Survivors Blog: 

Elizabeth

Editor's Note: For the unfaithful spouse, the cycle of lying often begins long before the infidelity itself. In today's post, an unfaithful spouse shares her personal journey of untangling a lifetime of deception, facing her deepest fears of rejection, and doing the agonizing—but necessary—work of pulling the truth into the light. "Liar." "Cheater." Just reading those words probably makes your stomach drop. I know the feeling. It’s a sickening, heavy sensation that makes you want to bury your head and hide. When you are the one wearing those labels, the spiral of shame can feel like drowning. You don't have the strength to face the reality of your brokenness without also knowing that redemption is possible. If you are an unfaithful spouse, I know where you are sitting. And I know you have to accept the possibility for change and repentance, or that shame will swallow you whole. So, how did we get here? Swimming in the Water of Deception It’s hard to look back on my life and pinpoint the exact moment I started choosing lies over the truth. Like water is to a fish, dishonesty was just something I lived with. That might sound strange to some, but a better way to explain it is that I was always living with fear. I was terrified that the truth was inherently ugly. I didn't see much repentance, acceptance, or forgiveness in my family of origin, so I learned early on to protect myself. I remember being in first grade. I had a harsh, strict teacher who clicked her heels when she walked—she was the opposite of warm and nurturing. One day, out of pure boredom, I started doodling on the corner of my desk with a pencil. When my teacher caught me, I was immediately sent to the office. She wrote a note for me to give to my parents and assigned me to write "I WILL NOT WRITE ON MY DESK" 100 times. It took me almost a week to hand that note to my parents. I was terrified, and I hated my teacher for exposing me. To cope, I justified it. What’s the big deal? I can erase it. It’s just pencil. Justification became my defense mechanism of choice. My deeply defensive heart didn't start with infidelity; it started in first grade. Why We Choose the Lie Is this sin and shame inherent to my nature? Partly, yes. There is a deeply selfish, stubborn part of me that wants to point the finger and avoid responsibility. Lying is wrong, and anyone who has ever been betrayed can testify to how thoroughly deception destroys a relationship. But here is the hard truth about the unfaithful heart: being told I was wrong was never a good motivator for me to change. In fact, it only deepened my resolve to bury and hide the guilt I felt. What I desperately needed—but felt I didn't deserve—was acceptance and understanding. When I finally began to understand that my lying came from a place of deep-seated fear, the lights came on. I was terrified of conflict, afraid of losing people, and paralyzed by the thought of losing acceptance. Deep down, I wanted to be honest, but I never figured out how to do it—until Affair Recovery. It was just easier to lie. Or so I thought. The Cost of Hiding I told myself my lies were keeping me safe. In reality, my lying kept me distant, unavailable, and hollow. Yes, my dishonesty devastated my husband and almost cost us our marriage, but it also completely crippled my own ability to be intimate. Rehabilitation is possible. I am living proof of it. But it requires walking through the fire. Telling my husband the entire, unfiltered truth about my infidelity and my past was the most difficult thing I have ever done. Working with a counselor to uncover those childhood defense mechanisms felt like pulling a rope of thorns and needles out of my chest, through my throat, and into the open air. It was agonizing. But it was necessary. What is not spoken, cannot be healed. Choose Honesty If you are the betrayed spouse reading this: you did not deserve to be lied to. On behalf of every unfaithful person out there, including me, we had no right to transfer our junk, our fear, and our shame onto you. But if you are the liar reading this: choose reform. Stop justifying the pencil on the desk. Stop letting the fear of rejection dictate your life. Dig deep and figure out the sickness and the root of your deception. Do I still get the urge to lie today? Sometimes. I'll catch myself wanting to exaggerate or omit a detail to avoid a perceived rejection from my husband. But I aim to push through and share it anyway. And that icky, heavy feeling in my chest? It always disappears the second the truth is spoken. You can breathe again. But first, you have to choose honesty. Are you looking to understand the why behind your affair? Our course, Hope for Healing, is designed to help you answer this question and find the healing you need in order to move forward and find freedom.

What do the words 'I'm sorry' really mean? They are used so frequently that they don't seem to carry much weight. If you are like me, however, they are the first thing we mutter when we realize we have made a mistake or done something wrong. When it comes to the pain of infidelity, the words 'I'm sorry' have to feel downright insulting to a betrayed spouse. As they should, because it isn't enough. The truth of the matter is, it will never be enough to undo the damage that is caused by breaking marital vows and by the deception that comes with being unfaithful. 'I'm sorry' is something we say when we bump into someone accidently or something we offer when we are running late. Most of the time, just uttering 'I'm sorry' comes across as selfish, because it has more to do with ourselves than what we did to the other person. This brings us to amends. What is an amend? For starters, amends are much different than saying 'I'm sorry.' Amends cannot solve the problem of infidelity, but they differ from an apology in that they are a stepping stone on a different path. Amends are the ways we, as unfaithful spouses, start the process of understanding what we have done and beginning to change course. Here are some additional thoughts on what an amend is and what it is not. Making amends is a lifestyle, not a one-time choice. It is about the beginning of becoming a new person. This will require that we not just hit repeat on the amend we are trying to make on any given day but, instead, commit to a process of letting our hearts be turned inside out and seeing our spouse with new eyes. Amends require discipline and consistency. My favorite definition of discipline is deciding what you want most instead of what you want right now. I sometimes struggle with a "right now" mentality. I confess that I still get caught up in what will make me feel better instead of what will help me to be better. Making amends must be done with a long-term vision, not for short-term satisfaction. Seeking short-term satisfaction is what got us into trouble in the first place. An amend is not a confession. While confessing what we have done is important, it is not the same as making amends. Confession is still about us, the pain we caused, and the details of our brokenness and sin. If we are standing on opposite sides of a river, confession is on one side, where we are. The hurt party is on the other side. To make an amend is to take the first step across the bridge in order to see and reach out to the person we have hurt by our choices. Here are some ways that I have tried to avoid making amends. Perhaps they will resonate with you as well: In the midst of a painful conversation, I will shut down and cry. My tears will tell me that I am hurt and being vulnerable, but I often need to give more. As a woman, I find it difficult in these moments to rise up and be strong. Instead of saying what needs to be said, I let my tears speak, and they confuse my spouse even further. I cannot confuse my shedding of tears with making amends. While my tears demonstrate the attitude and posture of my softening heart, they don't take the place of real words, which my husband needs. He is not a mind reader, and my tears, while important, can never take the place of saying what I need to say. I confess that I have used sex in ways that aren't helpful in our marriage. I need to look at this area more closely, even as I type it, but it is a starting point and a confession that I have not always gotten this area right. I have had the tendency to over-apologize and take too much responsibility, instead of carefully looking at what shortcomings I actually need to own. This is a blanket attempt to not do the careful moral inventory that is necessary for recovery. I think it far better that I sometimes say nothing instead of filling the space with half-hearted attempts at over-apologizing. Keep growing. To Healing, Elizabeth

My husband and I have two teenagers in our house, and we are trying our best to raise them into responsible and caring adults. For those of you that have already been there and done that, I'm hoping you can look back on that time with a smile. You survived it. Teenagers, after all, can be quite fun, and they can add a lot of energy to the house. For those of you that haven't or might not ever get a chance to raise these strange little people that look like adults and make you think they are adults (when in fact they are not), it really hasn't been as bad as some people will tell you. The hardest part, I have found, is that teenagers are brutally honest when it comes to their ideas about you as parents. You rarely can "fake" it with them. They will sniff out insincerity and hypocrisy like nobody's business. And they are like little mirrors reflecting back to you the areas in our lives where we still need to do our own "work". The challenge that we keep running into is that we really don't know what we are doing most of the time--especially with our oldest. We have never done this before so we often have no frame of reference. And winging it doesn't exactly feel like good parenting. What has been heart-wrenching for us at times is just how much dealing with teenagers has been like trying to deal with the aftermath of infidelity. Not long ago, our teenage daughter went over to a friend's house on a Saturday night. The ever-evolving tandem of growing responsibility and trust has made its bumps in our family before, but this night the wheels definitely fell off the bus. All seemed to go according to her plan, and she came home at midnight when she was supposed to. However, the following morning, when we went to use the same car that she had driven the night before, there was mud all over the rearview mirror and on the tires. That was really strange, because the friend she went to visit does not live on a dirt road. When we asked her about it, she told the partial truth. Insert trigger number one: lying to my husband. After what I have put him through with my affairs, the man truly needs a lifetime of truth and nothing but the absolute truth. He handled the situation with grace, but lying is definitely a trigger for us. Not the kind that keeps us stuck like they used to, but the pin-prick "ouch" feeling is still there. Trigger number two would be my shame. It is interesting raising these teenagers, because while I am not proud of it, I completely understand their tendency to only share what they want us to see and know. Share the good; hide the bad. I did that most of my life. While I chose not to let shame take over, it does rear its ugly head in situations like this, and that feeling of wanting to run and bury my face in a rock started to rise up in my chest. Before you think the obvious, let me say it: I am an adult now. I need and want to act like one. I am not a teenager, and while a lot of my development got arrested there, I am eternally grateful for the gift of being able to choose a better, more mature and lasting perspective on love and relationships. As the story unfolded with our daughter, we finally got to the bottom of what happened. This took several hours, and we ran the gamut of emotions: anger, frustration, silence, tears, repeat. She ended up going to a place where she had no business going so late on a Saturday night. She and her friends got stuck on a dirt road because they got lost. In order to hide the mud, they went to the carwash at 11:00 pm. However, they left mud under the car and on the mirrors, because, I'm guessing, it is pretty difficult to wash a car in the dark. Seems like a whole lot of effort to cover their mistakes when the truth is so much easier. This is where it hit home. I cried as I saw my daughter start to confess. I know that had to be very difficult for her, because the shame was written all over her face. I cried even more when my husband gently told her that there would be a punishment but that we love her and she is allowed a do-over. He reminded her that we only care so much because she is so valuable to us and that we want her safe. He also told her that next time she finds herself stuck on a dirt road in the mud with her friends, we would come and get her instead of her panicking and fearing the loss of love from us. We forgave her. I hate to think of my daughter alone in a carwash in the middle of the winter late at night. She forgot how much she was loved and how much she mattered. Today, I hope that despite whatever you face, you can choose to know you matter. You can choose to remember you are loved. You can stop running and hiding and covering up. Or you can choose to let go and start to forgive. This won't necessarily mean you will get what you want or that you can change or control the outcome, but you can start to choose differently. To Healing, Elizabeth

