Survivors Blog: 

Jen

I sat in the therapist's office for the first time after my husband finally confessed his affair. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Surely I did not belong here, did I? She introduced herself, we had some preliminary conversation, and I told her my story. I didn’t know what people actually did following betrayal, but I knew I needed help and I needed it now. The pain I was experiencing was excruciating and I could barely move through the day. My head was spinning and I desperately wanted to move past this as quickly as possible. I was willing to do absolutely anything to find some relief. “It takes most people about two years to recover,” she said. What? Are you kidding me? No, that wasn’t going to work for me. I came into her office thinking more along the lines of maybe two months of living like this. Maybe three. That’s it. I couldn’t deal with this for one minute longer. I was in total disbelief of her words, so I told myself I would just do it faster than all those other people. In early recovery, most of us are in a hurry to just get through it.. No matter what side of the equation you're on, no one wants to linger one minute longer in this mess than absolutely necessary. My husband was equally unprepared when I shared the therapist’s prediction. Neither of us really believed it, and we wondered if maybe she didn’t know what she was talking about. As the months went on and I continued to struggle, he sometimes gently noted the time that had elapsed, as though pointing it out would make me snap out of it and feel differently. “Jen, it’s been 100 days.” I was also frustrated, believing I must not be working hard enough or I would be doing much better by now. He was genuinely repentant, very understanding and supportive. Neither of us understood why I wasn’t starting to feel better. How could I possibly feel this terrible day after day? “Jen, it’s been 6 months.” We actually laugh about this now, but it was not at all funny at the time. I felt I was doing it all wrong and I would never recover. I assumed it meant I was doomed to fail. His intentions were good, he just really didn’t understand and neither did I, so I was not able to explain it to him. I thought I would magically feel better over time, and when I didn’t, I went searching for resources and encountered a few references to timelines that reflected similarities to my therapist’s remarks. Various sources described what “should” be happening 3 months following D-day, then 6 months, 9 months, at the one year mark, and so on. I waited for the days and weeks to pass, just trying to hold on until I reached that magical marker on the timeline that said I would start to feel better. I told myself that when I got there, something would be different. It just had to. And then when the date on the calendar came and went? Nothing. I was crushed. Of course, it doesn’t make any sense that something would spontaneously change on some random date, but I had hung my hopes on it because frankly, I didn’t know what else to do. So when it didn’t materialize, I felt even more lost than before. I just wanted someone to tell me when the pain would end, so that I could crawl into my bed and just hibernate until it was time to come out and be healed. As I passed each mile marker, I felt more and more discouraged that I wasn’t where I was “supposed” to be. I felt like I was falling behind, like I must not have the capacity to heal like “other people” did, and this conclusion only added to my feelings of hopelessness. The more time that passed without any real improvement, the less I believed there was an actual end to this pain and confusion. I lost all confidence this was going to get any better. My fear increased about being stuck indefinitely in this Recovery Purgatory, and the fear fed on itself the longer it went on. The more time that passed, the more fearful I became that I would never heal, and then more time would pass and feed that fear, and so on. The reality is that time does not heal all wounds. Time itself really doesn’t matter as much as what we do with that time. In reality, I spent much of that time just waiting. Waiting for him to fix it, waiting for him to make it better. He was also waiting - waiting for me to be healed. Time alone was not going to do it, but neither of us really understood the work that was needed. I wasted a lot of time either trying to avoid the work, or telling myself I didn’t need it. I would do bits and pieces here and there and thought that should be enough, but it wasn’t until I really jumped into my recovery wholeheartedly that I began to experience a significant shift, and things started to really change. Time became much less important as I started to experience glimmers of healing and hope for the future. I know we all want to look for answers and realistic expectations, but I really don’t like any of the purported timelines, since every one of us is as unique as our situations. I also think there are too many subjective variables that create a wide spectrum when it comes to how each of us even would define “healed,” so it further complicates those predictions. I know some people who are satisfied with just getting to a point of relative peace and stability, and others who won’t stop going until they truly thrive. There is no right or wrong, and sometimes the goal posts move along the way. Now that I’m no longer in the midst of the trauma, I prefer to look at healing in seasons rather than specific time frames. The initial season of recovery is awful. There’s just no way around that. There are triggers and reminders everywhere and everything feels very raw, scary, and overwhelming. There is little peace. Speaking for myself, what came next was a season of searching. I searched for hope, for guidance, for someone to tell me what to do. One very important thing to note is that even though it takes time to walk through recovery, the experience is not static. The pain and complete overwhelm I felt the first week is not the same as what I felt months and years later, even if it was still hard. Admittedly it may have taken me longer to gain traction than it might for others, so I was in pretty rough shape for a while. That supposed two year timeline to heal was not even close for me. I wish it had been. Even so, I can see there were shifts over time. Affair Recovery recommends taking an assessment at defined intervals (ie: every 3 to 6 months) to gauge progress since it can be really hard to discern any difference in the day to day. For me, one straightforward gauge of progress was the impact of a “trigger” over time. Initially, triggers were truly debilitating, causing intense physical symptoms that often took me down for days at a time. A bit later on, triggers were still present and painful, but they only took me offline for an hour, then only for a few minutes, and so on. The intensity lessened. Then the meaning and impact changed. While I wasn’t yet “healed,” my experience when I got triggered was not the same in later seasons as it was in the beginning. It’s important for me to say that here, because I remember when I first started out, I heard about people having triggers years down the road, and I was horrified to think that they felt the same as I did just a couple months after D-day. That wasn’t the case at all. And it wasn’t just about learning to suck it up and put on a brave face. It was a true lessening of emotional and physical response as I continued to do the work of recovery. So how long does it take to recover from infidelity? The exact amount of time is different for everyone, but the short answer is - it definitely takes longer than anyone would like. There is no way around it - only through it. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” That’s all we can do. Just keep going. One day you will look back and be surprised to see how far you’ve come in your healing journey. It does get better - much better. But it also takes time. In the meantime, try to be patient, give yourself some grace, keep doing the work, and just keep going. We all get there in our own time.

To Tell or Not to Tell…Our Friends and Family People struggle with the decision of whether to tell friends and family and, particularly their children, about the infidelity that occurred in their marriage. For some, the ugly truth comes out before they consider it. Sometimes, kids are collateral damage in the ensuing chaos, overhearing or directly witnessing the arguments and drama by parents overwhelmed with their emotions. I’ve heard both sides of this dilemma declare with certainty that their perspective is the only right choice for one reason or another, but I’ve also heard people regret how they handled it and wish they could go back and do it differently. Some feel it is inherently wrong and deceptive to keep a secret like this within a family, and the truth should be shared no matter what, while others argue there are no circumstances in which children should ever learn of their parent’s betrayal, even as adults. In my time spent on the Affair Recovery forums, I have heard from many people whose children learned of the infidelity amid the discovery alongside the betrayed partner or overheard enough to put the pieces together. Sometimes, an overwhelmed spouse blurts it out to friends or family as they begin the free fall into shock and confusion, often regretting it later. Some affairs are made very public, and everyone knows, whether you want them to. In those instances, choosing whether to tell is moot, and the path forward is more about damage control. But for those that still have that choice, which is correct? Do we tell our friends and family, or not? What about our kids? What do we do? There is no single right answer to this question. People are unique, and situations differ. There are many variables and nuances between families, spouses, betrayal stories, and other factors, so each situation is individual. Family and friends vary in their emotional capacity and stability; of course, age is a factor in whether (and how) to discuss something so difficult with children. There is no single “best” way to handle this, but I can tell you what we decided to do and how it worked out for us. First, some background. During my husband’s affair, I told no one of my suspicions. Not a word. I accused him directly, and he denied it, but I never said anything to anyone else and kept all my fears and feelings to myself. Over ten years passed before my husband finally confessed. During all that time, I never told anyone, and he had certainly never told anyone - other than the affair partner, of course. After he confessed, I didn’t know what to do about sharing this nuclear bomb that had just been dropped in my lap. My world crumbled around me and I was very alone. Neither of us wanted to share this news with our family or friends. I needed support, but I couldn’t get past the shame (mine and his) to open up to anyone I knew. I had already carried it alone for a long time and didn’t even know if I could get the words out of my mouth. My husband’s affair had ended years earlier, so it felt punitive for me to want to tell anyone. Initially, I believed that I should just be able to “get over it” since it was a long time ago and that there was something wrong with me for feeling so much pain. I did not immediately understand the magnitude of the impact this would have or the benefit of having someone to talk to. I was ashamed of his infidelity, and I felt worthless. I thought sharing it would just highlight my deficits for all to see, and then they would also know I was not enough. Eventually, I told one longtime coworker, but I soon regretted it and otherwise kept it hidden. I heard someone describe the feeling of hiding a dead body while trying to heal. That’s pretty much what it felt like, and I put a lot of energy into keeping our secret. It was nearly impossible to keep my emotions in check and pretend everything was fine day after day, but that is exactly what I did, at work and home. So much so that it was hard to devote time and space to healing, and it was counterproductive in that regard. Over and over each day, I would leave the room to cry and return with a fake smile and pretend to be okay. I felt fake. I felt disconnected from my kids, my friends, and my family, and they had no idea I was in any distress at all. As time went on, I spent more and more time separating the two lives, the public façade and my private reality. I made many mistakes along the way, and I wish I had done many things differently, but for the most part, I don’t regret keeping this from our children, family, and friends during this very raw time. It was very hard and lonely. However, I felt very unsettled about lying to everyone. They only knew the fake mom/friend/daughter who pretended to be okay. It felt really unfair and kept me from feeling connected to them, which was just another loss I experienced because of the infidelity. I also worried about the potential that our kids might have overheard our conversations and possibly already knew and felt we were intentionally keeping a secret from them or worried about our family. But there was no way to find that out without asking, and I wasn’t ready to open that can of worms. People I had met through AR forums and groups told me I should tell my kids, who were teens / young adults at the time. They offered perspectives from their situations, but for most of them, the disclosure had negatively impacted their relationships with their kids, and it scared me. But their situations were not mine, and telling my kids felt wrong. And yet, I also felt deceitful for hiding this “thing” in plain sight in the middle of our family. It was a conundrum, and I could not predict the outcome if we decided to share the truth. If we told anyone, we couldn’t take it back again. So, I felt more comfortable just holding off, maybe forever, to avoid having it go badly. Over time, as I began to heal slowly, I revisited this question here and there in my mind. I still had all the same hesitations, but I also felt resentful for feeling like I had to keep a significant part of my life hidden from the people closest to me. I felt they didn’t even know me anymore. After several years of recovery and finally getting to a more stable place, I revisited the idea of telling our children and discussed it with my husband. I was not looking for a pound of flesh, nor did I want to damage my kids' relationships with their father. I was also concerned about how they would navigate the information and how it might impact them individually. However, I was wrestling with the inauthenticity of all of my close relationships, as the real me, the most gut wrenching parts, remained hidden. Not only do they not know about the infidelity and the resulting trauma, but they don’t know that for a while, I was so depressed I struggled just to stay alive. To be present. To be a parent, a daughter, and a friend. I wondered if my kids thought I just lost interest in them or didn’t care. They also did not know about the strength it took to face this and the deep respect, partnership, and support my husband and I have since found in each other. My husband held me together when I couldn’t do it for myself and showed strength and humility my kids knew nothing about. I also started to think about my kids as they entered into adulthood. I wondered about their expectations for marriage and if they would share their struggles or face them alone and in secret as we had done. I didn’t want that for them. I didn’t want my kids to have the fake Instagram standard for marriage where everyone looks happy and shiny on the outside, and the viewer is left feeling like they are the only ones facing hard things. That isn’t real and can be so isolating. I wanted my kids to know marriage is hard and everyone will endure things they didn’t expect, even if it isn’t to the level of infidelity. I wanted them to know that even if everyone else’s marriage looks easy and perfect, they hide the reality of any relationship between two imperfect people. Some people may have very little trouble in their marriage, but it gets hard for everyone at some point, which is just reality. (To be clear, I don’t consider infidelity to be a routine part of marital hardship; it is in a category of its own and carries more pain than any other relational situation. However, in general, all marriages will face some hardship, and unfortunately, some of those will include betrayal.) I wanted my kids to know how to be resilient and see a living example that marriage can survive difficult and painful things and is important enough to put forth the effort. In our marriage, our tendency has always been to keep all marital conflicts hidden from our children when possible, but doing that can send the message that there isn’t any conflict, which is just not real. I didn’t want to get into the weeds with them about any of our issues. Still, I wanted to acknowledge that we are flawed, have endured a lot of hardship and heartache, and can be a safe and understanding resource when they someday face trouble in their marriages. I certainly didn’t know what to do or what the right decision was, but my biggest fear was hurting my children in the process. My therapist assuaged some of those fears when she said - if your kids know or even suspect there was an affair. Still, they see you leaning into each other and showing love toward one another, even amidst tense moments, then you are showing them love and forgiveness. And that model is even stronger if they know what has happened. After much thought, my husband and I created a narrative to share. We did this together. The narrative was entirely truthful but selective about what we included. We didn’t include specifics about an affair being part of our marriage history, but we did talk about the hurt that has happened - before, during, and after the affair, and how we have worked together to overcome it. We spent a few days writing out what we wanted to say, and once we had agreed to the general sentiment, we sat them down together and shared it. We didn’t read it verbatim but took turns talking about pain and humility and being unable to make good and loving decisions when we were focused on our individual hurts. We described in very general ways how we had felt misunderstood and hurt each other over the years. My husband took ownership of hurting me very deeply and being grateful for my forgiveness. We talked about communication, or the lack thereof, as well as sadness, depression and bitterness, and I shared for the first time that I had been going to therapy for quite a while and that we had also started couples counseling. The faces of my children revealed their surprise. I told them I didn't want to keep the therapy a secret, but for a season, I did need to keep it private as I dealt with some things. I wanted to normalize getting help so they didn’t ever have to feel like they needed to suffer in solitude like we did. In the end, our advice to them was: When things are hard, don’t stay isolated. We hadn’t sought help before because we didn’t know what to do; we felt alone and we thought no one would understand. But you don’t have to keep “hard” hidden. God put us in community for a reason. I wish we had recognized that years ago. We described what we have learned about God and ourselves in the healing process. Before sharing this, I suspect if they had their own marital troubles, they would have been unlikely to share them. I hope now that we normalize struggle, heartache, therapy, resilience, and openness so they will feel open to seeking support when needed. They didn’t have much to say that night, but they did ask a few questions over the days that followed, which allowed for a little more general conversation about therapy and relationships. We had also decided to include our son’s fiancé in the conversation, and I was initially worried she might feel uncomfortable with such an intimate conversation. However, she commented that she appreciated the openness. I hope they can learn from our mistakes, and I felt liberated by sharing this with them. We didn’t tell them there was infidelity, and we didn’t get into specifics. This was enough. Unexpectedly, having this conversation released me from my lingering resentment at feeling fake and having to keep his secret. I hadn’t realized it was still there until I could let it go. I don’t know what it would have looked like if we had tried this early in our recovery. I honestly don’t know if I would have been satisfied to leave it at that without having the full story be known so they could truly understand the depth of my pain. But I am at a place now where this was enough for me. It was truly liberating without causing relational damage. I can’t say if this approach is right for anyone else, but it was right for us. My husband’s partnership and humility have been crucial in our progress, and this narrative was a joint venture. Infidelity’s impact extends beyond the marriage to the family. So does healing.

