A Hike Helped Me Move Past My Husband’s 12-Year Affair

After finding out that my spouse of 44 years had a secret life with another woman, I couldn’t move on. But ‘walking it off’ gave me the perspective I needed

Patricia McCormick,

AARP

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Published December 02, 2025

An illustration show a woman hiking along a mountainous trail, moving through a rock formation shaped like a wedding ring

After her marriage ended with betrayal, the author set out amid Utah’s red-rock arches, canyons and mountains to reassess her life as a suddenly single senior.

Tara Anand

It’s only the first half hour of a four-day hiking trip in Utah when I stop, huffing and puffing. Lagging far behind the group — all women, led by an outfitter called Explorer Chicks — I understand, in a literal sense, the term “blistering pace.” At 65, I am the oldest chick. By a lot. I’ve already ditched my fleece jacket, hat and gloves, but I am still overdressed for the unexpected 80-degree heat, and in no shape for the six-hour ascent.

Up ahead, the other women pause. They wait just long enough for me to rejoin them and set off again as soon as I do. I strip off my flannel shirt next, and now I’m trudging along in my flannel-lined pants, heavy wool socks, boots and bra. I lag. They pause. I catch up. They go on.

The third time this happens — it’s not even hour two — I tell the other chicks to go ahead without me. I’ll wait on the path and rejoin them when they pass me on their way back down. This gives me more than four hours to consider my blunder in signing up for this hike, and to find the next flight home.

a photo shows author Patricia McCormick joined on a hike. She is posed in front of rugged, mountainous terrain.

Author Patricia McCormick joined an all-women hiking trip in Utah.

Courtesy Patricia McCormick

Eight months earlier, my marriage had ended when I found out my husband had been having an affair. For more than 12 years. Since then, I’d spent much of that time crying, blaming myself and wondering how I could’ve been so blind.

“You didn’t suspect anything?” my friend Stella asked. We were out for a walk back home on Long Island when she stopped, hands on hips. Stella is a true-crime writer, smart, savvy, skeptical by nature. There’s no judgment in her question — she’s a sleuth looking for clues — but sometimes when friends ask the same thing, I sense a whiff of blame, an implied criticism of me.

I tell her the truth: I didn’t suspect a thing.

I understand why people ask. Some, I think, are inquiring on behalf of their own marriages, the way you ask about symptoms of the latest flu. Do I have it? Could I catch it?

Meanwhile, I’d scoured my four-decade-long marriage, desperately looking for what I missed, for the moment when I could say, “Ah, yes. Now I see what he was really up to!” I’d waited for an avalanche of memories, refracted through this new version of reality. But nope. I never really had that aha moment.

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A photo shows author Patricia McCormick on a scenic hike in Utah. She is in a creek bed between two giant rock formations.

Utah’s spectacular landscape helped the author see a life for herself post-divorce.

Courtesy Patricia McCormick

I’d also canvassed everyone I knew, pleaded with them to tell me if they saw signs I missed. Our housekeeper. A colleague of my ex. His oldest friend from Pennsylvania. Even our kids. I’m a problem-solver, a journalist. If the person at the heart of the story — me — didn’t see what was happening, maybe I needed other sources. More than that, I felt as though my writerly powers of observation had been thoroughly discredited. But no one, it seemed, suspected a thing.

I finally turned to my mentor in a program where I’d volunteered and asked her for analysis of my ex. “He’s addicted to attention, to getting little bumps of self-esteem from others,” she said. “And, you know, there’s a reason you married him. You’re a codependent.”

I told her I liked it better when we were analyzing my ex.

She also told me, plainly but kindly, that I had to let this go. She sounded like a high school coach talking to a player who’d just taken a hit. "Walk it off,” she said.

Which explains why I signed on for what is starting to feel like The Amazing Race: Golden Bachelorette Edition. A strenuous hike would be good for me, I thought; it would prove that I can do difficult things.

Except that I couldn’t. Which is what I am starting to believe after an hour or so of sitting at the side of the path, smiling wanly at hikers going by who give me pitiful looks and offer to call for help.

But then, mostly out of embarrassment, I get to my feet, despite my promise to the trip leader to stay in place, and start up the hill. At my pace. I plan to go only as far as I like, just to keep moving, but after two hours of steady, slow and satisfying effort, I see that I can keep going, that I want to keep going, that I have to keep going. After another two hours I arrive at the lookout, feeling fine and dandy.

I spot the rest of the group way out on a rock ledge, scrambling, crab-walking, crawling, grabbing onto chains to keep from falling almost 6,000 feet down. I do not feel the need to join them.

I don’t even let them know I’ve made it to the summit. I simply enjoy my private triumph and take in the view. It is as spectacular as advertised. Otherworldly. A view that goes on and on, limitless, or at least limited only by the inadequacy of human vision.

This, I realize, is what I came for. Not to prove to myself that I can do difficult things. I am already doing a very difficult thing trying to put together a new life as a suddenly single senior. I wonder now why I thought I needed to put on a 30-pound backpack and flannel-lined pants to prove this to myself. I suppose I thought the experience would make literal what I’ve been experiencing. But no, I see now: I came for the vista. For the sense of possibility. To remind myself that beyond what I can see is what I can imagine.

I understand, then, that I’m finished looking backward. That would be like putting my hat, gloves, fleece and flannel shirt back on for the descent. From this point on, I’ll look forward. To my new life, whatever shape that may take.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.