Chapter Two

Betrayal

“It is easier to forgive an enemy
than to forgive a friend.”
— William Blake

There are so many different kinds of betrayal, and infidelity is not even in the top three in my opinion. The betrayal of friendship is heartbreaking. The betrayal of your family and children seems unforgivable. To me the worst kind of betrayal is when you trust someone so completely that you give them your heart and soul. You tell them your hopes and dreams and share your most intimate secrets. You lay out on the table all of your greatest fears and deepest insecurities. Then that person you trust uses that information as a weapon to hurt you. THAT is the ultimate betrayal. When this happened to me, it knocked the wind out of me. It felt like a dump truck knocked me down and then backed up and ran over me just for good measure. Betrayal hurts so much because it goes beyond what someone else did to us. It makes us question ourselves—our judgement, our self-worth. How do you come back from that kind of betrayal? How can you ever trust someone again with that much power? How can you look at that person again without wanting to run them over with the dump truck (see Anger in the last chapter)? Amazingly, we can recover, even from the worst kind of betrayal. We can forgive. We can learn to trust again. We need to first honor ourselves and be careful about when and how we empower another person with information about what’s at the depth of our souls. Honesty is a good thing, but too much honesty too soon is not. Leave a little mystery. Don’t bare your entire soul to everyone who is willing to listen. Trust is a gradual process that should be earned.

My Story – For me, the fact that Brian had been sleeping with someone else was not the biggest issue. If I had found out that he had some meaningless affair with some younger woman, I think I could have gotten past it. If he had told me it was a mistake, it meant nothing, he loved me and only me, and it would never happen again, there would have been room to heal. Of course, I can’t say that with certainty because that’s not what happened. What happened is that he set out to replace me. He liked his life and wanted to keep it. He just wanted his life with a new, improved wife. He wanted a wife that would cook and clean more perfectly, have sex whenever he felt like it, and be happy (or at least not complain), regardless of what he said or did. From what I gathered in many hours of conversations with him, he appeared to think it would be a simple matter to just take me out and put someone else in, like buying a new pair of shoes and taking the old ones to Goodwill. One more thing he wanted was to not feel guilty. So he made it all be my fault. For months he and his Plan B would talk on the phone and tell each other how great they each were, and how they would never do A or B and, of course, would always do C and D. Especially D. The more his imaginary scenario took shape, the worse I looked to him, and the more he blamed me for EVERYTHING. He knew my weak points. He knew my insecurities. He knew how to hurt me. When he laid out the way he felt, it was all about my failings, down to the most miniscule detail. And in my state of shock, I believed him. Of all the ways he could have chosen to end our marriage, he chose the one that would hurt me the most. Because he didn’t want to feel guilty. For the most part that worked out for him. He had been losing sleep for several months because he felt bad about lying to me. Once he got all that off his chest, and squarely on mine, he slept like a baby. That was the betrayal that almost destroyed me. He knew how to hurt me, and in his twisted logic, he did it so he wouldn’t have to feel bad.

So how did I get past this betrayal? I have to admit, it took a long time. There is no magic wand. I had to realize that there were things that I was responsible for and there were a lot of other things that I was not. Over time I regained my self-esteem, rebuilt my self-confidence, and focused on my future. My goal in my coaching practice and in writing this book is to help others do the same thing, only much faster than I did.

Infidelity – The biggest lie men tell their wives (and probably themselves) when their infidelity is discovered, is that they “didn’t plan it. It just happened.” Somehow they were walking along, minding their own business when they tripped and fell naked into bed with each other. Um, no, it didn’t “just happen.” My ex-husband used this cliché, as well. It “just happened” because the two of them spent hours on the phone, and then made up stories to tell their spouses, and then he got on an airplane and she got in her car and they went to a pre-arranged meeting place. That amount of planning negates “just happened.” They may also try to make it seem like a “love conquers all” kind of thing. They couldn’t help themselves. They were drawn together by their love. It was bigger than the both of them. If there was a third party involved in your breakup, these statements may sound familiar. Betraying someone’s trust is not a romantic story, regardless of how they may try to spin it to whoever might be listening. It’s a conscious decision made for bad reasons, and the consequences are heavy. People are hurt, families are split, children start the long process of her house/his house, friendships are ruined, and on and on. If your pending divorce is due to your own infidelity, you will have additional challenges to face as you try to navigate this process with grace. You are bound to be facing anger, blame, and resentment from all corners of your world. I strongly recommend you speak with a counselor or coach as soon as possible, as this must surely be overwhelming, and you need someone in your corner. Regardless of what got us all to this point, the best thing we can do is strive to become a better, stronger version of ourselves and move forward with dignity.

Divorces are inevitable. The only way to be 100 percent sure you will not ever get divorced is to never get married. I am not a proponent of such a thing. Even after two divorces, I still believe marriage is a good thing, whether it lasts forever or not. Even in the best circumstances, divorce is difficult and heart-wrenching. Bringing a third party into the process just makes things harder for everyone. This is where you can insert one of those “if onlys.”

When it comes to graceful endings, few things make that more difficult than having to deal with the girlfriend (or boyfriend) who was a part of the destruction of your marriage or partnership. This is a person about whom you might have had violent thoughts of revenge. The last thing you want to do is be civil to her. However, if you have children, or if you have to deal with this person in some other capacity (like if it’s your sister or a co-worker), civility is in everyone’s best interest—including yours. This will, without a doubt, test what you are made of. You do not need to tell people that your spouse left you for another. People figure that out all on their own. The more you behave with dignity and grace, the better you look and the worse your former partner looks. There is a small amount of vindication in that. And as for the “other,” they have their own issues to deal with. Stepping into someone else’s life is not as easy as they thought it might be. They will have to live with the whispers and stink eyes. Most people won’t say anything about it to you right away, but over time people will let you know how they felt about what happened. I still run into folks occasionally who know Brian’s wife and tell me they can’t believe he chose her. It’s been long enough now that those comments don’t really affect me much one way or the other. But sometimes, still, just a little smile will come up. I am human after all.

Even if you never meet this other person, the fact of their existence raises the levels of anger, disappointment, and heartache exponentially. I had a friend whose husband was having an affair for a number of years, and this affair led to the demise of the marriage. After a year, this friend was still printing pictures from his email correspondence with the “other woman” and getting herself all worked up over and over again. She was keeping the pain close to her heart by constantly revisiting the past. What happened, happened. You must choose to put it in the past where it belongs or it will continue to make you crazy. This is not an easy task. It takes strength of character. No matter how much you wish for it, you cannot change what has gone before. It will stay with you until you choose to move past it.

Justification – With enough skill and practice, one can justify anything. Most people can justify the small things, like little white lies, being late, missing commitments, or taking home office supplies. Many others can justify the big things, like being mean to people, cheating on their taxes, and being unfaithful. Usually this justification goes along with blame. If you have the ability to make everything you do someone else’s fault, it is quite easy to justify your actions. At the end of the day, when you look at yourself in the mirror, there is no justification for doing what you know is not right. No matter how hard you try to get around it, it is not okay to lie, steal, or cheat. You learned that from your mom or...