The Gray

A big part of living through the aftermath of learning that my most important relationship was built on lies, manipulation, predation, and emotional and psychological abuse has been sorting through the reality of what I actually lived.

Not just what was hidden from me.

But what was real.

The slow build.

The friendship.

The time together.

The laughter.

The intimacy.

Shared dinners.

Snacks in bed.

The dogs.

The problems we talked through.

The moments that felt ordinary and warm and safe.

And then—layered over all of that—the reality I didn’t know about.

The parallel lives.

The withheld truth.

The choices he made while looking me in the eye and telling me he cared.

Integrating those two realities has not been easy.

In fact, it has probably been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

There were days I loved him and missed him so much it felt physical. And there were days I felt anger, rage, hurt, and heartbreak for what he did and for who he actually was. Sometimes those feelings existed in the same day. Sometimes in the same hour. Loving the man I thought I knew while reckoning with the reality of his choices was disorienting, exhausting, and deeply painful. And it has taken way more time than I wish it would.

After discovery, there’s a temptation to flatten everything—to declare it all fake, all a lie, all meaningless. That kind of clarity can feel powerful. Clean. Protective.

But that's not how I operate.

Because parts of what I lived were real.

The connection I felt was real.

The love I gave was real.

The way I opened my life, my heart, and my children to him was real.

What wasn’t real was the foundation.

Not just what it was built on, but who he was with me.

And holding both of those truths at the same time is the gray.

My sister struggled to understand this. She would tell me that she’s wired differently—that when she’s done with someone, she’s done. If someone crosses a boundary, hurts her, or simply decides it’s not right, she cuts ties and moves on.

I understand that. I respect it.

But I’m not wired that way.

Especially when it comes to love and connection.

In this case, I had opened up and let him in more deeply than I ever had before. I didn’t just date him—I integrated him into my life. Into my routines. Into my sense of home. Into my future, hope, heart, and dreams.

You don’t undo that with a switch.

So no, what came after wasn’t black and white for me.

It was gray.

Painfully gray.

There have been so many shades of gray as time has passed that at one point I found myself thinking about how many there actually were.

Then I remembered Fifty Shades of Grey was a book title.

I laughed.

And then I remembered the premise of the book.

I never read it. I got a chapter or two in and put it down.

I could not stand the plot.

An insecure young woman.

A rich, powerful man.

A private world she’s slowly drawn into.

Control reframed as desire.

There’s some irony there now.

Maybe I should have read it and taken notes.

What I lived wasn’t that story.

There was no dungeon.

No overt dominance.

No explicit contract.

What there was instead was something quieter.

Subtler. Harder to name.

A gradual accumulation of gray—after the truth was known.

Power disguised as care, revealed in retrospect.

Control hidden inside normalcy, recognized only once the illusion was gone.

Warmth that had existed alongside deception.

Tenderness that had coexisted with manipulation.

Safety that, in hindsight, had been carefully performed.

Love and warmth that came from the most honest parts of me.

That doesn’t mean I excuse what he did.

It doesn’t mean I minimize the harm.

It doesn’t mean I doubt what I now know to be true.

It means I hold two truths: I loved deeply and I was deceived in ways I probably wouldn't believe except they happened to me.

Many of the moments I miss were real.

And the structure I was inside was not.

What followed was the work.

The gray was living with full clarity about what had happened while still carrying real memories, real attachment, and real grief. It was integrating the truth without letting it contaminate my body, my choices, or the relationships that come next.

That work was not passive.

It wasn’t time doing its thing.

It was deliberate.

I stayed with the discomfort instead of outsourcing it. I refused to flatten my history or turn it into something simpler than it was. I integrated what was real and what was harmful so neither would leak forward.

The gray is not confusion.

It is integration.

And because I have done the work, this will not follow me.