or the disorganized mess on my desk, so I picked up his bag off the door, thinking that maybe he had taken the paperwork to the office. Amidst the bills for American Express, Heineken, and Nike was this journal. The Story of Us.

I opened it and began to read.

The hand-written entries were dated. I recognized my husband’s script instantly, but there was a second hand that was unfamiliar to me. The pages were filled with recaps of days in Malibu and a night in Palm Springs when he was supposed to have been out of town on business.

Entire days were spent together when he was supposed to be at work. Dinners out. Restaurants named. Explicit details of meet-ups and fucking; so much fucking, while skin hunger consumed me. I learned that the two-night business trip to Oregon was just an overnight trip. The second night away was spent in a hotel about five miles from our home.