Unfaithful Spouses, You have been working really hard. Since discovery, you have received a chance at a new life, and you are determined to change your behavior. You want to see crumbs of hope in your marital relationship, but all you see is pain. What is likely underneath that pain is a violation so deep that you might not even be able to comprehend it for the first year. Maybe you feel shut out as your betrayed spouse acts in ways you don't think are beneficial. Perhaps you don't understand why your betrayed spouse keeps information from you--even something as innocent as them meeting with a close friend for lunch and not telling you about it. Maybe it is more serious than that, and you see them becoming careless with their own behavior. Maybe they start drinking too much or not telling you when they will be home. Or maybe you even see them falling into the same temptations you have had, and they are seeking out any kind of solace or comfort from another in the form of flirtation or a revenge affair. While it is easy to only see or judge the behavior, I think it is more important to look for the pain underneath it. We, after all, are asking for that same grace in light of our own journeys. Until a betrayed spouse feels some kind of assurance and small guarantee of safety (this will usually happen only after months and months of consistency, no new information, and evidence that we are working diligently to become a new person), they will likely continue to shut down. The likely motive? Self-protection. In my own marriage, it was incredibly difficult for me to understand why my husband no longer shared some information with me after disclosure. I was working SO hard. I was taking the Affair Recovery classes; I was going to counseling; I had stopped all contact with the affair partner. In a nutshell, I was desperate, afraid, and doing everything possible to turn our relationship around. Yet, my husband continued to withdraw from me. It might have been as simple as him having lunch with his brother or a meeting with his boss that he would not talk about. I no longer had access to even the most innocuous parts of his day. During that first year, I would always be so hurt by this. When I took it too personally, I would write stories in my head that told me he was trying to pay me back for what I did to him. (As is the case with so many situations in my life, I have discovered…I was wrong). Other times were much more serious. My husband is a by-the-book, straight-laced guy who oozes integrity. It was confusing and terrifying to all of the sudden find texts to other women that were so inconsistent with the man I knew him to be. I remember feeling saddened by my husband's behavior, all the while knowing I had done the same kinds of things to him. Fortunately, this was during the season of my life when I was going to counseling twice a week. With God's grace and the help of my therapist, I was able to speak to my husband with kindness, grace, and a boatload of humility. Because of my own infidelity, I very much knew the distraction from pain that even flirtation can provide. I remember approaching him with so much fear and a heavy heart. I questioned at first whether I had the right to even speak into situations like this in light of what I had done the year before. After all, didn't I deserve this? Fortunately, I did speak into it. Although I can't remember my exact words, I know I spoke directly and kindly. I was direct in that I called out the behavior, talked about how much it hurt, and asked him to stop. I was kind in that I remember saying I understood how easy it was for him to be in this place, as I had been there many times before. I didn't judge him as much as I begged him not to make the same mistakes I had made. That conversation stands out in my memory as one of the most painful and honest talks of our entire recovery. Time is a gift that allows the lens in which we view our situations to change. Time is funny like that. Because of the gift of time, I see the wounded spouse's journey through their pain much differently than I did before. Now I can see, with a wider lens, the path of my own destruction, and I am much less focused on what my husband did or didn't do. Please realize that I am not addressing a relationship in which there is physical harm or abuse. If that is the case, or you fear that it is, please seek wisdom. Run, don't walk, to a trusted friend, pastor, or counselor. Get help and outside influence. If that is not the case and you are simply frustrated, try to continue to see things from another perspective than your own. Try to keep one nostril keenly attuned to our own inner cesspool, as C.S. Lewis so eloquently reminds us. Chances are, if you are being left out, it is probably more about your spouse trying to protect themselves from further pain than about them trying to hurt you. When a betrayed spouse is hurting, they might do or say things that make it difficult to love. Pain can do that to people-- eliciting a primal response that is not pretty. I know words were said to me that didn't come from my husband's heart but from his pain. It is wise to know the difference. To healing, Elizabeth

Today, my heart is reminded of the pain that once was, the pain that so many of you find yourselves in today. For me, it is a distant, tender scar. It is healing, but if I stare at it long enough or touch it in just the right ways, the pain can all come rushing back. If you are in the middle of this kind of suffering, you are likely desperate for relief of any kind. Violently painful memories have carved your heart into pieces, and maybe you can't even remember what life looked like before this whirlwind of torment took over your life. Suffering takes on different forms for different people, but it is important to remember that both the repentant Unfaithful and forgiving Betrayed will experience torment. Though it might be tempting to keep score or claim that the Unfaithful has forfeited their right to feel badly, it does no one any good to go down that road. It isn't fair. It just is. To say that an unfaithful spouse doesn't experience pain is a bit like saying the same of a drunk driver who caused a crash, killing an innocent bystander. Pain and suffering are natural consequences. For the betrayed spouse, the analogy still holds. You might not have been behind the wheel, and you may have never seen this coming, but here you are: a casualty left in the rubble. Today, in the midst of whatever degree of pain you are feeling, I offer you this: God is near. He is, perhaps, closer than He has ever been. He hovers over you like a blanket, and He sees you. He does not waste pain. He didn't create it, but He will use it. I often don't comprehend why certain things have to die before new life begins, but I know and have seen that God does His best work in the desert. If you don't have a religious faith, then I invite you to look to peace or love or the universe instead--or whatever you can believe in today. Just believe in something. I know you're tired. You are so ready for this all to be over. But God sees your aches, and He hears your cries. He sees the stains on your pillows from your tears. What does it look like to lean in closer to that tenderness? Perhaps go and bury yourself in His word. If that's not your thing, maybe try to focus on someone else's suffering for a while. Sometimes, nothing helps us with our own pain as much as serving others. Either way, we can refuse to let pain be a place where we camp out forever. As Viktor Frankl reminds us: Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. What is to give light must endure burning. I choose light. -Elizabeth

Self-Love. Self-Worth. Self-Compassion. These are words that I have had to unlearn and relearn—words that I thought I knew, but now realize I misunderstood for most of my life. Now, they actually mean something to me. Growing up, I would attend church with my mom and siblings. I had just enough of a smattering of church "sayings" and knowledge about the Bible to become familiar with them. But honestly, there was far more I did not understand than what I did understand. Most of the time, when I went to church as a kid, I always had a sense I was in trouble or "doing it wrong." I never felt a sense of belonging, and I remember desperately wanting to believe everything I was learning was true, but not understanding how it could be true. I would see a picture on the wall of this Jesus, wearing a white robe and surrounded by sheep, and I would get confused. This certainly wasn't someone that I felt could relate to the doubts and discomfort I was feeling. I would hear how much this "Jesus" guy loved me, but then I would also hear how bad my sinfulness was, and I didn't know what to do with either. I pretty much came away with the assumption that I needed to clean up my act or I was going to be judged. Maybe that was why my father never went to church. One idea that I would hear a lot in church was the "Golden Rule"—the idea that we should "do unto others what you would have them do unto you." What that meant to me was that you were supposed to elevate everyone else's needs above your own. To a little girl who was already questioning if she mattered in this world, it just further cemented this idea in my head that I should be last. It was a junk yard dog mentality that said, "just take the scraps." Everyone else must have something you don't, so keep your doubts, insecurities, and questions to yourself. When you are the unfaithful spouse, it is easy to adopt this mindset and assume that after what you have done, you deserve to be treated like dirt. It is easy to see yourself as dirt. However, this is wrong and simply untrue. We can't change the consequences of what we have done, but we don't have to keep treating ourselves badly in the process. Even if you don't go to church or believe in the Bible, I think we can all take something away from Jesus. He lived to help us all become better humans. His concept of loving others as we love ourselves was the basis of his ministry. Where I got this wrong was looking at His words backwards. I think Jesus was saying that all along, we are to love others as we love ourselves, but here's where I missed it: I was supposed to love ME first. I was supposed to figure out who I was, fill my cup, ask for help, and admit my own shame first. Instead of loving others well, I didn't love them at all. I was loving them just as I secretly saw myself: shameful, mistrusting, and hopeless. If I had begun to see myself the way God sees me, I would have maybe known that it was okay to start to ask for what I needed. I would have actually trusted the words of church leaders who had offered time and time again for me to bring my secrets and shame to the foot of the cross. Instead of holding onto information, I could have trusted my husband when he had begged me to tell him who I really was. I could have loved him much better had I had learned to love myself. If you are an unfaithful spouse navigating how to come back from the really poor choices you have made, I ask that we stop with the assumption of, "this is what I deserve," and, "after what I did, who can blame them for hating me." Trust me when I say that this will not help anyone heal. Jesus tells us that there is no condemnation in Him. Self-kindness is one of the most difficult concepts to grasp, especially when we are drowning in shame or your betrayed spouse is hurting. To treat ourselves with compassion when we feel like we deserve stones, seems unfair. However, self-condemnation will actually prevent healing. It won't change the consequences, and it will actually keep us stuck in a pretty selfish and awful place. The old saying, "you can't give away what you don't have" is true. It is only by kindness that I have figured out how to love myself and others the way I always wanted to. Learning to see, like, and love myself in spite of what I have done has been the biggest motivator for change. To love others as we love ourselves is to also learn to take care of ourselves just as we would take care of someone else. It has meant that I have had to treat myself with more kindness and understanding than I am often comfortable with. -Elizabeth

This is a question that almost all of us have asked or heard at some point during recovery from infidelity. It might have been screamed in anger, or muttered in a barely audible cry of exasperation. And it is a question we often hear over and over again, "How could you?" It is a good question, and it lies at the heart and sum of all of the pain created when people like me have affairs. It is as if we look to the heavens and we cry out in our pain, a guttural "why?" While this is an important question, there is rarely an answer that satisfies the need to understand this type of pain. After the aftermath of my own infidelity came out, my husband did not sleep for months. He lost over twenty pounds. He threw himself into work and disassociated from the world. He did not tell anyone and he lost any resemblance of joy in our home-life or hobbies. He retreated into a coma of what appeared to be complete non-existence. The pain was so deep, it was if he had detached himself from life itself. Even his looks towards me silently and contemptuously shouted, "how could you?" Making sense of what I had done was like trying to find a needle in the proverbial haystack. I wanted so badly to do something. I wanted to reach him somehow. But no matter what I did or didn't do, I could not begin to touch his pain. To him, I was pain. Never in his life had he felt the kind of rejection I had handed to him. Justice for my actions demanded inner protest in him. This was difficult to understand as an unfaithful drowning in my own shame. I had cut him so close to his heart. I had gutted him. And out of that gutting came a primal rage within him. I believe most people react in one of two ways to such pain: They will either lash out in an attempt to cause the same kind of pain that was done to them (screaming, anger, revenge) or they will go to the other extreme of complete withdrawal and isolation, even contemplation of suicide. My husband went the withdrawal route—he shut down. To say a betrayed spouse's heart is broken is an understatement. Over the course of days that turned into weeks, months that turned into years, he started to find his center. His center was deep within him, next to the same heart that had been shattered. And he discovered he no longer wanted to hurt me back. Was it the riskier choice? Possibly. But, back to the question of "how could you?" We have never answered that, but it is a question that's importance has faded over time. Recovery has shown us how deeply broken we BOTH are. And through the years of going through this, we have gotten pretty good at stopping the scorekeeping. A personal example for me is what happened recently—and yes, this was recent. One of my favorite sayings from Rick Reynolds is, "you can be miles down the highway and still just a few feet from the bar ditch." I was out and about and ran into an acquaintance that is friends with my former affair partner. Mind you, I have really tried to follow all of the wisdom Affair Recovery offers to not give airtime to any thoughts of the affair partner. However, this particular day, the woman mentioned him. I brushed it off, but then my dreams were haunted for several nights about him. I consciously did not want to give it airtime, but the triggers kept coming; until one night, a few days later, I did something really dumb. I looked up on the internet something the woman had mentioned to me in the conversation. For no other reason than stupidity and wanting the satisfaction that he was a loser. My pride won. What happened next? At first, there was a really awful and broken part of me that instinctively wanted to just hide that information about my conversation, the dreams, and the computer search. I suppose that part of me may always be there. But, I now know God can give me the strength to be different and change. I know that, as crazy as it sounds, I want to tell these things to my husband. I did by the way, and we usually can now handle conversations like this with grace and ease. They usually end with something like, "I know that is hard to admit, but I'm glad you were honest with me." My former life and ways of handling issues is over. Am I still broken? Yes. I just choose to be honest, above all else, in small things and big things. I think this is the only way our marriage will survive. "How could you?" for me, always, always, always starts with dishonesty. Period. Many of you write in and ask what to do if your spouse isn't safe. What do you do if your spouse won't forgive? All are many versions of the same "how" and "why" that are often far bigger questions than one person can answer in a single day. If that is you, I leave you with this: What is your center? Who were you before your spouse broke your heart? If you are the unfaithful, who were you before you started heading down a path that took you from fidelity, integrity, and honesty? Who do you want to become? This will require continuous digging to deeper places. If you haven't taken Hope for Healing or Harboring Hope, I suggest you start there. If you have taken those courses, what is keeping you from leading or mentoring? In all of the times I have taken Hope for Healing, I learn something new every single time. And with each new class, I am reminded quickly of how I came to a place of choosing infidelity. It is a reminder to me that I want to love people closest to me, not cause them pain. How could I? I did. All I know is I don't ever want to go back there again. Elizabeth If you'd like to read more on this topic, please check out the Affair Recovery series titled, "How Could You?" It might help answer questions that have popped up for you in the recovery process. Harboring Hope registration opens January 22nd. Subscribe to be notified. Harboring Hope is our online course for the betrayed to heal after infidelity. Our courses often sell out within a few short hours. Don't miss it! 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To forgive somebody is to say one way or another "You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you have done, and though we will both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. One day, I still hope we can be friends". -Frederick Buechner This is one of my favorite definitions of forgiveness. I don't know about you, but I don't think there is anything easy about forgiveness. Neither the betrayed or unfaithful spouse can get very far into the recovery process without having to confront this issue. For the betrayed, they must choose to ultimately offer forgiveness for what seems unforgiveable. But what does a betrayed spouse do when they keep getting hurt? How do you forgive when someone seems to care less about you? For the unfaithful (and that would be me), forgiveness gets pretty complicated because it requires me to look in the mirror. I have to choose to face all of the seemingly "unforgiveable" things I have done and said and ultimately choose to forgive myself. I personally found the biggest stumbling block to my own forgiveness has been pride. It took a long time (almost two years) for my husband to forgive what I have done to our marriage. He admits to me he has always wrestled with his pride. Pride told him that he did not deserve what was done to him. Pride also told him he shouldn't forgive me, because there was to be no guarantee I wouldn't do this again. Pride told him that he had a right to hold onto his anger and make me pay for what I had done. It was only God who quietly kept asking him to exchange his pride for forgiveness. It has taken equally as long for me to accept and believe his gift of forgiveness. I first have had to forgive myself. Which looking at what I had done, seemed impossible. Because I have to admit, when I first started to accept the reality of the awfulness of my choices, all I wanted to do was run and hide. Shame was my ammunition to fight pride. It took a lot of months for the fog to lift and once I became curious about my own actions instead of judgmental towards them. Once I started to let go of some of the self-hatred, I was able to see and release myself all of those things I had actually been running from for so many years. Pride was the ugly little voice that kept whispering lies that I was somehow better than what I had done. Pride was behind the mask of my pretending. Both the unfaithful and betrayed will wrestle deeply with pride. I think to be human is to be prideful. And I once heard, if you have no idea what your faults are, it is likely pride. Like a cancer, pride can be a secret, destructive force that slowly eats away at our relationships…whether we stay married, we are separated or end up divorced. Pride is the ugly, silent, contemptuous whisper that says "I am really better than you because..." You can have forgiveness or pride but you can't have both. One of the reasons I can't wait to meet Jesus face to face someday is that I am fascinated by the idea that we will get to encounter someone that has absolutely zero pride and ego. And another reason I can't wait to meet Him is that He is able to offer complete forgiveness. Scripture tells us that God is able to look at us and not remember our sins at all. He doesn't see them. While I thank God for that, it is unfathomable to me because as mere mortals, we each have this thing called a memory. We have all heard that you can forgive, but you can't forget. Which is why one of the most helpful concepts I have learned of late has been the idea of "redemptive forgiveness". And this is the idea that we can (and must) simultaneously acknowledge what happened AND forgive. The memory of our affairs, the turmoil, the aftermath and the pain will always be with us. For all of us reading articles like these, infidelity is likely one of the most devastating things we will ever face in our lifetimes. Only when I am able to forgive myself, I can say "never again to I want to be in such pain and agony nor cause such pain and agony". Therefore, I choose to offer forgiveness of self AND receive my husband's gift of forgiveness. Today I am really grateful for that gift. Elizabeth

