'My husband was acting strange so I started asking questions. The fourth one ended our marriage.'

Four little words were all it took for Anne's* seven-year marriage to implode. Four little words and a crushing silence.

It was Mother's Day and Anne and her husband had just spent a full day with his family, enjoying a big lunch. When the couple returned home, Anne's husband said he would go to the shops to get some dinner for them both.

As he left the house, Anne had no inkling her relationship was about to end.

"Everything seemed to be okay, nothing had really changed," she told Mamamia. "When he came back, he was in a really funny mood. It was a mood I couldn't read."

Anne did what any partner would; she started asking questions.

"I just kept throwing things out there, like 'did you get a phone call,' 'did someone die' … I just had no idea — and eventually I got to, 'is there someone else?' Then there was silence."

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Upon discovering her husband's affair, Anne jumped straight into action mode. She asked him to leave the house, to stay somewhere else — anywhere, as long as it was far from her.

"That was just my first thought, 'you need to get away from me.' I don't know if it was anger, I think it was more shock," she said.

"You know how people have a fight or flight response? I'm more of the fight and then, when it's all said and done, then I have the flight.

"At that point, I didn't know what was going to happen with the relationship."

Later that night, her husband sent her a text message checking-in. He asked if she was okay. Anne responded with an honest 'no' and inquired where he was staying — thinking he had just gone to his mum and dad's.

"He just said, 'I'm not sure yet.' And I was like, 'OK, you've probably gone to stay with hers.'"

The texts Anne* sent to her husband. Image: Fake Text Message.

That was the first moment Anne realised there might be no salvaging her seven-year marriage.

"I hadn't even considered reconciling yet, but to me that was another betrayal," she said, adding that she called her friend who flew in from interstate the very next day.

"By that time I'd processed, I didn't want the relationship anymore. I stayed up all night actually, sitting at the dinner table doing a jigsaw puzzle because I just couldn't sleep. I think I made the decision then, talking through everything with her."

From there the memories blur; Anne remembers packing her husband's belongings in boxes and suitcases, and sending him a message to come and collect things.

"I do remember the day he came to get his things. I did ask him if this was the first time and he said no. I didn't ask anymore than that, I was already disgusted enough," she said.

At some point, Anne discovered the woman her husband had been having an affair with was "one of his clients from the gym."

As her husband was a personal trainer, she had never really questioned his odd hours.

"I never questioned him not being at home. I just always assumed he was working. I had that trust," she said.

Reflecting on things now, Anne suspects the reason her husband was in "a mood" was because the other woman gave him an ultimatum.

"Otherwise, why would he come clean if he didn't have to? Particularly, knowing it had happened before," she mused. "I found out from a mutual friend of ours, probably a year or two later because I wasn't close to the friend, I just bumped into them in the street, and they said that those two had married."

Anne admitted that she was "pretty blindsided" by the ordeal, and said the only thing that could've served as a red flag was the fact her husband had become more "fussy" about his appearance.

"He had just been a shorts and T-shirt kind of guy, that sort of thing. But he was wanting a more crisp appearance, in terms of a proper shirt," she said. "But to be fully transparent, just before he had gone to the shops he had tried to have sex with me," she recalled.

For years after, Anne said she questioned whether she could have done more in her marriage.

"I was thinking, 'what did I not do? What did I do wrong? What was wrong with me?'" she said. "You carry that into your subsequent relationships — always waiting for the 'thing' with you to be wrong.

"I never got a clear answer as to 'why.' Was it just that she was there and willing and able? You look back on yourself and think, 'well, what's wrong with me? What am I not doing right.'"

Anne has done the hard work of rebuilding, and has mostly moved on from that part of her life. She is now happily married and has started a family.

"It took a lot of therapy," she said. "(There were) a lot of issues for me in entering a relationship and dating again … it took me a long time to accept someone new."

*Name changed to protect identity.

Feature image: Getty.