This is real, original, well-written with a terse, tense style that is almost like a thriller. It carries an emotional wallop. And it's very, very true - I've been there, and the slow but accelerating erosion of the beautiful and giving and truthful person I was before the affair was painful to experience, because as much denial as I was in, the truth crept in just often enough to keep me on a sharp edge. I appreciate this piece as a slice of life, no judgment. I too remember the looks in the eyes of those who knew - I could tell in seconds who knew: the gaze of disbelief, the glare of anger, the fear they were in the presence of a monster, and the worst of the lot: the righteous snub of the virtuous, such pleasure to write me off in their moral superiority and teetering self-control. That part of it we don't deserve. We should be tough on ourselves, call it what it is, deception and betrayal, a sin of enormous magnitude, but the Greek chorus recoiling in mortal horror, condemning us for eternity and laying the blame for the fall of Thebes at our feet: I can match them gaze for gaze, for judgmentalism is a sin as well, and in "Unfaithful" I did not judge the Diane Lane character, nor do I judge in life .......... I only ask that we express ourselves with the deepest of truths, that writers tell their tale authentically and hold the mirror to their face and tell us what they see: "the seed .......... planted in the soil of deception and hidden from light and air, has such shallow roots that it can’t possibly grow into something healthy and sustaining." That is a brutal truth bigger than this story, and if that's all we get from what we've done, a universal truth or two, pass it on. Pass it on.