Modern love the pod cast supported by produced by the island at W B. You are faster The from the New York Times and W B were Boston. This is modern love, the stories of love loss and redemption. I'm your host, Meghna Chakrabarti, the forgiveness it's always easier said than done. What's even harder is finding a way to relate to someone who's, hurt you to see them as just another, imperfect human being Benjamin hurt. Wig learned this at a difficult time in his life, Lance Reddick reads his story he's best known as lieutenant Cedric Daniels. In H, B, o

wire, his lance with Benjamin's essay in the waiting room of a strange spouses I googled constantly and scroll through pages of possible. what is before, finally settling on a female psychologist, with a kind face later that week, I went to her office wanted to talk about fidelity and broken trust, but somehow ended up talking about sex and guilt. I cried a lot eight years when I was twenty. I served in Afghanistan as a machine gunner on a security platoon that accompanied convoys a six month, tour of grinding tedium interspersed with episodes of unpredictable violence and death. But that's not what drove me to the psychologist office. I went because my marriage had fallen apart.

my wife had an affair, as is often the case in marriage. The infidelity was more a symptom of our treble than it's cause. Their situation was typical. They met through work one evening before I knew what was happening. The three of us were at the same fundraising event and at one point he and my wife ducked outside for a smoke, and I was left alone well, not entirely alone. His wife was there to hold

the newborn looking uncomfortable. We didn't talk, someone was making a speech about future goals and I was eating dessert after the affair came to light. My wife and I separated I missed the cat. When I wasn't feeling self righteously angry. I missed my wife too. In the evenings I listen to Springsteen Tour pizza watched hockey slept poorly and spent the great hours before googling, my wife's name, the guy's name and the pain of divorce. One night, the first link told me to pray to God. The second told me to prepare for a new life with many beautiful women, and the third led me to a buddy here. Removal site I decided to go for counseling,

a few months later, I was in the psychologist reception room, paying for my fourth of really good cry when a woman can't on the child walked in. I didn't recognize him at first and then I remembered her face from the fundraiser. Are you the wife of a guy? My wife is having an affair with I asked technically, the question is a stupid one. First off

it's stupid. Second, it assumes that this woman's identity, like my is wrapped up, infidelity and infidelity, and everything between it assumes that her skin, like my feels like the translucent neutral paper of a tie, rap that holds in the lettuce and the shrimp, the peanut sauce and the pain. Yet she said, but we're not together anymore, I'm Catherine, the receptionist rushed out and returned with a psychologist is everything. Ok, the psychologist asked ass. She walked in, we looked at him and then when she understood what was going on. Oh, my god, she whispered worlds colliding in fairness, the chances of Catherine and mean meeting in this fashion were extremely low. She and I had never spoken before. We both worked full

lived on opposite ends of a large city. We both search the internet for. it's lose and somehow decided, number, the same psychologist in a wish to meet her. On the same day, in consecutive hours, the receptionist was still shaking her head. Oh my god, the psychologists whispered again later Katherine and I went to Breezy cafe and talked about our estranged spouses, the circumstances that had brought us here, Catherine son, bumped, away on her knee. She asked if I'd like to hold him, I reached my hands out He smelled clean and abundant and wonderful, and he didn't care who I was what started happening when or why it all began for time. My question

in fear and anger resolved into this child sitting on my lap. Then he started to cry and Catherine took him back cradling him in her forearm and pulling her jacket over upper body and his I was attracted to her strength, maybe to her as well. I wondered if she was attracted to me, but the question was irrelevant Neither of us knew what to do with love right. Then. I asked her if she wanted to get married again. At some point, I think she said how about you probably sometime down the road, I said, I'm glad we met. She said by early. My final day as an inner city. Housing worker had arrived, and I was

