His Mistake, Her Liberation

“My husband, Michael Miller, was cheating on me. I knew it like a storm on the horizon; the air between us had grown cold and quiet for months. Tonight, on my birthday, I found him at a rooftop bar with his ex-girlfriend, Brittany Blake, a social media influencer he' d long desired. They looked like a perfect couple, and his words, "Sarah? Oh, she's probably at home. You know how she is. A little boring. A little...needy," cut through me like a knife. Public humiliation felt like a physical blow. Hours later, in agonizing pain from a miscarriage, Michael, smelling of Brittany' s perfume, abandoned me in a pouring rain to rush to her side. He believed her fake emergency, leaving me, his bleeding, pregnant wife, alone on a dark street, just blocks from the hospital. His casual cruelty was staggering. "You didn't fall. You were pushed. And you deserved it. You tried to attack Brittany." When I finally uttered the words "I'm pregnant," he sneered, "You're lying. You're making it up to manipulate me." The pure, unadulterated selfishness of it was staggering. Then, at the hospital, as I mourned our lost child, he asked me to make soup for Brittany. I understood everything. He saw me as disposable, a placeholder. It was then, looking at the beating heart I had saved, that I declared, "I want a divorce."”