Freedom begins in a community of “me too” people, people committed to helping you carry your burden. ~ Sheila Walsh When a person experiences a loss or tragedy, those around them often offer support differently. People say things like, “Let me know if you need anything,” or “I’m here for you.” This can be genuine and well-meaning, but to the person amid crisis or grief, they’re not especially helpful. That is passive support, meaning if the grieving person comes to me and asks for something specific, I will provide it. Active support looks like this: “I have two hours free on Tuesday evening. I’d like to bring you dinner and babysit your kids. Would that be helpful?” Both offers are genuine and well meaning. One is more helpful to a person who is overwhelmed and in crisis. Caring people often don’t know how to support a person in crisis. We don’t know what is helpful, so we extend this open-ended invitation for that person to identify their needs and then reach out and advocate to meet those needs. If you have ever been on the grief side of this equation, you know you often don’t even know what you need, and the last thing you want to do is reach out of your isolated shell of grief to ask someone for anything. In my experience, this applies to betrayal recovery as well. As a betrayed partner, there is often so much shame surrounding the discovery of infidelity that the last thing we want to do is tell someone about it and then ask for something, particularly from people who don’t understand what it feels like. This can apply within marriage relationships recovering from infidelity as well. Early on, my very well-meaning husband often said, “I’m here for you,” but I felt totally alone. He did not read books or search the internet to understand what I was experiencing or to find ideas or programs that might be helpful. Instead, he waited for me to tell him what I needed. I was drowning in shock, trauma, shame, and depression, and I had no idea what to do to move forward. In that state of being, I was not in a condition to use reasoning and thoughtfulness to research recovery tools and treatments. I was in crisis: a constant state of hypervigilance and distress, and my critical thinking skills were mostly offline. My brain was trying so desperately to stay afloat amidst all the chaos that it mostly just tried to minimize the reality of the infidelity to survive. This was not a conscious decision. I did not realize how damaging and skewed this thinking was. I wasn’t seeking or expecting much of anything from my husband. I figured that I was not enough since he had wanted someone else. Therefore, I must be the problem. I saw this as my issue to solve, and I was alone. When I couldn’t just “get over it,” I again saw myself as the problem. Being “stuck” was just another indicator of my deficiency as a person, which is why he wanted someone else in the first place…and the twisted merry-go-round continued from there. (This was obviously all very unhealthy thinking, but that was the reality of my experience for quite a while.) With all that in mind, I was uncomfortable asking him to do anything for me. I felt ashamed and rejected, so I did not have any confidence that my needs mattered to him. His actions had shown me I was dispensable. Why would I say, “I need…” and assume he would care? I knew my repentant husband genuinely meant well, but I didn’t find it helpful. I didn’t know what I needed when we first began untangling everything after the betrayal. He didn’t either, but his approach was to encourage me to not think about it and move forward. I understand why this made sense to him then, but ignoring does not equal healing, so this was neither helpful nor possible. I share this not to point fingers but to hopefully help someone else learn from our mistakes. Over time, I sporadically tried therapy and various programs, and while my husband said he supported whatever I needed, he was sometimes clearly uncomfortable with it. He did not understand the purpose and sometimes believed my efforts were making it worse. And at times, it did make it worse. Sometimes, even good recovery work can cause temporary instability, but I also tried some pretty unhelpful and really terrible programs, so it was probably a little of both. I also did not know what I was doing or what I needed, so I tried a lot of things; some were good, and others were not. It was like throwing spaghetti at the wall and waiting to see what would stick. There is no rule book for this stuff, so sometimes you have to try something and see if it helps before you know whether to continue it or bail and try something else. My husband was always very genuine about wanting to be there for me; over time, he figured out how to do that. He went from being available to listen (though the conversation was tough for me to initiate) to directly asking me if I wanted to talk, especially when he could see I was struggling. That difference is huge. One was passively waiting to see if I brought anything up, and the other was actively asking if there was something I wanted to discuss, even knowing it might be unpleasant. It was a huge relief to me, and while I didn’t always choose to talk at that moment, knowing that he really meant it was very comforting. When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction. ~ Peter Bromberg Part of the exasperation in healing from betrayal is trying to get the unfaithful partner to understand the impact. The whole experience made me feel crazy, and it was hard to express everything I felt. Before I could see that he really grasped the depth of how his affair had impacted me, I felt I needed to justify my pain and triggers over and over again and somehow prove they were legitimate. Rick Reynolds captures this well by explaining, “Until the betrayed spouse believes their unfaithful spouse "gets it," they experience an internal pressure to keep talking about it until their mate understands. Many unfaithful spouses interpret this behavior to be a tactic to shame them, torture them, or manipulate them. The betrayed spouse actually has the opposite intent: they continue to ask questions in an attempt to heal their wounds and to actually reconnect again. If the unfaithful spouse will accept responsibility for their self-centeredness and dysfunction early on, their spouse will feel safer earlier and begin to grieve.” I definitely saw this play out, and once my husband started to actively support me in the ways I have described, I could see that he “got it.” My compulsion to “prove” my pain began to noticeably subside, which allowed us to have more productive and healing conversations. He began to ask, “How are you?” with genuine curiosity and without defensiveness toward my answer. This was a wonderful way to actively provide support, especially if my response was “not great,” which it often was. Over time, he broadened the scope of his active support. If we passed through locations he knew were triggering, he would take my hand and say, “I know, I’m sorry.” It was validating and comforting, making me feel seen and understood. We often didn’t need to discuss it further in those moments because he demonstrated that he knew and cared about what was impacting me. After his affair was revealed, I had become hypervigilant and very guarded, but the more he provided active support, the more relaxed I became. Slowly, it started to feel more like we were on the same team, dealing with this thing together, rather than me feeling like I was completely alone. But it took a long time, and a lot of patience and consistency. I know it wasn’t easy, and he took risks, knowing he would not always get a warm and fuzzy response from me. He created safety by doing these things; ultimately, it was what I needed, and over time it made a big difference in our relationship. Sometimes he would hug me, let me cry, and say, "It's okay; you can tell me anything," even if it was the same stuff he'd heard 1,000 times already. He would say, "We will get there. We will do this as many times as we need to." He held onto hope for both of us when I didn’t have any. Those things made me feel safe and seen. At first, I often didn’t tell him what was on my mind, as I had such a hard time doing it and was still very wary. But knowing he was willing to listen and cared about what I was experiencing felt very comforting and supportive, whether I shared my thoughts or not. If you are the unfaithful spouse and you really want to support your partner, be there, and be truthful - 100% truthful - every single time. Tell him or her every day how sorry you are, how much you want to be with them, and how grateful you are that they are still here. Reassure them that you want to know their thoughts and feelings, even the ugly ones, because you are in this together, and you don't want them to be alone. You should consider taking the initiative to show your support rather than waiting for your overwhelmed, betrayed partner to figure it all out. Recovery involves risk for both parties. It is not easy for a betrayed spouse to extend any measure of trust and vulnerability toward a person who willingly hurt them so deeply. Conversely, for the unfaithful partner, it is a risk to tell the truth and then be open to the full impact and consequences. But in the end, truth is the only way to have a meaningful relationship with your spouse. Real intimacy cannot be found without truth; every marriage deserves to experience that. Love is providing a safe place for loss and pain to heal. And for hope and joy to grow. ~Topher Kearby

As I first ventured into the world of betrayal recovery, I listened to several experts advise against asking too many questions and getting too many details about their spouse’s betrayal. They cautioned that the details can be damaging and cause lingering intrusive thoughts. The predominant advice is to stick to the basic information of timeframe and generic summary of events but otherwise to steer clear of anything that could be considered a question related to comparison, like physical appearance, body type, specific sexual experiences, etc. The advice was that these things don’t serve to promote healing, and it is better to keep them unknown. (A list of suggested questions to consider asking instead can be found here.) Not asking for details is very sound advice, and if that works for you, I agree that would probably be best. It made logical sense and I really tried not to want to know. But that is just not who I am. My perspective may not be the same as yours or anyone else’s, but I found myself needing to know everything. I couldn’t live with my husband having any lingering secrets with the affair partner. The years of secrets made me feel like he was protecting her or preserving something special between them. So now that the truth was out, I needed to know anything she knew. Unless you've experienced it yourself, it is hard to find the words to express the unique feeling of being an outsider in your own marriage. Initially, I tried the suggested “24-hour rule” many times. The 24-hour rule is where you consider a question that might be harmful to ask, write it down, wait 24 hours, and then see if you still feel the need to ask. I did this on a number of occasions and had a literal notebook full of all the things I wanted to know. Not once did the passage of time make any difference in my need to know the answers to those questions. I wrestled with it internally for a while, like I was a bad person or doing this wrong by still wanting to know. Eventually I realized this is who I am, and I would never rest without all of the information. My first therapist said I was a “nooks and crannies” type of person. I needed to get into the weeds to process things, including the details of the affair. If you are like me and not knowing eats you alive, then you may want to consider asking for the details. What is the downside? You have the details. They can paint full color images in your head you will never be able to “unsee”, but for me, the images were there anyway, and most of those in my imagination were worse than those he eventually shared. The mental movies I envisioned before I had the details were already embellished with music, lights, sound, and thematic elements that weren’t actually part of the real story. Still, my brain romanticized it and made connections to make sense of it, even if they weren’t true. When there are gaps in details, our brains often confabulate - using our imagination to fill in the blanks. In this case, I concluded how it must have played out since the affair seemed to be so important and carried on for so long. This led to many scenarios I assumed to be true, but in reality, they were not even close. I needed every detail, and in a few specific instances, I needed to hear them over and over again to overwrite the narrative I had long held in my head. I had a long time to sit with my version of events going unchallenged in my imagination, so they were hard to unravel. It was traumatizing, but the reality was I was already traumatized, and this process was going to be difficult no matter what those details were. Every person is unique in terms of what they need, but I also think the type of affair or betrayal may make a difference in the potential helpfulness of details. If it was a highly limerent affair, details may not prove beneficial. But if it was a more rudimentary affair it might be helpful. My husband’s affair was sexual but not particularly connective, and that is not uncommon. It was ongoing but not romantic. It was clumsy and haphazard and much less “sexy” than what I envisioned. It was still completely wrong and devastating to me, so I am not minimizing it in any way, but it wasn’t the twitterpated, steamy, romance novel scenario I assumed it to be. It was more of a series of rushed, awkward, unconnected encounters that happened to include sex. John Haney often refers to this as “masturbation with a partner”, which conveys the selfish, meaningless, unconnected, and often mechanical sex that is common in affairs. They barely knew each other in any authentic way. They were very familiar on a surface level and obviously in a rudimentary physical sense, but most of their conversation was flirtation and fluff. Nothing deep was shared. No meaningful plans were made. On the receiving end of the betrayal, I obviously assumed there was a deep, passionate, and romantic connection underlying all of this. Why else would he have an affair? So all of my “mind movies” and images were along those lines, with perfectly choreographed Hollywood-type sensual scenes running through my head. It turns out that in reality, there was little conversation, no beautiful scenery, little warmth, and no real passion. It was just hurry-up-and-get-it-done kind of stuff, like teenagers trying to get away with something before they get caught. It was not a particularly coordinated or beautiful experience. In my case, the pain caused by learning the details was less than the pain caused by my runaway imagination. It helped me to create context for what my husband’s affair was - and wasn’t. The truth and my husband’s commitment to what I needed to heal were a huge factor in our ability to grow closer through this experience. The process was challenging for him, too, but he patiently shared anything I asked, as often as I asked it. I know I could not have felt safe otherwise. It is not the right choice for everyone, and I acknowledge those details are painful, but I do think about them. But for me, they demystified so much of what I had imagined, and living with those imaginary scenarios would be much worse. I feel like the typical advice is not to ask too many questions about the details, and I felt shame in wanting to know, like there was something wrong with me or if I was being petty. The stronger I got in this process, the more I understood that we are all unique and that there is no “right” way to do it. Sometimes, seeking more and more information gives the false perception that it will all eventually make sense, but in reality most of us will never fully understand the betrayal. Part of the healing process is learning to accept that fact, but that is not easy and comes much later than we would like. Not every betrayed spouse needs or wants to know everything, but some do. While it was painful, it was the right choice for me. I would only caution you to consider whether you are ready to hear the answer before you ask a question. You can always wait and ask at a later time - there is no expiration date on questions. The betrayed spouse must be given the control over how much and when they need to know. Even if a betrayed spouse doesn’t want all the details, they need to know that if they want to know, they can, and that the unfaithful spouse would be willing to share anything the betrayed spouse felt was necessary for their own sanity and potential healing. I wanted to know what I was forgiving and never look back and wonder about what I didn’t know. I don’t regret my decision, and I appreciate my husband’s willingness to share everything with me and then sit with me while I was in the pain it caused. It showed me he prioritized me over his secrets which was an important piece of our recovery.

During his affair, when faced with hard questions about his relationship with the AP, my husband lied. Every. Single. Time. After D-day when I asked him about that, he acknowledged he feared if he ever admitted the truth he would lose me, so he resigned to take the truth to his grave. When I asked how he could lie to my face during all those years even after the affair ended, his explanation was pretty simple. He said he knew if he played dumb and consistently denied everything, the conversation would end and we could go back to “normal” relatively quickly. In his mind, that meant very little disruption to our life. However, he definitely wasn’t thinking about why I kept asking those questions all those years, and what kind of turmoil I was in to continue to bring it up. He was just thinking about saving himself, preserving the marriage, and getting back to “normal” as soon as possible. During those years, it felt to me as though he was protecting his alliance with his affair partner, and that was why he wouldn’t tell me the truth. It said to me that he prioritized his AP over me. He now understands why I felt this way, but said it was not like that at all. He was just protecting himself and did not want to face any disruption to our relationship. He just wanted things to be “normal.” None of these explanations make any of his actions ok. At all. But it does help me understand, to the extent that is possible from my side of the street. I still struggle with the intentionality and meaning behind the affair and all the manipulation involved, but these perspectives are helpful for me to better understand his motivations at the time, which he describes as far less calculated than they felt. In no way am I suggesting anyone give their partner a pass for these actions. But in the process of trying to foster empathy, to better understand an unfaithful partner, and potentially building trust and repairing the marriage, these insights have been helpful. It doesn’t come easily, but over time I have seen many similar examples in others’ stories that help soften my cynicism and replace some of my doubts with curiosity. False Reassurance There have been times during our recovery when my husband has “reassured” me of something, and it has really hit me the wrong way. Things he said that on the surface should have provided comfort, but actually made me more anxious. At first I couldn’t figure out why, but I had a strong physical reaction to these reassurances. My very wise counselor explained to me these are because of his previous false reassurances-. What does that mean? Here’s an example. During his affair, I would question my husband about the affair partner and his relationship with her. I was very direct about my suspicions that they were having an affair. She was his boss, so I knew he spent time with her every day at work, but he would often complain about her in a variety of ways, and tell me flat out that he did not find her attractive and he would never be interested in her. And yet…he was simultaneously carrying on an affair with her. He often went into detail about many of their day to day conversations and interactions as though he was being transparent with me. All of that was to normalize their relationship to make me feel “safer” and let down my guard, when in fact it was just smoke and mirrors - manipulation to throw me off track about what was really going on, to stop all of my questions. So now, after D-day, if I am feeling unsettled about a female coworker, for example, statements about her unattractiveness, his disinterest, or “you don’t need to worry” don’t feel comforting like they should. I’ve heard it all before, and they were lies. So, those kinds of “reassurances” don't feel reassuring now. Those same words were used to deceive my fragile heart that wanted so desperately to believe him, and now they just make me very anxious. There are never any guarantees in life, but at this point I don’t truly fear he would cheat on me again. However, I have found that connecting my brain with my gut is a tricky business, and it can be slow to get the message. So while my logical brain does not believe he would betray me again or would even desire to do so, my emotional response is often fearful and guarded. After all, I never thought he would do it in the first place. As a result, these “reassurances” just don’t feel very reassuring. The skepticism is normal, understandable, and healthy as a person who has been betrayed. Trying to forcefully override those feelings has not been helpful or effective - I’ve tried. It may be hard for the unfaithful partner to understand, as he or she knows if they are now being truthful, but from the betrayed spouse perspective, you only know by what you see, and that takes a lot of repetitive trustworthy behavior. Trust is shattered in a moment, but takes diligence and time to restore. The unfortunate reality is that when you cry wolf too many times, no one will believe you. That’s just how it goes. It’s not my fault that I don’t blindly believe words that were previously used to deceive me. That is just me protecting myself. The problem is, my hard earned defenses smash up against his genuine commitment to the truth in our current relationship. That is hard on both of us, but it helps to understand how we got here, and that my hesitance isn’t coming from stubbornness. My gut is just doing its job to keep me safe, so when it hears things that ring familiar to those that were disingenuously used against me, it says, “Nice try, but we’re not falling for that again.” It’s not a personal judgment against my husband. I believe he has been completely truthful since D-day, and I also know it must be exasperating for him when I don’t - or can’t - believe something he tells me. I am now starting to be able to separate my husband’s intentions from the impact it had on me. I viewed intention and impact as intertwined, assuming he intended to hurt me and made his decisions with that in mind. He obviously knew it was wrong, but had no idea how it would impact me because he never made the effort to think about it. If you were the unfaithful spouse, please know that we really do want to believe you. We just might not be able to... yet. As frustrating as it might feel to you, please keep being honest and open, and with time and healing, it is possible for trust to be restored. It is not an easy process, and the deeper the deception, the harder it will be, but it is worth the effort if you want a chance at restoration of your marriage. “The weight of the things that remained unspoken, built up so much it crushed us everyday." ~Maroon 5 Can We Believe Again? Part 1: Crying Wolf Can We Believe Again? Part 2: Reinforced Walls