to go, buy a cake for my Farewell party later that afternoon I walked under the bright lights of the supermarket and stared at the walls of food. When I returned from Afghanistan, I hated but markets like the soldier, Jeremy Renner, plays in the hurt locker who returns from war only to feel overwhelmed by too many choices and too much freedom. I felt paralyzed by possibilities wanted to go back to the cafeteria and decisions made for me. So I limited the possibilities and got married. I settled on a giant carrot cake. It had fish. size, rosettes of pink and blue icing, and wait almost as much as Catherine's son I paid for my food rest, the over sized kicking both hands and headed for the exit, where I somehow ended up a few feet away from my Ex wife's

lover. I haven't seen him since the fundraiser he had been in my dreams, though in wondering I was knocking at the door of my childhood home when he opened it and just stood there, handsome shirtless, less confident everything I was not crying. When I awoke alone in a new apartment and newly divorced, he was in my dreams the same way the suicide bomber was in my dreams a year after I came back from Afghanistan, I couldn't always see him, but I felt his presence at the edges of is pushing me somewhere. I didn't want to go forcing me toward the inevitable conclusion dreams like the slow burn of a forest fire when the roots under the earth smouldering stretching a hundred different directions. I spend a lot of

I thinking about the ways I wanted, my ex wife and her lover to feel that burn. I thought I hated them later on. Some friends proclaim. That a giant cared kick in his face in the supermarket line would have been a fitting conclusion to the story, but I didn't even consider the option I just stood there with a cake, in my hand, feeling ridiculous. He looked tired. Maybe he had custody of his son like then, maybe he have been up all night taking care of him. Do you want to go for a beer sometime and talk about it? He asked? No, I don't want to go for a beer to talk about it. I said which was petulant the true, but I forgive you I added, which was supercilious

false, ok, he said still looking tired. I couldn't summon any real anger. He was just a young boys, tired father. He wasn't even unkind. I walked out holding the cake feeling happy I hadn't burst into tears. You tried to fight. I should have left it there, but in one of the mood swings that seems characteristic of my post divorce anxiety, I sent my exit text saying how I couldn't believe she left me for him. She didn't respond and I wasn't proud of myself. We stopped texting rather I stopped.

in stupid texts. I slowly continue to heal in the months that followed thinking of my Ex wife's lover. As that sweet boy's, father was somehow very helpful for me. I had held Catherine's boy felt the good weight of his body, and eventually I learned that it's hard to heat a person when that person was a part of bringing something good into the world.

Her boy is much bigger. Now, a beautiful child. I see his photos on Facebook and sometimes like them. Catherine and I haven't spoken in a while and that's okay. I don't know what has happened to my ex wife and Catherine's husband and that's ok too, there's enough pain in the world, and I don't wish it on them anymore. Some days, I wish I had taken up Catherine's Ex on his offer of a beer that afternoon been kind to my ex wife,

myself up to those possibilities a bit more. I remain grateful for the opportunity of meeting Catherine and I would like to meet her son again when he is older, a coffee shop, a supermarket line or psychologist waiting room all seem like good places. For such a meeting. I wouldn't explained the situation wouldn't be fair. I would probably just smile and mumble. You helped me through a tough time when you were young, then I would walk away trusting in the possibilities Lance Riddick reading Benjamin Hartwick, their say in the waiting room of a strange spouses will hear how bench It's doing today after the break

I laughed fallin my boyfriend and I often play falling, be together by together. I be sitting next to each other of playing individually and not cheating times when I open up spelling bee. I see that you have completed a few words on your own. I feel a little betrayed in ferry may have happened. I know you did it again. I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words that I always get nervous that I sent it to my parents or something like that was my bad. It was like the first party together, and I wish that I think I got it- see it J, a c k

