Guest Post: Trust: Is your marble jar full or empty?

One of the many challenges we face as a betrayed wife (or partner) is around trust. How can we trust him again? Who can we trust with ourstories? Will I ever trust anyone again? Will I be able to trust my own judgment?

I was recently in a two-day Brené Brown - Dare to Lead, intensive workshop facilitated by a certified Daring Way coach. We spent a lot of time on trust. How to build it, how to lose it, how to recognize it when it is there. We listened to the story of Brené’s daughter losing trust in her best friends and her deciding to never trust anyone again, ever. Brené uses the analogy of a marble jar to help her daughter understand how trust is built. As people share stories about themselves, engage in small, everyday acts of empathy, or show up for real when you need them, marbles are added to their jar. The more stories they share, and show up, the more marbles you are able to add to their jar. It is easy to trust someone whose jar is overflowing. Your marble jar people aren’t necessarily people who are in your life all day, every day, but over time, with small acts, they’ve filled up their marble jar. And if you think about it, you know who those people are. There may not be a lot of them, but I think that’s appropriate. Trust is earned.

When you are going through hell, you only need one marble jar person. That one person will hear your story without judgement and will ask, what do you need? how can I help? And if you listen to your body, you already know who your marble jar person is. You’ll feel a yes. You’ll feel relief when you think about sharing with them and being in their presence. You will likewise have friends, who are your day-to-day besties or even close family but whom you also know, for whatever reason, do not have a full marble jar. You’ll get a no from your body on them too. You’ll feel resistance or anxiety when you think through sharing your story. And that resistance may be because of the ways they haven’t showed up for you in the past. Think carefully about your people and see if you can identify one marble jar person. Sharing with them can make a huge difference in your journey back to trust.

Now think about our partners. They’ve managed to empty the marble jar in one go. And we wonder, as betrayed wives, why we can’t trust them again completely right now, as if trusting them was somehow on us. It’s not. Of course, you don’t trust your partner in the way you did before. The jar is empty and it is not your job to fill it for them. They must make the effort to put the marbles back in the jar. And this is where shit gets real and difficult. Because refilling that marble jar is a function of time and consistency. Is he doing the hard work of figuring out his own stuff, consistently, over time? Plonk, in goes a marble. Is he showing up for and holding space for your pain, consistently, over time? Plonk, in goes a marble. Is he making an effort to let you know where and when he’ll be and checking in, consistently, over time? Plonk, in goes a marble. Is he being trustworthy, consistently, over time? Plonk, marble. (The marbles are going to plonk for a long time because that jar is big and really empty.) You don’t suddenly arrive at trust, just like you don’t suddenly arrive at forgiveness or “over it.” It all takes time, that four-letter word.  Elle tells us that her trust for her husband came back over time because he consistently showed up and did the hard work that refilled the marble jar. You can take as much time as you need, and you’ll know, eventually, whether he’s making the effort to fill the jar or not.

Now think about you. Learning to trust yourself is a bit harder.  This may require the help of a coach or therapist because sometimes we need an outside perspective to remind us to be gentle with yourself and to help us dig in to the old stuff that keeps us stuck. Learning to trust what we know begins by being gentle with ourselves, by tuning in to the way we talk to ourselves about ourselves. Are we going to trust someone whose words are harsh and full of judgement? Probably not, even or especially if that person is us.  We can build trust in ourselves by tuning into our bodies and learning to trust what t tells us.  Are you hungry? Eat. Are you tired? Sit down, lay down, take a break.  Restless, mind whirring? Journal, go for a walk. But start giving yourself what you need, and you’ll start filling your own marble jar too.  This also takes time, practice and consistently showing up for yourself.

For more resources and reading, please consider visiting https://brenebrown.com/ . Her work is both accessible and life changing. It’s a great first step in reconnecting with yourself and learning about how love and trust are inextricably linked.

Thursday Thought

Guest Post: Six Things To Do With Your Formidable Post-Betrayal Anger

by Chinook

“Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.”- Ang Lee

 “I realized that if my thoughts immediately affect my body, I should be careful about what I think. Now, if I get angry, I ask myself why I feel that way. If I can find the source of my anger, I can turn that negative energy into something positive.”- Yoko Ono

Fury. Rage. Indignation. Ire. When we discover that we have been betrayed, anger burns with a power that is astonishing and fearsome. Here are three ways to harness it—and three ways to avoid letting it do harm.

