I ran to the living-room couch, threw myself down and sobbed. Even today, decades later, I can still see myself lying on that couch sobbing, waiting for an apology that never came.

THE big surprise was days after his admission, when I stumbled upon a part of myself I hadn’t known was there anymore, a part that was compassionate, loving and empathetic. Without planning to, I began trying to understand. It took a while, but as the days passed I really did begin to comprehend the whole picture.

As hurt as I was, it all made a perverted sort of sense. I understood her attraction to him, a 35-year-old man in a suit and tie with a nice car. And I saw how he would be taken in by an adoring young woman who hung on his every word and read the books he suggested. It was every married man’s fantasy, especially a married man who felt unappreciated at home and overwhelmed at work.

The shocker, though, was that the affair had been going on for a year: a year during which he experienced his first taste of pot and gone to his first jazz concert while high. He was in heaven trying to keep it all together until the night she and her friends taunted him and chased him away, calling him an old man. That night he poured it all out to me, and through my shock and tears, I actually began to feel sorry for him.

My daughter asked me the other day: “How did you forgive him?” Trying to put herself in my place, she couldn’t understand how forgiveness was possible.

“Because I loved and was loved,” I said. My husband and I were close enough that I could put myself in his place and understand his feelings, wants, needs and frustrations. I hated to admit it, and people might have thought I was crazy to think this way, but there was a part of me that even admired his ability to “go for it,” to have the experience instead of just keeping his head down and grimly soldiering on.