Survivors' Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As a real estate and small business attorney, I have always been drawn to the processes that emerge during real estate and business deals. Emotions run high at the hope of future opportunity in the early stages. As particulars are investigated, uncertainties become clearer and some risks become calculable. There is always a gap between what is known and what can only be projected. Ultimately, the constraints of resources and time merge to force a decision. It is in that moment that instincts prevail and the process becomes poetic. It is also in that moment that the uneasy feelings of uncertainty rise and the warm sense of hope and safety take a back seat. Much like standing on the edge of a cliff and looking over, the greater the stakes, the greater the "pucker factor." Lately, I find myself in that spot in my marriage. I am a little over 20 months out from D-day. My wife and I have committed ourselves to tons of work through various resources. She is leading her 4th Hope for Healing Class, I've completed a couple of my own classes, we attended EMS Weekend, as well as countless hours of individual therapy for me, her, and our children. Early on, I grasped onto the promise of an opportunity for a "better marriage." Somewhere in the process I allowed myself to interpret that idea as hope for transformation in a way that erased the pain of the infidelity and reversed the clock back to a place in my marriage where the hurts from being betrayed no longer clouded my views of my wife and marriage. Now, I see that was really fantasy. A better marriage is not one that "feels" better. If I have learned anything, it is that feelings are fickle and unreliable. They can indicate all kinds of things both real and imagined. They can enhance a moment or crush a spirit. They can entice, and they can lie. I accept that I am forever changed by this process; vulnerability and trust are not as easy. I still trigger at times and experience that empty panic that my perspective of security may not be real. I carry shame for being here, trying to find a way to make this work. However, these times are becoming much more infrequent, and my perspective on His truth shines through this darkness, when I give it space to. I understand what has happened to me, I believe my wife when she tells me she is also disgusted by the person she had become during her affairs and has no desire to be that person again. My individual work has allowed me to see my codependence and begin to carry a confidence defined by how God sees me, instead of the world around me. I am comfortable that I am capable of experiencing a good life whether I stay married or not. I have worked through forgiveness, am continuing the journey of acceptance, and have reached a point where I've realized how sitting on the fence not only holds me back, but others around me who I hold dear. My daughters need stability from their parents. My grandchild needs me engaged. My work has a chance to prosper again if I return my focus to it. And my wife and I need to be grounded in what we believe. Immediately following discovery, I chose to love my wife by providing whatever resources I could to assist her in healing individually. Over time she fully submerged herself in the process. Obviously, we are both still broken people in a fallen world. That will never change. What has changed is our perspective of who we are, what we want to be, and how better to pursue those intentions. I am willing to take the leap of faith needed to trust my understanding that this shared perspective is true and reliable, but it is not without effort. I am willing to once again take a risk on her and see what a life in marriage, after so much work by us both, may be like. It will truly be unique, and certainly more authentic, than what we previously had. So . . . I guess what I am trying to say is "I'm in. . . I'm staying." Those words are hard to write. This doesn't necessarily feel "good," but it feels right. I am still deeply disappointed to be here. I want to admire and respect my wife as I once did, but my eyes are now open to just how self-absorbed and hurtful she can be. I fight the shame of being betrayed, but I realize this fight will likely follow me regardless of my future path. Early on I fantasized this moment would be filled with celebration, perhaps new vows and another honeymoon. Now that it is here, I can only describe it as somber and sobering. It is an authentic perspective on just how fragile the things we should value most in this world really are. The old marriage was one I took for granted and often used to fill in my weak spots. I now see this marriage as an opportunity to grow, to come closer to His will for my life. I hope my wife will continue to share in a commitment to the same intentions and that we both use this experience as a catalyst to wisdom, authenticity, and a greater purpose in our life. In that regard, I do hope for a "better" marriage. I sense she will join me in this commitment but. . . nothing is certain. . . Is this as good as it gets or is it simply where we are now? Regardless of my future path, there will be times of joy and pain, support and hurt. My hope is that my marriage now will be one valued and respected for its fragility. That we both seek to guard against the influence of friends and family who have proven toxic in the past. That we seek to understand each other instead of being understood. That we never forget that love is our individual choice. It is one of the few things in our lives we truly have control over. I'm sure it will "feel" great at times, just as I'm sure it will not as well. In the end, perhaps this will be a union of two broken people. That journey through infidelity is but one of the many tools that brought us slowly into His path. Perhaps our transformation through this process may even serve as some small witness for a few bystanders of just how incredibly God can use pain for His good. I have come to a point where I want to see what is on the other side of the door but cannot do so unless I open it. A true marriage, one worthy of desiring, requires commitment from both parties. There is no way to safely experience this goal from the sidelines. She has not only told me, but shown me repeatedly she wants to humble herself to do whatever she can to never be that person again and to help me heal. Occasionally, she has asked what recommitment would mean to me if I chose that path. It has been hard to answer as it was simply something I never thought I'd contemplate – it simply shouldn't be a part of marriage. But for us it is and we have to make the most of the hand we have been dealt.

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