How jewellery designer Samantha Wills found out her partner was cheating

The jewellery designer and ‘it girl’ details the moment she reached breaking point after discovering her partner had been unfaithful - not once, but eight times.

Finding out through text messages that your partner is cheating is not uncommon. I wished I felt angry, because anger is at least a sign of energy and strength. I had neither.

The days that followed played out in a silent film of shadows waltzing on my bedroom wall and ceiling. The clock ticked interminably and I was barely capable of putting a sentence together.

Privately, I was falling apart, but publicly I had some very big jobs that I was contracted to fulfill.

I thought I was consumed entirely by heartbreak, but the reality was that it was a convergence of everything. Not only was I exhausted, but my body was also trying in many different ways to tell me to take better care of my health. But I didn’t listen to what she was trying to tell me.

Between work, the travel and trying to hold a broken relationship together, when it came to my health, my constant refrain was: “I don’t have time right now, I’ll deal with that later.”

”Privately, I was falling apart.” (Picture: Supplied)

The pain that was washing over me during this time was not just from trying to process Jasper’s* betrayal but also because I was reckoning with the fact that I had attached every ounce of my self-worth to this relationship.

I think that may be the hardest deceit to process – that of self-betrayal. The danger of affixing your self-worth to anything or anyone external is that your sense of worthiness evaporates when that person or thing is gone.

Everything felt like it was crumbling around me, and the only strength I had at this point was a bottle of prescription-grade sleeping tablets.

We had agreed to meet that Sunday afternoon. His all-too-familiar knock echoed down my hallway. For the last three years, the sound of that arrival would have had me running towards the door. Today, my feet moved slowly and silently towards it.

The large hall mirror reflected back the frame of a woman I didn’t even recognise. The anxiety of the last three weeks was evident in my body – my shoulder bones protruded and my once-tight jeans hung loosely on my hips. I opened the door.

“Everything felt like it was crumbling around me.” (Picture: Instagram)

“Hi,” he said. His eyes were as sad as I had ever seen them. “Come in,” I replied.

We sat on my couch and, like strangers, made polite small talk until the small talk turned to silence. Unable to sit in it any longer and gathering every ounce of courage that I could muster, I finally turned towards him.

“I need to ask you,” I said, quietly, “how long has this affair been going on?” He was quiet for a while. I didn’t try to say anything. He looked up at me, then back down to the floor.

“Which one?” he said.

I took a sharp, short breath. “How... how many have there been?” I asked.

Silence.

“At least eight,” he finally replied. I couldn’t breathe.

“Please,” I begged, “please don’t leave me,” my eyes desperately pleading with him. He stood up without looking at me and said he had to go.

As the door closed behind him, the darkness flooded into my apartment. Without standing, I found my way from the couch to the floor. I curled up in the tightest ball I could, hugging my knees to my chest and just sobbed. I had finally reached the bottom.

I landed in Melbourne two weeks later. The morning was spent in hair and make-up, and only four hours after stepping off the plane, I was dressed for a day of hosting the Yellowglen [sparkling wines] marquee.

The eyes of the nation fall on Flemington during the Spring Racing Carnival in Australia, which for many is more about the fashion than the sport of horseracing.

As with any ambassador role, contracts stipulate a certain amount of social-media posts you have to publish over an agreed period, and posting multiple times a day across multiple platforms provides a large podium for people to weigh in with their thoughts and opinions delivered via comments and direct messages.

@SamanthaWills You’re much more f*ckable now you’ve lost the chubby weight. That’s a compliment BTW. Hit me up, baby.

@SamanthaWills Why are you starving yourself, SW?!?! I thought you were a better role model to women than this. You’ve just lost a follower. Hope you’re proud of yourself for adding to the body dysmorphia epidemic. What a fraud you turned out to be. That blood on your hands sure will be hard to wash off.

@SamanthaWills Eat something. You look disgusting.

Samantha Wills features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

Spring Racing was the biggest event on Yellowglen’s marketing calendar.

Everyone on the team had worked so hard on the new packaging and brand direction, and it was at this carnival that we were launching it all. In a weirdly dystopian experience, giant billboard-sized images and decals from the new Yellowglen campaign with my face plastered across them were on every flat surface at the Flemington Racecourse.

The image was from the photo shoot we’d done just after I had found out about Jasper, but in the image I look like the happiest girl in the world. I stared at the girl on the billboard. I didn’t even recognise her.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. This is an edited extract from Of Gold And Dust by Samantha Wills (Allen & Unwin, $32.99), on sale Tuesday.

Originally published as How jewellery designer Samantha Wills found out her partner was cheating