First, thanks, to all of you.

After that story in last week’s paper, there was a flurry of reaction. An email from my father: Four words. His closure, the need to have the last words spoken to my ex-husband be laced with something other than hugs, handshakes, an eagerness to see him again soon: Have you no shame?

Then, his reaction. To my father, he had the gall to say that he isn’t trying to hurt anyone, “least of all him” and that it would be better, easier to “work on our marriage” if “my ‘support system’ would just stay out of it” instead of “getting me worked up about NOTHING”

Then, the voicemail he left for me, swearing and screaming and asking me why all my family and friends are harassing him. Sending him spiteful and nasty emails about his story. He was just doing his job, covering the news. He’s a reporter, that’s his job.

Then to me, a message with this line: “There is an underlying theme that I cheated on you. If you're telling people that, it's not fair to me. And if that's really what you think, we should move forward with the divorce because this relationship doesn't have a chance”

I let that sink in and got red hot and burned up about it. UNDERLYING theme that he’s cheating on me? If that’s really what I think?

He was doing what he did to me for years. Manipulating me. Trying to put me in my place by discounting the truth, implying that my crazy little head is off on some bender.

And for a minute it sent me spinning. Wait. What? Am I wrong? Did I miss something? Is there some other reason, other than him cheating, that in one weekend we went from seemingly happy to me looking for another place to live?

Nope.

So I waited until I was calm. I sent him a thoughtful and poised email, detailing snippets of the betrayal. How things were those first few days, those days he’s clearly rewritten.

I held back from quoting the emails between the two of them, the ones I found in his inbox, his outbox; the ones I saw them sending back and forth in those first few days:

“uh oh. This probably isn’t good. She knows.”

And

“I don’t want to be away from you. you make me happy. I wish you could just come home with me.”

From her: “I can’t kiss you. I just ate garlic for lunch.”

from him: “It’s ok. I have a toothbrush. I want a kiss.”

My thoughtful email to him, the one I’ve sat on for five months, was rich. It was full.

He responded with “I’m tired. Do what you want”

I read his response and it didn’t make me cry. It didn’t make me angry. It didn’t break me. I called an attorney. I’m ready.

And yes, I did take some pleasure in the gossip I got today: her husband knows. I like to think that he may leave her; she’ll end up with a man who just wrote a “news” story on how to get a blue box from Tiffany’s, a gift for a woman, for $100 or less.

Tonight I’m going out. With a woman who’s a siren, a woman who doesn’t go out before 11 pm, a woman who gets out of bed at 1 am, after she’s washed her face and put her pajamas on, to meet her friends at a bar and stay out until the sun comes up. A woman who is 26 and reminds me of wilder days. A woman who dates a musician and will bring him along tonight; will bring his friends along. A woman who defines style icon.

She’s inspired me to wear the red velvet pants that have been at the back of my closet for years. That I have put on and taken off a hundred times, too self-conscious to wear them out of the house. I mentioned them to her and she said: “Wear them girl. You’ve got the body. I’ve got the lipstick. You’ll be so hot.”

Stay tuned.

You Make Me Sick. You Make Me Reel. Sick

Today, an emotion I hadn’t met before. Violent Rage.

I went to a kickboxing class at my gym, looking for a place to unload this. punched and kicked and thrashed alongside women doing it to a beat, counting calories burned. While I Imagined contact and blood and humiliation for a man I once handed my heart.

My husband, who has been caught cheating on a spouse not once but twice, penned this piece in today’s paper. These are excerpts and I’ve added my own commentary throughout.

The liars club
December 12, 2005

Jeff Irwin says he is in the business of helping families -- though in an unusual and, some would argue, immoral way. He provides alibis for cheating spouses. As founder of the Alibi Network (www.alibinetwork.com), Irwin provides back stories and excuses for spouses who want to stray from home. For some, it could be a quick dinner with a special friend, while for others it could mean a weekend tryst in an exotic locale.

"With the statistics that we have, there is more cheating going on now than ever," says Irwin, who runs the Buffalo Grove company. "We didn't create the market, it's already there. We are just providing a service."

And boy, what a service: everything from sending phony e-mails to receiving calls to buying airline tickets for that romantic -- but illicit -- getaway. Sounds like something actor Jude Law, who earlier this year admitted to cheating on fiancee Sienna Miller with his children's nanny, could have used.

Yeah, boy. what a service. Too bad Jude Law doesn’t live in Buffalo Grove. Too bad you’re referencing tabloid clichés when you could have used yourself as an example. Wouldn’t you have been a better example of a typical client? Really.

Irwin is right about one thing: The market is already out there. About half of married couples have had a partner who has committed some extramarital hanky-panky, he says. More scientific studies, however, show the number might be lower. The Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California conducted a study that found about 24 percent of men and 14 percent of women have had sex outside of their marriages.

Yep. He’s right. The market is there. I’m in that “hanky-panky” half. My husband was part of the 24%, the “more scientific study”

Most clients come in with an alibi already in mind, but if they don't have one, Irwin's staff will help concoct one.