My emotional walls went up when his affair began, and had been reinforced from all the deception and mistrust. There was no easy way to sandblast them down; instead, they were chipped away as trust was built - trust in him and trust in myself. I didn’t trust myself anymore after having “allowed” everything that happened. I felt stupid and weak for not having done more to catch him in his lies, stop the affair, and protect myself. His repeated false reassurances (more on those later) only reinforced the walls. I felt very guilty about this for a long time. He demonstrated in many ways that he is now a very trustworthy man. So I shamed myself for not just dropping my defenses, but it didn't matter - I just couldn’t let him get too close. I was continually guarded, waiting for the next shoe to drop. If it took so long for him to admit the affair even happened, if I waited it out I might get more truth, right? My counselor helped me understand that my defenses were put in place at a time I needed them. They served a purpose and protected me, and I should not be mad at myself for doing what I needed to do. I should appreciate my gut response (that even now continues to remind me of potential danger), for protecting me when I needed it, but I also need to stop bashing myself for developing necessary and healthy defenses at a time when it was critically needed. Taking down those walls is hard and that is where I am now, but not blaming myself and feeling like a failure/loser/whatever for not easily dropping those defenses is crucial for my well-being. I don't do this well at all. The more I talk to my counselor, the more she normalizes me having a hard time letting the defenses go. Maybe that will help you; I don't know. We are all dealing with competing realities of betrayal recovery and trying to sort it all out on some level. “Honesty is the highest form of intimacy." ~Nicole LePera Why do they lie? So why do people lie? It isn’t always what it seems. Lying creates power and control over a situation. If I lie to you about something, you are unable to make an accurate assessment, so I am essentially controlling your reality. Yes, it is manipulative and hurtful, but it may not have the intentionality we might assign to it. It feels like my husband intentionally manipulated and controlled me to ensure the affair could continue uninterrupted. The lies and cover ups were deliberate ways to ensure I had no autonomy to make good decisions about our marriage or my own well being. He and his AP both had to know that, but it seemed that my life was not as important as their ability to maintain the freedom to continue the affair. After D-day when I presented my perceptions to my husband, he saw it very differently and said he was not intentionally manipulative like that. Yes, of course he was intentionally lying to protect his secret, but not with the conscious purpose of robbing me of freedom. He never thought it through that far. The lies were basically a response to each immediate threat of being found out. Just kicking that can down the road until another lie was needed to keep the cover up intact. People generally lie to avoid consequences. When they lie, it turns away the focus so they don't have to really face - and feel - what they're doing, and who they really are. It protects their image, not only to others, but to themselves. It is more than just wanting to deceive others, it's also about deceiving themselves. By keeping things hidden they don’t see the pain they are causing, so it’s easy to convince themselves they aren’t actually hurting anyone. Most unfaithful partners justify their behaviors to feel better about what they are doing. Often, they tell themselves they are lying to spare their partner from pain, so it is ok or even noble. Over time the behaviors become normalized and seem less harmful - it is no longer shocking to lie, so it gets easier and more routine. The reality, of course, is that deception is not about sparing the feelings of the betrayed partner, it is about avoiding consequences and controlling the situation. People cheating in their marriage also lie to avoid risking something they don’t want to lose. I found numerous examples to support the irony that they often lie because the marriage is important. It sounds crazy, but if they didn’t want to preserve the marriage, they would probably just openly admit the betrayal, leave, and move on. Right? There are exceptions, of course. There are people who have different motives and then there are actual sociopaths, but most who lie are doing so to avoid losing something they value - even though the actions they are taking certainly don’t convey value at all. From my perspective as a betrayed spouse, it certainly felt like my husband was willing to risk our marriage and family because it had no value, but he wasn’t. Ironically, he lied because he didn’t want to lose it. He didn’t want to change his “real” life for the AP; otherwise, he would have just gone ahead and done so. Thank you for reading Part 2. I hope this series has provided validation for the experience of the betrayed spouse and perspectives to consider about deceit. Last up is Part 3 where I will close out the series and discuss more of the distorted thinking that can perpetuate deception, as well as the echoes that can linger in the betrayed spouse as a result. Can We Believe Again? Part 1: Crying Wolf Can We Believe Again? Part 3: Maintaining Status Quo

"The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies, it comes from those you trust the most." ~Author Unknown You are probably familiar with the fable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The tale concerns a shepherd boy who intentionally and repeatedly fools villagers into believing a wolf is attacking the town's flock of sheep. He cries, “Wolf! Wolf!” to watch them all come running, but they arrive to find there is no wolf. He does this several times, and eventually, when an actual wolf appears, the boy calls for them in a panic. By this time the villagers no longer believe him so they don’t come, and the sheep are eaten by the wolf. After hearing the same phony claims again and again, no one believed the boy when he was finally telling the truth. He had knowingly told the same lie several times before, but it still seemed to come as a genuine surprise to him when the villagers didn’t believe him when the story he told was actually true. This fable speaks to the complicated and frustrating experience for both spouses after the discovery of betrayal. For the unfaithful spouse, he or she KNOWS when they ARE telling the truth and probably feels hurt and exasperated that they are doubted or continue to not be believed during the healing process. After all, they knew when they were lying, and they also know that now they’re actually telling the truth, so it should be enough, right? The betrayed spouse is understandably guarded after the revelation of infidelity, and speaking from my experience, I refused to be fooled again. So even if I really wanted to believe him, my gut reminded me of all the lies I had heard, and that he was not to be trusted. It’s a very difficult place to be for both parties, and it takes time and understanding to even begin to find some middle ground. Understanding why this is so hard was helpful for me to cut myself some slack for my unrelenting guardedness and skepticism. As always, my experience is mine, and does not represent all betrayed spouses or situations. It may not be relevant to everyone, but if it rings true for you, maybe you can find something that is helpful. My husband’s long term affair ended 10 years prior to his eventual admission. I had been asking him for years to tell me the truth, but he continued to lie to me over and over again. When I finally got the truth, it was a mix of feelings. I always knew in my heart he had an affair, but was still hoping I had been wrong. I fought an internal battle all those years to convince myself I was overreacting, and that I should believe him, since he had very convincingly told me dozens of times that I was just paranoid. But it turns out I was right the whole time. Once the truth was finally out on D-day, it was all out. To his credit, once he decided to confess he held nothing back, he told me some very hard truths, and did not try to justify his actions. However, in doing so, he seemed to feel I would just automatically believe everything he said now that he had finally decided to tell the truth. This was after intentionally lying to me for more than a decade - over half of our marriage at that point in time. After all, he knew he was finally telling the full truth. He knew he never intended to lie to me again, no matter the repercussions. But I had been on the receiving end of so many lies, for so many years. So now, I wanted to believe him; I really did, and sometimes I was able to, but some things were just a no-go for me. The ambivalence was intense, and there were elements about the affair and the affair partner (AP) that I just didn’t believe, no matter how many times he said it, and how emphatic he was. Too many lies for too long had made it hard to believe anything. It confused me because at my core, I really believed he was finally telling me the truth. So why did I still have doubts? He was hurt that I didn’t trust him. He is entitled to his feelings and I tried to empathize, but the reality was, I didn’t trust him because he had proven not to be trustworthy. So where do we go from here? I hope you will join me for Part 2 to continue the conversation about the impact of deception and why it is so hard to overcome. “If you tell the truth it becomes your past.If you tell a lie it becomes your future.” ~ Anne Bercht Can We Believe Again? Part 2: Reinforced Walls

"When you are standing in [a] forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope." ~ Elizabeth Gilbert Initially, after learning the full truth of my husband's infidelity, everything felt tainted, dark, lifeless, and just meaningless. I saw him as a person who willingly created this situation for me with total disregard for my life, and my capacity to ever experience meaning and peace in it again, as though I just didn't matter at all. I often asked myself, can anyone really be happy after infidelity? Or are they just "less sad" – working hard to patch up a shipwreck that would never be any good again anyway? In fact, I asked this exact question to a number of "experts" in the field of infidelity as I was looking for hope that there was "real" recovery, and not just a band aid masking these gaping wounds. Every single one told me it was definitely possible to find happiness after betrayal. But still, I didn't believe them. They would often still talk about sadness and triggers, and to me, that negated any talk of happiness. In recovery, I have struggled with black and white thinking, and I suspect that I am not alone. Either my husband cared about me, or he was willing to hurt me. Either my husband loved me, or he wanted to have sex with someone else. Either he cared about protecting our family, or he wanted to have an affair. Either our moments together were real, or he was cheating on me. Either I had value, or I was not worthy of faithfulness. Either God loved me, or He let this happen and didn't care about me. It is the ubiquitous struggle of good and evil, true or false, darkness and light. But some things don't fall neatly into those categories. As I have traveled the path toward healing, what I have found is that where I am tempted to put an "or," there is often an argument for "and." In the early seasons of recovery, I remember just waiting for the time I could eventually feel happiness, when the sadness was no longer present. As I began to slowly heal, I did experience happiness – genuine happiness. What I did not expect was that the sadness remained alongside. I didn't anticipate that they could coexist, and yet both be real and true. It still doesn't make sense in my head, but that has been my experience. I do have moments, and even days of genuine happiness, even feelings of joy, and peace. I never thought I would feel any of that again. In fact, I was certain I wouldn't. Absolutely positive. I thought I was destined to fake it forever. And at first, when it first started to trickle back into my life, happiness felt foreign, unnatural, even undeserved. My inner voice would reject it and say, "What are you happy about? Don't you remember? How can you be happy when this is your life?" And then it would tell me I am pathetic, fooling myself, just a loser accepting crumbs. (My inner voices are very unkind and quick to play on my fears. Maybe you have them too.) For me, at this point, I am happy a good deal of the time. I am also sad often. I am both. At the same time. When I first started on this journey, I heard people talk about holding pain and joy side by side and I couldn't understand it. It sounded dreadful, so I assumed it meant they were just faking happiness amidst the pain. I couldn't wrap my head around feeling genuine happiness without the pain being GONE. But now, I see they do coexist, and in a way that now feels natural. The pain is not gone and will probably never be gone. But it definitely doesn't feel like it did in the beginning, what some of you might be experiencing currently. The pain I feel now is very different. Softer. Quieter, like an undercurrent. More rooted in disappointment, than the searing, blinding, pain that shouted over any other feelings I was trying to have. And it doesn't always feel as relevant to my present life as it once did. That loud kind of pain I felt in the beginning still shows up, but not as often anymore. And when it does, I am comfortable that it is only here for a visit rather than a full blown vacation, so it doesn't scare me anymore. It doesn't overwhelm me like it used to. I deal with it and then it goes back into the box. I don't have to shove it in there like I used to attempt unsuccessfully; it just goes in on its own. And I am content with that - for now. That doesn't mean I am free from triggers and those crushing thoughts and feelings that derail me. Sometimes I lose hope and I don't want to do this anymore. As a matter of fact, I had to pause writing this for a while to navigate some painful stuff. I expect this to get better as time goes on and as I continue to do the very hard work of recovery. This is not a static process. It has required action and energy, and looks different for each of us. We are all unique, so what has worked for me might not work for you, and vice versa. I have heard the interpretation that pain doesn't get smaller, but the other parts of your life – happiness, purpose, meaning, etc., grow bigger around it. I think that's true. I feel more deeply now, good or bad. I feel more gratitude for the good things in my life than I did in the past. I don't worry or stress about stuff that used to weigh me down pre-infidelity. My priorities are different, and clearer. And I am happy with all of that. I am a better person now. More present. More real. More whole. More forgiving (in general - not just this stuff). More understanding, insightful, and compassionate. I am sensitive to the pain of others around me in a way I was not before. I am a much deeper person. I have a closer relationship with God and a much closer relationship with my husband. I still have pain, and I still experience triggers and reminders that impact me deeply. But when they come back, I can talk to my husband about them, and it is healing. This is really hard. There is no way around it. After discovery, I thought, "I can't believe this is my life." Because to me, now this was my life. My whole life. There wasn't anything else. This thing had eclipsed me entirely, along with everything else that used to matter. Now, I can look at this thing and think, "This is part of my life." It is still hard, but it is no longer my whole life. There is more. More that I want to do. More that matters, more that I am. If someone had told me in the beginning I could carry the happy and sad feelings at the same time I would have been horrified, thinking it meant the "good ones" would be forced and fake. I couldn't comprehend how I would ever be able to hold these feelings side-by-side and not feel devastated every moment of the day. But what I'm experiencing now is much more peaceful. Accepting. I'm still disappointed and sad, don't get me wrong. There is no panacea. There is a loss of innocence with happiness now, but also an appreciation and thankfulness for all we have endured and what we almost lost forever. When the darkness fell around me, it seemed as though the light completely disappeared. And for a time, it did. But eventually, I saw glimpses of light and couldn't believe they were real. They were faint and sporadic and I assumed I was imagining them. Until one day I looked around and realized I wasn't lost in the dark anymore. I say this to encourage those of you who aren't here yet, that there are feelings that you probably can't yet understand. Hang in there. The light is coming. You haven't even met the best version of yourself - not yet. The most healed The most fulfilled The most content And meeting that "you" is worth fighting for So keep learning and growing ~Topher Kearby