1.    Let it protect you (at first).

When I first uncovered my husband’s affair, I was in complete shock. I had known that something was terribly wrong in my marriage and had gone so far as to ask if he was having an affair, but when he denied any impropriety, I believed him. Anger, in those first twelve hours, was the territory occupied by my closest friends, whom I contacted right away; not by me. But as the numbing shock wore off, their anger began to spread through me too and soon, I was alight with fury.

People describe having out-of-body experiences when they are being forced to experience something too traumatizing to endure. I believe that anger can, in the early days, be similarly protective. When we are on the verge of being smothered by the pain, anger can swoop in and set us ablaze, and save us.

Women are socialized not to feel anger. But I call bullshit on that. When we have been wronged, anger is exactly the correct emotion to feel.

2.    Let it motivate you (in the right direction).

Anger is a shockingly motivating emotion. When it coursed through me, when I saw red, I had to do something to get it out of my body. I took up high-intensity exercise. But because I couldn’t hit the gym every time rage seized me, I also developed a list of labor-intensive chores that would engage my body and mind. I turned to these when fury started to swallow me up. I raked leaves. I swept the deck. I chopped wood. I cleaned out the fridge. I purged items from the closets and hauled them to Goodwill. 

These actions allowed me to harness the energy of the anger. They left me feeling less restless inside, and gave me a more tidy, clean, peaceful environment in which to dwell.

3.    Let it teach him (and you).

We feel anger when our boundaries have been violated. We feel anger when injustice has been done. Anger was one hell of an indicator for my husband. My anger made it very, very clear to him that his actions, which he had been justifying to himself for weeks, were profoundly unjustified. 

My anger was also an indicator to me. I found myself raging to a friend that if anyone should have had an affair it was me, given that my husband had spent years underinvesting in our marriage, forcing me to be the one who kept our relationship on track. After I said it, I paused. I hadn’t fully realized how resentful our marriage dynamic had made me until I hurled those words out into the world.

Pay attention to your anger. It is a flashing arrow, pointing towards specific tender spots, injustices, or insecurities that you might not even have realized were there.

4.    Force it to submit to reason.

“Don’t do anything crazy” is some excellent advice I read in several different places after I uncovered my husband’s affair. Anger is so powerful that it can drive us to do “crazy” (i.e., reckless and misguided) things we would never otherwise do. Things we will very likely regret once the anger fades. These include engaging in physical violence, destroying his property, having a revenge affair, or smearing his reputation. Bad-mouthing the cheater to children is an especially misguided and harmful thing to do.

When you are seeing red, it can be hard not to give in to vengeful impulses. But resist.

5.    Prevent it from rewiring your brain.

I used to think that when a person felt anger, venting that anger was an important way of purging it from one’s body and mind. But that is actually scientifically incorrect. In fact, the more you think something or feel something, the more you strengthen the neural pathways that lead to that thought or feeling. 

Imagine it snowed heavily last night and you are standing at your back door. At one side of the backyard is the woodpile. At the other is your Zen meditation zone. Everything is covered in a lovely thick blanket of snow. You decide to go over to the woodpile and kick it to release your anger. You stomp out, do it, and come back. It feels good. You decide to do it again. And again. And again. Now look down at the ground. There’s a well-worn path to the woodpile. There is nothing leading to the meditation zone.

Every time rage washed over me, I allowed myself to feel my anger fully—for one minute. Then, I took measures to prevent it from taking up residence in my brain by forcing my thoughts and feelings elsewhere. 

My mind is like an art gallery and I am the curator of what is on display.

6.    Let it go.

I am grateful to the formidable anger that inhabited me in the first few days after D-day. It was there to protect me and to teach me. But anger can quickly become toxic, and I did not want to be an angry person. 

I also knew deep down (very deep down) that holding on to anger would not keep me safe, which meant that releasing it would not place me in danger.

Letting go of my anger is not something that happened naturally over time—I had to really work at it. It was a long and slow and boring process that involved meditation and journaling and therapy and simply making the hard choice, over and over, to not allow anger to linger in my heart or in my mind. There was no discernable benefit for a long time. 

And then, eventually, there was.

