Betrayal

What is betrayal? Is it a glance that lasts too long? Or long conversations with your colleague? Is it sleeping with somebody? Or is it just emotional betrayal?

Will I be ok if Sathya did any one of these things? Will his conversations with his female colleagues distress me? Will I be paranoid about it? Will I imagine his interactions in the office, recreating scenes? Will I obsess over such trivia as who does he have his breakfast & dinner with? Will I be able to take it in my stride if I were ever betrayed? Will I let it go?

Right now, he is indispensable to my life. I can’t imagine myself apart from him. I may detest a 100 things in him but I love him, I need him. Any thought or deed of betrayal from him would be a death blow to me. Yes, I want to foolishly believe that it will never ever happen to me. He won’t fall in love with someone else ever, so long as I am still alive & still with him. Naïve? Yes. More than naiveté, it is a defense mechanism. It’s like by repeatedly telling myself that he loves me & will always love me & only me, it will become an inerasable reality. But hypothetically speaking, if it happens, then what? I am psyching myself out with this topic.

No, I won’t let it go. No matter how much I might love & need him, I think I will not tolerate infidelity. I can’t. It’s not an ego thing. It is plain sense: he is interested in someone else, not in me anymore. If he pretends otherwise, he could either be playing it safe & having the best of both worlds or he might just be a chicken, not brave enough to face the truth that he is involved with some other woman. So, either ways, he is fooling me. And the way I look at it, well, I am gullible enough for a whole lot of people who find it easy to fool me, from shopkeepers to hawkers to rickshawallas to neighbors to colleagues to relatives to friends. I definitely don’t need my husband to top that lousy list!

More than the actual act of unfaithfulness, I guess the fooling game is what I am petrified of. The “usko thodi na maloom padega” attitude; the “Aur agar maloom pada bhi toh kuch bolke mamla nipta lunga” nonchalance; the “usko mein sambhal lunga” confidence. If he ever gets attracted to someone else, I would rather he chooses her & goes with her. I wouldn’t like to be in a dishonest relationship where we both know he is cheating on me. I can’t bring myself to turn a blind eye to the sordid affair in order to continue with a ‘happy couple’ façade for the society. Damn the people! Damn him! I will be fine on my own. Thank you. I won’t suffer in silence in a hollow marriage just to please the neighborhood aunties.

I will prefer he goes to his new woman because one act of straying is still an act of straying. There must have been something not fulfilling enough in our twosome that made him look outside. Or maybe it was just an impulsive office affair that went one step too far. Whatever. As far as I am concerned, it is OVER. He can have her, as wife, girlfriend or keep. Who cares? He is good with her.

Will I remarry? Will I find in me the heart to be able to love another man again? Well, I do believe in the saying, “Never say never” :)

But I also know that, that’s highly unlikely. Simply because, when you have a deeply enriching emotional connect with your child; like I do with my daughter, you aren’t really giving a darn about a man anymore. After all, jeene keliye all you need is to be loved by at least ONE person. Zindagi jeelenge.