Disclaimer: This is not fiction. This is part of my story and, as the name implies, an entirely truthful account of the facts.

Truth

I've been doing something terribly wrong for the past few years to my wife, whom I love dearly, and this is the explanation why.

She betrayed me once, before we got married. She says her main reason for doing so was the fact that she was still feeling vulnerable because I had told her to get an abortion, or that I would leave her. She told me to leave and, at the time I did, but I called her 12 hours later to apologise. She took me back, although saying that her respect for me was almost shattered. She nearly lost our son because of the nerves our fight had caused her and had to go to the hospital, being later confined to bed for almost two months at home. I went to work in another city at that time, and only visited her on weekends. It was during one of those days that she betrayed me with a friend of mine who often came to visit her. She was the one to tell me what had happened, or I wouldn't have found out. I proposed to her that night, and told her I wanted a clean slate, that the past was behind us.

I lied.

I have been meeting women online for years now, telling them I loved them and them alone, that I hadn't loved my wife since before we were married and that I had married only for my son's sake. I had sex with one of those women, then I went home to my wife to celebrate Valentine's Day. I avoided further contact with the woman I had claimed to love and had had sex with, regardless of how her feelings might have been hurt in the process. This was over a year ago. I continued meeting more and more women whom I lied to. To some I said I didn't have sex at home, to others that I fucked her (as opposed to making love) out of need. I told them I would want another child but with the right mother when, in fact, I was planning to have one with my wife in the next four years.

She is not sure yet if she will stay with me, but her four main conditions for trying were that I stop going to any messenger, that I change my e-mail, that I post this and that I get professional counselling. She says it is not a way of punishment, but of forcing me to face up to the truth after so many lies.

Now I feel terribly bad for doing such and I'm consumed with anger at myself.

I also would like to apologise myself to her and to everyone else I dragged into this.

Sometimes the problem when we make a mistake is to know we're doing it and when to stop.

If she didn't find out I would probably still be making it, now I think "Thank God she did find out", I just wish it would have been sooner.

Vasco