He’d apologized more times than I could count, and not in that rushed, guilty way, but like he really meant it.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said one night. “I just… didn’t want to fight her. Didn’t want to believe she’d say that without a reason.
I was stupid.”
Even though I know others would’ve walked away from this relationship, I decided on therapy. For several weeks, we sat in a little office with beige walls and a box of tissues on the table between us, saying the hard stuff.
“It’s not just the DNA test,” I told him during one session. “It’s the lack of trust.
You didn’t believe me, even though I’d never given you a reason to doubt me.”
He nodded, eyes wet. “I know. I messed up.
I’ll never doubt you again.”
He’s kept that promise, so far. I have to give him that.
It didn’t happen overnight, but over time, we worked through it. He listened more.
He defended me. He shut down comments from his mom’s family, who were trying to get us to talk to her.
Finally, I forgave him fully, not because I forgot, but because he owned up to his wrongs.
But the relationship with Karen is almost completely broken. I tried listening to a voicemail, and it was full of lazy excuses and guilt trips.
I deleted it before the end, and we’ve blocked her since.
Ben’s dad filed for divorce not long after the party.
He stopped speaking to Karen, too.
Without her, he began visiting us more, and nothing’s changed between him and Ben. Luckily.
In the mean time, our son kept growing, laughing, babbling, and learning to walk by gripping the edge of the coffee table.
And the DNA paperwork, both results, are still in a drawer somewhere. We haven’t looked at them again.
