“You have loved me more than anyone in my whole life. You are the pinnacle of my existence. I will not give you up.” Imagine reading these words in an email in your own home. Imagine first your curiosity. Imagine they were the words of your husband of 20 years. This incident happened to me one day. I was trying to figure out my new email account when I accidentally clicked on another’s account. My heart stopped when I found the email. Could this be my husband? There was his name and then there was the name of another woman’s. Finding your husband is cheating on the internet can be more devastating than catching your spouse in bed with another woman. Words can be just as intimate as a touch but hold deeper meaning, an infidelity of the heart.

How do you survive then, being cheated on? With 51% of marriages ending in divorce, one out of two, you have to wonder. Are there animals in the wild kingdom that are faithful? What would Darwin say? Did we evolve this way? I confronted my husband. Getting him to sit down and talk to me was like trying to snag a rabbit. Both children were out of the house at the time and we had agreed to talk. He said he was going for a walk first to clear his head. An hour and a half later he still wasn’t back. I called him on his cell phone. He said he was coming right home. An hour and a half later he finally showed up. He told me he would give her up.

The next morning he kissed me goodbye as he went to work. I looked up his email dated that day and there he told his mistress that he met on the internet about our confrontation and to not to worry that no matter what his wife said, he would never give her up. I told him that night I was filing for divorce. One learns a great many things living on your own from how to maintain your car, to replacing water hoses in a washing machine to how to refinance the house. My ex assumed that I would not be able to exist on my own. He said among other things I would never be able to get my own credit but in reality my credit was better than his.

Women put up with physical and mental abuse because they are afraid to live alone or they say it is because ‘I love him.” I came across a story of a wise 80-year-old woman living in an assisted community. She advised that men should treat their woman like dogs. “Men take care of their dogs. They feed them, take them to the vet when it’s needed, pet them, and do things with them that are fun. Men take pride in their dogs. If a man would treat a woman the same way their marriage would be a good one.” “Real men,” she added, “don’t put their dogs on a leash either.” Get support from family, friends and co-workers. Seek counseling if things get too hard. If you are sad, volunteer, or help a neighbor. If you can’t sleep alone, sleep with your dog. I sleep with my 100 lb American Bulldog and I feel safe. Why do human beings cheat? Do all animals in the Wild Kingdom cheat? According to a recent report on CNN (a most trusted news source) flatworms were noted to be one of the only animals that do not cheat on their mates. I am being a bit prejudice here, but don’t they all look alike? Perhaps that is their secret.

Now take the slap happy penguins. One would assume as portrayed by the popular culture they would be a faithful mate. However, on the Discovery channel a program on penguins showed a different kind of scenario. A female sits on her precious egg while her mate stands patiently by her side when suddenly he decides to take a walk. He waddles a bit and takes a corner. When out of sight he hops on another female for a quickie. He returns to his mate with a piece of straw in his peak, as if to say I was just out redecorating, dear. Perhaps it pays to be pickier. The female fiddler crab may “date” 100s before she settles on the male of her fancy. A male crab says “come hither” with his big claw and she skitters over to inspect.

Besides having lovely long eye-stalks, males must also be able to dig the right kind of hole. Though not necessarily the biggest as one might expect since a bigger hole would produce more eggs and young, no this hole must be “just right." What if you were to ask Charles Darwin what makes human beings cheat, over a cup of cappuccino? He would probably stutter a bit (he was a stutter), wave his hands in expressive explanation and go off on a tangent as he was known to do by his students. He was a family man and loved his wife Emma dearly. He would say demonstratively “Natural selection is not survival of the fittest!” and that is the point you would probably come away with. It has been my experience that one can survive a cheating mate. I am healing, but also have grown.

There are always new opportunities, new technologies to learn, and new ways to improve your life. I have a new relationship with someone I found on the internet ironically (that’s a whole other article) and being as picky as a female fiddler crab. There are no easy answers. Within you is the choice-to ask the hard questions of yourself that only you know the answers to, and then begin to grieve, take account and move on. It is after all a process, to choose to grow or not to grow, to choose to evolve.

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