We hit the jackpot I'm same is asking the digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try, spelling bee and all our games at annoying times dot com, flash games, we're back its modern loved. The pod cast a magnet Accra Party and now a postscript from the editor of modern love for the New York Times Daniel Jones and the author of this week's essay bench. Hardwigg. I first started writing. When I returned from Afghanistan, I was having number of nightmares at the time and a friend suggested, I try writing about it, which I did and the the nightmares went away, and so, after I found out about the affair, I just found that I again had this very

his strong impulse to write and- and I think that writing is a way for people to acknowledge and confront some of the trauma they have experienced and a way for them to move forward in a healthy way, my ex wife and I are not in contact right now and I'm not sure if she's a still together with the Catherine's Ex husband either. But guess I've just tried to remove myself from the situation and folk moving forward and my raining and I'm not sure what the future holds, but that's where we're at right now I love Benjamin heard wigs essay on, I loved it from the first moment I read his ESA Really, a an exploration of how corrosive self pity and blame

can be in your life when things aren't going your way and So how liberating forgiveness can be, but how do you get to that place? How do you get from feeling, sorry for yourself and blaming others to a place where you forgive people who you think of have done you wrong or just that life has sort of thrown curve balls at you one after another ANA? I thought it was just narrow, remarkable testament to the power of that forgiveness and how he takes the reader through that process of arriving at a state of forgiveness. You know at several points here: he talks about just acting stupidly and acting out of out of his worst impulses. And you know it really takes recognizing that to go beyond it and to get yourself into a better place, and this is

waken, honestly that so many people have been through. It doesn't have to be even cheating in a marriage. It can be kind of relationship where you are deceived and betrayed, and you feel like it's all the other person's fault, and it just takes you to a very dark place and he takes this essay to have a light place. That's who says that an extraordinary achievement when Dan Jones told me that answer attic was going to read the peace. I think one of the reasons why I was so excited about it, because the wire was almost this baptism into complexity. For me, and just nice thing that there are a number of different ways that people deal with situations, and I don't how what it is like to be that other person, so if I am at times

was angry with my ex wife, her angry with the man that she was with, recognising that the situation is sort of bigger than my conception of it, and I think relating to that in my writing, something that that I've tried to do and hopefully will contain, having his essay published in modern love motivated Benjamin to pursue writing professionally. He starts his phd at the university of Colombia later this summer and he has something else to be excited about he's found, love again, don't be almost two years in August that we ve been dating. Now and she's a graphic designer and writer and she's my best at it. Erin gives me lots of great feedback and Benjamin is still in touch with Katherine, the Ex wife of his ex.

I lover he got to hold her son again when they met for coffee earlier this year right before his peace was published. So for Benjamin moving on, isn't about trying to forget the chapters that make up his past, it's figuring out how to write them sometimes it does feel like. I've lived a number of different lives as a soldier as a. A married man- is a tree planter working in the inner city now living here in Vancouver, but I think writing really allows me to examine those different, very it's my life and try and make sense of them. Benjamin hurt, wig author of in the waiting room of a strange spouses

We also heard from modern love. Editor Dan jumped the floor in the I love spelling, my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes, when I spelling bee. And I see that you have completed a few words on your own. I feel a little betrayed fairy may have happened. I know you did it again. I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words that I always get nervous that I sent it to my parents or something like that was my bad. It was like the first party together, and I wish that I think I got to see it. J. A c k

we hit the jackpot I'm same as earth's the digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N times, dot com, slash games, special thanks to Lance Reddick for reading this week's essay. You can see him. The Amazon Series Bosh Next Amy Land Decker, we were stand and face each other and then my

Ex husband was asked to look into my eyes and repeat some phrases that meant basically, with this document I release you and we stood there just as we had on our wedding day, he looked even more handsome and grown up and happy, and I thought about why he married me in the first place. Yes, he loved me, but also he was probably afraid he would never be able to have a family. If you didn't marry woman, modern love is the production of the New York Times and W B you are Boston MP, our station, its produced, directed and edited by Jessica, Albert John Parodi, Caitlin, O Keefe and Emory see. What's the idea for the modern Pied cast was conceived by Visa Tobin, Iris avars are ignored.

Producer Daniel Jones is the editor of modern love for the New York Times, an adviser to the show music for the part guest courtesy of a p m. I beg the tracker body, see an x ray.