When my son was around 5 or 6, he used to point at a news anchor on TV and call him “Daddy!” My wife would just smile and say, “Kids have wild imaginations,” and I’d laugh it off.
Years later, that same anchor appeared on screen again. Jokingly, I called out, “Hey, your TV dad’s on!” But my son’s face went pale. Before he could respond, my wife started coughing and asked him to get her some water. Instead, he turned to me and said, “It’s time you knew the truth.”
He revealed that the man on TV had once been my wife’s boyfriend—and that when he was little, she’d take him along to see him.
My wife broke down in tears. She confessed it had been a short-lived affair during a difficult time in our marriage. She felt lonely, and I had been buried in work. When someone well-known paid her attention, she got swept up in it.
I was devastated. It suddenly felt like everything I thought we had was built on a lie.
