Perfect.

Although I am still fairly new to the world of the betrayed, I have noticed that there are striking similarities in many of the instances.  For example, I was quite surprised by the sheer number of people who are blindsided by their partner's affair because they thought they had a nearly perfect relationship.  You can count me in on this one.  In fact (and I've read of other people having similar experiences), The Mister and I have had people tell us that they viewed us as a model couple.  The Mister and I used to wonder to each other if WE were the weird ones because the people around us dealt with things like alcoholism, gambling addiction, verbal abuse, and blatant dislike for each other.  And our problems were much further on the other side of the spectrum - we fought about minor things like The Mister being insensitive and hurting my feelings or us not having enough sex.  Our fights were pretty tame compared to the other people that we knew.  Furthermore, we had successfully survived things that most people don't even need to think about - a deployment and recurrent miscarriages, to name a few.

I felt secure that our relationship was just that strong.  I was under the impression that we were well-prepared for pretty much anything that life could throw at us.  In fact, prior to getting married we had even discussed our reasons (beyond the obvious) for why we would remain faithful.  Oh how I was wrong.  Turns out what we had was not that special.  I'm actually still wondering if what we have is even mediocre.  At the moment, it still feels subpar.  I mean, in the case of alcoholism or gamble addiction.  That's an illness and it's not a direct transgression against the spouse - unlike my husband's affair.

Most people around us are unaware of my husband's behavior.  We recently celebrated our wedding anniversary.  And we STILL had people touting us as "the perfect couple."  I felt like a complete fraud.  It was embarrassing.

However, now I am beginning to wonder if this should have been a red flag.  Is there really a "perfect couple" out there?  I'm wondering, if it was just a matter of us stuffing feelings inside and bottling things up, rather than actually communicating that gave us the impression that we had such a wonderful relationship.  Improving our communication is definitely something that is my priority as we attempt to rebuild our relationship.  But, that might be something interesting to delve a little deeper into.