Today I am sharing with you something that someone sent to me after my dad died years ago. I have never forgotten it, and I share it with you today for encouragement wherever you are within the waves and wreckage of infidelity. (This was originally posted on the website thatericalper.com by someone unnamed) "My friend just died. I don't know what to do." A lot of people responded. Then there's one old guy's incredible comment that stood out from the rest that might just change the way we approach life and death. "Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents." "I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people that can't see." "As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that it was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang onto it for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive." "In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between the waves, there is life." "Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you'll find the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, and for the most part, you prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out on the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out." "Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."1 Here's to finding life between the waves. -Elizabeth originally posted on the website thatericalper.com by someone unnamed

I stink at being alone. I have never been alone; not even my time in my mother's womb was in solitude—I am a twin. I have always shared birthdays, rooms, busses, spotlights, cookies, bathrooms, etc. When I first arrived at college, I remember sitting in my new dorm room by myself. My soon-to-be roommate would never show. Apparently she got cold feet and withdrew from the university. I remember for the first time in my life having a very primal panicky feeling of "aloneness." This was the first of many times in my life when realized I did not like that feeling and felt the desperation to rid myself of it. Without a clue of how to deal with that desperate feeling within, I started to fill the emptiness with people. I was already an extrovert, so it wasn't too much of a stretch for me to start filling my time with boyfriends, bars, parties, friends, classmates, and people. In a college full of students, my fix was never far away. When I was with "people," I could be whoever they needed me to be. Fast-forward to the discovery of my affairs. I began to feel that similar, primal sense of fear of abandonment. Which sounds ludicrous because I was the one who "left." In what seemed like an instant, I realized that it was a very real possibility that I could be alone. My affair partner was not going to leave his wife; my husband didn't want to even look at me. I had no idea that there was a difference between being alone and being abandoned. As I started pretty intensive and necessary therapy, I began to unravel my lifelong battle with my relationship to other people. I still struggle with this. My natural and instinctive response to others is to placate and avoid conflict. I'm lousy at setting boundaries sometimes; at times, it still requires an act of God for me to simply utter the word, "No." Today I share with you something written by an Indian Jesuit priest and therapist. When I find myself discouraged and not doing well, I have to read this and remind myself where to find my strength. People are not my god, but boy how easy it is for me to idolize them. "Look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result, they have a stranglehold on you. See how they control your behavior by their approval or disapproval. They hold the power to ease your loneliness with their company, to send your spirits soaring with their praise, to bring you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection. Take a look at yourself spending almost every waking moment of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are living or dead. You live by their norms, conform to their standards, seek their company, desire their love, dread their ridicule, long for their applause, meekly submit to the guilt they lay upon you; you dare not go against the fashion in the way you dress or speak or act or even think. And observe how even when you control them you depend on them and are enslaved by them. People have become so much a part of your being that you cannot imagine living a life that is unaffected or controlled by them." -Anthony Demello Here's to letting go and filling ourselves with something–or Someone–bigger and better. Your fellow traveler in recovery, Elizabeth

When we entered into recovery from infidelity, there was a long season of disbelief—even though I was telling the truth. Granted, after what I had done to my marriage, I didn't deserve to be believed; nevertheless, it is a very disheartening and discouraging time. After discovery, I knew I had hit what many would call "rock bottom." I was so tired of my lies, my life, and myself—so I came clean. I told the entire truth about what I had done. For the first time in my life, it felt good to be rid of every secret and every "bad and shameful thing," and have it all out on the table. However, my husband did not believe me for many months; perhaps a more true statement was that he could not believe me. He would ask if there was more. He would ask if that was everything. There were times he would even come up with new information that would make me feel absolutely crazy. He would ask me if I had an inappropriate relationship with what seemed like any man we had known during our entire marital history. It was CRAZY-making. If I was already crazy, I certainly was convinced I was even more so by this point, because I started to question myself. I started to question everything. This wasn't necessarily a bad place now that I look back. Had I told him everything? What if I forgot something? Was I so good at lying and pretending that I didn't even know what the truth was anymore? His "believer" ability had been broken. And my trustworthiness was even more broken. If you find yourself struggling with this, I hope to share anything along the path of our journey to encourage you or to help you to see things from a different perspective. We all need each other in this. Fast-forward two years for us. Speaking of, I know there are days you wish there was a fast-forward button. The work of recovery is grueling and long and painstakingly slow. There were times when we really struggled so much that I wanted a fast-forward button so badly. There were times my husband was in such agony, I am certain that he wanted a rewind button to erase what I had done. But I digress, and back to the question. Why won't my spouse believe me? There is an element of "the boy who cried wolf" for us unfaithful. We are a wishy-washy bunch. We said we would do one thing, but we went and did another. Just because I had gotten to a place where I was open and honest, I failed to see a pretty big message of humility. Coming clean doesn't mean you're healthy Just because I told the truth–while it was a relief and a huge step of growth for me–really meant nothing to my betrayed spouse in light of all I had done. In his eyes, that truth must have paled in comparison to the pain and injustice I had caused. Just because an alcoholic takes his last sip doesn't exactly make him healthy. Disclosure was simply the jumping-off point. Yes, I had told the truth, but I still had–and still have–a LONG way to go in maturing the areas of trustworthiness and obedience. Don't take it personally. It's not about you. What I also needed to see was that my husband's unbelief wasn't about me. Part of his process had to be not believing me. He had to ask over-and-over to know the truth. In some weird way, I think he needed to hear me say the same things over-and-over to believe me. It is much the same with my own journey with my Savior. How many times have I had to hear that I am loved and forgiven before I actually believed it and lived it out? If your spouse still won't believe you, trust me when I say it is probably not about you. When my husband would not believe me it also set forth a primal sense of panic within me. A desperate feeling would wash over me that led to the fear that I would be abandoned or left alone. This thought was absolutely devastating to me. I, without a doubt, had absolutely no sense of maturity, obedience, or solidarity. Most people engaged in affairs usually do not. So it put me in a place of panic for a good while. Don't write stories in your head or make it harder than it needs to be After a while, the unfaithful spouse can easily start to go down a road of wrong-thinking. For me, this often looked like a black-or-white place: "He will never believe me. Why should I even bother telling the truth if it doesn't seem to matter?" Or, it can set up an even more dangerous proposition in the mind of an unfaithful spouse that might lead to the type of thinking that says something like, "This is too hard. They will never see that I am someone who can change or tell the truth, so I will just give up." It was so difficult to see any of this while we were in the middle of recovery. So many times, when I look back, I wish that I could have made it more about my betrayed spouse's journey and his process. Just because I had come to a place where I decided to get my act together and be honest didn't automatically mean that my spouse would be able to digest that. Instead of trying to control the outcome, I want to always remember what a mess I can be. I am a girl who would avoid pain at all costs, and it was very painful for me to feel the rejection of not being believed. Again, now I know it's not about me. So, what if your betrayed spouse still won't believe you? I think I have had to learn that ultimately it doesn't matter. As much as I wanted him to believe me, I needed to change ultimately for me. Focusing on his belief or disbelief derailed me from what I needed to do to become safe and responsible. Your spouse not believing you has nothing to do with what is necessary for you to grow. I had to change and mature for my own sake. And doing that has definitely benefited my marriage. As always, thanks for reading and letting me grow alongside you. To healing, Elizabeth

