My Husband Told Me His “Work Wife” Was An Upgrade. Then I Found Out He Was Paying Her Rent While Telling Me To Budget. How Should I Handle This Dinner Invite?
A New Life
We spent the day unpacking and arranging furniture, debating where the couch should go and whether my bookshelf looked better by the window or against the wall. She brought cleaning supplies and helped me scrub down the kitchen before putting away dishes. Her boyfriend assembled my bed frame without complaining when the instructions turned out to be missing half the necessary information.
By evening the apartment looked almost livable with most boxes unpacked and furniture roughly where I wanted it. Laya opened a bottle of wine when we were done and toasted to new beginnings holding up her glass in my small living room. I felt genuinely happy for the first time in months, not because everything was perfect but because I was building something that was authentically mine. A space where I could be myself without judgment or comparison.
The final divorce papers arrived 6 weeks later officially ending 8 years of marriage with my signature on legal documents. I sat at my new kitchen table and read through the decree seeing our relationship reduced to asset division and settlement terms. I signed them with a mix of sadness and relief acknowledging that this chapter was truly closed now.
Then I took myself out for a nice dinner at a restaurant I’d always wanted to try, sitting alone at a table and ordering whatever I wanted without considering anyone else’s preferences. I wasn’t celebrating the divorce exactly but I was acknowledging that I’d survived something hard and came out stronger on the other side.
The Grocery Store Encounter
I’m pushing my cart through the produce section two weeks later when I see her by the tomatoes. Jessica freezes with her hand halfway to a package and we lock eyes across a display of bell peppers. She looks different without the professional polish, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail.
For a second neither of us moves, both of us probably calculating whether we can pretend we didn’t see each other. She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something then closes it again. Her face cycles through what looks like embarrassment, anger, and resignation before settling on carefully blank.
She gives me a tense nod, the kind you’d give a stranger you accidentally made eye contact with, then quickly grabs whatever tomatoes are closest and hurries toward the checkout lanes. I stand there holding my shopping list watching her disappear around the corner display of canned goods.
The anger I expected to feel doesn’t come. Instead I just feel tired of the whole mess, exhausted by months of drama and legal proceedings and emotional processing. I finish my shopping and drive home to my apartment realizing somewhere between the dairy aisle and the parking lot that I don’t want to waste any more energy thinking about her or what happened. My life is moving forward and she’s just someone I used to know through the worst period of my marriage.
Discovering Me
My therapist’s office becomes a place where I slowly piece myself back together. Over the following weeks we work on separating my identity from being Craig’s wife, figuring out who I am when I’m not defined by that relationship. She asks me what I like to do before I got married, what hobbies I gave up, what friendships I let fade because Craig didn’t like my friends or didn’t want to spend time with them.
I realized I’d slowly made myself smaller to fit into his life, agreeing with his preferences and dismissing my own interests as less important. She suggests I try something I’d always wanted to do but never made time for, something just for me that has nothing to do with teaching or my old life with Craig.
I remember always wanting to try pottery after seeing a class advertised at the community center years ago but Craig said it was a waste of money for a hobby I’d probably quit. I sign up for a beginner pottery class that meets Tuesday evenings, spending my first session making a lumpy bowl that barely holds its shape.
The instructor is patient and encouraging showing me how to center the clay and use steady pressure. I’m terrible at it but I love the feeling of creating something with my hands, the focus required to shape the spinning clay.
Between therapy sessions I start reaching out to friends I’d neglected during my marriage, people I’d slowly stopped calling because Craig found them boring or annoying. My college roommate is thrilled to hear from me and we meet for lunch catching up on years of life changes. She’s divorced too, further along in her healing, and she tells me it gets easier but takes longer than you expect.