The hard and sometimes messy choices you made in response to fear or from a place of trauma do not define you, nor make you a bad person. You did the best you could with the knowledge you had. - Dr. Caroline Leaf Any ordinary life contains regrets, but betrayal generates a whole new level. I'm sure most of us could easily rattle off a lengthy list, but today I'm focusing on a specific set of regrets created by the aftermath of infidelity. Life does not stop spinning for infidelity, and I think an additional cruelty is the regrets created in the life that continued to play out while trying to wrap our heads around the betrayal. I know for me, I have many regrets regarding the quality and depth of parenting and emotional availability I could offer my kids, friends, family, and even my husband. I told my first counselor how guilty I felt for not having the energy or mental focus to attend to my kids like I normally would, and she compared the experience to someone with cancer. She asked me, “Would you judge someone with cancer who didn't have enough energy to parent her kids the way she wanted to?” And of course I would not. She explained that my mind and body were in a state of emergency, not all that different from the cancer patient. But I was unable to offer myself the same grace, piling the guilt on top of the pain I was already experiencing and feeling like a complete failure as a wife, mother and person. It would be nice, if after the revelation of infidelity in our marriage, we could press pause on life for a while, and devote ourselves to survival. As though the world would say, “Just take the time you need, and when you're ready to resume life, just press “play.” Until then you won't miss anything or screw anything up.” But unfortunately, that's not how it works. Life goes on in the midst of betrayal and recovery. It doesn’t stop for you to heal. Kids need you. Bills have to be paid. The laundry needs to be done. The lawn needs to be mowed. Birthdays and holidays will still rear their painful heads on the calendar, with no consideration of your feelings. And while all that is happening, children grow up. Jobs change. Opportunities are lost. We age. People die. Pandemics happen. And so on. With socially acceptable losses like natural disaster or death, grief is met with understanding and space to mourn. Help is offered, funerals are held, time for grieving is allotted, time off from work is normal and expected. Friends gather and offer love and understanding, and maybe even bring chocolate. But betrayal is often dealt with in secret and in isolation, as has been the case for me. Hiding in plain sight while the rest of the world keeps spinning; no one knowing the silent despair hidden behind the facade. Six months went by, then a year, maybe two, or even more. Looking back, I see those missed opportunities. Missed connections. The school events where I was nothing more than a shell, sitting on bleachers or in the auditorium seats, and using every molecule of energy in my body just to stop myself from dissolving into a puddle of tears. I didn't see his big win, or really hear his solo. I didn't feel the energy of the crowd. I don't remember the conversation on the ride home as he explained the behind the scenes of it all. I didn't ask many questions. I didn't suggest we go out for ice cream. I just wanted to go to bed. Did he notice? I don't know, but I did. And now that season is gone, and several others like it, and I missed it. I regret not being there. I was physically present, but my mind was a million miles away. I was so overwhelmed, I could not focus on anything in front of me. I could only pretend, with a fake smile plastered on my face. In my darkest moments, I wanted to die to escape the pain. It's all I could think about. And now I feel so guilty for missing those moments, and have so much regret. What kind of mother have I been? What else did they need from me that I didn't have the capacity to give? Have I damaged them? Made them feel unloved or unappreciated? Will I ever be able to make it up to them now that they are moving into adulthood? Is it too late? Because there was such a long gap in between the affair and the disclosure, I feel like I failed my kids when they were little, and then again as young adults. It feels like I didn’t do any of it right, and that I deeply regret. There are no do-overs. I missed the joy of being mentally and emotionally present with my kids, and now will never have the chance to do it again. I regret losing my old adventurous self. The mom they saw was not the person I used to be. During the affair, I was wrapped up in my fear and anxiety of what was happening to my life. I felt powerless to stop what was going on right in front of me. I can easily play Monday morning quarterback now, to see how I could have handled things differently, but I was so lost, confused, and scared that I felt helpless as I watched my life spiral out of control. Our family experienced meaningful and memorable events after D-Day, but some I barely remember as I was not fully present. And now some of those opportunities are lost and will never happen again. Kids have moved out, and those special times we were a family all under one roof will never happen again. And I missed the final moments of that. I know I have lost connections with other people, some of which I will probably never get back. A longtime friend said recently they thought they had offended me as I essentially ghosted them for a few years. They have no idea what we have been through, and only saw the lack of effort on my part in our relationship. It isn't fair that the aftermath of infidelity happens on top of the life that we had planned on living. That life gets derailed for a time, and that time can vary widely from person to person. But life doesn't stop for trauma or illness or death. It just keeps spinning, and eventually we catch up. But when we do, it can be a real gut punch to look back and see what we missed. But as my first therapist told me, it isn't fair, and it really isn't any more in our control than the person fighting cancer. I have many regrets, but I can't change that now. Now that I am in a better place, all I can do is try not to miss any more moments, forgive myself for what was beyond my control, and love the people in my life to the best of my ability. So if you have these regrets too, don't beat yourself up. You are only human and can only manage so much at one time. I tell this to myself as well, and as I heal, I am arriving at a more positive perspective on this. I did the best I could, and so did you. You became who you needed to be in order to survive. But now it's time to become who you need to be so you can thrive in life. Change is coming. It's time to embrace it. - Topher Kearby

I was having a conversation with my Affair Recovery editor recently, and we talked about the motivation behind my decision to blog about infidelity. It can be emotionally heavy, and logistically difficult amidst work, home, and family responsibilities, particularly as I continue to devote time and energy to therapy and recovery work. So what made me want to do this? Infidelity creates an isolation like nothing else. In the many years during and after my husband's affair he would not admit to anything. Just flat out denial of my legitimate suspicions, like I was just crazy for asking. I lived in limbo, knowing I did not have the truth, but also not having any foreseeable way to obtain it without his cooperation, which he was very unwilling to provide. I never looked for outside help. I never told anyone. I only asked him again and again, and he continually denied it. In turn, I tried to deny it to myself. I did not allow for any space to consider that there even was “help” for this. He had done whatever he had done with his affair partner, refused to tell me the truth about exactly what that entailed, and now this was just my life. His decisions made me feel as though I was imprisoned in this reality he had created, and I saw no way to change that. Years later, after my husband finally confessed, I started searching for help. As I've mentioned before, finding the right help while simultaneously being overwhelmed by trauma and confusion is next to impossible. I sought resources to help me understand infidelity and what I was experiencing, and most importantly, I sought hope. I felt so hopeless, so I searched intently for reassurance that there was any hope for real recovery, where I might feel like life would be worth living again someday, because it definitely did not feel that way at that time. I found I often couldn't relate to the blogs and testimonies I read. It typically felt like there were two options available. The first was from hurting people who just wanted to talk about how terrible cheaters are, which was not especially helpful or illuminating to me. The second was from the perspective of those who classified themselves as “healed” and spoke of their victory over betrayal, while seemingly glossing over the ugliness that they endured, and carefully omitting the reality of post-betrayal life. While option #2 sounded better, it seemed to portray a life “restored” and whole, with no remnants of sadness or loss, which I couldn't even wrap my head around, much less believe was real. It sounded like a sanitized version that left out the “real” in an effort to gain followers or sell a program. There was no mention of lingering sadness or reminders. There was no room for ongoing resentment and feelings of loss and disappointment. Could those people really exist? Sure, I guess. I just couldn't relate to it, so it offered me no real hope. I did not ever see myself fitting into that category, so it left me feeling more hopeless, like I was doing it all wrong or just didn't have what it took to reach the healing they described. What I needed was to know what I was feeling was normal. I wanted to know I wasn't alone. I wanted to know it was ok to hate everything right now, but that there was still hope to feel differently at some point. I wanted someone to just be real with me. After having been deceived about so much and for so long, I was unwilling and unable to ignore my skepticism and viewed these resources with great suspicion. As I read accounts from people who had tried this or that, and reported success, it just made me feel worse. I tried all of those things and the needle didn't move for me. Most talked about their amazing groups of friends or people from church. Mentor couples and a support network. I didn't have any of that. I was alone, and no one knew what had happened. My devastation was hidden from everyone in my life. So the end result was that I felt more like a failure and less hopeful that I could ever achieve any of the peace they were describing. I assumed the problem was me. It was just too far of a leap to get from where I was to where they said they were. I really wanted to hear from someone who was in the messy middle, taking the baby steps, clawing their way inch by inch. So that is the place from which I write. Maybe someday I will be one of those people, telling you how I have made it to the other side. But for now, I share my journey of the real and raw places in between, to offer validation and hope for others that are like me and are still here in the valley. So I write from the place I wish I had available to me when I first started down this path. I want to offer a balance of reality and hope, but mostly I want to offer validation and community. I know my experience may not necessarily mirror yours, as our journeys are all unique, but if I have made one person feel less alone, it is worth the effort. If, through my writings, I can put words to another person's confusing feelings, and help them to feel seen and understood, I am truly grateful. So I thank you for being here to read this. I am hopeful that you find some solace in being part of this community and joining me from time to time on my own journey. I wish you strength, peace, and hope. Behind every strong person there is a story that gave them no choice. ~ author unknown

After the revelation of infidelity, memories and milestones become a very tricky landscape. Reminiscence that used to instill joy, nostalgia, and peace, can now elicit a very different set of emotions. Reflection on the past can be truly debilitating in the face of betrayal. As a whole, anniversaries, dates, seasons, etc. now carry a sting. But there is a particularly cruel mockery that enshrouds a wedding anniversary following marital infidelity. Some experts guide a couple in recovery to consider the "old" marriage to be dead, grieve its loss, and then embark on creating a "new" marriage in truth, light, and healing. I understand the sentiment behind this, and maybe it is interpretation on my part, but I just don't like it. It doesn't work for me. Betrayal can encompass a significant period of our lives for many of us - whether it is the actual affair(s) / betrayal behavior, the duration of the deception, or a combination of both. In my case, my husband's affair and subsequent years of deception lasted a very long time. Am I supposed to just close the door on a huge chunk of my adult life and never look back? I'm not saying this is exactly what the experts are suggesting, but that is how it feels to me. My kids were little and those were very special years for me. I don't want to close the door on that. I showed up in those years. I did the best I could to reach over that divide, but he would not open the door. Could I have done things differently, in the years before, during, and after the affair? Yes, of course. I missed opportunities that I would address differently in hindsight, but I acted in good faith, based on the knowledge I had (or lack thereof) and the emotional skillset and maturity I had at that time. Now I am older and wiser (let's hope) and have learned a lot about myself and my husband so I can do things differently and with eyes wide open. So, now to my point. Since D-day, several wedding anniversaries have passed. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how I felt about the first one. I didn't even want to acknowledge the day, much less celebrate it. I ignored it and just wanted it to go away. This was about 6 months after D-day and it just felt like a sick joke. Added to the insult was the solemness my husband expressed about the importance of the day. He seemed very earnest and resolute in his expression of the day's meaning to him. I did not understand why we would ever want to celebrate it again. What was there to celebrate? Why would a person who took marriage so lightly and went to such extensive and repeated measures to destroy everything it was about, want to celebrate the anniversary of our wedding day and the vows that ultimately meant nothing? I remember thinking that now it was just insulting that this day even exists. He got me a very heartfelt card; I could not acknowledge the day at all. The painful irony is my husband found it so meaningful and important, when it truly meant the absolute least to me it possibly could. If I had been agreeable we would have done something special, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I just wanted the day to be over and behind me. Looking back, I know my husband was hurt by my reaction, but it seemed like such a farce to me, and I really couldn't muster up the empathy to care how he felt about it, since he was the one who cared so little about our marriage that it had been rendered totally meaningless. It seemed pretty cut and dried to me at that time, and I really did not think I would ever feel any differently about this. I counted our anniversary among the many things I lost in the aftermath of betrayal. To his credit, he was able to "hold" the meaning for both of us, while I began to work through it to try to move closer to where he was. I have seen many of the Affair Recovery General Forum conversations about wedding anniversaries (and rings) and most of the comments include the words "never" and "always" in terms of the betrayed spouse's feelings, with no hope or expectation for change. Obviously I understand this, as I have been right there with you. However... I continued to struggle with it, which means that I knew somewhere in my heart, I did not want to let it go. Bear with me on this, as I explain how things have shifted for me. I already told you how wedding anniversary #1 post D-day went. I pretty much ignored anniversary #2 as well, just wanting it to pass quickly, move on, and leave me alone. No card, no commemoration. By the third one, though, I felt differently. Not initially, but my frame of mind shifted following a specific conversation I had with my Harboring Hope group leader. I was facing another wedding anniversary and wanted to feel differently about it, but didn't know how, or even if I ever really could. My group leader endured her husband's numerous affairs across the span of many years of their marriage, but they had been reconciled and happy for a number of years at that point. I told her my dilemma and asked her how she felt about their wedding anniversary. This is what she said: "Since the (last) affair was over, we have anticipated the day and celebrate it for many reasons. It's the day "we" began and that is still cause for celebration. We are now celebrating not just the beginning of our marriage, but the history of our marriage. It's one that went from what seemed broken beyond repair to beautiful. We celebrate God's grace and the power of forgiveness. Our anniversary now is even sweeter than it was before infidelity. We made it! We went through the darkest nights and the hottest fires and we are still married! We love each other more deeply now than we ever thought about the day we first said those vows. One of those vows is 'for better or for worse' and the years he was cheating were definitely "worse", but it is part of us, part of our story... We reclaimed the day by renewal. When God rebuilds from broken pieces, from dust, into something whole and beautiful, I think that's a cause to celebrate! I suppose one way would be to look at our marriage as a big picture. The day we got married is part of that picture. It is how the picture began, the first mark on the canvas so to speak. We are still married. We still love each other, in fact, we love each other even more now than we did then. So the beginning is something to celebrate. Without the beginning, we wouldn't be in the present. And the present is something to cherish. Yes, promises were broken. He wasn't faithful... Our beginning is still our beginning. And I still see that as something to celebrate." She went on to say that they chose to renew their vows on their wedding anniversary as part of reclaiming. This was intentional, to not allow the affairs to take her memories of their wedding day - the day that marked their beginning. She explained that for her, both dates hold special memories and that the vow renewal didn't negate the original wedding day, but reaffirmed it. For her and her husband, they remember both events as special in their own way. I thought about what she had said and let it sit with me for a while, not knowing how to feel. I appreciated the analogy of the strokes on the canvas, and considered that in my own life. My feelings change all over the place in this recovery space, as I'd bet many of yours do too. But even then, I could see how thinking back to my wedding could be a good memory woven into the larger picture, rather than just a disappointment that needed to be dismissed and thrown away, never to be mentioned or thought about again. So as we approached our wedding anniversary last year, I actively used this analogy to filter my perspective about it. It didn't suddenly change everything, but it did allow me to consider that I might feel differently someday, which offered hope. As we approached the day, my husband allowed me to lead the way at the pace at which I was comfortable, and I asked him to take the day off from work with me. I did buy a card that year, although even that experience is like wading through a minefield; anniversary cards are generally comprised of a few standard sentiments: faithfulness, loyalty, teamwork, and protection/safety. It's complicated to intertwine sentiment with reality when you're looking through the Hallmark lens at a post-infidelity marriage. I made some plans for us that didn't pan out, partially due to circumstance and partially because I wasn't emotionally ready, but it still was a noticeable step. We ended up going out to lunch with our son, and while not a traditional "anniversary" commemoration, it was still much more than I could have tolerated or envisioned in the first two years, and it felt right. It was a small victory for me, and it offered me optimism for future anniversaries. It was, and still is, important to me that my husband understand how difficult and confusing it is for me to wrestle with the feelings about this occasion, which he does. I want to eventually be able to celebrate it and make it special, but I didn't want him to falsely assume this is easy or that I am "all good" and at peace about it. I'm not. It hurts. But I want to make it better, and it is worth the effort to me to make this special with him. Fast forward, this year held a milestone wedding anniversary for us. While I still experienced a mixture of painful and hopeful feelings about it, I also recognized it is a miracle we are still here together. There have been so many opportunities over the years for either of us to walk away, and I am amazed we didn't give up. So this year, we made reservations and went away for the night. It was... nice. And hard. And beautiful. And painful. And wonderful. And connective. And ironic. And special. And confusing. Sometimes it's hard to know how to feel about it. Isn't that weird? Trying to decide how to feel about something? I'm sure you get it, but it's so strange not to know how to feel. This year was the best wedding anniversary so far since D-Day. "Celebrate" still might not be quite the right word at this point, as it still feels like I - and our marriage - held no value to my husband for a season, but it felt right to honor the day in this season. And the most valuable part to me is that now, we are both able to share honest feelings and tears with each other, and not feel like we have to pretend. The healing process is a series of small steps. The bad times don't negate the good ones, and the good ones don't erase the bad. They are all part of our story. As for the idea of declaring the old marriage dead? I don't exactly agree that happiness in celebrating future anniversaries involves letting go of the past and moving ahead into the future. For me, I am finding it is necessary to incorporate the past to move ahead into the future. It may be semantics, but the thought of "letting go" makes me bristle, and feels inauthentic to me and how I view life. The distinction may not be clear to anyone else as I am expressing it, but it has made a difference in my ability to make shifts when I can. "Letting go" feels forced, but incorporating is more natural as I grow to understand more about what happened, why it happened, who he was, who I was, who "we" were, and what she was (and was not) to him at that time. It's still a work in progress. I don't know if that helps anyone else, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I realize with longing that I will never be able to look back in my old age and say we had a faithful marriage. The facts of the past cannot be altered, and there is such grief in knowing that will never be our story. When I talked to my husband about my struggle with our anniversary, I told him I am not trying to make him feel badly that this day is painful for me. Actually it is the opposite - I want him to see and understand how important it is that I make this special despite the pain. If it was easy, it wouldn't mean that much, so the struggle and effort is actually a positive thing, and demonstrates the value I place on our relationship. We are different people now. We know what our marriage is worth, and we both value it more than we did before. Pain is an effective teacher in that regard. I see us now as a cushion for each other, absorbing one another's failings with kindness and grace that neither of us deserve. I will end with my hope for all of us by sharing the words of my former group leader, "I hope you will someday be able to genuinely celebrate your beginning... and your new beginning."

