The impact of infidelity on your career

I am ambitious. I always have been and always will be. I was raised to prize excellence. I am a hard worker...perhaps to hard as my husband as often called me a workoholic. But he never understood the joy that comes from a job well done.

So when I first found out that he was cheating on me, my work ethic was shot to hell. Unable to focus on anything but his infidelity - deadlines went passed unheeded. In meetings I spaced out, unable to keep to stop myself from thinking about whats going to happen or what he was doing at that exact moment. It took me about 5 months to get to a place of almost functioning the way I used to - and now I am thinking about my future.

I always knew I would be a life long learner. I love studying and learning new things - I find meaning in gathering knowledge and implementing it - so now at the point in my life, I am trying to position myself to do whatever I want to do for the next 20 odd years ( I am a bit of a planner:-))...

The thing is though- instead of thinking of what I would love to do...what would bring me happiness, I now think about what I need to do in order to have the best shot at bringing money in, as a single mom.  I would love to be an historian - there are gaps in south african history around coloured culture and for too long we have ingnored it in favour of white or black culture. I would like to part of the movement that brings about coloured pride - this however seems like a pipe dream right now. Nobody wants to pay consistently for this sort of thing - I would need to have a reliable partner to pull it off. A reliable partner that I don't have.

So I find myself, looking at options at how to study more indepth in the field that I am currently in. Maybe I should do my masters in adult education? I can do it and I do it well, virtually all my work experience is in this field and it would be the natural next step...but I long for unchartered territories...perhaps the closet I will ever get is the discovery history channel.

His taken more from me than he probably realises.  His taken away my freedom to choose to something bold and new. I could never risk losing the roof over our heads for a new adventure - my sense of responsibility is to deeply ingrained.

It makes me wonder how many women have compromised their dreams because their partners have let them down? How many women chose to stay in marriages, because on their own - they can't provide a standard of living that they want for their children.

Why couldn't he have loved me more?