Dear Betrayed Wife, I am the other woman. By admitting that, I know I am the one person that truly and most easily deserves your hatred and your spite. I know I am a source of your anger and contempt. I am a huge source of your pain. Essentially, I am the person that is largely responsible for the ache in your heart that seems like it will never go away. I am quite certain you must periodically wish that I had never existed. Of course, I am making a huge presumption; I can hardly even begin to understand what things must look like on your side of the equation. However, when I start to put myself in your shoes, I can begin to imagine. When I put myself in your shoes, I have a tenderness that starts to enfold around my heart and chest. Often, I have thought that your life would be so much better if I were dead. If that were the case, you wouldn't have had to endure the nightmare of knowing what I stole from you. I have taken so much from you. By having an affair with your husband, a knife was stuck in your back. And I have to confess – I was the one holding the knife. All the while, I never thought of you. I only thought of myself. While you were making meals, taking your kids to school, ironing your husband's clothes, and running yourself ragged like any good wife and mother does to keep your family and household running, it was me who was stealing from you – behind your back and right under your nose. I flat-out lied to your face. I pretended I was your friend. I pretended I cared. I did this for months. I was the one enticing your husband away. Only a hypocrite would do something so callous, and that hypocrite was me. I wore the mask of "just friends" with your husband for many months. I'm certain I was so good at this charade that even you believed it. Surely, no one could betray you in the ways that I have. While you were at work, I was flirting with your husband. Many afternoons in his office, his phone calls were to me; they should have been to you. I soaked up the attention like a sponge. But the attention wasn't mine for the taking. You were the one that deserved it – that needed it. Add that to the long list of things I have taken from you. When you were spending weekends visiting your dying dad, I was doing the unthinkable. I was seducing your husband. I am that woman. And thinking of that brings such shame. As women, there is a code of honor and integrity that says that we are comrades, sisters, and friends. We are both wives and mothers, doing the very best we can to keep marriage, jobs, and families running. Even if I didn't know you very well, in theory, I was supposed to be your friend. I was supposed to be the one looking out for you. I was supposed to have your back. I did none of those things. Instead of supporting you, I betrayed you. If the tables were turned, I'm sure you would have never done to me what I have done to you. I had no right to cross those lines and take what wasn't mine. In doing what I did for the months leading up to discovery, I not only abandoned my own marriage, but I walked straight into the sacredness of your marriage and shattered it. In one fell swoop, I jumped off the cliff of abandoned emotions and took so many people down with me – including you. It has taken me a long time to want to confess any of this to you, or to even face my feelings about you. To be honest, it is taking me a long time to become healthy enough to put into words what I know I need to say to you. It would be far easier in my mind if I could just pretend you didn't exist. However, I did what I did, and now I must own up to my transgressions. You do exist. You are a human being that deserves far more than my betrayal. You are now a part of my healing journey, and I have to face you and confess. Every night in my mind and in my heart, there you are. I will never deserve your forgiveness for what I took from you. I won't even ask for that. Having an affair with your husband was so very wrong. As much as it hurts to speak of it, I at least owe you this because no one deserves what I did to you. I have given you shame and disgrace in exchange for a few months of fantasy with someone that was yours. Not mine. He was your husband. I even wounded your kids. Kids who only wanted a dad who could be devoted to their mom. I stole that from them with my incessant need for attention. I know my words, my name, and any image of me, likely stirs up a lot of emotion and pain for you. I know I can never take back what I did to you, nor can I undo the damage. As I work to rebuild and restore my own marriage, I do want you to know how much I think of you. You merit so much more than a meek apology from me. I deserve everything you bestow upon me, but the remarkable thing is that you probably won't hold onto that anger or hurt. You will heal. You will go on to live a remarkable life because that's who you are. All I can offer you is evidence of my sadness, my regret, and my commitment to my own healing. In my own brokenness, I broke you. Like chards of glass all over the floor, my own brokenness cut you and injured you. You suffer because of me. As I offer you my confession and repentance, I no longer will wallow in shame, as that would mean I stay selfish and stuck – susceptible to hurting others. Instead, I offer a release from what happened. I hope you can be free of me, and all my sins against you. I hate what I did, and I hate what it did to you. In time, please take what you can from me, and I hope and trust God is big enough to set us both free. In kindness, Elizabeth

This past month, I had the opportunity to take a two-week trip traveling through Germany, Poland, Austria, the Alps, and the Czech Republic with my oldest daughter. Although I have journeyed to three of the other continents, I had never been to Europe. It was an educational trip, full of history about Jewish culture, the Nazi regime, and World War II. Growing up, I had an appreciation for history but never had great teachers on the subject. Because of this, I left for the trip excited, yet apprehensive and unsure of what I was to encounter. This would also be the longest period of time that my family would be separated, including my husband and I. I'm happy to say that we survived, and I think we are better for it. Since we got back, I have been asked numerous times what I learned or what I was enlightened on during the trip. I am still absorbing and processing much of what we saw and experienced, but one very basic idea keeps playing out in my mind – restoring the wreckage – especially since my husband and I are in the middle of another "Disclosure Day" anniversary. If you have ever been to any of the cities in Europe that were in the heart of World War II, the first thing that you'll notice is the cities' conditions. You could always tell if a building had existed prior to WWII because of its appearance–shrapnel, bullet holes, or destruction was evident on the mortar pillars and sides of many of these structures. This was the immediate evidence to know that the building was built before the war. Contrasted next to one of these very old buildings might be a beautiful, untarnished, new one. This mixture of beaten and blemished, next to unscathed and modern, was everywhere. There was a clear divide between what was then and what is now. How true is this for each of our own lives? There is simply life before discovery and life after discovery. We, as a couple, will never be able to recover or go back to the way life was before my infidelity. My choices left us in rubble; some things are frankly, ruined.Names, places, and dates involving my affairs exist in a very painful way. Although we are healing, there is a painful twinge that pierces our chests when we triggered by these reminders. Like the bullet holes in the buildings, I suspect they will always be there. They grow more faint with time, but nevertheless, they are continuously there and serve as a reminder of the devastation. In other ways, now that we are two years out, I can see evidence of the newness from rebuilding our marriage. Restoration can occur. It has been a slow and tedious process, but the amount of debris that's been removed has been incredible, including my own dysfunction. While on our European trip, one of the most relevant questions for each sight or city was what percentage of this place was destroyed during WWII? I find that question pertinent to our recoveries as well. Obviously, every couple's situation is different, but the magnitude of our marriage's destruction was intensified because I had two affairs – one emotional and one physical. If anyone will tell you they can heal on sheer willpower, I will be the first to jump up and down and yell, "NO!" Without an intense healing plan and a willingness to stick with recovery, history is doomed to repeat itself. Which brings me to my other revelation from our journey through Europe. In every city or former concentration camp, designated places were left as is – in ruins. You will find a portion of the Berlin Wall just as it was during the time of communism, full of barbed wire, trip wires, and metal spikes in the ground. In the concentration camp of Birkenau, you will find a large pile of rubble, brick and ashes that used to make up the gas chambers and crematoriums. In the Alps of Austria, there's a place that is stripped to bare ground, with only a faint outline of Adolph Hitler's foundation. There is no memorial, no recreation of the structure, and nothing new has been built over it. Each of these places are haunting and desolate. These hollow, desolate places touched me the most. As a former unfaithful partner, I know that it's important to stand in the ruins and realize that I'm capable of catastrophic destruction – to sit in the reality that lives have been forever altered by my choices. The shame is not painful because it doesn't have as much of a hold on me, but it is painful in the sense that monuments like this have to exist to protect us from further devastation. I keep the EMS Weekend room key in my wallet as a reminder. When I look at that key, I can instantly go back to how much pain we were in when we boarded our flight to go to Texas. It takes me back to the look on my husband's face when I disclosed everything I had done. When I used to see my husband's pain, I wanted to shy away and run from it. I wanted to make it go away, or at least do something to fix it. I wanted to magically be good enough and make enough new memories to erase the pain. With time, I am less inclined to do that. I just sit in it. I see it. I feel it. I let it pull at all of the places in my heart until it grows heavy – until I ache. I then mourn in the rubble. To healing, Elizabeth

For the unfaithful spouse, there will come a point in your recovery where you will begin your grief process. It will likely not happen at the same time or in the same way as your spouse, and it should not come as a surprise to us. Grief is the vehicle in which we carry our pain. For betrayed spouses, grief begins immediately; they are bombarded and overwhelmed by the shock waves of finding out that their spouse has cheated on them. They are in horrendous pain, and the grief starts on day one. For most unfaithful, the grief will look different because it is delayed. It is delayed, because while we are acting out in our affairs, we are not feeling genuine feelings. We are in pain avoidance and pretend mode and there are no "real" feelings in an affair. It is not until an unfaithful spouse can start to slow down, step back, and see things clearly that we begin to grieve. Grief is a strange thing. It is not linear. It is not predictable. And as much as you want to, you can't put grief on a timetable. When in grief, we are sensitive and not quite ourselves. We sometimes find we don't even recognize ourselves. A white wash of pain seems to be heavy and the world just seems a bit too loud and close. Pain shouts when we can only handle a whisper. You know you are in grief when people try to comfort you, but very few words can break through your pain. We grieve what we have lost. I have never found it helpful for someone to tell me in the midst of grief of why I should be thankful. Because the truth is, I am not grieving over what I have, I'm grieving what I have lost. Frankly, I don't need that reminder of all of the reasons "I should" be grateful. All we can see during the process is the loss – what we once had. We don't want a replacement. We aren't ready for that. Grieving is the state of wanting and missing what our life was like before the death, the divorce, the infidelity, or the loss. I also have found it is never helpful to compare our pain. But as human beings, we are naturally drawn to comparison. This seems to go hand in hand with being expected to be in a place we are not. We start to doubt if it is okay to be where we are in the process, and we can easily start to wish we could be further along than where we are. Instead of accepting that we are only a few months out from discovery, we find a way to deny and long that we were two or three years out from discovery. Grief can be so disorienting that we typically compare in hopes that it will help us find our way. But comparison isn't helpful. Pain is pain. We would never tell a two-year old to suck it up or get over an injury from a scraped knee. We would never tell them that they should stop crying because it was only a scrape and they should be grateful that they didn't break their leg. For that child, all they know is that it hurts. In that moment, they feel the pain of their knee and they see the blood and it is scary to them. My hope is that we can all find a way to be more tender in our grief. When I see my husband as someone who is grieving, it calls me to a deeper compassion for him. If I can see his pain through the eyes of the grief process, I treat him with more kindness, patience, and tenderness. When I am able to accept and see myself as someone who is also grieving, the condemnation and shame start to go away. I am not sure where you are in your grief process. One of the best books I have ever read on grief was Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff, who wrote this book after losing his son. He will put words to your pain, even though each of our situations are so different. After all, pain is pain. Keep healing, Elizabeth

When it comes to God, one of the most beautiful things about Him is also what I find most fascinating about Him --- He simply won't change. He doesn't budge and He is who He says He is. Yesterday, today, forever. God does not keep office hours or change His mind on a matter. He won't get bored and He sure isn't fickle. His compassion will never end. He will never tire of hearing or listening to our broken hearts. For all of us trying to sort out the mess of our lives created by infidelity, change is perhaps the most difficult thing to absorb and comprehend. None of our lives will ever be the same. I don't know about you, but it has been really painful to accept that the landscape of each of our lives is forever altered. Our marriages no longer look or feel the same. If your spouse is still with you, you know what I am talking about. "It" seems to always be there, underneath the surface. The awful memories that never fade away. "It" really happened. The one thing you promised you would never do, you did. And the nightmare you never wanted became your reality. To say that the change can be exhausting and overwhelming is an understatement. There is no eraser, rewind button, or control-alt-delete option. This is where I definitely need something and Someone bigger than me. How can God see us all the same? How can He offer the same mercy and forgiveness for what I've done and be willing to love me just the same? He says He loves us. He always has. God is not some power hungry puppet master that is staring down on us, waiting to send lightning bolts to condemn us. He seems to give an awful lot of chances before His patience runs out. I know God is a loving Dad who says, "Hey, you need to stop living like that. I gave you the command that going outside your marriage was going to hurt you and you didn't listen. But now you are starting to see why I said that. It was a pain too great for you. It was too much for you to handle and you really hurt your spouse by disobeying Me. But I love you, so I will always give you a second chance. And I will be enough to mend your spouse's heart too. Because I don't change and I am always enough for you." And for those of you whose hearts are broken, God is the One who will never forsake you even when your spouse has. He sees you. If anyone understands what it is like to be rejected and cast aside, He does. To know that God is enough for both sides of infidelity is incredible. Today I find myself in awe of all the ways He is never changing and always loving. The perfect balance of justice and mercy. In humility, Elizabeth