How Do You Know if You're Healing? Part 1 How Do You Know if You're Healing? Part 2 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." —Hebrews 11:1 I guess when I first heard someone talking about the process of "healing" I envisioned a feeling of relief, like a balm to a wound. For me, I have found that sometimes healing actually feels… really uncomfortable. Sometimes it feels more like a state of suspension, between where I was and where I want to be. It's unknown, unpredictable, and uncomfortable. As awful as depression feels, depression is safe. There are no expectations. No surprises. No vulnerability required. Hope is scary because it can lead to disappointment, and then more pain. It's so exhausting that sometimes it's easier to not hope at all, rather than risk being hurt again. But I try again anyway. The line between acceptance and resignation is murky. One is empowering, and the other is sustained powerlessness. Sometimes it can be hard to tell which one I am feeling on a given day, but it is getting easier to discern as time goes on. Before I continue talking about healing, I want to take a moment to recognize the difference between triggers and reminders. I think it's important to distinguish between these because it can be a helpful barometer of progress and healing over time. In my "un" expert, but very seasoned experience as a betrayed spouse, the main difference is that a trigger is something that brings up an automatic physical reaction, sometimes even before I am consciously aware of the connection. Whereas a reminder is a cognitive thought that relates something to the infidelity or the pain. A trigger is an automatic response and beyond my control. A reminder does not necessarily bring with it an emotional response. It reminds me of sadness, disappointment, or pain, but may or may not elicit those actual feelings in that moment. It depends on what it is, where we are in the process, and how I'm doing on a particular day. For example, if I am experiencing a trigger, I might feel a sudden onset of physical symptoms (rapid heartbeat, tightness in my chest, a knot in my stomach, sweaty palms etc.) combined with a sense of panic or feeling unsafe. If I am experiencing a reminder, it is primarily taking place in my thoughts, as opposed to my body. I might feel sad or disappointed with a reminder, but it lacks the sense of panic and immediacy that a trigger presents. I think it is important to note the difference because it's easy to get discouraged when so many things still remind me of his affair, and makes me feel like I am not making any progress. In the beginning everything was a trigger, and it was all intense, and it just was what it was. But over time, and once I started doing the right work, the responses started to vary. Now, some previous triggers are more like reminders. That's not to minimize having to endure the ongoing reminders of something that caused so much destruction and never should have happened, but in the realm of recovery, the distinction is important. It's been interesting to see what still generates an automatic reaction in me after all this time, and what doesn't. It can be inconsistent and sometimes it really takes me by surprise - in either direction. Such as when something that I wouldn't consciously think would even bother me at this point unexpectedly creates an intense physical response. Recently, I overheard a benign phone conversation between my work-at-home husband and a female coworker, and it sent me spiraling. It took me completely by surprise, and I found myself suddenly shaking uncontrollably from head to toe, and struggling to catch my breath. In contrast, on another day I came across an object that would normally generate a 10 out of 10 response, and I marveled at the lack of reaction that I had - like I was observing someone else. It would have previously sent me through the roof, but in that given moment, it just registered as being there, and not much else. So how do you know you are actually healing even in the midst of all the mess? Today, I drove by three different places that have significance in relation to my husband's affair. These three places all happen to be on a route I have to travel frequently. As much as I still hate the thought of all of it and I still feel degrees of resentment, pain, and disappointment, my heart no longer races as I drive by. I no longer feel a sense of panic. I don't get nauseous or physically shake anymore. I don't (usually) break down and sob in the car as I drive by. All of these used to be my consistent automatic responses to these same exact places, but they haven't in a while. Just because I still feel pain doesn't discount that some healing has taken place. Am I done healing? I certainly hope not. This is not a place I want to stay. It all still deeply hurts my heart. The reduction in intensity is progress, but I would like to think someday I could truly experience peace. My counselor often reminds me that healing comes in layers. Sometimes I am fearful to describe progress in a specific area, as I worry my husband or counselor will check the box and say - "good - you're all done!" And then I will be stuck here forever; still unhappy and hurting, just maybe less so. "Manageable" and "tolerable" are not where I want to stay, but are admittedly better than where I was. Two steps forward and one step back. This is the persistent dance of recovery. It is not linear and so frustratingly exhausting. Glimpses of progress and hope jumbled in with setbacks and despair. Fear of feeling too confident about finding "success" in a particular area, while looking over my shoulder for it to come back to bite me again, and leave me wondering if I really made any progress at all. Sometimes I feel like I'm making steady progress, and then something will hit me and I take 10,000 steps backwards. It feels like I have lost ALL of my progress and am back at the beginning, starting over. But am I really? It sure feels that way, but if I try to be more objective, I can say the time "in the pit" is a little shorter every time I fall back into it, and the times in between falls to the bottom of the "pit" get a tiny bit longer. In the beginning, it was hard to discern, and really didn't matter because it all felt so terrible. A little later on, it became more evident, and while I still hate revisiting the pit, now I feel more confident that I will only stay for a brief visit, rather than a full-blown, miserable vacation. Setbacks do not mean you're not healing. It certainly feels that way and it's easy to convince ourselves that it does, but this journey is complicated and setbacks are just a part of it. As hard as this all is, failure is not as scary to me anymore. After experiencing the worst thing ever to happen to me, fear about anything else pales in comparison, which is weirdly liberating. I can't undo my reality, so having already checked the box on the biggest devastation in my life, leaves me less fearful of pretty much everything else. Healing feels like different things at different times to different people. Sometimes it feels like an unexpected laugh. Like hearing laughter, real genuine laughter, and then realizing it's coming from you, and then realizing you can't even remember the last time you actually laughed. Or maybe it's a moment of peace and contentment. Just for a second. It feels foreign after being depressed for so long. I recently saw this depiction of healing from writer and artist Topher Kearby and thought it was beautifully accurate: Healing is not a gentle journey. It takes strength and courage because it's not a straight line from pain to joy. It's a cycle. And one that must be repeated time and time again in order to truly grow. As we shed our skin of the past we become exposed to the light of the future. We are raw and the fire burns. Because everything is new. Those parts of ourselves have never been seen by the sun before and now that they have nothing will ever be the same. And that's beautiful And that's terrifying And that's healing Healing can be as simple as getting out of bed. Taking a shower. Eating something. Sitting quietly. Being able to think clearly for just a moment. Wiping your tears and trying again. You are doing the best you can with the cards you have been dealt, and you will find your way. Just make sure to look around once in a while to acknowledge your progress. It may be so faint that it's hard to see, especially in the beginning. But if you are here reading this today, you are already doing something toward healing. It will get better. Hebrews 12:1 Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

For that matter, what is "healed" anyway? What does it mean? What does it actually look like? I will explore this further in a future blog, as this question has perplexed and frustrated me since I learned of my husband's infidelity. More to come on that. In the meantime, the process of healing is hard to measure. You can't take out a yardstick or step on the scale to track the progress. It's subtle and murky. Healing is slow and often undetectable day by day. It takes some intentional scrutiny to see it, and it looks different for every person. I can only tell you my own experience but maybe it can offer some insight in your situation too. I think it's easy to dismiss progress when we still feel pain. Pain can be deafening against the quiet of progress. But sometimes we need to really take a closer look to get an accurate measurement. For example, if you think back to the days you first discovered your spouse's betrayal, you were probably knocked off your feet by the overwhelming pain and disorientation. Your world as you knew it was no longer the same, no longer safe, and everything was turned upside down. The pain was blinding and completely enveloping everything around you. If some time has passed since then, and you are still in pain, you may think that means you aren't healing at all. But take a closer look. Even if you are still depressed, or feel pain and disappointment, you might be able to notice a shift. Did you eat today? Did you sleep last night - at all? Did you get out of bed this morning? Those may be improvements, and while four hours of sleep versus two is not wonderful, it is progress. It can be the small, incremental things that feel like nothing, but are actually tiny steps toward forward momentum. If you are reading this blog then you are actively seeking healing and that is progress, too. Even if you don't feel it today. One of the things about healing is that it can be so frustrating and painful that it doesn't feel like healing at all. At times, it is like seeing Bigfoot. Even if you did see it, you're pretty sure you didn't, and you think it must have been a figment of your imagination. Nonetheless, even if you did see Bigfoot you know you're not likely to see him again. That's what healing feels like at times. A fleeting feeling, just for a moment, and then it's gone. It's so frustrating to almost catch a shift in perspective, a tiny nudge toward understanding, and then it's gone. Poof! Like you never felt it, and now you can't even really remember what it felt like, but you thought you had it for a moment. I have found over time these "glimmers" arrive in more frequency and stick around a little longer. They still come and go, and when I lose them it is so disheartening and sometimes I still get really depressed. But I am finding the glimmers are appearing more often and lasting longer each time, so I feel a little less anxious about them disappearing as I have increasing confidence they'll be back. Healing is often messy, and might not feel like healing at all. Last year, we finally decided to put new carpeting in our bedroom. The carpet was not new even when we moved in over 20 years ago so it was pretty old. (Don't judge me.) For years, we focused on updating all the other rooms in the house: the kids' bedrooms, the living areas, the kitchen and bathrooms, and just kept putting off our bedroom. Anyway, even last year I was still hesitant to get new carpet when my husband suggested it. Why? The closet. We have terrible closets with deep, impractical, unreachable recesses on both ends that hold stuff we put there all those years ago that had mostly never been touched. To put in new carpeting, we had to pull it all out and actually go through it. I've "organized" the closet over the years, neatening things up and buying organizers or nice storage totes, but it was superficial, and I never really took everything down to the bare floor waaaay back in the hidden and very hard-to-reach corners. The only way to really clean it was to take everything out, spread it all out, and take a good look at it. Only then could we make some hard decisions on what to throw away and what to keep. Before we could have a nice clean closet, we had to make a mess - there was no other way. Anything else would have just been surface organizing and wouldn't have addressed the hidden junk in the back. Even if we avoided it for a while, sooner or later we're going to move and we would have to go through the hidden junk anyway. Looking back, I was definitely not looking forward to doing this work, nor did I enjoy it while it was happening. But now, I fully appreciate knowing there is no disorganized, non-functional, outdated stuff in there and l have a closet that is organized and feels much better than it did before. Despite my initial reservations, I am glad we took the effort. That's how I think healing works. Sometimes it feels like it gets worse before it gets better. Digging out all the junk we have ignored, suppressed, or didn't even realize was there, is uncomfortable, even downright painful. "Surface organizing" (by one or both of us) has kept the peace at times, but has glossed over the pile of junk that really needed attention but was too hard, or just too much to deal with. The only way to really clean it out is to dump it all out all over the place, see what we have, and start picking through it. What a mess. It's uncomfortable and way too vulnerable to have that stuff hanging out all over. I just want to put it away quickly, close the door, and make things look nice and neat, but that is not how this works. That doesn't mean I want to "dredge things up" or keep "rehashing" them. It means I have things I haven't been able to process for one reason or another, and they are never going to settle without cleaning it all out and getting to the back of the closet. Do I wish there was an easier way? Of course I do. This is not fun. This is not enjoyable.This was not my choice. I am dealing with something to which I never agreed, in the best way that I can. But shoving all that junk back into the closet without actually cleaning it out will just cover up the problems, not solve them. Like a bandaid over an infected wound, it might hide it in the moment, but it won't heal anything or make it go away, and the wound will continue to seep into everything it touches. So what was the point of all that? Sometimes it feels like it gets worse in order to get better. Sometimes the messy part is a means to an end. It's not pretty, but it can be productive. The hardest part is staying motivated to hang in there through it. It's not like someone can say - listen, if you make a mess for three weeks it will be all neat and tidy by week four. No, there are no guarantees, and the messy part is going to last a while. The more trauma and deception you have experienced, the messier it may be. Despite the old saying, time does not heal all wounds. Time doesn't really heal anything. What we do with the time is what matters. For that matter, throw out the timelines. They may give some guidance, but can also add pressure to feel a certain way by a determined point in time, and if that doesn't come to pass, (it definitely didn't for me) it can leave you with an added sense of failure and hopelessness. Next time I'll talk more about how healing feels to me at this point. It is not exactly what I expected, but I think part of the key for me has been to let go of expectations. I wanted a step by step formula, and diligently tried all the things that others had said worked for them, but I did not find success following another person's prescription. We are all different, and things don't look and feel the same for every person. We each have unique stories of betrayal, and individual differences in ourselves, our pasts and our relationships, so there is no one size fits all. In order to move forward I had to cut myself some slack and be open to the possibility that my journey may not look the same as others. Letting go of expectations and cleaning out the junk is really daunting, and I didn't want to do it. I still don't. I would have preferred to shove it all back in the closet and close the door because I didn't want this to be my reality, and I didn't think I had the fortitude to clean it out. But here we are. Join me next time for Part 2, and in the meantime, I want to encourage you to keep going; keep trying. You are not alone. "One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." - Andre Gide, French novelist