In yoga, there are several warrior poses. Warriors I and II (virabhadrasana I and II) look the most impressive, with their raised arms and steady, fierce gazes. But the one that’s hardest to hold is the one entitled Peaceful Warrior (shatni virabhadrasana). When you move into this position, you make yourself defenseless. One hand rises upwards and slightly back while the other slides down the back leg. The heart and the throat are wide open, exposed. 

To the outside world, it looks graceful. Only the Peaceful Warrior herself knows how much effort that apparent effortlessness requires.

What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do

If I had a nickel for every time I said, aloud or to myself, "I can't do this any more", I'd be eyeball deep in nickels. It was my phrase of surrender. Of defeat. It was about exhaustion. And fear. Yeah, mostly about fear. Cause the weeks and months and, yes, years after D-Day often felt like holding on by my fingernails while I dangled over a canyon. My two options seemed to be to keep holding on or letting my body split apart on rocks. It felt inconceivable that there was a third option: To heal. To restore myself and my marriage. To reclaim my life.
So many of you seem to know that intuitively. You know that, yes this is a horrible painful experience but it will not determine the rest of your life. And I envy you that ability to understand your own strength. 
Like most lessons in my life, I've had to learn the hard way that I am stronger than I realize, that I'm more resilient. And yes, there are many of you here also that are like me. 
The ones who "can't do this any more."

1. Rest
I know that fear. That if you stop treading water for even one second that you'll certainly drown. That if you stop fighting for more information, that if you stop watching his every move, that if you just...stop, that it will all come crashing down. It's not true, of course. But it feels true. 
But here's what's really true. You cannot stop him if he's going to continue to cheat. You cannot force him to answer questions he doesn't want to ask. You cannot save your marriage if he isn't interested in saving it too. But you can save yourself. And that starts with feeling the incredible pain you're in and sitting with it. Rest.  

2. Accept the unknowingness
Ugh. I hate that this is part of it. Unknowingness is jet-black terror for me. Not knowing why he did this. Not knowing if he's still doing it. Not knowing if he will do it again. Not knowing if my marriage will survive. It all felt so unfair. Just yesterday, I knew. I knew my husband would never do this to me. I knew I'd married the right guy. But...see my point? What I thought I knew was wrong. Cause here's the thing: There are some things we can know and there are many many more things we can't. That we never will. And the better able we become at accepting that, the happier we will be. I'm not suggesting you become a fatalist about your marriage, that you accept that he just might cheat at any moment. But I am suggesting that there are things that we will never know about another person. And here's something else – there are things we may never know about ourselves, unless we're faced with certain situations. Unless we know ourselves deeply, though few of us ever do.
So...we face the unknowingness. We determine what we can and cannot know and we determine what we need to know and what we can release. 

3. Stay small...and keep your world small. 
Remove anything that isn't absolutely necessary. Build that "no" muscle. Cull the toxic people from your life. Get rid of social media if it's making you miserable. Turn off TV shows if they're triggering. The day will come for expansion again. But it's not now.

4. Gather your tribe
There is no shame in seeking help, in telling your story, in gathering those who can hold you while you weep. In fact, one of the surprising gifts in this horrible thing that happened is the incredible people I've come to know. Many I know only from their pseudonym on this site, or their Twitter handle. But you are friends. You are my tribe. I watch you gather around others' pain, even when you're feeling it yourself. And it affirms what any of this – life, to sound grand – is about. Loving each other through the storms. 

5. Search your heart...

• What do I want? A therapist can help you with this. It's a big question. Most of us want this to have not happened. But since time-travel isn't an option, what does your future look like? What do you have control over and what must you accept that you don't?
• Have I had enough? You have not "wasted" time if you tried to reconcile and changed your mind. You have not "wasted" time if your marriage is over. Letting go can be a brave act of self-love. 
• Are my actions moving me toward what I want? I know the pain is intense. And the temptation to numb that pain is huge. To pour a third glass of wine, to buy another outfit that only briefly distracts us, to flirt with that new guy at work. But if healing is our goal, then consider that our actions need to move us toward it. Self-care. Radical kindness. Healthy habits. And yeah, probably therapy. 

6. Rise
It might seem inconceivable that you'll arrive at a point where the thought of his infidelity isn't a stab to your heart. But rising is about having learned to trust yourself, having learned to love yourself, having learned just how strong and incredible you are. Rising is your destiny. 

