Julie, meanwhile, wants to make sense of the irresistible pull Cynthia exerts on Ayo and the intensity of her own response. “Why did this hit you differently than his previous flings?” I ask her. We are familiar with the story of the middle-aged man who takes up with a young beauty and the wife’s feelings of inadequacy by comparison. For Julie, however, young beauties had never been a problem. “Not feeling threatened by them, I decided to ignore them,” she says. But Cynthia was a kick in the gut. A professional, accomplished woman, she was the same age as Julie and had excelled in the field Julie had walked away from decades earlier to devote herself to motherhood.

As I listen to her, it begins to fall into place why this revelation plunged her into such despair. Her husband did not just fall in love with another woman—he fell for the woman Julie could have been. Cynthia does not just represent some new part of Ayo that he is discovering. She also represents everything his wife gave up. It could have been Julie working at his side, sharing his passions, and celebrating their successes together. She chose differently, and there is no going back for her. Meanwhile, he has the option of doing a take two.