Survivors' Blog

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

Two years ago, I had my first d day. Wow, how my life has changed since. I find myself fighting darkness again lately. Perhaps it's the anniversary, perhaps its fatigue, perhaps it's a little bit of a lot of things… so I write to clear my head. This blog is simply the ramblings of a betrayed man in the weeds. We recently moved. Some events in my working life late last year instigated a domino effect that resulted in my professional world scaling down in a good way. My wife and I made the decision to move from a very large house we had lived in for over a decade into one half its size. The home in which we raised our children, lived what I thought was a dream marriage, then experienced its fall, is no longer where I rest my head at night. The way these events fell into place really made this transition feel like a God sent opportunity to hit the reset button, simplify life, and truly begin to focus on starting over. I have spent the last several months throwing away the old, and buying new. Parts have been redeeming, and parts have dug up old painful bones. As the smoke settles, I think I am beginning to see a glimpse of my new reality. It has its perks, but it definitely ain't all rosy. This truly is a daily struggle, even now... While I suspect it will get easier with time, I am beginning to accept that the effects of my wife's betrayal are lasting and, to some degree, will linger a lifetime. A few months ago, I wrote about how I had come to the decision to stay. I had hoped making this commitment would help push me through some of my lingering doubt and move me into a more present future. The opposite has been true. While my wife continues well over a year of consistent empathy, remorse, and newfound humility, I find myself feeling trapped... She feels grateful... I feel stuck... You see, the old me, the confident guy who sought out impossible challenges, thrived on achievement, ambition, and success would've been so judgmental of the new me... this guy who is choosing to be married to a woman that so easily dismissed and mocked him. I am still struggling to accept that some professional opportunities, political aspirations, and future plans may no longer be in my best interest as the threat of exposure and the damage it could bring my children is too great. I have spent the last 2 years feeling the daily pain of contemplating my wife having sex with other men and I'm tired. Don't get me wrong, the programs and therapy work. EMDR has been a powerful tool and the triggers are much more tolerable and manageable. But the reality is, in all my group work and the many relationships that I've developed with betrayed men on a similar journey over the last 2 years, I am yet to meet one who has stayed with his unfaithful wife and no longer triggers at some level during sex – and some of these men have been more than a decade out from discovery. I have had highly qualified, well intentioned counselors tell me these men exist, yet none have been able to introduce me to one. The consequences of the selfish and immature acts of infidelity are still constantly evident... at times even overwhelming... even now, after years of constant work. Through this process I have developed friendships with a number of betrayed men on similar journeys. One group of these men communicates often and recently the conversation turned to the loss of the feeling of a special bond with our wives and the loss of that "loving feeling" we all seem to experience. I value this group's thoughts greatly. Many are much further down the road than I. It left me thinking, I am not even sure I know what love "feels" like anymore. My new perspective is love is a choice, not a feeling, but I do miss the desire to pursue her. I have chosen to act in her best interest by staying to raise our children, providing financial and emotional support, therapy resources, protecting her as best I can from exposure caused by her humiliating acts, even when her actions practically destroyed me. At times, I am attracted and aroused by her, at times I am repulsed and pity her, at times it all mixes together simultaneously and leaves me withdrawn, broken, or angry. Once again "feelings" prove fickle and unreliable. One of the members of the group who is often wise in his insight noted trust had to rebuild to a high level before the desire to pursue her returned in earnest. I like that thought and perhaps that is in my future.... While there are resources to help, nothing can erase reality, it can only be accepted. I have to learn to live with being misunderstood by many I consider friends. My choice lies in perspective, but the positive choice, the one that draws me closer to His purpose for my life, is not always easily ascertained... nor swallowed and believed.... So, what is the point? Why tolerate it all? Truth is I do not have a choice. While I am sure my newly recovered wife, free of the bondage of all her secrets, could easily find a new relationship without all this baggage and likely enjoy more uninhibited admiration and desire from another man, I will carry the struggle of overcoming being defined by this forever. If I am to survive, then I have to keep facing the darkness head on, and refuse to succumb to the temptation to try and sweep it away. I am not sure of much these days, but I am certain that complacency will breed the self-contempt shame needs to overcome me. I'm tired but I know I cannot stop. Shame is powerful. It cannot be easily dismissed. It is demanding and impatient. It lies and manipulates and can squelch joy in an instant.... But it isn't real... it isn't authentic... and somewhere deep down in all this darkness I will find the power inside me to truly put it in its place. To that end I patiently aspire. Meanwhile, looks like my counselor has a cancelation tomorrow... so I press on....

One of the things I have found to be true about the walk of recovery from infidelity, is the longer I walk, the less I know. And the less I know, the more I feel. The feeling that has overwhelmed me of late is one of pretty intense sadness. It seems I feel sorrow in every bone and fiber within me. I feel it deeply, and it feels like a dam around my heart that can break loose at any moment. When I look at my husband, I just feel so sad for what I did to him and what I have put him through. I don't feel sorry for him. I know he will be okay and he has really, in light of it all, handled this far better than I would if I were in his shoes. There is something incredibly beautiful and moving to me when I see betrayed spouses carry such pain with dignity and grace. I don't know that I would be able to handle my hurt that way. One of the things I am particularly sad about is how much I missed of our life and marriage. The other day I was in Target and I passed by the aisle full of Easter candy. There I saw them: the fifteen-dollar gigantic chocolate bunnies that every kid dreams of getting on Easter morning. I remember vividly the first time as a child I bit into one of those and to my shock and dismay, it was hollow! There was supposed to be chocolate all the way through! Oh, how I have been exactly like those dumb chocolate bunnies on the shelf. Hollow and empty. Nothing inside. When we first started with Affair Recovery, I remember not feeling or understanding how my husband kept grieving the loss of our marriage and vows. I know that may come as a shock to some, but I really did not feel anything. I had no idea how unattached I was. I was pretty much void inside...of any of the really good stuff anyway. Things like compassion, grace, empathy, understanding and honesty were not overflowing in my heart. I was compartmentalized and in hiding and fear. Over the last year and a half I have become pretty attached to my husband without even realizing it. I miss him when I don't get to see him. Most days, I see his decency and humanity and I just downright like him. I genuinely find him pretty funny. I long to just be near him and sometimes sit in wonder at why on earth he would still see any hope and goodness in me after all I have put him through. How and why could I have been so cruel and inconsiderate? Never once in my affair, did I stop to consider how he must feel. Basic human decency went out the window. I hate how he now has to battle with feeling disregarded and unimportant because that is EXACTLY what I did to him. I hate the demons that betrayed spouses have to fight. If you are unfaithful, you may not feel any of this sadness yet. I know I couldn't for a long time. I don't know your story, but for me I think I had to begin to feel sadness for my own story first. That may seem odd or selfish, but by giving myself compassion for how I got to the point of being unfaithful (let us just say we could all buy a new car with the amount of money we've invested in my therapy!), I now am a little less hollow than before. The saying 'you can't give away what you don't have" applies here. I have a heart full of love and therefore only a full heart can be broken. Every time I even think about all of us at Affair Recovery….I just feel sad. If you are reading this, thank you. Thank you for letting me lean into the sadness of your own stories. For what you've done and what has been done to you. It's just not the way it's supposed to be. "Her sins. . . and they were many----are forgiven. For she loved much; but one who is forgiven little; shows little love". Luke 7:47 In sorrow, Elizabeth

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

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

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

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

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

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