Reflections on Identity

How Infidelity Binds Me to My Grandmother

Her loss, my gain

Every morning since my husband and I separated three and a half years ago, I have clasped onto my wrist a thin gold bangle bracelet that once belonged to my paternal grandmother. She died twenty-five years ago and we have little in common except for one indelible bond that unites us even in her death: we were both cheated on by our husbands.

My grandfather, who I adored, was known to have a revolving door of mistresses over a period of decades. My mother surmised that he had run out of money by keeping too many women on the side. My own tale of woe was not as long-lasting. The day after I discovered that my husband had fallen in love with another woman, even though he had since decided he wanted to be with me, I asked him to leave. When he refused, I begged him; my desperation pushed him out the door, for good, a mere forty-eight hours after I had uncovered the horrific WhatsApp messages on his phone.

I remember my grandmother as being fragile and emotionally unstable, though she was fiercely loving to me and my sister. Her only son, my father, died in his mid-thirties. My mother was kind to her and my grandfather after my father’s death, including them in family holidays and driving to Brooklyn from our house in Westchester to…