Today I am going to share the biggest mistake that I made since my last affair, and how it almost cost me everything. It was, in my opinion, even worse than my infidelity. That mistake was my inability to reach full disclosure the first time. For six weeks, I held on to secrets about my behavior and I continued to lie about what I had done. Our world started crumbling down on our wedding anniversary two years ago. Every single detail of the disclosure process is awful, but it really stinks when your D-Day is also your wedding anniversary. That was the day I admitted to my husband that I had been unfaithful to him and I had developed feelings for someone else. But I omitted any other details. In my delusional mind, I somehow at the time was convinced that an emotional affair sounded "better", so I withheld details about the physical encounter. I also never disclosed that I had another inappropriate relationship years earlier. For six weeks, I sold my "cleaned up" version of my truth, which had glaring omissions. During that time, my husband begged me to let him know if that was everything. Sadly, I lied. It is really difficult to say this, but I had not told the truth in so long I don't even think I knew what it was. It wasn't until I signed up for Hope for Healing that I started to realize I needed to share everything with my husband. Even if it meant he would leave me. I was so tired of me. I was slowly beginning to let the articles at Affair Recovery sink in and I kept thinking "what am I doing?". I was really getting weary of living with my lies. Call it my pride still at work, but I guess God will use whatever we will give him. I refused to spend money on a class that would promise me I could get my life back while I tried to hold on to any more secrets. Something in me broke. I could not and would not lie to anyone else. I remember on our very first group call, I blurted out to these women, who were still strangers to me at the time, "I have more to tell my husband about my unfaithfulness. I vow to tell him before this class is over and I am going to need help doing that". The very next week, we would have our second D-Day, and our world came crumbling down. I can see things so rationally now. When you are in an affair, it is very difficult to identify the grandiosity, fantasy, and illusion of it all. It is like a drunk person convincing a cop on the side of the road that he can walk in a straight line. One cannot reach the clarity that only sobriety can offer if still under the influence, and I would be no exception. I had cut off all contact with my Affair Partner, but I had vowed to keep a secret to him and so my allegiance to that kept me from disclosure to my husband. I definitely couldn't see it then, but I had closed the door, just not locked it. Anything short of the complete truth about our infidelity to our betrayed spouses will deny them of dignity and shortchange their intelligence. Telling my husband about my betrayals was already like digging a giant hole and throwing him in the bottom of it. With every question he had to ask (because I was so unwilling to offer the truth) must have felt getting shovels full of dirt, mud, rocks, and trash on top of him. Through his pain and reactions, I started to begin to grasp the enormity of what I had done. It was a precarious place to be. I saw his pain and so I did the worst possible thing. I began to "manage" the information. I was so deceptive by thinking that if I only sprinkled the dirt on him, it wouldn't hurt us so badly. What I couldn't see then was how much I damaged him and our marriage by prolonging the suffering. Far better would it have been for me to have had the courage to stand on top of that hole and look down on him and be able to say "I am about to dump an entire ton of bricks and rocks on you. It is going to hurt you, if not crush you." But I didn't. Instead I chose the path of cruelty and long suffering. For six weeks, I kept the dirt and debris coming. My husband would think he would have the information and then try to manage his way out of the hole before I would knock him back down again with something new. This made our recovery almost impossible because quite simply, how can a wound begin to heal when it is vulnerable to more injury? Like trying to save the titanic from sinking by using a teaspoon to take out water, carefully measuring out the truth for betrayed spouses is the most hurtful thing we as unfaithful can do. Reaching full disclosure was the scariest point for us in our recovery. I wish I had been able to do it the first time because it set us back even further than when we started. If you are new to AR and need help and support in being able to disclose, there are so many resources out there to help you. Your betrayed spouse needs this and will not be able to heal or forgive without this. Please don't be like me. You can do better. In Him, Elizabeth

Research shows that there is a growing number of unfaithful women. Exact numbers are hard to come by, and I expect that will always be the case. If unfaithful spouses are lying, why would they be honest in research? Regardless, I think we can all learn qualitatively. And I feel called to put a voice behind the myths and questions out there. One of the biggest fears we have had to overcome was the notion that when a wife has an affair, this means she wants out of the marriage. I can only speak from our experience and the fellow unfaithful women I have the privilege of walking alongside, but this is simply not true. What I believe is more true, is that I just gave up on the marriage. I gave up on our marriage before I ever put any effort into it. Sadly, we put more time and money into our lawn and home than we did our marriage. I felt dead in the marriage. I assumed my husband didn't care about me. I stopped loving. I quit trying. I had completely unrealistic expectations of what a marriage should be. I was really unfair to my husband to had expected him to be the bread winner, the knight in shining armor, the best friend, the expert dater, the perfect father, and to meet all of my broken needs. I was a pretty self-absorbed piece of crap. But I cannot say that I had an affair because I wanted to leave our marriage. This idea was terribly confusing for my husband at first and we really struggled because of it. This "myth" was incredibly difficult for us to overcome, because it implied to him that I always had wanted to leave him. This "myth" suggested that he was always plan B and I was just biding my time until I could find someone better that came along. The truth is, I was unfaithful because I am broken and sinful. I am selfish. To say I had intentions of leaving would have meant I actually thought something through. And trust me when I say I wasn't thinking clearly or at all during my infidelity. I don't mean to ever minimize what I have done. Ever. But to give myself any sort of credit that I had clarity of what I wanted or needed during my affairs seems ludicrous to me. I will be the first to jump in line and tell you how lost and unclear my thinking was. There is a saying "you can't blame the lost for being lost". While I certainly take 100% of the blame and responsibility for my sin, I also realize that in my selfishness and brokenness, I took the road map and I threw it out the window. But here is probably the ugliest and most honest thing I can admit about my infidelity. I think I was so wildly prideful and controlling, I always assumed I would never get caught. I assumed I could, in gluttonous fashion, keep my marriage and get my affirmation elsewhere. I never thought about the future, just the now. Being in an affair is much like being in a sixth-grade romantic relationship. It is downright embarrassing to come to terms with the reality that "I never thought that far ahead". I'm truly sorrowful for how shallow and insecure that sounds. I wish I had known better. I wish I had thought of anyone but myself. I cringe to think about the woman I became in those relationships. There are certain nuances between women and men for sure. But for most women who cheat, there is a raging insecurity underneath our facade that we have felt shame about and hidden from the rest of the world, including our spouses. And, you guessed it, a lack of firm boundaries. That all wraps itself up into an incredibly deep web of shame. Saddest of all is that by betraying our mates, we transfer all of that pain right into their hands. I will always be grateful for the time I was given to sort out my junk. I am forever grateful for the wisdom that AR will give us in that we should not rush to make decisions. I am grateful for you, the community of folks out there trying to sort out the pain and find healing. I realize I ventured into some deeper waters today. Perhaps waters that will disturb some, or comfort others. As I continue to grow in my own recovery, I am okay with that. Elizabeth

Last night we were attending church. If you are not a church goer, no judgement here. The number of times I set foot inside a church before I turned 25 was few and far between. Church can be such a healing place for many, yet such a triggering place for others. Throughout my own life I have seen so many good things done by the church. I have also witnessed the very worst of humanity inside the supposed church walls. However, I still believe in the church simply because I choose to follow Jesus and He believed in the church. However, instead of looking at the world at large and all of its problems, I think it wise to look in the mirror and start with me. The problem with the church has been me. You see, when I was in the middle of getting emotionally entangled in my first affair, I remember sitting in the row of a Christmas Eve church service. Recalling this memory of being such a pretender and hypocrite is very painful, and I am forcing myself to relive and retell because I know I never want to go back to that place. My husband has a beautiful singing voice and he leads worship. He was leading a song about how much we are loved. I remember at the time having a sinking feeling of "what am I doing?" I had just spent the day before seeing my affair partner (I was still justifying we were only friends) and wishing him a Merry Christmas. And probably the most honest thing I did at the time was mumble and not sing the words. There I was, sitting in the very place for folks who were broken and needed help, yet I refused to let go of my secret. And sadly, it would be four years later and another affair before I could come to any place of honesty and truth. What are some of your most haunting memories of what you did during your affairs? Did you have any wake up calls or times when you wanted to stop but you didn't? What did you do with those promptings? Did you come clean or did you ignore them? The most devastating part of my decision to betray is how long the shock waves last, and how far and wide they reach. Like flood waters, the effects of infidelity seep into every corner and crevice of a marriage. Fast forward to last night. I was fortunate enough to have my husband and my girls stand beside me at church. For the first time in a long time I was completely present. No distractions. No preoccupations. No shame. No secrets. I felt free. I felt like I belonged there and I had nothing to hide. I wanted to soak it all up and tears streamed down my cheeks as we worshipped. I cannot sing well but I sang loudly. And I meant every word that I give my all to something bigger than me. I have nothing on my own and I have been forgiven. What was done for me was out of love, and I want to become a person that can love like that. I am tired of beating myself up about what I have done. I no longer want to feel the need to excessively apologize for my sin. That doesn't mean I can't be realistic... but my true self is both amazing and horrific. My shame will only keep God from me and delay my healing. I have to accept myself all of my weaknesses, and my big neon sign of weakness is that I have craved and fallen prey to any kind of fatherly or sexual love from older men. I hope that where ever you find yourself today, you are working towards acceptance. Acceptance that none of us deserve, but the offer is there for the taking. Elizabeth

The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, A puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, Not as they pretend to be. Jeremiah 17:9-10 Roots: Part 1 Remember those shallow roots we are developing? Experiencing "ah-ha" moments, as Oprah calls them, was one of the first steps of my true growth for recovering from infidelity. For me, it was the beginning of realizing just how deceitful I had been. To stop pretending. My life has always looked so good on paper, but behind the scenes I have been a raging mess. For me, it was always lying by omission. Author and theologian Dan Allender would say that "the stories that remain untold are the ones that remain a stronghold". For most of my life, I believed that those parts of me could just remain hidden. They would just be there to fester and rot. I assumed (wrongly) they would only affect me and that what people didn't know wouldn't hurt them. One of the best ways I have come to discover the roots of my deception has been through the work of a seasoned therapist. The hours I have spent in individual counseling have been instrumental for us to get behind the "why's" of my infidelity. I know I am 100% responsible for choosing to betray my husband, but I have also found it true that there were definitely unspoken and unhealed events in my life that caused a chain reaction to my brokenness acting out. After D-day, we had some initial difficulty in locating the right therapist. I wish that this were an easier process for all of us out there, but unfortunately it isn't. Through the recommendation of a trusted friend (one of the few we told about what was going on in our marriage), we finally found a Christian psychotherapist that had been practicing for over 30 years. As most of you know, triggers seem to lurk in every corner when a couple is trying to navigate how to find help, and we were no exception. Because both of my affairs (my first one emotional, my second one, emotional and then physical) were with men old enough to be my father, it was difficult at first for us to overcome the fact that my new therapist was an older man. So every time I went to therapy there was this big underlying irony of the possibility of transference and weirdness. But we chose to trust. This was not easy for my husband at all. But in our case, this was exactly what I needed to begin my healing. For the first year of recovery, twice a week I found myself in therapy. The first few months we solely focused on my childhood. To say this was painful would be an understatement. But I was committed and I was determined to do anything to save our marriage; I began the process of diving into my roots. What I discovered was not pretty. I am the youngest of four children and my father was an alcoholic. My dad has been gone nearly three years and I still have a really difficult time putting to words how I feel about him. Yesterday was his birthday and I find myself eating too many cookies and willing myself not to feel anything about him, but I think underneath it is a lot of sadness. When I was in my affairs, I remember feeling the foolishness of how cliché it felt to be with someone two decades older than me, but shame is a funny thing. It caused me to bypass clichés, norms and vows and get my needs met, however dysfunctional those needs were. My therapist very tenderly helped me assemble the pieces of my life that would reveal to me that I was definitely abuse reactive. I had a lot of nightmares in the beginning months. I began to learn that it was not normal for a ten-year old girl to be with high school boys on a Friday night. Or that dad's do not throw up all of the time or have that many stomach bugs. I am working hard at accepting myself and not judging myself, so I am not making a joke or a funny remark to mask my pain about how screwed up that sounds. It is actually quite sad, and I know so many readers out there can relate to the dysfunction. Over many weeks and months, healing started to take place. I owe an eternity of debt to my therapist, who I still maintain contact with, just less frequently. Through time and patience, he heard me and saw through my pain. He helped me, in a very non-threatening way, come to the root of my own deception. One of the most powerful ways he would do this was feeling sadness for my story when I would simply be numb. By mirroring and reading his facial expressions, I was able to come to some sort of terms with how much I have avoided and "refused to go there". He took my pain, and carefully and tenderly held it. Sharing my own story with you all has been a privilege and I thank you for reading and for holding our life so carefully. It still hurts to share, but I definitely feel like my life is less of a tragedy and more of a story of resiliency. Since you began your recovery, have you been in the care of a therapist? If so, how is that process going? Certainly, it is extremely time consuming and costly. If you are not, what is the reason that holds you back? What have you done with your story? Keep growing those roots. . . Elizabeth

