“You knew? You knew about this, and you didn’t tell me?”

I tried to reach out to him, but he recoiled.

“I didn’t know how to tell you, and I’m not proud of keeping this secret. But it wasn’t mine to tell.”

“Sasha!” he said, his hands in the air. “You should have told me! This isn’t something that you just keep hidden from the person that you’re going to marry. I don’t know if I can trust you now. This was a setup, wasn’t it? You wanted to introduce me to this lifestyle, isn’t it?”

By this point, I was overwhelmed, and I couldn’t understand what Adam was getting at.

I was taken back to a memory from my youth. I was 16, and my friends were planning a sleepover at my home.

“You have the biggest room, Sasha,” my friend Brielle said. “Let’s have it at your place.”

“That’s perfectly fine with me,” I said. “I don’t think my parents will mind at all! And we can watch movies in the living room because my parents have a TV in their room now, so they won’t disturb us.”

“I’ll bring my cotton candy machine,” Brielle said excitedly. “We can have that and popcorn!”

I remember going home after school and telling my mother all about our plans. She smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

“Sure, honey,” she said. “You girls can take care of yourselves. Dad and I have a dinner that evening.”

Little did I know that later that evening, I would discover the truth about my parents’ marriage.

My friends and I were all sitting on the couch when my parents walked in with another couple. My mother was holding tightly onto a man’s hand as she kicked off her shoes. My father was kissing the other woman.

When they saw me, they were shocked. And they had no choice but to explain the situation to me.

Now, listening to Adam, I was taken back to the same flood of emotions.

“No, it’s nothing like that,” I said. “I am dedicated to you. I don’t want that lifestyle.”

But Adam wasn’t having it. He just wasn’t listening. Instead, he began to speak about his mother’s infidelity which had led to his parents’ divorce. It all made him see betrayal everywhere.

“Everything is a red flag for me, Sasha.”

He packed a bag and left for a hotel, saying that he needed a moment to reevaluate our engagement.

I spent the rest of the night crying, feeling the weight of my parents’ choices crashing down on my own relationship.

“You need to talk to him,” my mother said, giving me a cup of coffee. “Just go to him.”

I joined him at the hotel. We barely spoke, the silence heavy with everything left unsaid. I didn’t know if Adam still wanted to be together or not. I suggested that we move to my grandmother’s house for the rest of our stay so that we could talk about everything while still being comfortable.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s okay with me because this hotel is too cold anyway.”

There was a coldness between us that hadn’t been there before.

“I’ve never kept secrets from you,” I told him. “I didn’t know how to bring it up. It’s not something that I like talking about because I struggled to understand it myself.”

Adam sighed, rubbing his temples.

“I get it. But this feels too close to home, Sasha,” he said. “I just need some time.”

We spent the rest of the week at my grandmother’s house, trying to finish the family visit in the best spirits we could muster. My parents apologized to Adam, but it didn’t matter anymore.

It wasn’t about them. It was about the fact that their actions had triggered my fiancé. On the drive home, Adam and I decided that we wanted to stay together and see where life took us.

“But I think we need to go to therapy,” I said, handing Adam a drink.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said, biting his lip. “Because I need to uncover my own trauma before accepting your parents.”

Now, Adam and I have started talking about everything. From his fears, my shame, our future. We could only heal from this.

What would you have done?