The Day I Cut Off My Cheating Husband's Credit Card

On my birthday, I'd arranged to have dinner with the whole family at their favorite steakhouse.

I waited two hours. Not one of them showed.

Then my husband, Hilary Pruitt, called.

"Mila Harris, we're taking Sophie Henson to Scandinavia to see the northern lights. We'll be gone about a month. They're boarding us now."

For a second, I couldn't process it.

"So you're telling me that you, Mom and Dad, and Nadia Pruitt are all standing me up on my birthday to go to Scandinavia with Sophie to see the northern lights?"

"Mila, you get a birthday every year, but Sophie doesn't get this excited about the lights every day. We don't want to spoil it for her."

I didn't cry and I didn't make a scene. I just hung up, calm as anything.

Then I opened the app on my phone and stopped the monthly payments on the house and the car, along with every card in their names.

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I looked at the chocolate birthday cake on the table and suddenly started laughing.

I don't even like chocolate. But every year, my birthday cake was chocolate.

Because Hilary and Nadia loved it.

And I don't even like steakhouse dinners!

I shoved that eyesore of a cake off onto the floor, then paid the restaurant's cleaning fee.

After that, I stopped at a bakery and bought myself a little strawberry cake, then went to The Cheesecake Factory and ordered the richest, most indulgent comfort food on the menu, my favorite.

Thinking back on these three years married to Hilary, I'd bent over backward for that whole family in everything.

Small things, like what we ate. Big things, like buying the house and the car.

Back when Hilary and I first got together, he told me he already had the house and car ready, just waiting to marry me and bring me home.

He even took me to see them, a two-thousand-square-foot open floor plan and a luxury car worth three million.

At the time I actually thought, this man's got his life together.

It was only after the wedding that I found out the house and car were all financed, both with the minimum down payment.

And Hilary's job was even less stable. We'd barely gotten married when his company let him go.

Back then he held my hand.

"Mila, from now on the mortgage and the car loan are on you. Once I find a new job, I'll hand my whole paycheck over to you."

He looked for three months. Either the job was too far, or the work was too hard.

Eventually he just came out with it.

"Mila, how about I open a coffee shop? Running a coffee shop has always been my dream. You'll support me, won't you?"

Looking at the hope in his eyes, I handed over another six hundred thousand and let him open his coffee shop.

The day it opened for business, Hilary was so moved his eyes filled with tears.

He gripped my hand tight. "Mila, you've done so much for me. I promise I'll be good to you from now on!"

That coffee shop of his barely had any customers. It couldn't even cover its own monthly rent.

But he was happy running it, so I'd rather cover the losses and let him keep going.

Later his childhood sweetheart, Sophie, came back, and Hilary went out of his way to invite her to work at his coffee shop.

He even paid her double what the other staff got.

Hilary and his mother were still carrying my supplementary cards, and everything they ate, wore, and used came out of them.

All of it, I put up with.

Looking at it now, all my patience did was let them push further.

Just picturing them stepping off that plane, ready to spend freely on my card, and finding nothing goes through, I couldn't hold back a laugh.