After Our Fall-out, I Dodged His Enticements

Let me lay it out. Ryan and I did have a kid once.

A year after tying the knot, I found out I was pregnant. Ryan's business was hitting a critical pivot, and he was swamped everyday.

I couldn't stand watching him struggle alone, and since our little one was such an easy baby, I hustled right alongside him, day and night.

Even five months pregnant, I was still running around on-site.

Due to Ryan's radical shake-up at work, long-time employees staged a protest, and I ended up right in the middle. A shove down the stairs, and just like that, I lost the baby.

That fall nearly killed me. I spent a month in the hospital, and it did a number on me.

Once home, I found myself trapped in grief, nights spent holding the baby's clothes, crying until I couldn't anymore.

Ryan held me through countless nights.

Eventually, he suggested we might be better off not having kids at all, thinking it might spare me further pain—I agreed.

As years passed, his business stabilized, my health got back on track, and both our parents started nagging us about a baby.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't reconsidered.

Someone once warned him, "If you wait any longer, your wife will be too old to have kids!"

Ryan clapped back, "I'm the one who doesn't want kids. Plus, I've got a medical condition. I can't have kids, period."

That shut me down, and I figured, maybe we could just keep going as we were.

But then, about a month ago, I stumbled across Sherry on a "people you may know" suggestion.

Her feed was littered with glimpses of Ryan, blurry though they were, I'd know him anywhere.

He'd taken them—her and the kid—on his business trips, hitting all the tourist traps.

They even hit that starlit restaurant I'd always dreamed of, all three munching on a kid's meal.

At that moment, it felt like the sky was falling.

For so long, Ryan had kept it under wraps. If it hadn't been for that friend suggestion, who knows when I'd have found out about his affair.