I read my husband's therapy notes and I can't un-know what was in them.

He writes in a notebook after his sessions. He's done it for about three years. It sits in his nightstand and I have known it was there the entire time and I never touched it.

In July he was out of town and I was looking for a phone charger and it was right there and I opened it, and I want to be honest: I didn't open it by accident and then keep going. I opened it on purpose.

I read about fifteen pages.

Most of it was work. Some of it was his father. And a section from February was about me, and it wasn't cruel, and that's almost worse. He had written, in his own handwriting, that he thinks he married me because I was steady and that he's not sure he was ever "in it the way she is."

That was eight months ago and he has been, by every outward measure, a good husband that entire time. He plans things. He was wonderful at my sister's wedding. He has no idea anything changed.

But I changed. I hear a different sentence underneath everything now. He says "whatever you want" and I hear something else.

And I can't bring it up, because bringing it up means saying I read it, and because what he wrote was something he was working through with a professional — not a conclusion, a thought. People are allowed to have thoughts in therapy. That's what therapy is for.

So I'm the one who broke the rule and I'm the one who's hurt, and there is no conversation where those two facts sit together.

Has anyone been here? Did you ever say it.