You may be familiar with the life analogy of the contrast between the way cows and buffaloes face an impending storm. As a storm approaches, cows sense it coming and move in the opposite direction, away from the storm. Unfortunately for the cows, they aren't very fast and as a result of this decision, they actually remain in the storm longer as they run alongside it, prolonging the unpleasantness. Buffaloes, on the other hand, will turn toward the coming storm and charge directly into it. By doing this, the buffaloes pass through it quickly, reducing the amount of time and discomfort they experience from that storm. I remember hearing this analogy somewhere along my recovery journey and confirming that I must be a cow. I wanted nothing to do with any of this, and would definitely run in the other direction if avoidance was really an option. But it's not. So I might as well be a buffalo and get through this. From my current vantage point, I can look back and see ways in which I prolonged the storm by trying to avoid it, even unknowingly. One of those ways was through minimization. On the surface, minimization might sound like a good idea. In the moment it feels healthy and helpful, like downplaying and making all of it less significant might help get me through it faster. Looking back, I realize I greatly minimized the affair after disclosure. As I mentioned in a previous blog, there was a 10 year gap between the affair and my husband's eventual confession. I had always been uneasy and suspicious, and could never feel settled about it. My direct questions and accusations during (and after) the affair were always met with blatant lies. I knew they had something between them, but for years I tried to convince myself my husband would never have done such a thing, and that I was just being paranoid. I minimized it, trying to believe it was "just" a flirtation or a crush, as though even that would have been ok. My instincts and fear persisted to tell me they were having an affair, which conjured graphic sexual images of them in my head, but my inner denial was equally strong, and this internal war raged on in my mind and heart for years. I could only settle the extreme anxiety by repeatedly telling myself, trying to convince myself, that he would never do that, that it hadn't gone that far, and that he was telling me the truth. I minimized what I knew to be true in order to survive. Then disclosure happened. It basically blew all those years of denial out of the water in one fell swoop. He told me the "worst" of it first: the part he knew would matter to me the most. He got it out of the way rather than leave me wondering as he went on to tell the whole story. It was devastating. Still is. Always will be. Anyway, looking back now, I see that after that point I took every opportunity to minimize the affair, rather than face it head on. I really thought I was facing it, but in reality I was trying to convince myself it wasn't that bad. I repeatedly tried to package it as "a long time ago" - as though it shouldn't completely rock my world, since so much time had passed. Or that it just wasn't relevant to my present life. Early on, before either of us really had much of an understanding of the full impact, my husband also echoed this a few times, "It was a long time ago," he would say, and for him it was. But for me it felt like it was happening now. So this statement just reinforced my attempts to minimize it, as I tried to believe it shouldn't matter that much now, and I didn't understand why I couldn't just get over it, concluding that I was at fault for allowing it to continue to hurt me, since it ended a long time ago. For context, my husband's affair was fully sexual, spanned well over a year, and included many occasions that intentionally placed me together with my husband and his affair partner. This included a variety of settings, including spending several holidays together at her home. It was not insignificant and there were many layers to his betrayal. I often found myself repeating minimizing phrases to myself, as though if I said them enough it would make it hurt less. I said things like: they "only" did (this or that) ___ times, or "at least" he wasn't planning to leave me. "At least" the affair "only" lasted ____, and he "just" felt ____ toward her. And so on. All the "only" "just" and "at least" statements served to soothe my heart in the moment, but kept me from facing the reality of the situation. I spent so much energy trying to convince myself it wasn't really that bad, I was just running away from the storm like the cows. Unconsciously, I put a lot of effort into these minimizations. In my Harboring Hope group I consistently felt and said out loud that my situation was "not as bad" as the others, since their husbands had cheated for more years than mine did, or had more affair partners than my husband did, or both. These kinds of minimizations made me believe I wasn't justified to feel the pain I did, since my situation was so much "better" than theirs. But here is the truth. Pain is pain. It's not a competition and there is an unlimited supply. Someone else's tragic situation does not mean there is less pain available for mine. By trying to talk myself out of being justified to feel the pain, I am avoiding the pain and all that is necessary to get through the pain. Skirting the edges by creating explanations and justifications as to why I shouldn't be feeling this way offers no benefit and just prolongs the storm, like the cows do. I came across a note I sent to my Harboring Hope Group Leader after our first or second meeting. This was 6 months post D-day, and reading it again now really illuminated my frame of mind at the time. These are actual quotes taken from my message: "I just feel like I will feel better knowing that you really understand what happened to me. In many respects his affair was so minimal compared to everyone else in our group….Sometimes I think it's ridiculous that I can't get past it because it is so minimal compared to everyone else's situation and that maybe I'm defective for feeling as overwhelmed as I do." But now I see none of that is valid. My pain is my pain and his affair hurt me deeply, regardless of how much "worse" it could have been, or how it compared to other people's experiences. I wasted so much time trying to talk myself out of validating my experience, that I lost the opportunity to face it head on and deal with it. Even with all the gut wrenching work I did with my first few therapists (and on my own), most of my effort was spent trying to figure out how to override my feelings through the perspective of minimization, rather than accept and deal with my feelings and the reality of the situation. I focused on the aspects of my husband's affair that "could have been worse" and tried to dismiss my feelings about what actually did happen, including the lies, deception, and manipulation, not just during the affair, but for years afterward. I tried to ignore all of this but still felt all the pain, so instead of minimization helping my perspective, it just made me feel as though I was a complete failure, a loser who couldn't even get over this correctly. I wouldn't even acknowledge the buzzwords - recovery, safety, trauma, self care, and so on. I felt it was all far too dramatic for me, and I didn't feel I was in a situation that warranted all that. I had not been on the battlefield and I hadn't been physically assaulted. My heart was just broken. I don't think I really felt permission to see this as legitimate trauma until I started working with my current counselor (therapist #4). I had dismissed all of it - the clear emotional trauma and the subconscious physical impact of years and years of continued deception and repressed emotions. I'm not looking for a trauma trophy or anything, but I do think it is important to accept and validate that a break in the marital relationship in such a deceptive and damaging way is in fact traumatic. I continually beat myself up for failing to recover from something I wasn't even willing to fully acknowledge, adding much more pain and frustration to an already painful situation. We can't heal what we aren't willing to name or face. Paraphrased from @Nate_Postlethwait: After experiencing trauma we often are apologetic for how we show up - needy, sad, unable to "shake" the depression or "live in the present" etc. These are often responses from our nervous system as we grapple to heal from and overcome the trauma, but it's ironic that we often apologize or feel "less than" for the experiences we have in trying to heal from a trauma, despite the fact that no one asked permission before harming us to create the trauma in the first place. Infidelity is huge, with many losses that we don't fully appreciate or understand until later on in this journey. There is nothing minimal about these losses or that pain that they generate. I don't want to confuse minimization with perspective. There are actual things about my husband's affair that probably could have been "worse" and while it's important to try to have perspective of the whole picture, comparison to others, or how much worse it could have been, is not going to somehow make the pain go away. As someone recently said on the Affair Recovery forum, when language like that is used about someone destroying your marriage, it just feels impossible to take in. The poster went on to say, "It's like saying, 'I only stabbed my victim in the heart with a knife one time.' Once, twice, a dozen times, the fatal blow is the same." Rick Reynolds shared an article about grieving that illustrates the importance of facing, and embracing, the grief. In the article, Rick says, "Those who go into "GRIEVING" mode may spend months sorting through their grief with tears, pain, and true sorrow, but at the end of their journey they feel refreshed and renewed." He continues, "I have never known of a single person who has thoroughly grieved and had any regrets or felt a need to blame anyone. They are free and at peace. When people fail to move forward after the affair, it's often due to the inability to grieve the loss. Instead of healing from the pain, they try to control and manage the pain which only results in further damage and isolation... A major determining factor between those who go forward with new life and those who remain stuck after an affair is their willingness to grieve the loss." In another article Rick says, "We mistakenly believe that hiding the reality of our situation will somehow save us from the pain, yet it only serves to enslave us to that very same pain. Hidden pain is then transformed into shame. Our shame then negatively impacts all those we love and serves as the fuel to perpetuate our cycle." The point of all of those thoughts is that the buffaloes have the right idea. Running into the storm, into the grief, into the loss is what is necessary, yet so contrary to every instinct we have to escape pain. Mona Shriver very accurately stated, "Recognizing the depth of the pain gives us permission to seek healthy ways to mourn instead of wasting so much of our energy trying not to feel the way we do." Healthy perspective is important, and along the way this will come. In the beginning I thought I was developing perspective, but I really was just trying to talk myself out of my feelings. Looking back I can see how unproductive and harmful that was, and how it just prolonged the pain. Now, I don't minimize anything, but I have developed a better perspective over time and with a lot of conversation and reflection. Facing this stuff is hard, and not for the faint of heart, but I never want to be a cow again. Let's be buffaloes and face the storm - together.

Forgiveness - Burden or Gift Part I: What is Forgiveness Anyway? Part II: The Journey of a Lifetime Last time we talked about the reality of forgiveness - what it is and what it isn't - and how forgiveness plays a vital role in recovery and potential reconciliation. So why don't people forgive? Lots of reasons. Fear, pride, anger, resentment, bitterness and a lack of understanding of forgiveness are some of them. While I would never wish to relive this season of my life, it has offered me a great deal of self-examination. To begin to consider life after betrayal, I had to take a hard look at myself. Was I prideful? Yes, probably. Considering forgiveness of this deeply personal and intimate offense made me feel humiliated, stupid, and foolish. Who lets someone treat them in the worst possible way a human being can be treated and then forgive that, and reconcile? Well, it turns out forgiving people do. Lots of them. And they are not stupid or foolish - they are actually some of the strongest, most courageous people out there. What about righteousness? That gets in the way for a lot of people. We can "compare" our sins to those of the unfaithful spouse and declare ourselves to be superior, and therefore can be unwilling to forgive such egregious acts from those clearly so far "beneath" us. Except that we are all sinners. As Rick Reynolds explained at EMS, we have to stay mindful of our own inner cesspool. None of us is perfect. I remind myself that I did not deserve forgiveness from God for my sins either, but He forgave me anyway. As we celebrate Easter and are reminded of Christ's ultimate sacrifice for our sins, I think it offers objectivity regarding our universally flawed human state, regardless of which side of the infidelity equation we find ourselves, and the need for forgiveness in our own lives. "Forgiveness requires the ability to forgive yourself for the failure of your own false expectations." Kenneth Cloke Humility is a gift I have received in this season of forgiveness, and I am not afraid to look at my own shortcomings. After committing to forgiveness for my husband, I began to examine my role in our marriage and the times I had hurt him, even unintentionally. I asked him for forgiveness, and he offered it. Don't misunderstand, I am not taking responsibility for his affair. That was his decision alone, but that doesn't mean I was a perfect wife. The more I could really get vulnerable to examine that, the more compassion I had for him. None of it is easy or intuitive. It is deliberate and intentional work, and very hard. Rick and Stephanie Reynolds offer some practical tips toward forgiveness in this article. I am content with where I am in my forgiveness of my husband's infidelity. It is a lifelong journey. I wish it was a one and done decision, but even with the best of intentions and a heartfelt declaration, those triggers and resentments spring up to remind me that I have to forgive again. And again. And again. When I see a "special" photo that now just feels fake and hollow. When I battle painful intrusive thoughts and images in what should feel like an exclusively intimate moment with my husband. When I randomly recall a time I raised suspicions and they were dismissed and called "silly." When another loss becomes apparent to me and I feel resentment for having to give up even more that I never agreed to, I have to forgive again. Don't get too discouraged, though, because it truly does get easier as time goes on, and with practice. I remind myself I have already forgiven for this or that, and have to do a bit of a reset. It's still hard at times, but is less difficult than it once was. "Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I think the hardest concept for me to initially understand is that I couldn't just wait until I felt like forgiving. That was extremely unlikely to happen. Ever. It is more of an intentional action based on decision, not feelings. The feelings come later, after the path has been worn down a bit. Forgiveness felt impossible in the beginning, but the forgiveness in my heart for my husband is much more authentic now. I am certainly not "done" and I still have angry and resentful moments, but the "feelings" of forgiveness are much more genuine, not forced anymore, just not fully complete. I am satisfied with that, as I think it's huge progress, and I know if I stay the course it will just continue to improve, so it's not something I worry about anymore. I know I could not have achieved this without God's work in me. If you're not ready to forgive right now, that's ok. There is no timeline. You can't force it. Mona Shriver says, "It's a common prescription to betrayed spouses to ‘just forgive and you won't be angry anymore.' I'm sorry, but that's just not usually true. A betrayed spouse who is dealing with severe anger will need to actually grieve first, then slowly and steadily move towards forgiveness." I suggest looking back at this in a month or two and try again. And again a few months after that. It is a deeply personal and unique choice for each of us, and we are all different. There is so much to face with marital betrayal, we simply can't face it all at once. Be patient with yourself, take your time. Forgiveness is a strength, not a weakness. It takes tremendous strength to forgive something as deeply wounding as infidelity. You never really know how strong you are until you come face to face with something that seems so impossible. It can feel overwhelming, but as with the rest of recovery, take it one step at a time. This truly is the journey of a lifetime. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Eph 4:32

