I didn’t need to.
I had something much more important: a husband who respected our marriage enough to be honest with me, and a relationship strong enough to withstand somebody else’s attempts to undermine it.
That doesn’t mean every marriage will survive infidelity, temptation, or betrayal. Trust must be earned and protected, and not every partner will make the right choices.
But it does mean that another person’s confidence is not evidence of your partner’s disloyalty.
And somebody else’s desire does not create an obligation for you to compete.
Vanessa wanted to take my husband.
Instead, she revealed her own misunderstanding of love.
She thought marriage was a contest in which the most persistent woman won the prize.
She discovered that my husband was not a prize, my marriage was not a competition, and I was not going to surrender my peace simply because she wanted to feel powerful.
The gold gift box was never really about cookies, scarves, or unopened notes.
