The Soldier Next Door

…Ana POV…

Okay. Let’s call this what it is.

Completely and utterly fucked up.

Having a Marine as a husband feels like you are always at odds with the universe.

The Corps is his life, yet do I even dare say that the Corps is the ‘other woman.’

And it is the ‘other woman’ that is always going to get the best parts of him.

Ethan has done some pretty fucked up things during our relationship, and yet now it is starting to grow over into our marriage. The most fucked up thing I have ever known him to do and the most fucked up thing I am going to experience…Text © 2024 NôvelDrama.Org.

Leaving me now, now when I need him the most.

He has chosen the ‘other woman.’

I don’t need to tell him how destroyed I was when I found out. He is right here.

He saw the moment my heart shattered.

He saw my soul crumble.

He watched me go from a tired but proud new momma to a broken and defeated heap of a woman.

I watched him.

I saw him.

I saw my best friend, the man I married, whose heart I had held in mine, who had always gone deep with me whenever I needed to rumble with my demons, whose hand I held through various emotional struggles and mental health crisis’, and whose baby I am yet to given birth to.

I saw him choose the ‘other woman.’

It was excruciating to hear and watch him go through the detail of how he had come to this decision. It was like watching a horror movie where the anxiety and tension just keep building, and you never really know if the scariest part has happened yet.

But I listened. I attempted to hold back my rage and on to my dignity while he purged out every lie, every betrayal, every unspeakable act.

I saw him go through the full range of emotions as it all came out, from deep remorse to resentment, to shame, and even at one point heartbreak over his decision of choosing ‘the other woman.’

I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t feel it when he decided to start sharing more of himself with ‘someone else.’ What he gave to ‘her,’ he took from me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but something was…gone. He was not there anymore; I always knew it; I was just too scared to take notice of it. At least, the man I knew was him wasn’t there, the husband…that man was gone.

So when he finally told me what it was that I was suspecting, what I knew what coming, I actually had an overwhelming sense of relief. Like I’d been in a war I didn’t really understand for months and months, and it was finally over.

And then came the compassion. What the actual fuck.

It’s a strange experience, being so furious with and hurt and broken by your husband, the one whose soul you thought you knew, but at the same time having compassion for the pain they’re in. I wasn’t expecting to feel compassionate. I certainly didn’t want to feel it.

But somehow, in this fucked up, heart-wrenching, soul-destroying mess, there it was. Maybe it was because he finally came clean about every hidden thing he had done, said, and felt, and the relief that came from that softened my broken heart just a little. Maybe it was a stress response, so I didn’t have a complete nervous breakdown. Maybe I just can’t help myself when it comes to the people I love.

I’ll be honest. At that point, I had no interest in helping him feel better about any of this. If I’m really honest, I wanted him to suffer. While I’m not ignorant enough to think I didn’t have a role in the state of our marriage, the choice to ‘cheat,’ the choice to choose the ‘other woman,’ was 100% on him. I didn’t care that he that he had made this choice while he was trying to serve himself and his country proud. That he chose ‘her,’ well the fact is that is he would always choose ‘her’ no matter where I fit into this, me, his wife, simply did not get first place.

I don’t care that he got wrapped up in something that snowballed out of control before he could stop it. And I certainly don’t care that he never stopped loving me; actually, he did because love is a choice, and he was not choosing us; he was choosing ‘the other woman.’

I cared that this man that I loved, that I married, that I created life with, got so overtaken by his need to prove himself constantly over and over to someone else. Yes, I get the fact that this is his heart and his soul, and that may have broken my heart as much as the hurt caused by his actions.

He should have talked to me. I wish he had talked to me.

But he didn’t.

He went it alone. He kept feeding those demons inside himself, kept going back for more, disconnected from me, and shared with some ‘other woman’ I hardly know the most intimate parts of our relationship and himself.

And took us both to the absolute bottom of the pit.

So now, here at rock bottom, we each have a choice to make. He has committed to choosing this ‘other woman.’

And for him, it’s that clean-cut.

But in doing so, he has chosen a different path for ‘us,’ ‘our marriage,’ that is on the breaking point.

I see him starting on that path already, but that choice was very clear for him. Though for once, I wished that he realized where the love actually is in his life.

For me, the lens through which I view this choice is still blurred by the devastation of this whole mess. Yes, there is a child to consider. Yes, I do still love him. Yes, I will eventually forgive him. But still, these are not reasons to stay… Not for him…

He will always choose ‘the other woman’ in his life over me,

Do I want to be the one that forces him to?

I have known him for a greater part of my life, and I know, and I wish I did not let myself believe otherwise, but I know that he will always choose the Marine Corps. He might come close to giving it up, but there will be no point when it becomes non-existent.

This experience will take us both to the lowest depths of our souls. It will crack us wide open and force us to expose the darkest parts of ourselves. I will have to face up to the things I know will always be three that will break us into two pieces…me and ‘the other woman.’

So here is what I choose for now. I will lay in the trenches with him. I will lay there while we keep talking, keep chipping away until the fear of vulnerability is gone. Until we can get up out of the mud together and recognize the gifts that this darkest of times has provided. I will not promise I won’t still be mad or want to run. I will not promise to let it go until I’m ready. But I will stand there with him until my soul is recovered enough to tell me what’s next.

My hope for myself is that I can put my broken pieces back together to create a new shape. One that is strong but soft that knows devastation has no place here, that there is only room for love. Love for myself. Love for life. No matter what.

My hope for him is that he can keep that clarity of what real love actually is, that it is and has always been available to him.

My hope for us is that we move through this together with humility and grace and keep on building the loving, messy, wholehearted life that our child and we deserve.

Because where there is hope and the freedom to choose, there is the opportunity to turn a dark night of the soul into a magnificent journey.

And so, for now, I choose to have hope.

I will always play second fiddle to the Marine Corps, and I guess I have done so for most of my life. I will never be Ethan’s first, I will stand next to what he loves the most in his life, and I would be foolish the thing that I can rise above it.

There is no point in me being mad at him or have strong words that will just be beside the point. I need to acknowledge that he has made his decision; there might be room for compromise, but never will there be a point that I can change his mind.

He will always have ‘the other woman’ in his life.

The Corps… His Son…

His son… The Corps…

And then me…

Sad realities, but facts that come to be with the wife of a Marine.