They played tennis competitively and extremely well for years. Vancouver Lawn had very few players at that level. It is a sport that is both social and romantic, short skirts, ponytails swinging and much talk of “love”. And let’s not forget the fabulous effect that all that stopping and starting has on a man’s butt. And legs. Mixed doubles takes on a whole new meaning when two on the court are having an affair.
His wife had a sense, a strong intuition. her game was good but maybe not so her backhand. One evening the other woman arrived onto the courts excited about a new job. Jen congratulated her but the mistress could not look her in the eye. She could not accept her gift of kindness. It is in this moment that Jen knew with certainty that this woman was sleeping with her husband.
She confronted her husband. He admitted to it. An affair is an exit. A way out.
They had to sell their family home. She packed up the house alone- a job so painful but therapeutic. She spent days putting away/ splitting up and throwing out their shared past.
On moving day Jen found a wounded pigeon on her driveway -she carefully moved it to a safer place. It died. She had done everything she could to save it but could not. It was time to move on.
Amazingly, she claims now over three years later, that the greatest gift is having her life fall apart. You then have a chance to rebuild it piece by piece. Who, in a 20 year marriage, would be offered that. Naturally, this is also the hardest part-the blank slate, the unknown and the pitched dreams of the future.
Jen’s thorough recovery was due in large part to how she valued the time of grieving and did not throw herself into any distraction from the pain-no dating or non stop going out with friends or workaholism. She met with that pain and moved through it.
A man she met when she was married, who came for lunch with his family to their cottage many years ago, re entered her life. She did not remember him or the visit because at that time she was in the ‘trance’ of a dead marriage. They became friends spending months getting to know one another. She was slow to trust and slow to touch. One day he asked tenderly to hold her hand. Today they are in love.
They never play tennis.