The day I found out my husband was having an affair (via his repeat Ubers late at night from the same roster of hotels), my world as I knew it crumbled. I couldn’t get out of bed. I could barely bring myself to speak to friends and focused instead on functioning daily.
I can’t imagine this happening with the world’s media standing at the garden gate, watching your family’s every move, as Victoria Beckham implies in her candid response to the Rebecca Loos scandal and her husband’s alleged affair in the Netflix Beckham documentary.
Part of my recovery was to hide away from friends and family, and try to deal with it in private, picking the mess of our marriage apart from our two very different perspectives. Our situation felt as straightforward as it could under the circumstances, when your life as you know it is turned upside down by the person closest to you. We got to make a choice and quickly resolved that we both wanted to try to make it work, rather than split immediately. Like the Beckhams at the time of the Rebecca Loos headlines, we had young children in the equation.
That decision, to stay in the marriage and work at it, felt at odds with what I felt society expected of me—to up and leave, outraged. But to be frank, I felt way too confused and crushed to make that type of rational decision in the days that followed the affair discovery.
Later down the line I fantasized about it as an easier option, to just walk away from the months of heartbreak that followed, the hard conversations that kept recurring, the mental comparison your brain flirts with and you have to conquer. Of course I know myself, and from friends sharing their experiences, that is there is no easy choice, and for some there is no choice at all.
The reality is marriage and long-term partnerships can be hard, and infidelities are a surprisingly common occurrence. As I went through the healing process, I realized I couldn’t hear the voices of the women who chose to dig in and sort through the hard stuff.
I did wonder at the time how women in the public eye, whose partners were rumored to have strayed, got through it under the scrutiny. I understand why they wouldn’t share intimate details, but hearing those voices as a shared experience might have helped me, or at the least made me feel less isolated as I navigated the emotional upheaval. It’s why I’m appreciative of Victoria Beckham's candid acknowledgement of how hard that time in their life was and how they’ve worked through it.
So to the cynics who have accused them of revealing it all now, to boost authenticity for Brand Beckham, I say try to live this experience even without the media spotlight and see how you fare.
I also know from personal experience that the healing process takes time. It took me over a year of intense and often uncomfortable therapy to deal with all my emotions, to be honest with myself and also my partner. It took me five years to be able to tell others about our experience, to have the space from the intensity of the heartache and ability to discuss it without breaking down.
Our relationship has changed forever, and now with some time and perspective I feel proud of how hard we both worked to stay in our marriage. I can imagine the Netflix premiere, with all the family together, was no doubt a proud moment for the Beckham clan too.
And when you’ve worked hard, I understand it’s something to celebrate.
This story was first published on Glamour UK.
