In Unhitched, couples tell the stories of their relationships, from romance to vows to divorce to life afterward.
Jason W. Miller and Rachel Sanders met in 1992 in Boone, N.C., when she was still in high school, and they married six years later. After more than a decade of being together, Mr. Miller had a secret affair with a mutual male friend. At the same time, Ms. Sanders discovered she was pregnant.
Dates of marriage Aug. 29, 1998, to March 16, 2005
Age when married Mr. Miller was 23; Ms. Sanders was 22. (They are now 51 and 49.)
Current occupations He is the chief operating officer for a private health care group; she is a property manager.
Children One daughter, age 22. Ms. Sanders also has a 14-year-old daughter from a second marriage, and a 21-year-old nonbinary stepchild.
Where did they grow up? She grew up on a farm in Boone, N.C., with two brothers. The family was poor and very strict. “We lived off what we grew and raised,” she said. He grew up as an only child in Freeburg, Ill. His parents split up when he was 16, and he became estranged from his father, who died when Mr. Miller was 20. In 1992, after high school, he moved to Boone, where his family owned a vacation home.
How did they meet? At a high school football game.
What was it about the other? “Jason was really charismatic, stylish and wasn’t like the local boys,” Ms. Sanders said. Her home life was stifling and she left at 16. For more than half a year, she slept on a couch at a cousin’s house. During this time, Mr. Miller was “my rock,” she said.
“I didn’t understand her family or the pressure of living in a small town,” Mr. Miller said, adding that the two were best friends and did everything together. “Rachel had a glowing personality.”
Why did they marry? Her religious upbringing made it impossible to live together. “I was a person who checked boxes and marriage was the natural progression,” he said. They had been together for five years when he proposed in 1997 at a scenic overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Three hundred people came to the wedding, including both of their families.
How were the early times? They bought a house. Ms. Sanders was working as a dental assistant and Mr. Miller, then working as an administrator in the district attorney’s office in Boone, was studying for a master’s degree in public administration. In 2001, they began trying to start a family. Both said they had been happy.
First signs of trouble? In 2002, Mr. Miller, then an administrator in a medical practice, became friendly with a co-worker, a married male doctor. The two couples soon became friends. They shared weekly dinners and traveled together. The women encouraged the friendship and shared one of their own.
Mutual attraction led to the first sexual encounter between the men in May 2003. Mr. Miller admitted he had been attracted to boys since he was 6.
Two weeks later, Ms. Sanders announced she was pregnant. That night the two couples celebrated over dinner.
For three months, the men kept their affair secret but were racked with guilt. Mr. Miller cried often, which Ms. Sanders attributed to the fear of becoming a father. Finally, in September, after Ms. Sanders asked if there was another woman, Mr. Miller admitted to everything. The other man also told his wife that same day.
“I told Jason he wasn’t gay, but he assured me he was,” she said.
Did they try to work on things through therapy? Yes, both together and individually. They also worked hard on a plan to co-parent their baby, who was due in a few months. Mr. Miller wanted to be a fully active parent.
“I came to realize that Jason was a victim and society had put him in a box that he had to get out of,” Ms. Sanders said. “It was not really about me and I was not the only one hurting.”
“I lost my marriage, but I accepted Jason,” she said.
Who asked for the split? That December, she asked him to move out. “We both cried,” she said. He moved into an apartment by himself, and his friend, who became his boyfriend, also lived on his own after he split from his wife.
Their daughter was born in February 2004. At Ms. Sanders’s request, she was delivered by Mr. Miller’s boyfriend, an obstetrician-gynecologist. After the birth, Mr. Miller moved back in with Ms. Sanders for six weeks to help with the baby.
The final breakup? The official divorce came a year later.
Did they feel stigmatized? “For over a year, I didn’t go anywhere without someone vilifying or talking about me,” he said. “I had Rachel’s grace and support, but without that I don’t know if I could have made it through.”
She asked her family and friends to treat him with kindness and respect.
How did they fare financially? They had joint custody, and both his grandmother and mother helped with child care. When their daughter was 7, he moved to Washington, D.C., with his boyfriend. Mr. Miller saw his daughter on weekends and during the summer.
How did they move on? About the time of his move, she became involved with a local man who had a child 10 months younger than her daughter. They married in 2009, and she helped raise that child. In 2011, she had a second child with her second husband.
In 2014, Mr. Miller and his boyfriend married.
What would you have done differently? “I should have talked to people,” she said. “Being more open would have helped me feel less lonely.”
“I regret having hid the affair,” he said. “I never wanted to hurt Rachel, and I loved her then and love her now.”
Looking back, what advice would they offer others? “Be honest with others and true to yourself,” Mr. Miller said.
“I want my children to know themselves before they marry,” Ms. Sanders said. “We were always striving to better our relationship for the benefit of our child.”
What is life like now? Mr. Miller and his husband live in Atlanta. She still lives in Boone with her husband and their children. Their daughter is graduating from college this year and plans to study medicine.
The post She Found Out She Was Pregnant Just Before He Revealed an Affair appeared first on New York Times.
