I Heard My Husband Say Another Woman’s Name in His Sleep for Three Weeks – So I Made the Call He Never Expected

“I didn’t realize you had company.”

“Jake, are you under some kind of review?”

Jake let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh. “It’s all just a big misunderstanding, Rose. Really. Nothing to worry about.”

Marlena tilted her head. She arched one eyebrow, looking at Jake with an expression that told me everything I needed to know.

“Don’t lie to me. How serious is this?” I asked, turning back to Jake. “Could you lose your job? Is that why you’ve been working late so often?”

Jake let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh.

“I…” Jake gulped. “It will be okay, Rose. There were just… a few mix-ups on the Johnson project. Some numbers didn’t quite line up. But I’m confident we can work through it.”

Marlena didn’t look nearly as confident.

She set the blue folder down on his desk with a heavy thud. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

She shot me a sympathetic look as she turned to leave. The door clicked shut, leaving us alone in Jake’s office.

“You lied to me every single night for three weeks.”

She shot me a sympathetic look as she turned to leave.

“I was trying to protect us, Rose,” he pleaded. “I didn’t want you to worry. I thought if I could just fix the project, you’d never have to know how close we were to losing everything.”

“Protect us?” I shook my head, feeling a bitter laugh bubble up. “Jake, I thought you were having an affair! I spent three weeks wondering if our marriage was over because you were too cowardly to admit you were in trouble at work.”

“I would never do that to you!” he shouted. “I love you. I was just scared.”

“This isn’t much better,” I said. “You shut me out. You let me think the worst of you because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

“I was trying to protect us, Rose.”

He had no answer for that. He just stood there among his piles of messed-up paperwork, looking smaller than I’d ever seen him.

I turned and walked out of the office.

“Marlena” wasn’t a secret woman, but a lie that pointed to something even worse: Jake had messed up, and instead of owning that, he’d tried to bury it beneath excuses and lies.

Could I stay married to him after this?

I didn’t think so.

Could I stay married to him after this?