My husband openly flirted with his coworker right in front of me, and when I finally spoke up, he shrugged and said, “If you can’t handle it, walk away.” So I did. And later that night, I made a choice he never imagined—one that reminded me exactly who I am and what I refuse to tolerate — True story —
My husband openly flirted with his coworker right in front of me. And when I finally spoke up, he shrugged and said, “If you can’t handle it, walk away.” So, I did.
And later that night, I made a choice he never imagined. One that reminded me exactly who I am and what I refuse to tolerate. “If you can’t handle me talking to a colleague without getting insecure about it, maybe you should just walk away.” My husband, Levi, said those words to me at a charity gala in front of dozens of people: his colleagues, his boss, the woman he’d been sleeping with for 7 weeks.
His hand was still resting on her lower back when he told me to leave. Her name was Sienna. She was 26, blonde, his direct report at work, and she was smiling. I’m Hazel. I’m 33 years old. And I’m about to tell you what happened when I actually took my husband’s advice and walked away and what I did next that he never saw coming.
But let me back up six weeks because that’s when I started noticing the signs I’d been ignoring for months. I’m a senior accountant at a nonprofit auditing firm in Phoenix. I’m good with numbers, good at finding discrepancies, good at spotting when something doesn’t add up. My job is literally to look at financial records and find the holes people try to hide.
So, it’s almost funny, painful, but funny that I missed the holes in my own marriage for as long as I did. Levi and I met at a networking mixer when I was 27. He was 29, a sales director with one of those smiles that made you feel like you were the only person in the room.
He actually listened when I talked about tax law, which most people’s eyes glaze over at. He didn’t blink when I ordered the expensive Pinot Noir. He made me laugh during a conversation about depreciation schedules, which I didn’t think was possible. We got married a year later in a ceremony his mother planned down to the napkin colors.