For example, a police officer client might want to spend the weekend with his special friend. Irwin's company can help set up a phony seminar at an out-of-state location.

Hmm. Good example. Not unlike the time my husband crafted a similar story for his father. Told his stepmother they were at a seminar in Georgia, together, for the weekend. Lied so his dad could spend the weekend in Miami with his girlfriend. Told me to stay out of it, it was none of our business.

Not everyone thinks having a business dedicated to helping cheaters cheat is a good idea.

How about a stronger statement: “Only cheaters think having a business dedicated to helping cheaters cheat is a good idea”

Penny Tupy, director of the Wisconsin-based Save Your Marriage Central and a marriage coach, says there are already plenty of other factors stripping away the sanctity of marriage.

"When marital infidelity among celebrities is portrayed as a love story, it demonstrates total disdain for the sanctity of marriage. We forget that real people, including innocent children, suffer very real and lasting hurt from these affairs," says Tupy, who developed national Marriage Fidelity Day.

Like his girlfriend’s children. Her three-year-old, her one-year-old. Her total disdain.

Though some might rationalize the need for a business such as Alibi Network, it doesn't make it right, she says.

Irwin said business is booming. The company has been around only since April, but through word of mouth has about 1,500 clients -- about half of them women. And so far, he says, no one has been caught.

The services can get pricey depending on the alibi. A phony e-mail, for example, can cost as little as $10, while providing cover for a weekend away overseas could go for hundreds of dollars. There is also a $35 membership fee.

Aha. No wonder I caught him. He’s hardly the type to shell out for a $35 membership fee. His online porn site was $9.99. But only one time. He was only looking at that to try and understand the appeal. What kind of men would actually do that.

He says he's neither condemning nor condoning the practice of cheating on a spouse. He argues that sometimes the infidelity is a one-time thing that isn't worth destroying a family over.

"On these mini-alibis, it could be someone that just wants to go out to dinner with someone or spend the night with someone," Irwin says. "It's like a seven-year-itch type of thing, they scratch their itch and then go on with their life. Their family and home life remain untouched."

Untouched. Scratch the sevon-month itch and then tell your wife to be careful driving in the snow. That she’s getting “hung up” on things that happened months ago

After all, it's not the cheating that breaks a couple up, he argues. It's the finding out.

It’s that last line that got me punching. The ethics of letting a man in the midst of a divorce, who maybe even got some help from his girlfriend on some of the more “clever” lines, sign his name to this.

I haven’t finished processing this just yet but I think it’s time for a response. A very public one.

I Really Can’t Stay
Baby It’s Cold Outside
The Answer Is No
Baby You’ll Freeze Out There

The day I caught my husband in a lie, on the phone, asked him if something was going on, if there was someone else, if he was cheating on me, he was too stupid and too slow to lie. He just confessed. Didn’t pause, take a second to think up some non-truth to buy time, to save us. He wasn’t fast enough.

During the first days that followed, I was too stupid to know it was over. I moved to the refrain of ‘we will fix this I will fix this we are married I am committed we will fix this I will fix this i will fix this.’ I filled my trunk with clothes in garbage bags and drove around and around, leaving my closet mostly intact. Waiting for him to call, beg, chase.

But he was busy enjoying the freedom, his requited crush. He told me he needed some time.

I floated around, not telling people, not wanting to say it out loud; I’d forgive him but others wouldn’t. Days passed without him calling, begging, chasing. Without him knowing or caring that I had fallen apart. That I was crying in my sleep, at work, all the time. I waited and he told me I was being impatient. That his only crime was being honest, asking me to give him time, let him think. My problem, he said, was that I always wanted answers right away.

When he asked me to marry him, I said let’s think about this. let’s wait. It’s a big deal. We don’t have to get married. we can wait. we have time. If we get do this we can’t undo it and that’s scary. Let’s be sure.

I stood up in front of people who love me and believed in me and said I do. I beamed while my mom, through tears, read these words:

“…I hope you kiss
like you do today knowing so much
good is said in this primitive tongue

from the wild first surprising ones
to the lower dizzy ten thousand
infinitely slower ones—and I hope

while you stand there in the kitchen
making tea and kissing, the whistle
of the teapot wakes the neighbors.”

Why didn’t I understand, he wanted to know? What don’t I understand? He was sure and then he wasn’t. Give him time.

He’s still thinking. Last week, he told a friend how great I’ve been about this whole thing, agreeing to live in limbo while he gets his head on straight. He heard I was planning to have dinner with a mutual friend, a male, and he said he doesn’t like that idea. It should have been cleared, first, with him. I’m supposed to be waiting. he thinks i'm waiting.

He emailed to tell me it’s it’s cold and he hopes my apartment is warm enough. He’s been worried about me driving in the snow, I should be careful not to slide through any stop signs.

Stay warm and be careful driving out there are things you say to strangers in the elevator. Conversations to fill air time on the news. They are not things you say to your wife, who you are supposed to wake up next to. Watch the snow with, out the window, from under the covers. Drink hot chocolate with and stay inside with. You are supposed to tell her to drive carefully in a way that’s different from the way you say it to everyone else.