I did it anyway.
I can see why that felt disrespectful.
I'm sorry.
Can we talk about what has been happening between us?
Maybe our marriage still would have ended.
I cannot know.
But we would have spent less time injuring each other on the way out.
That matters.
Years after the divorce, my therapist asked me whether I still regretted the kiss.
"Yes."
"Would you erase it if you could?"
I answered too quickly.
"Yes."
Then stopped.
Miriam waited.
I thought about June.
About the woman I became.
About learning to speak directly.
About learning that self-worth cannot be outsourced to a cheering room.
"I'd erase hurting Simon."
I said finally.
"But I don't want to erase everything I learned afterward."
Miriam nodded.
"Those aren't the same wish."
No.
They aren't.
Today, I am forty-one.
June is fifteen.
Simon is remarried to Rebecca.
I am not married again, though Aaron and I have been together several years and are happy in the unglamorous, honest way I did not appreciate when I was younger.
We argue.
But now I say what the argument is actually about.
Last month, Aaron forgot an anniversary dinner reservation.
The old version of me might have said:
It's fine.
Then spent a week making him pay emotionally for failing a test he did not know he was taking.
Instead, I said:
"I'm hurt because this mattered to me and forgetting it made me feel unimportant."
He apologized.
We ordered Thai food.
The world survived.
Sometimes growth is embarrassingly simple.
Simon and I rarely discuss the past now.
There is no reason.
The paperwork is long finished.
The anger settled.
June's life moved forward.
But once, at a school fundraiser, someone started a silly adults-only party game at a table near us.
A woman laughed:
"Truth or dare?"
Simon and I heard it at the same time.
Our eyes met across the room.
For half a second, the years disappeared.
Then Simon smiled.
Not cruelly.
Not bitterly.
Just knowingly.
I shook my head.
He laughed.
And that was it.
The memory no longer owned either of us.
For a long time, I told this story beginning with:
I kissed another man for ten seconds and my husband divorced me.
That version made me a victim of disproportionate consequences.
It was neat.
It was dramatic.
It was also dishonest.
The more truthful version is harder.
I crossed a boundary my husband had clearly expressed.
Then, because admitting that frightened my ego, I spent weeks minimizing his pain.
I recruited friends into defending me.
I made our private conflict public.
I blamed Simon's imperfections for my choice.
I lied to avoid counseling.
I said things around our daughter that made her feel responsible for understanding an adult conflict.
By the time I finally apologized, the marriage was carrying far more than a kiss.
Simon did not divorce me because ten seconds were magically unforgivable.
We divorced because the kiss exposed problems we had ignored, and my reaction afterward destroyed the safety we would have needed to repair them.
That is the truth.
It took me a long time to say it without adding "but."
No but.
Simon had flaws.
I had legitimate unmet needs.
The marriage was lonely in ways neither of us understood soon enough.
And I made a choice that hurt him.
All of those sentences can stand together.
That is maturity, I think.