As I stood in the middle of what used to be our living room, the weight of betrayal heavy on my shoulders, I realized that I wasn’t going to leave quietly.

I wanted to stand up for myself. I wanted Dale to feel even a tiny bit of the hurt I was feeling. I wanted to inconvenience him at every chance I got. It all happened by accident. I had left my laptop charger at the office, and I needed to make an online payment—so, I used Dale’s laptop. Only to stumble upon enlightening emails with graphic details that no partner would ever want to stumble upon. As I went through the emails—dirty love letters between Dale and some woman named Mandy—he was in the kitchen, cooking us dinner. “How much chili is too much?” Dale called out, oblivious to the secrets I was uncovering. “You decide,” I said, my heart breaking as I closed his emails and shut off the laptop. I didn’t know whether I should storm into the kitchen and throw a tantrum about the emails. Dale and I were set to get married in the next six months—our wedding invitations were already out. Walking into the kitchen, my fiancé was chopping up vegetables and humming to music that played from his phone on the counter. I realized that I couldn’t stand the look on his face. Suddenly he looked different to me—a shadow of the man who I was supposed to marry. “So, Mandy, huh?” I said. Dale looked at me, his face frozen. We spent thirty minutes going back and forth between us. Dale went on and on about how Mandy didn’t mean anything to him. “Mandy was just for me to realize how good I have it with you,” Dale said, taking a bottle of vodka out of the cupboard. “And that’s an acceptable reason?” I asked, genuinely shocked that he was trying to gaslight me. Eventually, Dale ended up packing a bag. “I’m going to stay with my brother,” he said. “We need to cool off.” “Give me a few days, and I’ll be out of here,” I said. “I need to get my things out. I’m done.” Dale had the decency not to question me further. “A week, Chloe,” he said, picking up his bag and walking to the door. I went to bed that night thinking about all the things I needed to do—with the first thing being to cancel my wedding and everything that came with that. I thought about my wedding dress—a custom gown that was going to be ready in two weeks. That had to be torn up.