I Got Cancer, He Got a Mistress

An Ask E. Jean Classic

Dear E. Jean:

 A year and a half ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I was twenty-seven years old. At that point I'd been married for four years to my husband, an attractive man with a very high-profile entertainment job. I've often felt (not being a supermodel) that he was much too good for me.

He took the news of my illness well and exuded constant optimism. His strength helped me get up in the morning, go to treatment, go to work, then return home and be a good wife. I thought that although it was the most difficult experience of my life, I would survive because I had a great marriage to carry me through.

That is, until I found the email depicting the weekend of unbridled passion shared by my husband and another woman. It turns out he'd begun the affair immediately after I announced the news of my illness.

It was the most horrifying blow I've ever known. I found myself hurling my husband's belongings out a second-story window, having the locks changed, breaking the p…