Thursday Thought

Guest Post: It’s All About the Cheese

by Chinook

I read the strangest thing the other day.

It’s the result of a psychology experiment, described by Amelia and Emily Nagoski in their excellent book “Burnout”. Research participants were asked to solve different kinds of mazes. You know, mazes. The kind my kindergartener loves. 

In one set of mazes, little illustrations showed the participants that they were trying to get a wee mouse away from a predatory owl. In another set, they were trying to get the wee mouse towards some tasty cheese.

You would think the illustrations would make no difference. The mazes were all equally difficult. But it turns out that participants were faster at solving the ones with the cheese, by a statistically significant margin (i.e., there’s a less than 1% chance that the difference was a fluke).

The researchers called these “cheese” puzzles “approach-related” and the owl puzzles “avoidance-related”. 

“The moral of the story,” Amelia and Emily Nagoski write in their book, is that “we thrive when we have a positive goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from. If we hate where we are, our first instinct often is to run aimlessly away from the owl of our present circumstances, which may lead us somewhere not much better than where we started. We need something positive to move toward. We need the cheese.”

It’s pretty easy for people like us, working through betrayal trauma, to identify our “owls”. We want to run away from the pain of infidelity. We want to leave the trauma of trickle truth behind. We want to flee the horrible feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But what is our “cheese”? 

What positive things are we running towards, not for the sake of our marriage (which is only partly in our control) but for the sake of our own life? 

Peace? 

Loving kindness for ourselves?

Freedom from unhelpful thought patterns?

What skills do we want to cultivate? 

What perspectives do we want to adopt? 

What feelings do we want to have about ourselves?

What is the new version of ourselves we want to actively create? 

If I choose to focus on the heavenly cheese ahead of me instead of the menacing owls swooping at my back, I might just find a faster way out of this maze.

Thursday's Thought

Guest Post: The Truth About Trickle Truth

by Lynn Less Pain

Trickle truth is the name for what happens when a cheater gives one version of the affair but excludes some of the information. With time (and questions) more information and then more information "trickles" out. There are several versions of truth that come out over time, in bits and pieces. 

My granddaughter wanted to get married at 20 years old. She made plans but didn’t want to tell the family. The truth was she wanted to get married, period. She didn’t want to say it out loud because of judgements, assumptions, unwanted advice and disapproval. She told us her plan in bits and pieces. She tested our family’s reaction with bits and pieces.   

Cheaters test the water a little at time. What the betrayed hears is a small version of the truth. The cheater wants it to sound, well, not that bad. She was just a friend. She came on to me at work. I was in a lost state of mind. I didn’t think you cared. He wants to gauge your reaction.  

I knew this person worked under my husband’s contract. He told me he felt sorry for her.  Her husband left her because she had Parkinson’s. I suggested we invite her to Sunday family dinners if she was alone. My husband said she is mentally unstable. Then later, I saw a text that said, I fell last night and need TLC. My husband’s response, when I questioned him about the text was, she is crazy and not stable. I asked him to tell her that she needs to be professional and the text made me uncomfortable. 
The next text I see is from my husband to the OW, What did you say the name of the perfume is? I confronted him. Then the trickle truth started and lasted four years. He trickled truth to the therapist for six months. If the therapist had known the entire truth, she would have taken a different approach. I felt like she really worked me over, when it should have been him. I had my suspicions. One night I took out the calendar and said this timeline doesn’t make sense. I would like to go over it again. He said, Can we take a break from it for a while? Then D-Day 2! The affair didn’t last a year, it lasted two-and-a-half years. Did he tell me? No, I saw a charge for a restaurant earlier than the affair started. I pulled over to the side of the road and called a lawyer. 

With each fresh revelation, the betrayed spouse is sent back to D-Day. 

The first story, year one, I asked him how much money did he “loan" her.  He said $800. I looked at the bank statements again in year four and there was an additional check for $300. I called the bank and yep, the additional $300 was written to her. He said he forgot.  A large blow-up lasted three days accompanied by a therapy session. 