But blessed is the one who trusts in Me alone; the Eternal will be his confidence. He is like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots beside the stream. It does not fear the heat or even drought. Its leaves stay green and its fruit is dependable, no matter what it faces. Jeremiah 17:7-8 My roots have been shallow. . . We live on ten acres. By Texas standards (where I grew up), this is not much land. But here in the Midwest, it rains all of the time, and I am continually amazed at how much STUFF you can grow on only ten acres. It is plenty of room for our horses, livestock projects, birds, dogs, cats, and whatever else wanders onto our place. My husband jokes that all he does is mow. And unlike Texas, all it seems I do is take care of everything that grows so that he can mow! One of the things I am grateful for in our marriage is that we do make a pretty good team in that area. And in case you are reading this and wondering if you will ever joke again in your marriage, you will. You will actually know that you are starting to heal when you find you both can laugh at something. For the last several years I have been working on eradicating the honeysuckle that takes over our property. It will wrap itself around fences, trees, existing shrubs and completely choke them out. The stuff is nasty. And it is everywhere. Believe me when I tell you I almost get angry when I go into Bath and Body works with my daughters and they sell Honeysuckle scented stuff. I want to scream at that because why would anyone want to smell something that is so awful for the environment?! It reminds me of the time I saw a dandelion bedspread at Pottery Barn... It is a weed! But I digress and this is a website for our recovery, and most certainly not my views on weed control. . . Here's the thing about honeysuckle. It has a really creative root system. They run deep and wide and when you think the plant is gone it will come back. Sometimes weeks or months or even years later. Those roots are intricate, deep, and won't be deterred with just one simple spray of Round up. I wish I had roots like honeysuckle. If you are unfaithful and it seems like your spouse is never going to get over this, here's what I thought about the other day while pulling and cutting and spraying: YOU ARE DEVELOPING A ROOT SYSTEM. If you want to change, do the hard work. It will be daily. Recovery will and should feel like a full time job. It will be expensive. It has been worth every cent. As you begin to deepen your shallow roots, your spouse won't see it. They will still doubt you and not trust much of what you are doing for a long time. This is actually a good thing and you wouldn't want it any other way. One day you might thank them that they refused to be near you while you were under construction for everyone's safety. I'm just thankful my husband stayed. It will be a LONG time before things even break the surface and any change will become evident. Keep pursuing the endeavors that will deepen your roots. This will involve a deliberate and conscious effort to eradicate anything toxic or (we will use the word sinful if you are a church goer) in your life, including dishonesty, selfishness, and pride. Most of your change will be underground and it will go slowly. Most days, only you and Your creator will see it. But know that deep within yourself, you can grow into something worthwhile, dependable, and beautiful. Elizabeth

To betrayed spouses everywhere: other than the obvious apology that is owed to you for the injustice thrown upon you due to infidelity, I have yet another confession to offer to you. I am embarrassed to say how deep my fears, insecurities and shame have reached. For much of my recovery (for most of the first year anyway), I have been afraid of you. I have feared your pain, your emotion, your comments and your rawness of emotion. I know this because I have feared it in my own home, with my own husband. I know it isn't a rational fear and might not even make much sense to you. Even deeper still, I think I have feared your consistency, your values, your ability to handle life so differently than I have and that you will judge me for it. If you're the unfaithful, it seems there's a giant neon sign alerting everyone that something is very wrong in the marriage and that problem is most definitely you. You know the saying. Shallow people cheat with other shallow people. So then you begin to work really hard at changing you. And while you desperately want to speed up the process, you can't. So then you question almost everything. Which doesn't exactly scream authentic or genuine. And it for sure doesn't allow for the betrayed to come first. Which really stinks. When my husband most desperately needed me to understand him and move in close, I have stayed away in fear. The longer I sit with it, it runs even deeper still. When he has needed me to just sit and listen and not say or do anything, I have avoided eye contact and shut down. I think I deeply fear the same thing he fears; the thought if we'll ever be able to make it. Can we ever be in a place of acceptance with our shattered marriage? What does that even mean? I am so tired of fear. I remember when we first went to EMS Weekend and I was one of three other women in the room that admitted I was unfaithful. Coming clean to a room full of entire strangers at the time was gut wrenching enough, but the fact that I was a woman and the minority was an added dose of shame. Humans are pack animals and we do tend to find safety in numbers, whatever the situation. Like me, I don't think anyone goes to EMS weekend packing the best version of themselves. For one, I was an emotional wreck. I was still lying; it took me an additional five weeks after EMS to get all of the details out because I was insistent upon editing my own story to make it "seem" better. As someone who had lived most of their life consumed with the image of me. . . this felt like suicide. I honestly remember thinking Rick Reynolds and his staff surely had a can of red paint and a paint brush hidden somewhere and were secretly waiting to come out and write profanities across my chest right then and there. Can you hear the irrational fear running through my veins? Here is what I discovered. I fear what I don't know. I have always kept everyone at arm's length. For most of my life I have mastered the ability to let people come close enough to me to see "just enough" but not too much. And my fear of the betrayed has been exactly that. To the extent I am willing to enter in and get close to the pain, the less I fear and I just simply feel an ache. There has never been one single betrayed spouse I have encountered that has ever been anything short of kind. Are they hurting? Of course. Devastated? Yes. I think it wise to be careful not to judge someone's character by the pain they are in. As our hearts heal and the pieces slowly start to come together, we see our brokenness for the common good. As I become stronger, I realize the person actually holding the can of red paint has been me. No one else has been out to get me as much as I have. If your betrayed spouse is angry, shut down, ticked off, hysterical, weepy, incorrigible, relentless, or even gone. . . I can promise you they are in immense pain. Our actions cut to the core of that pain. For me to be in a state of mind that I would give my time, my flirtation, my words, my attention, and my body to another human required me to cut my husband completely off and out of my mind. A wound and cut so severe does not come without agony and years of healing. Betrayed spouses, I am really sorry I haven't seen you. I am sorry that my own fear of your pain and judgement has gotten in the way for what you really needed. I see this so much in my own marriage. We finally gained so much momentum when I was healed enough to get out of my own DANG way! The prophet Isaiah gives a pretty amazing reminder of both truth and grace: "He will not crush those who are weak or quench the smallest hope. He will bring full justice to all who have been wronged. He will not stop until truth and righteousness prevail throughout the earth." Unfaithful: please do not be crushed. If Christ himself doesn't wish to stomp us out when we are weak, our betrayed spouses won't either. They just need us to come clean and change our lives. Betrayed: justice and truth matter, and will prevail. I humbly hope you can hold onto that promise, in spite of your hurt. Betrayed spouses represent such an incredibly beautiful picture of the justice needed in a successful marriage. My need for forgiveness reminds me of a constant dripping flow of grace that I never want to live beyond the shadow of. In that shadow of grace, there is no fear. Frederick Beuchner said that Christ is the fullest picture of justice and mercy. He continues by saying" "He that will judge us most finally is the one who loves us most fully." Today, I rest in that and hope you can too. Elizabeth

Today I wanted to share something that happened in my office that was incredibly moving to me. At work, we get to see people of all ages and ailments. Whatever your profession is, have you ever had a moment when someone walks in your door and you quickly realize (even though you are the so called professional) that you are the one about to learn? This morning, that was me. An 84 year old woman I had been helping came in. Her daughter usually drives her, because she doesn't like city traffic. But today when I went to greet her, she was sitting next to her husband, who I had never met. They have been married a little bit longer than 63 years. I am guessing this is longer than most of us have been alive! To say that I started to feel unworthy is an understatement. I asked if they would be comfortable coming back to my office together. They said yes. I was in no rush for time this particular morning, so we took our time. What happened next was something quite extraordinary. As I went through my standard procedure and questions, the husband opened up and spent the next hour telling parts of their story and life. Several things I noticed were astounding to me. I was trying to take it all in, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "what does it take to make a marriage last 63 years?" First, they were both extremely gracious, patient and humble. I noticed how gently they handled each other. I saw the husband interrupt a couple of times. Not out of rudeness, but more his eager anticipation to tell the story. What did the wife do? She simply sat and waited. Softly, when she had the chance to speak, she would do so. She was firm to get in her ideas and put a voice to her experience, but she let him lead when he wanted to. Secondly, I noticed the vulnerability. I suppose when you are acutely aware that your lifetime is near the end, your eyes leak more. I was especially moved by this man with callouses on his hands but tears in his eyes. He would talk about their life and how her illness had impacted him, but he did it through his tears. His eyes said more than his words. Finally, I noticed an elegant simplicity and rhythm to their life. And humility. They both admitted they still had things to learn about one another. When I asked what the wife wanted for her upcoming birthday, she said perhaps a backrub. They seemed to not be moved by what they lacked or didn't have. Both mentioned they had seen most of what they wanted to see in the world. He admitted he loved to travel much more than she, but he recognized how anxious it made her so he often compromised and was willing to stay home. She admitted she travels because she knows it makes him happy. Not feeling burdened by time, I pressed gently for one more question. To be honest, I selfishly was soaking up everything they were teaching me. I was just absorbing their presence and all they had to offer. I asked what they regretted most in their life? The husband, again teary eyed, said he regretted how selfish he felt he had been. He said through the years he felt so much of his life was all about him and what he could accomplish. He wished his life would have been more focused on his wife, kids, and family. She said she wished she had the courage to seek help for her clinical depression earlier. She didn't know that finding help could be so easy and that she was surprised at how much she was healed by talking about it. And then surprisingly to me, she added, that all of the help was worth the cost. I feel extremely gracious towards God for this gift today. I feel vulnerable in sharing a part of my heart and work with you all, but I am confident that most of us in this journey can learn lessons from this couple in their eighties, who still play cards together. A couple who reminisced about learning to Polka dance together. A couple who faithfully prays together. Yet their life has not been without pain and hardship. I feel a mixture of gratitude and sadness at the moment. Other than my maternal grandparents, I don't know that I have spent enough time up close and personal with a tangible example of such a lasting love. My sadness is for my own marriage and all of our marriages that are at the edge of the cliff. My gratitude is for the hope this couple instills in me, and all of us if we can make it through to the other side. Wherever you are today, thank you for learning and growing alongside me. I do not know who wrote this quote I will share below. It is taped to a bulletin board in my office. "So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered". To sixty-three years of marriage, and counting. . . Elizabeth

