I am his girl again, I won - and you can too

Recovering from infidelity looks as different as the shape of each person's nose. What betrayed spouses have in common is the trauma we have to deal with once we discover our life partner has been lying to us for months or even years. 

We are wounded by betrayal and we cope with it in any way we can. The way has to do with external and internal factors, what is available to us, what speaks to us and where our comfort zone keeps us. 

Infidelity is a traumatic experience no one wants to face and we never expect from the person we make a commitment to. The person we fall in love with, our soulmate, our other half, the other parent of our children, is never supposed to gaslight us or to cheat. That's why we got married in the first place, right? So that we could sort out all life challenges together.

Discovery day shows us that it did, in the end, happen to us too, like it probably did to an older member of our family or a close friend. We secretly fear that life can somehow steal our beloved from us. We are reminded of sudden death, chronical illnesses and divorce, almost every day through the news from people near us or from the world wide web.

We wake up the day after Dday and we see the sun rising again, as if nothing happened. Yet we feel broken, our heart shattered, our life in confusion, to say the least. We question every moment, every person, every move that could have pushed our spouse to have an affair instead of confiding in us, in our love. 

We don't even know what love is anymore. There is too much pain, a havoc of emotions we didn't even know we could experience. 

From then on, the path is unique to every one of us. There is no one-size-fits all to recover from infidelity. There are some possibilities that take more or less time to happen: some of us work on the marriage with a remorseful spouse, some of us are abandoned by the cheating spouse and some of us decide that is better to divorce from the deceitful life partner. 

Most of the noise on social platforms is made by anonymous betrayed spouses who follow the current "once a cheater always a cheater". This is a valid statement and suits many cases of betrayal in marriages. Those who decide to divorce and heal, are not the ones venting their anger and frustration online. 

We rarely hear of the happy endings, unless it's within a program of Affair Recovery. There are hopeful stories out there of couples who -in my view- romanticize recovering from infidelity as a means to have a better marriage. Even though it sounds good, it's a bit cloying for some of us, since we all have different beliefs, shaped by our known and unknown past.

For those people who want to love again, whether the same person who betrayed us and is remorseful or a new partner who can join us once we feel we are ready for a fresh start, happy endings are important as they give us hope. 

Giving others hope is the reason why I write here and on social media. 

Even though I am still with the husband who betrayed me, I have been willing to start over without him from the discovery of his affair. I have been through separation, through therapy, I have dealt with deeper wounds from my past and I still study trauma and the effects it has on our body, especially on our nervous system. I want to be as healthy as I can be, both mentally and physically.

I had to learn to mother my inner child with tenderness and act as the assertive adult I can be. I learned to get in touch with my feelings, to accept myself as I am, a fearful child who wanted to please everyone for fear of abandonment. I was born like that. I have realised that this fear of abandonment "didn't start with me", it is part of my family history. 

This child has to be acknowledged and healed and the adult in me has to become more active. I now say "no" more often and really take the time to feel the feelings inside of me. What do I really want to do with my time? How do I want to live my life? Where?

Infidelity taught me I can only trust myself, provided I really pay attention to my thoughts. It has been liberating, empowering, healing. 

In the process, I have gained a loving husband, one who listens and who says sweet words I enjoy. They don't have the same meaning as before I realised that romantic love is not real for me. I enjoy romantic love now in the form of music or plays (or series on streaming platforms). But "I love you", "I want to spend the rest of my life with you" are sentences I've been hearing a lot lately and it makes me happy. 

I have a relaxed husband at home, not hiding his screens from us, present and loving as never before. I am his girl again, I won. Three and a half years past Dday, three years of affair recovery and I am now able to handle the less frequent flashbacks and the intrusive thoughts from the past. 

If I did it, you can too. If your cheating spouse is not remorseful, I hope you are nearly done going through your own healing so that you will be ready for love again soon.

There is no rush, once you learn to love yourself, to trust yourself, you will attract the perfect partner to you. 

Lots of love,

Helen