The hardest part of changing my thinking was that Max didn't have to be in the room for me to hear him.
Sometimes his voice returned while I was getting dressed.
Sometimes it came back when I saw a photograph of myself.
Sometimes it appeared when I was tired, when the girls were arguing, or when work had left me with very little patience.
I would catch my reflection and immediately search for something to criticize.
Then I'd remember the wedding.
I'd remember the way Max had laughed.
For a moment, the old feeling would return.
I used to think that if I could just get past those memories, I'd finally feel better.
I wanted to wake up one morning and discover that his words no longer mattered.
That didn't happen.
Instead, I began noticing how often I repeated his judgments without him saying anything at all.
I would stand in front of the mirror and decide that a shirt wasn't flattering.
I would change into something else.
Then I would look at myself again, still dissatisfied.
The problem wasn't always the shirt.
Sometimes the problem was that I was waiting for an invisible audience to approve of me.
Once I recognized that, I could begin asking different questions.
Did I like the shirt?
Was it comfortable?
Did I want to wear it that day?
Those questions sounded almost too simple to matter.
But they were mine.
I had spent years treating my appearance as something other people were entitled to grade.
I needed to learn how to make ordinary decisions without imagining Max standing over my shoulder.
My daughters helped more than they knew.
My youngest had no interest in whether her clothes matched.
She cared about whether she could run in them, whether the fabric felt soft, and whether she could climb onto the sofa without anyone stopping her.
My older daughter was beginning to notice how people looked at one another.
She noticed dresses.
She noticed hairstyles.
She noticed when someone received a compliment.
I didn't want her to grow up believing that other people's opinions were the only reliable way to judge herself.
I couldn't promise she would never feel insecure.
I couldn't protect her from every careless remark.
But I could be careful about the way I spoke about myself around her.
I could stop calling my body a problem in front of the bathroom mirror.
I could stop treating a photograph as evidence that I'd failed.
I could let her see me choose clothes because I liked them.
That didn't mean pretending I was happy with every part of my appearance every day.
It meant refusing to make dissatisfaction the price of being allowed to enjoy my life.
One afternoon, my older daughter came into the room while I was sorting laundry.
She held up a top and asked whether it looked all right.
I glanced at it.
"It looks fine to me."
She waited.
I recognized the expression.
She wanted something more definite.
I could have told her she looked pretty.
Instead, I asked whether she liked it.
She considered the question.
Then she said she did, but she wasn't sure about the sleeves.
I told her she could try it on and see how it felt.
She went to her room.
A few minutes later, she returned wearing it.
She turned once in front of the mirror.
Then she shrugged.
"I think I like it."
"Then wear it."
She smiled and went back to her room.
The conversation lasted less than a minute.
I thought about it for the rest of the afternoon.
I had once believed that being a good mother meant finding the right words to reassure my children.
Now I understood that reassurance wasn't always the same as helping them trust themselves.
I wanted my daughter to know she could ask for advice without surrendering her own judgment.
I wanted her to learn that a person could listen to someone else's opinion and still decide for herself.
I was trying to learn that, too.
As for Edward, our friendship settled into a quieter rhythm.
We still talked at work.
He still brought coffee when he knew I was having a difficult morning.
I still went to him when I needed someone to listen.
But we became more direct with each other.
If I wanted advice, I tried to ask for it.
If I wanted someone to hear me without fixing anything, I said so.
Edward did the same.
Neither of us was perfect at it.
Sometimes I still assumed he knew what I meant.
Sometimes he began offering solutions before I had finished explaining the problem.
The difference was that we could tell each other when something wasn't working.
I didn't need him to become the person who proved Max wrong.
I needed him to remain the friend who could hear me without deciding what my life should look like.
That was a more honest expectation.
I also stopped wondering whether he might someday become my boyfriend.
There had never been a real relationship for us to continue after the wedding.
We had agreed to pretend.
He had his reasons for agreeing, and I'd had mine.
The fact that his reasons were more thoughtful than mine didn't mean I owed him a romantic future.
The fact that I'd been angry with him didn't mean I had to abandon the friendship.
We were two people who had made an imperfect decision and then had to talk honestly about it.
That was all.
For a while, I worried that Max might contact me again to ask about Edward.
He had seemed interested in the answer when we left the wedding.
I imagined him bringing it up whenever we exchanged messages about the girls.
I imagined having to explain that Edward was a friend and nothing more.
But Max didn't need an explanation from me.
If he wanted to believe there was something between us, he could believe it.
If he wanted to believe there wasn't, he could believe that, too.
Neither possibility changed who I was.
That was the part I had been missing.
I had treated Max's opinion as if it could become a fact simply because he believed it strongly enough.
If he thought I was undesirable, I tried to find evidence that he was right.
If he thought I had stopped trying, I wondered what I should have done differently.
If he thought my relationship with Edward was ridiculous, I felt foolish for having asked Edward to come.
I had been letting his judgments determine not only how I felt about myself, but how I interpreted my own decisions.
I couldn't keep doing that.
I still had difficult days.
I still felt the old sting when something reminded me of the affair.
There were times when I wondered how different our marriage might have been if Max had treated me with more kindness.
There were times when I missed the family life I'd believed we would have.
Those feelings didn't mean I wanted him back.
They meant that thirteen years of marriage had mattered to me, even though it had ended badly.
I could grieve what I'd lost without agreeing with the way he'd treated me.
I could remember the good parts of our life without pretending the betrayal hadn't happened.
I could accept that I had changed over the years without accepting the idea that those changes made me less deserving of love.
That was what I wanted to carry forward.
Not a promise that I'd never feel insecure again.
Not a belief that nobody would ever judge me.
Just the understanding that other people's judgments didn't have to become my own.
The next time I caught myself turning sideways in front of the mirror, I stopped.
I looked at myself.
I adjusted my shirt because it had twisted at the waist.
Then I walked away.
Nothing dramatic happened.
The day continued.
The girls needed dinner.
There was laundry to fold.
I had messages to answer and work to finish.
My life didn't pause to acknowledge that I'd made a small change in the way I saw myself.
That was all right.
I didn't need every ordinary moment to become a turning point.
I only needed to keep making choices that belonged to me.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: When I Finally Looked at Myself Without Imagining Max Beside Me, I Understood What I Had Been Trying to Prove All Along
My Ex Invited Me to Watch Him Marry the Woman He Chose Over Me, and I Made One Decision I Would Soon Regret
Part 7 of 8