When I hear the words liar or cheater, I get a yucky and icky feeling in my stomach. I do not have the strength to face the realization that all of us are broken, without also knowing all people are able to choose humility and redemption. If I don't accept the possibility for change and repentance, I will drown in a spiral of shame. It is hard to look back on my life and admit or pinpoint when I started telling lies instead of the truth. Like water is to a fish, it is something I have always lived with. That might sound strange to some, but perhaps a better way to explain would be to say that I have always lived with fear. Fear and anxiety that the truth is often an ugly thing, and I didn't see much repentance, acceptance, or forgiveness in my family of origin. I do recall when I was in first grade, I had a really strict and harsh teacher. She clicked her heels when she walked and she was NOT warm and nurturing. I am not sure why, but one day I remember doodling on the corner of my desk with my pencil. The concept of school property and defiling it was lost on me. I am pretty sure I was just bored. However, my teacher discovered my wrongdoing and I was immediately sent to the office. She had written a note home for me to give to my parents. The note explained what I had done and I was to write out 100 times on a piece of paper "I WILL NOT WRITE ON MY DESK". It took me almost a week to tell my parents and I hated the teacher for that. Is my sin and shame nature that inherent? Partly, I believe yes. I can be extremely stubborn and there is a really selfish part of me that wants to point the finger and avoid responsibility. I did write on the desk, after all. Justification is often a defense mechanism of choice. I remember thinking "what's the big deal? I can erase it. It is in pencil after all". But looking at it from a different view, what if every first grader in the school wrote on their desks in pencil? The truth about me is I can have an awfully defensive heart. Apparently this has been around since I was in first grade... Why do people lie? Lying is wrong. God says so and anyone that has been lied to can testify to how much it destroys a relationship and what we were made for. Being told I was wrong was never a good motivator for me to change. Actually, being told I was wrong only deepened my resolve to bury and hide the shame and guilt I felt for doing it in the first place. My mother was good at that. Her entire approach to sex before marriage was "don't do it... it is wrong". But that's an entire other blog for another day. The thing I know I have needed through life is acceptance and understanding. It's crazy, because I know I don't deserve that! When I finally started to hear and trust that I wasn't alone, and that my lying came out of a place of fear, I started to understand. Fear of conflict, fear of losing people, and fear of loss of acceptance are just a few of the many reasons I chose dishonesty. Deep down there was a desire to be honest, but I never figured out how to do it - until Affair Recovery. It was just easier to lie, or so I thought. Now I can see that my lying always kept me distant and unavailable. Sure, my lying devastated my husband and almost cost us our marriage. But lying also crippled my own ability to be intimate. I am living proof that rehabilitation can occur. Do I still want to lie? Not really. I sometimes catch myself wanting to exaggerate or maybe omit a detail from my day with my husband. If I feel that way, it is almost always coming from a place of fearing rejection. I aim to push through and share anyway. And that icky feeling in my chest? It always goes away after the truth. Telling my husband the entire truth of my infidelity and my past was the most difficult thing I have chosen to do. Working with my counselor for the past two years, has uncovered events in my childhood that have felt like pulling a rope of thorns and needles out of my chest through my heart and throat and out into the open. But what is not spoken, cannot be healed. If you have been lied to, you don't deserve that. On behalf of every unfaithful person out there, including me, we had no right to transfer our junk and shame onto you like that. If you are the liar, choose reform. Choose to figure out the sickness and the sin of it. Choose honesty. Elizabeth

Chances are if you are reading this, you are waiting for something. I remember early on in our recovery from my infidelity, it seemed that I was waiting mostly for some sort of relief from the circumstances I had created. I was lost in a complete shame spiral, and I wanted relief! I wanted the pain to go away. I have to admit now, I also was so ready for my husband to not be in pain anymore. I humbly can't even say I was healthy enough that I wanted healing for us. I only wanted relief. When we first started getting professional help (our first stop was EMS Weekend), I was told that our healing would take AT LEAST 18 – 24 months. It seemed like an eternity and I pridefully figured we could beat the odds and be different. Much to my dismay, things only got worse, and they continued to deteriorate (in my mind) for the next six to eight months. I was pretty bad at this concept of radical change and honesty. Time seemed to crawl. I started to realize that relief was much different from actual healing. I started to see that things had to get worse before they got better. I began to understand that getting better did not necessarily mean feeling better. Thankfully, we are nearing the end of the window that Affair Recovery gives for healing from infidelity. However, strangely, we still have so much work to do. But one thing that has changed is my ability to wait. My ability to tolerate pain has increased. My stomach for the unknown still has me restless and anxious at times, but I am able to sit in it more. How good are you at waiting? What exactly are you waiting for? We unfortunately all live in a time when there is very little unknown. Many of us have lost the ability to tolerate not knowing. The other night we recorded the finals of the Indian Wells tennis matches on our DVR. I know this has happened to most of you….so you can probably imagine what happened to us. As we neared the end of the third set of the men's final, the dreaded "would you like to keep or delete your recording?" came across our screen. Time was out and the program ended. We didn't know who finished the set and won the trophy. But wait. We live in 2019. We immediately walked over to our phones and googled the results. Twenty years ago, we would have had to wait for that answer or just lived without knowing. We would have waited until the next day to read the newspaper. Or we would have been intentional to set aside a specific time to tune into the news to see the results. Everything is at our fingertips, and if your family is like mine, we are too dependent upon instant knowledge, instant results, and instant everything. We have lost the ability to be surprised or to be frustrated by not having an answer. Make no mistake. Waiting involves participation and engagement. The best kind of waiting is not passive. It will involve asking, trusting, and discomfort. Waiting and being stuck are two very different things. How do you discern the difference? Waiting for me typically can involve hope and accountability. When I am stuck, I am usually lacking in hope and closed off to others. One of the gifts that recovery will give you (even if this is the worst thing that could happen in your marriage) is the ability to learn to wait. To watch and see how things unfold. I know it won't seem like a gift. It will seem more like a painful hell. However, I dare you to try to find the gifts in waiting.

If you are reading this and your affair has been discovered, chances are you don't know where to turn, where to go, or have any idea what will come of your life. You might feel like your life is over. Humiliation probably doesn't begin to scratch the surface of what you are feeling. You are now exposed for who you really are. You are a cheater. You are a liar. And you are a sham. There is nowhere to hide and it is time to face what you have done. You probably don't like what you see in the mirror. You can't see this now, but this is a very good place to be. For those of us that call ourselves unfaithful, we can all relate to this feeling of gut-wrenching awfulness. It is a much different pain than what our betrayed spouses feel, but in some ways not. As they look at you with the face of "how could you?", I hope you start to ask yourself the same. This pain is going to be a necessary catalyst for growth. You will start to realize that you probably cannot or should not go back to your affair. You could, but you realize now you have to make a choice. You can't have it both ways. Your affair may have felt special but now it is out in the open for what it really was: a fantasy and a lie. You can't delude yourself any longer. The truth of the matter is evident . . . a person of integrity would have been honest and left the marriage before seeing someone else. You may start to see for the first time that leaving was never really an option or what you really wanted. It is becoming evident that you are a walking contradiction and how untrustworthy you are. The complication of the mess and pain you have created is right in front of you. You will not get out of this without pain. Escaping pain and reality was what got you into this in the first place, and now you need to face it. You have hurt a lot of people and you will be tempted to try to stuff it back in the tiny little box you thought you had kept so well under control. But like a pillow topper that is vacuum sealed, once it comes out of that shrink wrap packaging, there is no way it can ever go back in like it was before. You will feel nauseous. You will feel desperate. You will no longer feel in control of anything. You will feel very alone. Your affair partner is gone. Your spouse will feel hatred (and rightfully so) towards you as they work through their pain. Everything they ever saw about you, believed about you, and trusted you has been shattered. Deep down, they don't probably don't really hate you, but they have been destroyed and they hate what you have done. Again, the reverberating question remains. How could you? You are pretty much scum. And I say good. Welcome to affair recovery. I am your fellow scum. I still refer to myself as unfaithful because that word shows the capacity of my ability to hurt people I love and care about. I call myself unfaithful because my actions have proved that I have the ability to manipulate any situation to satisfy my selfish, broken and perverted desires for affirmation. I bring up that feeling of the first few days and weeks after our own discovery, and my stomach churns thinking about it. I hope to never go back there. I never ever want to see the look and pain on my husband's face when he had to acknowledge the truth about me: the truth that I always had compartments for my pain and pleasure. If you are new on this journey and you are the lying, cheating, horrible adulterer, you will be tempted to believe the lie that you aren't worth anything and no one will ever accept you again. I am the first to encourage you that that doesn't have to be the case. It will take a long time to undo your actions. I am still working daily on being a safe person. But like the saying in AA goes…a day at a time. Every day we get to start with the acknowledgement that on our own, we ruin lives. You cannot do this alone and you won't be able to pull this off by yourself. You will need fellow strangers who you will find are not strangers, to help you heal. They will listen to your ugly stories, share their own, and offer help and healing. This is why I write to encourage you. This is why so many folks remain committed to Affair Recovery. Where are you on your journey? If you are new, have you found this feeling to be accurate? For those of you that are further along, are you committed to helping others heal? Do you believe there is a place for you? Do you believe your story is needed? Keep working hard. This life you will want will not happen out of thin air. Your spouse can heal, but they will heal much faster if you put in the work. It will be a daily walk of many small steps. It will often seem as if you aren't making any progress or that you aren't making it fast enough. Change will not be dramatic or big or powerful. In fact, you probably won't notice it much at all. Change will be as small as a mustard seed at times. Please keep taking steps towards the light. . . Elizabeth

I am writing this as I sit on a flight to a sunny destination with my husband; the same man who has courageously fought to give our marriage another chance. I am so grateful. So much has changed in our lives over the past few years. We have aged. We have toughened. We are different now. The innocence we once had is gone. Yet many things about us remain strangely familiar: our quirks and idiosyncrasies. One example of this, is that we are not sitting together on our flight. It baffles me how I can never seem to quite remember to check into Southwest Airlines early enough to get decent boarding numbers. My poor family doesn't even realize that families can sit together, because I can't recall a time we have ever been in the A boarding group. My husband smiles and knows this about me, and accepts it. For him, I know that in a restaurant or public space, he has to sit and face the door. He has this man-protective nature about him, and like a guard dog protecting his home, he prefers to be keenly aware of his surroundings. These are things you can't know about a person until you've spent years and months and days and hours with them. My heart is also heavy today at life's irony. Who am I, that second chances get offered? Who am I that a man I so carelessly threw aside during my infidelity, would now be willing to wait on our recovery and even go on a weekend getaway with me? I am pretty sure I can't come up with a feeling to describe my overwhelming sense of gratitude, humility and unworthiness. This will be our first trip alone without our kids since D day. My past actions easily could have cost us a different narrative. Triggers and reminders seem to lurk underneath the surface, yet here we are, forging ahead. What will the weekend hold for us? We will attempt to amend and rewrite the script of our story. Some parts of our story burn like a black sharpie scribbled all over a page. Other parts are mending and seem to be not so heavy. Pain and grace are mysterious like that. Another thing heavy on my heart as we sit on a plane, trying to rebuild our relationship, is that our best friend at home begins her first chemo therapy treatment in exactly one hour. If you're like me, infidelity has awakened your sensitivity to pain. I'm betting you are quick to notice and see it all around you now. Pain is everywhere. But so is grace. If you are reading this today, I hope you know that you aren't alone in your story. I feel a heaviness and a joy. Perhaps this is what CS Lewis was speaking into when he wrote the Four Loves and said this: "Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh need they have produced." Here's to rebuilding, Elizabeth

