“And 10 days later–we hadn’t even gone on our honeymoon yet–I found out that he had been cheating on me for the last six months with his ex-girlfriend. ”
Nelson discovered her husband’s infidelity while trying to view the first photos of the couple’s wedding. “I had just gotten a DVD in the mail and he had just left for work, and it was the first wedding pictures. Every bride is so excited to see her first wedding photos, so I popped the disc into my computer and it wouldn’t go in. It kept flipping out.”
“And I had never gone on my husband’s computer once, never on his phone once, and he had left his computer on that night and I popped it in. And as soon as I popped that disc in, Skype came up and I saw six months of very awful conversations and video, etc. that no new bride should have to see.”
Afterwards, Nelson was in shock. “I was just devastated, my friends really came to my rescue. I went back to my parents’ house, got under the covers of my bed, and just wanted to stay there.”
She continued, “I still loved the man, but the trust wasn’t there anymore. I was broken, I was embarrassed. I had just had this big wedding in front of all of my friends and family. I come from a family where my parents hadn’t been divorced, none of my aunts and uncles, my grandparents — I was going to be the first divorce in my entire family. And it was just humiliating.”
Despite her pain, Nelson admitted that she briefly considered overlooking her husband’s infidelity. “It crossed my mind — ‘maybe I could get past this. Maybe I could forgive him.’ He and his ex-girlfriend came very clean to me, and they apologized and I still loved him.”
Ultimately, however, she said that couldn’t bring herself to trust her new husband. “But I really just deep down knew, this wasn’t going to last a lifetime and this was something that–I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I just knew it. I couldn’t do it.”
“I was blessed where I saw loving marriages. My mom and dad were in love and married 40 years. So I saw loving marriages, and I just knew that, moving forward, this wasn’t going to be a relationship where I was going to ever feel that love and a devotion and trust that I saw with my parents.”
