'Alone: A Love Story' reveals the confusing heartbreak of infidelity

Michelle Parise is a diligent note-taker. She also doodles a lot.

When she's on the phone, or sitting at her desk, she writes down parts of the conversation and usually includes a doodle or two.

It's a creative outlet for her. She writes her diary entries like short stories.

It's a practice she kept up as she became a wife, and a mother. And it was an outlet that helped her cope after she found her husband was unfaithful to her, and as her marriage fell apart.

Those notes helped Parise tell the stories in her new CBC podcast, Alone: A Love Story.

Alone is about the heartbreak, confusion, compromise and sense of loss that come with betrayal. It's beautifully written and produced.

You can find the audio to all 10 episodes of the podcast, and also find pictures of Parise's doodles and notes in her blog posts at Alone: A Love Story.

Parise spoke with Day 6 host Brent Bambury about her experience and her stories, an interview you can hear by clicking on the 'Listen' button just above this text. However, we weren't able to include their entire conversation in this week's show, so we thought we'd include a few of the omitted questions and answers here:

BRENT: This is your story, but this is also the story of the person who betrayed you. So what did you believe you owed your ex-husband when you decided to tell this story?

MICHELLE: I feel like I owed it to him not to tell too much of his story, because that's his story to tell. So I was really careful about the things I said and didn't say. There are a lot of things I didn't put in there because I don't think it's my place to do that. I don't want to stick it to him at all.

Obviously I co-parent with him, so I think he's a good person and a good parent to our daughter. So basically, I really wanted to be truthful to the moments — in so much as I could be truthful to them — because they are only my side of the moments. I wanted to make it more about my experience of what happened rather than about what he was thinking and his motivation, because I can't guess at that and that's not my story to tell.

BB: Did you feel you had to ask his permission to tell this story at all?

MP: No. I didn't.

BB: How did he react when you told him you were making a podcast?

MP: He's always been quite supportive of my writing and my art. He saw early drafts of some of the chapters. I don't even want to paraphrase what he said to me because I feel like that's a private conversation that we had.

He's supportive of me and always has been in that sense.

BB: Your dad also makes an appearance [in the podcast] and you say that when his marriage with your mom ended, he went into a spiral of grief. Do you think there was something about your grief that came from that experience or was an echo of that experience?

MP: I don't know, Dr. Brent. That's really interesting. I don't want to talk too much about details of that, but he really went in a bad way. I have a huge family and there's tons of divorce — even though we're Catholic. I saw jilted people act in crazy ways and do bad things or fight. Not my dad, but just in general.

All I saw at the end of that was: if you're angry and you're hurt, and you can win in court and you can win custody, and you can win a house and you can win money, or whatever, you haven't won anything. Because the other person doesn't want to be with you anymore.

I knew I was not going to do that. That was instinctual. I was just immediately like: 'We are working together to split this house and this family and move across the street from each other for my daughter.'

BB: How did your dad and the rest of your family respond to Alone?

MP: Well, he hasn't heard it yet. I tried on several occasions to have a conversation with him about it, but he kind of talked over me and brushed it aside.

I basically wrote him an email where I said: 'Listen, I know you're going to be proud of me, but at the same time you're probably going to be disappointed or embarrassed. And I'm sorry, but I talk about sex quite openly. I talk about drinking. I talk about smoking. And I swear a lot. You've been such an influence on me as a writer and you've just been this important person in my life. I hope that even if you're disappointed and embarrassed, that you're still proud of me and you're still OK with it.

The only conversation we've had so far is that he's really upset that I swear so much. 
 

To hear the full interview with Michelle Parise, download our podcast or click the 'Listen' button at the top of this page.