He left me for another when I was 7 months pregnant
I’m seven months pregnant when I have the bad idea to check Xavier’s cell phone. A dull anguish has accompanied me for several weeks. Xavier is “no longer there”. Distant, bizarre, he seems to me to be completely disconnected from us. We have been together for four years and my pregnancy is going very well. It is a pregnancy that we have decided, like everything we do, and we are lucky to get along wonderfully. Xavier is a little mysterious man and his worries can be seen on his face. But usually he tells me about it. Is it because I’m pregnant that he’s keeping his work problems to himself? I try to ask him questions to find out what makes him taciturn and distracted, but he gets impatient and even goes so far as to ask me to take care of my business one day. It hardly looks like him. I take her hand, but it remains, limp, inert, in mine. His attitude seems suspicious to me. But I am still a thousand miles from imagining that Xavier can have a mistress. He doesn’t touch me anymore, and I blame the pregnancy for that. He is certainly afraid of my rounded stomach. I’m kidding and he reacts little, no doubt out of embarrassment. It will come back later, I told myself. But one evening when he is taking a bath, I notice that his cell phone is lying upside down. It emits a signal, I turn it over and see an SMS from a named “Electrician”. Here, here, weird, since at home, it is rather me who takes care of the stewardship. However, I did not notice any electrical failure … I then open the message and read: “Tomorrow I will probably be ten minutes late, my love, tell me that you miss me, I want you.” “
Frozen, I put the phone back exactly as it was. The world has just collapsed. An “electrician” whose first name Xavier took care to hide, calls him “my love” and gives him an appointment.. At least the message is clear. When Xavier comes out of the bathroom, I am unable to react. I am going in my turn. The message has been read and Xavier will undoubtedly notice it. Unless they write so much that it will go unnoticed in the middle of the others. When he sleeps, I’ll check it out. I don’t have to wait very long since Xavier is running away from me and is obviously in bed when I get out of the bathroom. His cell phone is nowhere to be found. He sees me digging around and asks me what I’m doing. Unable to act, I ask him for his phone. He sits up, and I confess to him that I read the last message from the “electrician” and that I want to see everyone else. I explode in fear and pain, but don’t want to say the name calling, because I’m afraid my baby will hear them. I won’t scream that girl is a slut. It’s Xavier the monster! He’s not trying to lie. Her name is Audrey, he told me. She knows that I exist, that I am pregnant. Hanging on to my original idea and probably not to collapse, I continue to reach out to him to give me his phone. “I want to read everything! “, I said. Xavier refuses. “I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want you to hurt”, he whispers, approaching me. He then explains to me, on his own, that he and Audrey have been together for three months and that he has tried to fight. I remain silent and he specifies everything he imagines having to say to me. He met her on a plane, they fell in love at first sight. I would like someone from outside to come and help me and take charge of my life. I ask Xavier to leave the house. He apologizes again, he’s sorry, he doesn’t understand why this happened to him, now, with this baby… At no time, however, does he offer to leave her. He takes some things from his travel bag and leaves. In an hour, my life became hell. My baby surely feels the magnitude of the drama that we are going to have to go through together.
“It’s a girl”, they tell me on the ultrasound where I go alone the next day. Until then, I had refused to know, since Xavier did not want to, but now I want to know everything in great detail. Shortly after, Xavier explains to me that he is deeply in love and will not be able to choose to leave Audrey. Like an automaton, I answer him that it is we who will leave each other in this case. He says he loves me too, but the truth is he’s already settled in with her. And I give birth in two months. Surrounded by my three best friends, I prepare my daughter’s room and things. At the time of giving birth, I refuse that the friend who accompanies me warns Xavier. The cry that Elise utters when she is born is the cry of pain that I have been holding back for two months for fear of scaring her. I have to protect my baby, but it hurts so much that Xavier is not by our side. It happens the next day. Embarrassed, moved, in bad shape, that’s for sure. He keeps apologizing and I ask him to shut up. When he leaves, I cuddle the little white bear he has just brought to Élise. I must pull myself together, and not sink. My daughter is a treasure and we are going to make it on our own, without him. When we get home, he comes by every evening, before returning home. I let him do it, for Élise. His presence in the house, his smell, his gaze, I miss everything as soon as he leaves and I do not understand that I can still love him so much.
Élise is now one year old. Xavier asked me if he could come back to live with us. He sees this situation too badly and I do not know if it is Élise who misses him, or me. He assures me that the passion is over with Audrey, and that the true love he had with me. He wants a chance. I think about my anger, about this unbearable grief, about forgiveness that is probably impossible, but I accept that it will come back. Because I love Xavier, and I miss him terribly. Tonight, I fall asleep next to him. I found her smile again, I read her eyes, but I’m afraid that another woman, on another plane, will steal it again, or that Audrey, absent, will once again become the center of her thoughts. Love is so fragile. The road will be long but we are going to consult a therapist, so that I don’t live in fear and Xavier no longer lives in remorse.. Together we will try to become good parents, perhaps knowing a little more about ourselves. Xavier takes my hand under the sheets, and I squeeze it. The contact is electrical. Yes, his hand is connected to mine again.