Forgiveness - Burden or Gift Part I: What is Forgiveness Anyway? Part II: The Journey of a Lifetime When discussing forgiveness of marital betrayal, other words that often spring to mind include impossible, unfair, and undeserved. Some of you may have even cringed at the mention of forgiveness. I definitely understand that. I think this topic is so hard to wrap our heads around when we are reeling from the pain and upheaval caused by infidelity, and it can seem out of the realm of possibility to even care about forgiveness. Every situation is different, so I can only tell you about mine. When my husband first confessed his affair, I was numb. In my situation, I had waited a very long time for the truth and had basically given up believing it would ever happen. Over the years that I waited, I had continually tried to convince myself there was nothing to know, which he reinforced with layers of lies and denial. So, when it finally came out and I was faced with the exact truth I had worked so hard to dismiss, I was unprepared. Even though your situation was probably different from mine, I'll bet you were unprepared too. My husband spilled the ugly truth all over me and tearfully asked for my forgiveness. In a daze, I offered it to him. Looking back, I truly meant it in that moment, but I had absolutely no idea what I was saying. I hadn't even begun to understand what I had lost, what he had actually willingly destroyed in our marriage, and as the reality set in over the next difficult season, forgiveness seemed like the least of my problems. However, as a Christian I knew I was commanded to forgive, and as a wife I wanted to be able to forgive, but I had no idea how I was ever going to get there. Forgiveness felt like it was designed for things that were accidental. Unintentional. Mistakes. Like, “Oh, gosh, I just spilled wine on your shirt; please forgive me.” This was not like that at all. This was a series of repeated choices over a long period of time, done with full awareness of wrongness, layered with deliberate and intentional deception and secrecy to ensure its continuation, uninterrupted and without consequence. This is not to say the hurt caused by those actions was deliberate or even considered, but the choices made were neither an accident nor a mistake. I struggled with this. It seemed so intentional. I felt caught between my obedience to God and my human nature. My human heart said forgiveness would be saying that what he did was ok, or that it didn't hurt me. It felt like forgiveness would somehow minimize the significance and impact of his betrayal. Or even that I conceded that what he did wasn't actually that bad. None of that was true. How could I forgive something that had cost me so much? Forgiving something of this magnitude just seemed unfair. Hadn't I lost enough already? But I do love my husband, and following disclosure he was deeply remorseful, truthful, empathetic, and motivated to heal our marriage. So, initially, I willed myself to forgive, through gritted teeth and angry prayers. I definitely did not feel anything resembling forgiveness. I was too busy being angry, even rageful at times, like nothing I have ever experienced before. As the months ticked by I knew I had to figure out a way to forgive him, both for his sake and my own. But how? I prayed about this frequently, but it was a mixture of obligation and desperation. In my heart I did want to forgive my husband. I just didn't know if I could. I really didn't know if I was a good enough person for that. I mostly assumed I wasn't. Forgiveness for monumental things like infidelity was what really good people do - like, super sweet, Godly, loving people who still smile when they're upset and say things like "Goodness gracious". Not angry, resentful, sarcastic people who spew four letter words like me. I continued to pray and ask God to show me how to forgive and to make me capable of forgiveness. I asked Him to pour His forgiveness through me for my husband. As time went on, I settled into this frequent prayer, and at some point I realized I had committed to forgiveness. That didn't mean I felt any forgiveness yet, but I had made a decision that I would forgive, and was committed to doing so, however long it took to get there. After a little while, that thought was comfortable. I no longer felt as much of a "forgiveness failure", and felt patience in knowing I had made the commitment, so the timeframe wasn't important. I continued to pray about it, but my prayer changed a little. Now I asked God to soften my heart and fill me with compassion for my husband so I could see him as God did, and to fill me with His forgiveness toward him. I wish I could say suddenly something was magically transformed in me after that, but that was not my experience. Could God do that? Absolutely. But I think He would rather we arrive there through our own struggle. More time passed and I continued to pray that prayer, along with a lot of other stuff about healing. Slowly my anger began to subside. Perusing the Affair Recovery forums and reading extensively on the topic over the years, I have noticed some recurring misconceptions of forgiveness. Forgiveness does not require justice. Sometimes people can get caught up in wanting justice or restitution before considering forgiveness. If you are looking for justice in the aftermath of infidelity - spoiler alert - there isn't any. You will never find it because it doesn't exist. The same goes for restitution. I personally cringe when I hear people talk about restitution in this circumstance, as though the losses can be replaced. They can't. However, that being said, with enough perspective and forgiveness, the need for justice becomes irrelevant. What matters more is redemption, along with finding meaning and purpose. Redemption for myself and my life, as well as having a role in my husband's redemption. That is deeply meaningful to me. Does it take away the sting of betrayal or make forgiveness easy? No. But it exists alongside all of that, and is equally important. Forgiveness isn't saying that the betrayal was okay. It actually says the opposite. It implies that what happened was so significant that there's nothing that can make up for it, and that is why forgiveness is needed. It comes at a cost to the person doing the forgiving. It can never be made right by human means. That's the message of the gospel. God did not forgive our sins because they were trivial. Our sins were monumental and we could never do enough to make up for them. Forgiveness is supernatural, and I believe as flawed humans, we are unable to do it on our own. Forgiving is not forgetting. If we could just forget, there would be no need for forgiveness. The principle of forgiveness is that, in spite of the fact that you will always remember, you give up your right to punish, and you come to accept the consequences of another person's actions. That is really hard. I didn't take these actions and I don't want these consequences. So please don't think I'm glossing over it all and saying it's easy, as it definitely is not. Not at all. For me, part of the process of forgiveness is my growing acceptance of these costs. The more time has passed, the more I have accepted that there are many things that might just always be painful and disappointing. It is not the shock that it once was, and my expectations have changed to accommodate reality. I would love to say that forgiveness will result in the resolution of pain but I don't see that happening. Maybe for some people it does, I don't know. For me, it is more about making peace with having to live with the pain indefinitely. Forgiveness does not equal trust. Trust is completely separate from forgiveness, and may or may not be restored in a relationship where infidelity has occurred. Trust is built by believable behavior over time, not by forgiveness. Forgiveness is often confused with reconciliation. They are definitely not the same thing. You can have one without the other. You can have both. But they are separate. Forgiveness is a critical component for successful reconciliation, but even if reconciliation is not possible or advisable, forgiveness is still important - even if it's just for the freedom and peace of the betrayed partner. Not every relationship can be reconciled, but forgiveness can still take place regardless. Rick Reynolds explains the paradox of social shame that can take place with a decision to forgive and reconcile, but he also highlights the ultimate benefit for those who make it. Forgiveness will not remove the negative feelings about the betrayal. Nope. I wish that was true but it isn't. Mona Shriver describes this well and offers validation about feeling conflicted that we still feel angry and hurt, even though we are forgiving the person who hurt us so deeply. After the dust settles and the real work of recovery begins, forgiveness is something each of us has to face. Not everyone will choose this path, and we have the free will to decide for ourselves. Some people will flat out refuse to forgive, while others feel an inability to do so. Then the rest will try to figure it out to release the burden they are carrying. I'm sure you have heard the adage about the person who released the prisoner through forgiveness and then realized he himself had been the prisoner. I want the peace in my heart of forgiving my husband, and yes, even his affair partner. Initially I had zero capacity, or even desire, to forgive her. There is a lot to forgive. She feigned friendliness toward me and my children throughout the affair while enjoying a secret relationship with my husband. That continues to feel so calculated, humiliating, and without remorse, like I was just a pawn in a twisted game they were playing. After the initial shock of it all, I asked God to help me even want to forgive her, and then to help me do it. To see her as He sees her. Am I there yet? Not completely, but closer than I thought I would be. God tells us to bless those who persecute you. That is a very tall order, and one that I cannot do alone without the help of God. Come back next week for Part 2 of Forgiveness - Burden or Gift?

Being loved is a hard concept to grasp when our dreams lie shattered around us, and the God whom we thought loved us, has let them shatter. Vaneetha Risner If the title of this blog gave the impression that I have the answer to this question, I want to let you know up front that I don't. I am still in the trenches and I wrestle with this often. I wondered if someone else might too, so I decided to talk about it. Faith is such a personal journey, so I can only offer what has been my experience, and in no way do I assume others will necessarily see or feel it the same way. Maybe this conversation can validate your experience if this is an area in which you have struggled, or are still struggling. Maybe you have figured it out and can share a comment below to guide the rest of us. After the grenade of infidelity was thrown into my lap and basically obliterated everything that mattered to me, I searched in desperation for answers. Being a Christian, that led me to look toward God for comfort and healing. I searched endlessly for relief. I read testimony after testimony from writers who spoke about the comfort they had found in God, and described feeling His love as they walked through this experience of pain and confusion. I felt neither God's comfort nor His presence. Truthfully, this left me more depressed and disconnected than before I read their words. If that was their experience, then I clearly was not doing this right, or more likely I just was not someone with the capacity to heal. Maybe God just didn't love me as much as He loved them. Maybe I was being punished (I actually lingered on that one for a very long time). Maybe this was just God's plan for my life, in which I was never going to feel any relief, but had unwillingly sacrificed my joy and peace for some kind of cosmic greater good that I couldn't see or understand. Initially after D-day I felt desperate for God, clinging to Bible verses and pleading with Him to somehow make this NOT be my reality. He can do all things, and He could change any circumstance, so I wanted Him to just make this not be my life. As time went on, I felt angry at God. Very angry. Resentful and untrusting. How could He let this happen and then leave me here? Then, I felt totally distant and disconnected from God. As though I was giving Him the silent treatment and pretending He wasn't there. If He wasn't going to help me, then I wasn't going to talk to Him anymore. Then I felt guilty. I knew I was supposed to be faithful to God and worship him even in suffering. But I didn't see anything worthy of worship. So I obediently prayed prayers of gratitude for things like air, food, and shelter. But truthfully I didn't mean any of it. I didn't care if I ate or breathed and I really just wanted to be dead, so I wasn't grateful for the life for which I was pretending to express gratitude. What did I hear from God? Still nothing. No lightning bolts for my disobedience and angry words, and no warm enveloping comfort for my desperate tearful pleas choked out with my face literally pressed into the floor. Nothing. Nothing at all. The silence was deafening, and I felt abandoned. As I continued to struggle to hear from God, I often came across well-meaning "resources" trying to oversimplify an overwhelming situation and I read that I should "just" think about something else, or focus on "good things," like Phillipians 4:8. While there is merit and truth in this, there is also a time and a place. In the midst of trauma and deep depression, this just made me want to punch someone. If you saw someone's house on fire you wouldn't tell them to "think about something else." The internal "house fire" of betrayal trauma required a lot of resources and time to get me to a place where thinking about good things applied at all. It's still a day to day struggle for me, but I know as a Christian I am supposed to have faith, right? I'm not supposed to question God or be resentful or angry, and I'm supposed to trust that it's all working for the good of those who love Him. Right? Turns out it isn't that easy. At least not for me. For a time, I didn't feel like I was supposed to say anything to God that wasn't thankful or honoring, or at the very least - polite. Early on I couldn't find any words at all. Thoughts and feelings were all jumbled up in my head, like one of those old spin art toys that twirls around and mixes up the paint colors into haphazard designs. The confusion and desperation were paralyzing, and then the anger would kick in. It felt wrong to be angry at God, but eventually I realized God already knows what I'm feeling anyway, so there was no reason to keep my thoughts from Him. He can handle my anger and disappointment. As with any human relationship with our children, we would rather have them be honest with us about being angry, than have them not talk to us at all. I'm guessing He probably looks at us like that too. Over time, I decided that I think some aspect of hearing from God has to do with selective listening. When my kids were young, they were magically oblivious to hearing words like "homework" or "bedtime" but I could practically whisper the word "snack" from around the block - and suddenly they had hearing superpowers. I think it works kind of like that. I wanted to hear "This betrayal didn't really happen" or "I will take your pain away" or even "I will cover the AP's face with boils" - but that was not what He was going to say, and I really wasn't interested in hearing from Him about anything else. After a while, I did "hear" from God (not audibly or literally). But the things He was showing me weren't necessarily things I could have "heard" early on. People and circumstances were placed in my path that I didn't know I needed until... I did. Over time I began to sense things that were shifting within me. Alongside the pain, I grew in perspective, compassion, forgiveness, humility, and patience... So. Much. Patience. These were not things that I necessarily wanted to learn, especially not like this, but I think they are results of the whispers and nudges of God through this season. It is still very much a work in progress, but I can see the framework now. Honestly I'd still rather hear "I'll take your pain away" or "I'll turn back the clock and it will all go away" but I don't see that happening. Sometimes I wonder if even writing these blogs is something placed by Him in my heart to offer comfort and validation to someone else who needs it right now. It feels like I ride waves of faith. At times I feel hopeful and almost feel God's presence and see glimmers of His work in my life. At other times, all I hear from God is deafening silence and I feel very alone, unmoored and totally adrift in my pain and hopelessness, like He doesn't even see me at all. I think that is the struggle of faith. If it was easy or obvious, then it wouldn't really be faith. Leslie Hardie, co-author of Affair Recovery's Harboring Hope course, routinely reminded participants that God helped her through her betrayal, and that He didn't love her more than He loved the rest of us. I doubted that (a lot) at the time, but I have thought of her words often since then. I am certainly not a poster child for faith in recovery, but I am real. I have real doubts and real disappointments and now, I have very real conversations with God. They are not all praise and gratitude, they are very honest. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I do genuinely feel gratitude that I couldn't fathom before, even amidst the presence of pain. So my conversations with God are a mix of those things, along with the frustration and disappointment I continue to face. It's okay. He can handle it. And I know He hears me. In a Q&A video, Rick Reynolds responds to a person who questioned her faith as a result of her pain, and asked how a just God could have allowed the infidelity to occur. Rick's answer pointed out that Jesus was perfect. He was the Son of God and never sinned, and yet he was crucified. Many of the apostles were martyred. The point he made was that even in those circumstances, God did not prevent pain. He allowed things to happen to people who least deserved it, because he created humans to have free will to make decisions - good and bad - and we have to live with the consequences. Fairness does not factor in. We know we will have trouble in this world (John 16:33). Sometimes it is through the mistakes we make, or those of others who impact us, that changes us, makes us grow, and leads us to God to deepen our dependence on Him, which is His ultimate goal because His heart's desire is to be in true relationship with us. I don't know how you feel about God's role in your situation, but I know I'm not alone in my struggle to understand. I don't have all the answers, but I hope sharing my thoughts might help someone feel less alone. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5

