Writer and life coach Carlie Maree. Photo / Facebook
Writer and life coach Carlie Maree. Photo / Facebook
In case you missed it: This was one of Lifestyle's most popular stories of 2016
A woman who discovered her husband had been cheating when his mistress emailed her at work has penned a powerful letter to the other woman.
Writer and life coach Carlie Maree, from the Yarra Valley, wrote in raw detail on the devastating consequences her husband's secret affair had on their family.
"22 May 2015 is a date I will never, ever forget," Ms Maree, 31, told Daily Mail Australia.
"We started dating in 2005, and were married in 2011. Our daughter was born in 2013 and I found out about my husband's affair when she was nearly two years old," she said.
"A year ago today you hit send on an email that had a monumental effect on several people's lives. Mine, my husband's, my daughter's, both our parents and families, our friends.
"The level of detail that you went into, felt like it had been curated to inflict pain. You knew what a wife would need to hear to get her to the point of no return in her marriage and you delivered it, blow by blow.
"Sometimes I wonder how much of it was him trying to find what he had lost in me. I was once a cute blonde in a short skirt behind the bar at his favourite pub.
"Ten years later I was the mum in the yoga pants with the silver regrowth and bags under her eyes from being up all night with a sick baby. He was supposed to love that version of me too."
At the time she found out, Ms Maree was predominantly a stay-at-home mum.
While she was studying to be a life coach, Ms Maree also filled her days by blogging, running a CV-writing business and spending one day a week in an office.
"My husband was away a lot for work," she said.
"But generally, he always came home at the weekends.
"I remember feeling awful for him missing out on our daughter... It had been hard for us to adjust to parenthood. We didn't expect to fall pregnant so quickly, and I had hoped that my husband might be around more," Ms Maree said.
"I knew he was being distant, and I felt that when he came home from being away he was often really cranky and tired. I wanted to feel connected with him, so I suggested counselling.
"He agreed, and in a few months, we were really starting to get back on track. Then, I found out about the affair."
Carlie Maree wrote a powerful letter to her husband's mistress. Photo / Facebook
Ms Maree found out on one of the days of the week she spent in an office, when she received an email entitled "Your Husband".
"My husband had ended the affair, and this woman he had been seeing for over a year had decided to tell me every sordid detail, in order to get revenge on him for that," Ms Maree said.
"She knew about me from day one, and had hoped that he would one day leave his family for her. I believe she was heartbroken when he didn't follow through with that."
After speaking to her husband, speaking to their counsellor and trying to move back in with her husband, Ms Maree knew she had to accept it wasn't going to work.
And now, just over a year later, Ms Maree told Daily Mail Australia that she wrote the letter to her husband's mistress for personal reasons, rather than out of hatred or spite:
"It was exactly a year later to the day when I wrote the letter," Ms Maree told Daily Mail Australia.
"I wrote it for me, not for her. Writing has been such a massive part of my healing. I don't wish her any ill-will.
"She did a really, really awful thing, but ultimately she's just a person who fell in love with someone who was totally wrong for them. And who hasn't done that?"
