I know sleep-talking isn’t a signed confession. I know the brain does strange things at night. But this wasn’t random, no, it was a name, spoken with urgency, followed by “I lied.”
Those two things together aren’t easy to dismiss. And they didn’t come out of nowhere. They came after two years of boundary-free contact with a man who already felt too present in our marriage.
Here’s what I keep coming back to: I’m not a jealous husband. I’ve never gone through her phone. Never accused her of anything. I’ve always given her the benefit of the doubt, maybe too much of it.
But right now I’m sitting with something I don’t know how to name. It’s not jealousy, I think, it’s that specific, awful feeling of wondering whether the version of your marriage you believed in was ever fully real. I don’t want to blow up 7 years over a dream. But I also can’t keep pretending I didn’t hear what I heard.
— Mark