God knows that the mended heart will be much more stunning and substantially stronger than the unscathed soul. Sharon Jaynes, author I have never put much stock in New Year’s resolutions, and have even rolled my eyes at people claiming “words” for the upcoming year. It seemed artificial to me. However, now that I find myself in a reality that I really want to change, it seems perhaps assigning a word may provide a targeted reminder of where I want to be. So, since I have already done a lot of work on myself and in our marriage, my word for this New Year is RECLAIM. I intend to reclaim not just places and scenarios associated with my husband’s affair, but also friendships, activities, and doing things for myself - and being able to actually feel like I deserve to do them. Betrayal has caused me to isolate and to feel unworthy, in every possible way. Even self-care and “fun” feels foreign and ill-fitting now, like I no longer am a person who can make claims to normal or pleasant things. As though now I am just supposed to live in darkness, and no longer am I entitled to expect anything from life. No, thank you. That’s not ok anymore. It has been my world for a season, but I can’t stay there. I won’t stay there. That is no longer ok with me, and I will not allow my husband’s betrayal to define my life. Only God can define me, and He did not betray me. God has always valued me, even when my husband treated me as though I had no value. Reclaiming is not an easy task. I know I need to be intentional. I need to reclaim our physical intimacy, our friends, places, and activities. I need to reclaim my place in this world and in this marriage. I need to reclaim my life. This is my work to do. I know that. But part of me says, why should I? I shouldn’t have to reclaim anything, it should have been mine all along. This is true of course, but doesn’t change the fact that I have to deal with the reality I have been given. If I want my life back, I have to reclaim it. As much as “justice” would make it his responsibility to fix what he broke, he cannot do this for me. I resent having to do this. I fear having to do this. I struggle to believe I deserve to do this. I really wonder if I can do this. My brain says, “Yes, of course you deserve good things, and you can and will reclaim your life!” But the quiet and persistent inner voice scoffs and whispers, “Yeah right, you will never get there. You will always just be someone who wasn’t even worthy of faithfulness, so don’t even bother.” That voice has been my constant companion over the last couple years, but it is not my friend. That voice is a true frenemy, pretending to offer insight with my best interests at heart, but strategically setting me up to fail and perpetuate this purgatory of self-doubt and insecurity. No more. I am done following the frenemy’s lead. I am moving forward - I deserve to have more, to feel more, to be more. I will reach out and rejoin the land of the living. My friends don’t know about the infidelity, but they do know I have been a recluse and have not been myself in a long time. Reinstating that element of normalcy amidst all that is no longer normal will help me feel real. I will approach my days as though I deserve to be happy. Will I automatically just feel happy then? No, of course not. But I am raising my expectations. They have been so low thus far they have not allowed room for anything more. Even if I only manage to achieve improvement some of the time, it would still be worth doing, wouldn't it? I am reclaiming ME. Not the betrayed wife. Me. What does that look like? I don’t really know. I have centered my identity around “wife” for so long that I have long lost sight of me as a person. In terms of practical aspects, I will also reclaim the physical places I have been avoiding. Why should I live in fear of places they went together? Why should my world become smaller because of their choices? These are just places. What happened there was not honoring God. I will not make a monument to something that never should have happened. I will stand in those places with my chin up and take them back. My world will grow bigger and I will become more free. Dr. John Haney told me the more I avoid something because it is "theirs" (a location, activity, date, season, or whatever) the more power I allow it to have. Betrayal and deception made me powerless over my own life by creating a false reality. I’m definitely done with that. Are you? Going forward, I am not okay with having places that limit my life. I always wondered when I would know I was ready, and I have definitely felt it lately, like it won’t swallow me up. How will you know if/when you should reclaim something? You have to wait until you are ready; it can't be forced. I wanted to just get it all over with right after D-day, but knew deep down I wasn’t ready and it could backfire. I assumed I would never feel any more prepared and wanted to just muscle through it, but I’m glad it never panned out because I can feel how much more ready I am now, at a place I wasn’t sure I would ever be. My husband doesn’t really understand my need to reclaim these things, but he will do whatever it takes if it helps me. Not everyone needs this; if you don’t, that’s great (and I really wish I was more like you!) But if you do, you do. We don’t all need to handle it the same way. Understanding and honoring our individual journeys is, in and of itself, empowering. We are not all the same, nor do we need to be. Betrayal can make us question whether or not we can trust ourselves. Our judgment can feel tattered after having been fooled, so we might even have to reclaim trusting our own feelings. I am in trauma therapy (which I highly recommend). This is very hard work, more than anyone not going through this could possibly imagine. My therapist encourages me to start talking to myself in a way that I am planning to regain what I have lost, not just hoping. I am there now, ready for that shift. I will speak more firmly to myself to reclaim what has been lost and speak as if hope is possible. I am allowed to feel like I am special to my husband, and I have permission to be happy. Someone please remind me of all this tomorrow when I am in a puddle on the floor. A horrible unjustice about infidelity is what we, as betrayed partners, make it mean about ourselves. Yes, our spouse made choices that were hurtful, but the things we tell ourselves about what it means about us often does far more damage. I’ll talk more about that some other time, but for now, I have to decide, who do I really want to be? That's a harder question than you would think. My life for the last several decades has been focused on being a wife and mother. I need to be a whole person. Who do you want to be? At some point we have to force ourselves to start living, even if we don't feel like it. I have sat on the sidelines of my own life for too long, feeling like nothing more than collateral damage of other people’s choices. I might not feel the motivation toward personal growth every day, but even if I feel it for five minutes once a week, I have to seize it and start there. What do you want to reclaim? Share your thoughts in a comment below and we’ll search for the beauty from ashes together. John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” I want to invite all who have been betrayed to our Annual Hope Rising Conferences - on Demand, and gain momentum, strength, and community on your journey to wholeness. Watch Now!

The Slow Crawl Back to Life: A Two Part Series Part 1 Part 2 It is both difficult and precarious to measure growth related to something so deeply painful and personal. Even acknowledging progress produces a reflexive twinge, like somehow that diminishes the devastation I experienced. That is definitely not the case, but I think, at least for me, making sure I don't forget how bad it was is a defense mechanism to ensure I don't get hurt this way again. Also, growth is not linear and sometimes is subtle, so it can be hard to recognize. So, expanding on what I described last time, sometimes we don't notice growth when we are holding on so tightly in an effort to protect ourselves and just get through the day. Recently, I came across an email I had written about a year ago. It was illuminating and made me see very clearly that I have made significant progress since then. I still have a long road ahead of me and feel varying levels of pain every day but the contrast of my present to the words written by my past self was stark. The past version of me writing that email was crawling out of her skin with PTSD symptoms and unable to find a moment's rest. I look back at that and am so sad that I (or anyone else) had to live through something so gut wrenchingly painful for so long. This is a portion of my email, written to my therapist at the time: I don't think anyone really understands my desperation. My husband is ready to leave just to stop being a constant trigger. I am so conflicted by looking at him and touching him, with all the triggers created and the chaos in my head, battling between wanting to be near him and needing to pull away from him in pain and fear. I need him very badly but can't let myself be with him even though he is right next to me. It haunts me. It doesn't feel safe. I feel very alone. It consumes me day and night as I don't sleep more than a couple hours. I just can't stand the thought of him with his AP. I feel sick, my heart races, like I will explode. I still vomit at times from the images in my mind. I can't even imagine ever not feeling this crushing sadness. I feel like I am drowning and my sanity is at risk. I want to check in somewhere and just be put into a coma until this is over. There are still times I want to die. More than I care to admit. It is so intense, I feel no hope. I am absolutely terrified that this is my life and I can never escape it. I don't know who I am and I feel like I will be trapped in this new reality forever. I feel like a caged animal desperate to get out of this situation. Reading that was a reality check. I remember that level of desperation very well as it was my daily existence for a long time. But it isn't my reality now. I really don't think I would have appreciated the significant growth and healing in me without having re-read that. I still feel a whole lot of "stuff" that I wish I didn't, but it isn't with the intensity and desperation portrayed back then. I am calmer. I sleep better. I manage my triggers better - not by white-knuckling it, but because they are just more manageable now (mostly). I still don't appreciate having to deal with them at all, but I can see how over time and with a lot of work, this has improved. Therefore I can only project that it will continue to get better and I have a sense of patience about this process that I did not have before. Dr. John Haney once told me that fear begets fear. Meaning, if I am fearful that I will never feel any better, that fear feeds on itself to produce more fear, adding to the burden of recovery. Fear is natural of course, but it can take over and be its own battlefront, on top of the necessary work around grief, trauma, trust, forgiveness and potential reconciliation. Along the same lines, I am finding that hope begets hope. I was once hopeless. Completely devoid of hope or even caring that I didn't have any hope. But after finally experiencing some positive shifts within me, I had a tiny ray of hope. I felt if I had experienced any healing at all, even the tiniest bit, then I could draw the conclusion that I could heal some more. So the hope grew a little. That cycle continued, and while I am not where I want to be, I do have hope that I could get there. In the initial days after D-day, everything was terrible. There was no mix of positive and negative emotions. It was extremely painful, but there was no confusion about how to feel. It was pretty clear cut and straightforward. I felt terrible. I was supposed to feel terrible. I felt like I would feel horrible forever and there was really no struggle in that aspect of it, it was pretty clear. At some point along the way, I began to feel positive things about my current relationship with my husband, while still in so much pain from his affair. The full truth and subsequent pain had brought us so much closer, and I felt grateful for our new emotional intimacy and vulnerability. These were truly beautiful things that would have been phenomenal if they had happened outside of the devastation. Mixing pain with joy is confusing. In the beginning of this phase, it was easy to dismiss any positive feelings - I am not supposed to feel happy because 'this' happened and therefore this happiness I thought I might have felt for a moment is not justified, and I reject it. Positive emotions can feel foreign, like they don't apply anymore. It is further confusing to have a brief moment of laughter only to fall back into the abyss a few seconds later. Like - oh yeah, I forgot for a moment how much my life sucks. Everyone's timeline for healing is different but I actually took note of the day I made it through a whole 24 hour period without breaking down and sobbing, as it was so monumental it actually felt foreign. I got used to feeling terrible and forgot what it felt like to be happy or to smile or laugh without it being fake to placate everyone around me. Happiness and peace were just memories of feelings and they were hard to recall. Sometimes healing feels elusive, like the carrot on a stick that is continually just out of reach. As I mentioned last time, I am now in a place where I am holding pain and gratitude side by side. That is obviously better, but harder for my brain to manage. It is much more complicated and feels unnatural sometimes. Sometimes in this place, my inner thoughts argue with each other about which feeling will be allowed to come out and play, and it can be tiring. But on the days I am discouraged and hopeless about ever getting to true healing, I remind myself that back in my darkest days I also never imagined feeling like I do today. I hope you might find that encouraging. Just because healing takes a long time doesn't mean the entirety of that time will be spent where you are right now. Hope acknowledges that while what we see and feel may be excruciating right now, it will not always be this way. As the apostle Paul reminds us, "hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (Romans 8:24-25) The following is an encouraging blog post I came across, and wanted to share it with you all too: Choose Hope — Vaneetha Risner. "Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope." — Elizabeth Gilbert Cover more ground faster with the life-changing experience of EMS Weekend for couples. This isn't another light-and-fluffy program that only scratches the surface of your pain. The EMS Weekend Experience is a safe space for you and your partner to start putting the pieces of your life back together, transform your trauma and begin healing from infidelity. Skeptical about the effectiveness of this experience? Don't be! Backed by a slew of previous participant testimonials, EMS Weekend delivers results month after month for countless couples. During EMS Weekend, we won't shame the unfaithful spouse nor blame the betrayed spouse. What we will do is pair you with a small community of other couples and an expert therapist - all of whom have experienced infidelity firsthand - as well as provide comprehensive resources to help you kick-start your healing journey. Sign Up Now!

The Slow Crawl Back to Life: A Two Part Series Part 1 Part 2 You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety. ~ Abraham Maslow I don't know if I have said this yet, but when I talk to you about hope and recovery, I am also talking to myself. I am still on this journey too and I get discouraged, frustrated, angry, and sad, so I am also encouraging myself as I focus my thoughts in these blogs. I hope you don't mind me tagging along for the ride. I was thinking the other day about all of this, and stopped for just a moment to take a look in the rear view mirror of recovery. Looking into the past is easy. I do that every single day and you probably do too, thinking about the "what ifs," and I wish this or that had never happened, and definitely the "what was real and what wasn't" trips down memory lane. Those are still very real parts of daily life. But that's not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about looking back to the beginning of this recovery journey and even at where I was just a few months ago. The experts recommend being intentional about assessing progress periodically, but realistically when pain is the predominant emotion of the day that intentional reflection goes out the window as pain management takes all the energy and focus I can muster. So that's why it was so profound when I found myself thinking about this. I was on a run, listening to one of the bazillion podcasts I have saved on healing or relationships or God or life in general. I was enjoying the sun and a nice breeze and thinking about what I was going to do when I got home. Did you catch that? I was enjoying it. Actually enjoying something. Not tolerating it, managing it, or gritting my teeth to get through it. It was nice - truly. It made me pause and think. And when I gave it my full attention I could honestly say I was having a good day. Taking a moment to look back, it had been a pretty good few weeks. In hindsight, even the last couple of months had been better. Not rainbows and butterflies - but markedly better. Does that mean I had just figured out how to stop thinking about it? Nope, not at all. I still think about it all the time, pretty much all day long. I don't believe the goal is to stop thinking about it. I do anticipate that after more healing occurs I will naturally think about it less than I do now, but that is not the end goal at all, at least not for me. My goal is to somehow have this integrated into my life where I can think about it and I don't fall apart. Where I can find peace with what has happened and still be ok, and maybe even happy someday, for more than an hour at a time. It's not that I don't feel pain at the thought of my husband sharing himself with another person in ways that were supposed to be only mine. I most certainly do. That still hurts immensely and I am still on this journey too, so I can't tell you if that will ever truly go away. I guess I'll let you know on that one. However, what I am noticing is that on my better days (let's be real here, sometimes it's only minutes or maybe hours) when I think about it, it just doesn't matter as much. Now that I've said that out loud, those words hang in my throat and threaten to choke me, creating fear and confusion that I've even generated that thought. It is so hard to articulate, especially to those of you early on who are still reeling with the shock and overwhelm in the first weeks and months after discovery. For me, I find the more work we do to become closer as a couple - really gut level close - good, bad, and ugly; the more the pain moves into the background. I am not going to lie; it often comes right back to slap me in the face and mock me for what a fool I am to even try to heal from this. I have to remind myself that if I felt hope and momentary glimpses of peace yesterday, then it is possible to feel those things again, and to build on them. It is a battle of the mind, heart, and faith to be sure. I am not a fan of what my friend describes as "mental gymnastics" to trick myself into believing things are better than they are; that's just smoke and mirrors and doesn't actually accomplish anything. But there is a distinction between thought maneuvers intended to distract and sugarcoat, versus actually processing something to the point that the perspective on it is more objective, less hurtful, and overall healthier. My husband's decision to have an affair will never be ok. I will never try to convince myself it was for our greater good or somehow needed to happen. No. It never should have happened and I never should have been subjected to any of the cruel and destructive things he did, but here we are. He made all of those choices and there is no going back; there is no "undo" button. Trust me, I have tried to press it at least a million times and I just can't change our story that way. But now we can take this and use it to create something. I can be grateful for the opportunities it has provided for us to grow as people, closer to God and to each other. I can be a better person, a stronger person, and a more compassionate and empathetic person than I ever could have imagined. We can be a more connected and intentional couple, in a marriage made up of two people who have walked through fire and fought to stay in this together. We know what it's worth now, with eyes wide open. So am I still disappointed with my life, knowing my husband willingly and repeatedly chose to betray me? Yes, every day I feel disappointment. I feel it deeply in my chest as I type these words to you. I don't know if that will ever change and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But I also feel immense gratitude. I am grateful for the lessons I have learned about myself, about him, about marriage, about God, and about life. I am grateful that I am a different person in so many ways. I have so much more compassion, empathy and patience than I ever had before. I am much less judgemental and now I often view another person's bad behavior with an eye toward potential hidden trauma in their life. I am deeply grateful for the man my husband is today; I could not build a better husband if I tried. We are deeply connected in ways we may never have reached without this trauma, I don't know. But I still feel pain. I still feel discouragement. Sometimes I still feel resentment and anger too, but those are more easily managed through the lens of compassion than they were in the earlier days now that I know and understand him so well. Some days the disappointment prevails, some days the gratitude does. Most days they are intermingled and I feel them together in a weird twisted bittersweet mix. What I am discovering is that these feelings can coexist, side by side. That felt unnatural at first, as they are seemingly contradictory, but as my mind and heart expand on this journey I am more open to understanding and experiencing things than I would have been previously. This is growth, no matter how the big picture looks on a given day. I even have a recurring calendar notification on my phone that reminds me every morning that "I am healing." Some days I feel it and others not so much, but it reminds me that even when I don't feel progress, it is there. I now have happy moments, even days. I feel like "me" again. Truthfully it's still a sad version of me, but it is the real me, no longer the vacant shell of a person I had been for a long time or the raving madman that took over at times. Let's face it, it's hard to stay motivated to do all this work only to strive toward a goal of "tolerable." I still have moments when I wonder if I will ever really be OK. I don't know the answer to that and I won't sugarcoat my words and say that I do. But I do know that in the early days of recovery I never thought I would stop crying. I never thought I could sleep more than 2 hours a night. I never thought I would smile again. I definitely never thought I would laugh without faking it. And here I am. I have done all of those things and I do have good days. I never thought any of that would happen; in fact I was absolutely positive none of it would. So is "real" healing possible? I don't know yet but my own journey has shown me that things are possible that I would not have believed, so I am open to the possibility in ways I wasn't before. "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." Viktor Frankl I want to invite all who have been betrayed to our Annual Hope Rising Conferences - on Demand, and gain momentum, strength, and community on your journey to wholeness. Watch Now!