When you begin sorting out the mess of infidelity, life gets complicated. As an unfaithful female, I started to question all interaction I had with the opposite sex following D day. I honestly considered at one point, that it might be easiest to just convert myself into a nun so I could avoid men for the rest of my life. If that is what would make me safe, I would do it! Some of the questions we wrestled with early on were: Can I work with men? Is it safe for me to have a male therapist? Can I be alone with men? Are phone conversations safe with men? What if the neighbor or UPS man comes to the house and my spouse isn't home? How do I respond to one of my children's male coaches if he texts me about practices? What do I do with the preexisting male friendships I had prior to my infidelity? The list of questions and nuances go on and on. I will offer my perspective on what my own failure is teaching me in this area. As a community, I hope we keep asking and struggling with hard questions. I don't pretend to have the answers, but this topic comes up in different forms through my recovery groups. The basic premise is what to do with men (other than my husband) and what does safety look like? For me, a necessary starting point is to define "friendship". Good ol' Webster says "a friend is someone that we can bond with over mutual interests." Mutual interests can be our kids, our education, our jobs, our neighborhoods or our hobbies. We share ideas, thoughts and our lives with them in a very pure, yet limited sense. Friendship, ideally, is free from obligation or sexual undertones. Sexual undertones. Yikes. If I look at myself honestly, it is apparent that I have a problem with this and I lack discernment in this area. The way I used to deal with male friendships was arrogant and naïve. The arrogant part of me told me I knew better. I could be friends with men based on my own willpower and judgement. I thought I could control myself in a manner that was safe. The naïve part of me did not see that my heart can be deceptive and my judgement can sometimes really stink. With enough time, loneliness and alcohol on one's hands. . . any male and female interaction can result in crossing the line. I am living proof of that. Now, the only real male friend I choose is my husband. Not in a puffy-heart letter, Facebook "you are my best friend" kind of way, because that seems fake and pretentious to me. But I honestly need to ask myself what need am I trying to fill by even wanting male friendships? I am a woman and I get to be friends with GIRLS! However, men are all around me. I work with them. I even have a male therapist (which has been incredibly healing). I interact with men every single day. I did not become a nun. Instead, I just use the wisdom someone else bestowed upon me and I aim to live by it, with the help of my accountability partners. A good rule of thumb for any interaction or conversation with a man is choosing to interact only in a way that I would if my husband were standing right beside me. My personality is extroverted and I am an encourager by heart. Without even realizing it, my encouragement can be mistaken as seduction. What I think is basic kindness can easily be misunderstood. I may think I am just being funny, but I must look through the lens of how others may see that. My humor, jokes, encouragement and time belong to my husband first. Other men in my life have specific roles, but they are not my friends. If you have been unfaithful, how do you interact with the opposite sex? I have to keep my communication strictly business like. No emotions. This can be difficult for those of us that are not inherently wired that way. I am not saying I can't be funny or be myself. But I can't tell you how many times I respond to texts from colleagues, my kid's coaches, or the like, and I have to edit and then re edit my responses. My first instinct is to use an exclamation point, overshare, or add humor. I know this sounds basic, but I have to work hard to be professional and to the point. It doesn't matter if I come across seeming like a witch from an icy tundra. My job is to keep my marriage safe. I grieve now for all I didn't know then. I am so sad for how unsafe and how careless I have been. The devil is indeed in the details and the seemingly unimportant decisions at the time. I remain heartbroken for my husband's pain. Can I ever be friends with males again? No. It's not because I don't want to. It's because I now see that I choose my husband and my marriage over anything else. If you want to read more about this, I recommend "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass. It is a lengthy book that tries to tackle a lot of information, but it is a good start. Another great resource is our betrayed spouses. What do they think? What do they need? Transparency and willingness to give up any rights in this area can speak volumes towards showing them you are safe and you mean business. Elizabeth

I was reading through many of my journal entries during the first year after discovery. I have several journals that are stuffed with scribbles, thoughts, and pages of raw and bloodied emotion. As I thumb through the hundreds of pages, I can see the narrative of God slowly eradicating my shame. When it came to my betrayed husband though, the theme of my writing seemed to revolve around a feeling of frustration and desperation. Early on, I seemed obsessed with trying to ease his pain and fear by searching frantically for some way to show him I wouldn't hurt him again. Pages were filled with repetitive questions and thoughts like: How do I comfort him? How do I enter into his pain? It feels like there is a brick wall around his heart and I can't get through. I feel so helpless and defeated. I don't think we can do this. I never see an end to this pain and heartache. I hate myself for what I have done. He will never forgive me. Did you notice it? I couldn't see it then. Not only was I paranoid and desperate, everything was still mostly about me. It was all about what I needed to do or what I needed for my own relief from anxiety. Shame has a funny way of ALWAYS making it about ourselves. Unfortunately, no person is perfect and no recovery from infidelity is perfect. I know ours has looked much more like a toddler learning to walk than an eagle soaring, that's for sure. Slowly, as I turned the journal pages encompassing months of recovery, I noticed a shift in perspective. The journal entries came more from a place of curiosity and concern. Less desperation. Less me. More God... Help me God to endure and trust that You have this. Help me to continue to offer tenderness and compassion for what I can't see or fully understand. Help me view my marriage through the lens of forgiveness and the extreme cost of that forgiveness. God, keep my focus only on You. Please help my husband with his pain. Show us a way. Help me stay faithful to You. Please give my husband all he needs today. You are his hope. I really wish there was a simple way to prove to your spouse what is in your heart or make some kind of promise that you don't want to hurt them again. But there isn't. I wish I could tell you it won't take months or years for this to evolve, but I can't. Reading back through my journals brings up a lot of emotion in me, but what rises to the top is the feeling of grace. I choose to have grace for myself for what I couldn't see then. If you are early on in recovery, you probably aren't where you want to be. But you know what? That's absolutely okay. You are probably doing the very best you can in light of what you've both been through. If you're not doing the best you can, why is that? Chances are you're still being deceptive or you may be afraid. This sentence from the middle of my journal entries was highlighted and underscored: "There is more grace in Christ than sin in you" -Richard Dibs. Then in a faint scribble beside it: do I really believe this? Are we there yet? No! We are still struggling, just like all of you. And I am still journaling. But like each page in these tattered journals, I will keep turning the page. The narrative is slowly changing and evolving as we keep discovering and learning. Whatever you are doing to try to care for your injured spouse, keep doing it. Don't give up trying. You will muddle through it. You will make mistakes. You frankly won't be able to get through to them because it might not even be about you. But keep at it. Keep reaching out for every possible resource to help you. Consistency and endurance will be your new guides. Today I will leave you with something from Leeann Payne in her book, Restoring the Christian Soul: "There is light at the end of this dark tunnel. The hurt and pain, unbearable as it is and inescapable as it is, turn out to be a vital part of the healing. God, I know You feel the pain with me and I know it cannot destroy me." What can you do today on your journey to healing? How can Affair Recovery support you in that path?

If there was a scale of emotions, I think it's safe to say we all prefer to be somewhere right in the middle; somewhere between 65 and 75 degrees. . . not too hot, not too cold. If your story and recovery has looked anything like ours, then you've probably realized that you and your mate's emotions can go way off the charts. We have been on roller coasters of highs and lows. We've experienced days where there seems to be no love or hope left at all. Days where frozen is an understatement and we have nothing to give one another but icy feelings and a steel heart. There have also been times we have been on the other end of the spectrum. Anger fired at one another by means of blazing, hot words and a rage that burns so deep, it makes you feel nothing short of crazy. Still other days, we feel an inkling of hope. Is there a chance we can make it? Was that a smile I just saw? Did we both just laugh and enjoy one another? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I have looked at the Hallmark card aisle and have never found the card to describe the range of emotion infidelity creates. There are so many of us out here crying out, desperate for some of these emotions and feelings to subside. So what exactly do we do with all of these feelings? One thing I am learning in recovery is to befriend them. Be curious about them. To simply feel them and trust that maybe, they won't always feel this way. Perhaps they're God's way of helping us learn about ourselves. Is there a particular feeling you avoid? I tend to avoid anger. I have been afraid of that feeling ever since I was a child. It is in no way an excuse for my behavior, but I've come to the realization that I used my affairs as a way to continue to deflect my anger. Oh, how I wish I would have been healthy enough to tell my husband I was angry instead of acting out and reaching to someone else. I still have a hard time feeling this emotion and the fear it brings up for me, but I am trying to learn it's okay. It's okay to simply acknowledge "I'm angry" If I feel the avoided emotion, what will happen? The process of working through my anger has caused pain from long before the infidelity to surface. Facing my feelings has led me to look at the truth and reality behind the issues that started early in my life. In a sense, avoiding the feeling helped me avoid the truth. A few months ago, I was fed up with the lack of control over my emotions. I marched into my therapist's office and strongly suggested he help me. I rationally explained that I was doing everything I could think of in recovery. We have been through disclosure. We have created safety. I have spent well over a year finally talking about and working through trauma. But my emotions were still all over the place. I wanted to return to a normal, comfortable and calm place. And by God, I needed his help to do so! I couldn't believe how he responded to my request. He laughed. My initial reaction was to be insulted by his laughter but I knew he really cared about me. I asked him why he thought such a seemingly reasonable request was funny. He then explained to me how normal it was. In light of what we were going through, he said he would be more concerned with me if I weren't feeling. He then suggested I read all of the Psalms within two days. So I did. King David (who wrote most of the Psalms) sounds a lot like us. He is all over the place. Every emotion I had felt or continue to feel is in there. Agony, despair, rage, fear, hopelessness, abandonment, joy, gladness, simplicity, hope and comfort. Chances are this pain is bringing up feelings you didn't even know you could feel or hate. You might be well versed in Psalms. Maybe you've looked at them in bits and pieces but never in their entirety. You may not even believe in God or own a Bible, and that's okay too. However, I encourage you to use the Psalms. Learn from them. Lean on them. Like one beggar who can show another where to find the bread, I will leave you with some of my personal favorites. I would be honored to hear yours. "You keep track of all of my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book" "Create in me a clean heart O God. Renew a right spirit within me". "You did it. You turned wild lament into a whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers." Elizabeth

If you find yourself in the first few months of discovery, chances are you are enduring many mornings that you don't see the point of getting out of bed. Your world and life as you knew it are gone. Life can seem empty and cold. Looking back on our first six months after discovery, there were days it seemed like an eternity of pure hell. Grief doesn't even begin to describe it. Like many of you, we have all endured losses. We've lost parents. We've lost jobs. Some out there have even lost children. While none of us are immune to pain, the pain caused by infidelity is a category of its own. Today I want to share with you one of the best things that happened to me about three months in. A friend told me three simple words that gave me immense hope. This friend knew everything I had done to my husband because she selflessly watched our kids while my husband and I attended EMS Weekend together. She has graciously stepped into our mess without judgement or picking sides and continues to do that today. She has cheered us on, but not gotten into our business. And she has guarded our hearts by not sharing our pain with others. One day I had to go over to her house to pick up our kids after school. As you all know, the daily grind doesn't stop for infidelity. We all learn how to cope by putting on a face for the outside world while our insides are crumbling. I guess this particular day she could see the hopelessness and despair on my face and she asked me how I was doing. I can't remember what I said exactly. But she did know how hard I was working at trying to begin to sort out the mess I had created. I'm quite certain shame was still the master emotion of anything that came out of my mouth. I will never forget how she looked directly in my eyes and said something to me, that looking back, was a game changer for me. She said, "You know Elizabeth, people can change." She then asked if I believed that. To be honest, I don't think I had considered the possibility. She saw something and believed in me when I couldn't. She simply offered me some hope. She offered me some much-needed Jesus encouragement that I could be more than my choices. Our betrayed spouses deserve the dignity of getting the choice to stay in the relationship or not. My job was and is to change. Change my destructive patterns and behaviors so that I can grant my husband the ability to decide what he needs and wants. My friend's words gave me hope. She believed in me when I was lost. She saw something I couldn't see but needed to hear. If you are the unfaithful, it is very easy (especially early on) to stay silent and stuck in the hopelessness that you may never have a different life after what you have done. While it is true we can not undo our pasts, the hope of the cross reminds me it doesn't take a lot of light to pierce through darkness. Affair Recovery is full of resources and people that can help remind you of that. If you haven't taken Hope for Healing or Harboring Hope, please consider signing up. You will find others to encourage you in this journey while your mate heals.