How could I miss the biggest red flag that my hubby lives a double life?

Dear AmoMama,

I have been married for 17 years, and I always congratulated myself on my solid, happy marriage. My husband was my best friend, my lover, my rock - and I was his.

I trusted him so blindly that I ignored all the red flags of an affair. Maybe it was so silly anyone else would have overlooked it too. It was so mundane, so plausible, such a little thing.

My husband came home from his tennis twice a week smelling different. Not bad, or sweaty, just different. I asked him once and he told me he showered at the club before he came home and it was the smell of this all-purpose hypoallergenic shower gel they had. And I believed it.

I can't believe I believed it, because the women's showers have a very different bath gel, woodsy and fresh that would have been just as nice for a man. Maybe I wanted to believe?

Anyway, over the weekend my son had a tennis match and he'd damaged his racket and asked my husband to borrow his. My husband always kept his kit in the trunk and he just tossed my son the keys and told him to get it. And that was it.

On Monday afternoon I was tidying up my son's room and found my husband's racket. I tried to call him to tell him to pass by the house to pick up the racket on the way to the club, but it kept going to voicemail.

My husband came home at the usual time, and when he kissed me he smelled the same. Then he said, "Gary really killed me on the court today, I'm exhausted." So I asked (STUPID) "did you borrow a racket?" and he said, "why would I do that."

And that is when I knew. He hadn't been playing tennis that afternoon or any other afternoon for the last two years.

So I went upstairs and got his tennis racket and just handed it to him. He went dead-white, he couldn't speak, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. And it all came out. He had been having an affair for two years, meeting his lover 2 afternoons a week and when he went on "business trips." Gary, who was also my friend, had been covering for him all this time.

I can't believe I didn't know, when he came into my bed smelling of that woman's soap; when he'd' get absolutely furious if he had to cancel his tennis for any reason, even to go to a parent-teacher meeting at my son's school once.

Is it true that the wife is the last to know? Looking back it all seems so obvious. All the signs were there. Why didn't I see it? Am I stupid? Or didn't I want to know?

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