I got version A of the truth. I try to wrap my head around it. I start to deal with it. Next is version B so the time between A and B is wasted time in the healing process. I try to wrap my head around this new information. I feel pain again. 
Now he says the last version was the last detail and I know everything now. Guess what?  That doesn’t mean anything to me because I’m convinced that there is still more information. It is not only information I seek but an understanding. Like trying to understand, when my husband drops the OW like a hot coal.  Suddenly he turns to me to say I love you. He switched his allegiance from her to me so suddenly. It is hard to believe what he says when he switches his allegiance to me and the OW goes up in a puff of smoke. I keep asking the same questions over and over to try to get to the truth and more information. 

Here is the point, eventually you will conclude you are never, ever, ever going to get the entire truth. It will take a long time to be sure he loves you.  A woman can only go through that process a number of times, which makes you think, I’m never going to heal. I started by asking my husband, “What is your definition of a lie”.

Definitions can differ. Get on the same page. Explain to him, lies are self-preservation that can turn into destruction. Even if he doesn’t get caught lying, it damages your healing and marriage. His intentions do not justify the lying.  No matter what he says you won’t be manipulated or controlled by his omissions. It is not about becoming honest eventually. It is about becoming honest immediately.    

Guest Post: The D Word

by StillStanding1

A sunrise over a remote lake is an annual part of the life I choose for myself.  
Choose something beautiful for you.

I wanted to show up today to talk to some of our newer arrivals; those of you who don’t yet know what warriors you are and are reeling or are in full-on “try to save and fix everything” mode. I am more than 3 1/2 years out from D-Day and, looking back, would never have believed it would be possible to be where I am. I would have been a little mad/annoyed/not ready to listen to the Me now. In those first, shuddering, pain-filled months, all I wanted was for my husband to wake up, get his head out of his ass and see what he was going to lose. And to stop hurting.

I don’t come to the site daily anymore. While I care deeply about the friends and connections I’ve made and feel so much empathy and compassion for the endless, tragic string of new arrivals, infidelity and triggers just aren’t an influential part of my daily life anymore. And I've begun to feel that my experience as a divorced, single person post-infidelity, lines up less and less with what I read in the posts and comments. I think that’s okay. New folks are showing up and Chinook inspires with her fire and words; it’s like a changing of the guards (hear the rattle of swords and line up to get the dirt smudged under your eyes) but I can continue to show up and hold space for that.

But it has also been suggested to me that my experience and voice may still be relevant, especially for those who choose or have divorce chosen for them. Even for those of you who feel physically ill at the idea of divorce (like I did), it's important to know that it doesn’t have to be all fear, failure, loss, struggle and poverty. You can come out the other side a stronger, healthier, more confident person. I can’t tell you exactly how that will go for you because we are all different, but I do know you have to choose it and pursue it (even if you have no idea what the hell you are doing when you start).

I’m on my own healing journey and without the perp (my ex-husband) in my face daily, I don’t have the same challenges to navigate. I have different ones but I worry that talking about them on this site will trigger and terrify new arrivals. I know when I first got there, the last thing I wanted to look at closely was even the possibility of divorce, let alone wrap my head around the idea that I would end up better-than-fine. One of the biggest things to accept? That ending my marriage has been one of the best things to happen to me for a long time. It has freed me to work on and release old patterns and learn to value myself. Yes, my ex is still around (he comes to my home two nights a week for dinner with our son). But I am not obligated to make it work if it doesn’t work for me. I’m not required to deal with his shit when he tries to push past boundaries. And while he is working on improving as a human being, he manages to remind me how far he still has to go just regularly enough that I don’t feel anything much like regret. Not anymore. 

Instead, I have worked at crafting a life I can be proud of and a story I am willing to claim as mine. I pursued volunteer work that has led to friendships and connections that fill me up. There are real people in my life who love and value me, in all my flawed weirdness. I have learned to love myself and treat my time and health with care. I’ve been working on trusting myself, both with personal life decisions and in my business. I committed to growing my business so it could support me after the alimony runs out, and I’m doing it. I am succeeding. I learned all about money and budgeting because not being in control of your finances is the source of a lot of fear for a lot of us. And I’ve done a lot of work in therapy and on my own to bring old stories and unhelpful beliefs into the clean light of day.

I’ve even dated a little and learned a lot about myself in the process. It’s not for the faint or fragile, let me tell you. When you are still raw from the massive rejection of a spouse choosing to cheat, even the tiniest rejection (a guy doesn’t follow up when he says he will or ghosting or any of that stupid dating stuff) feels much bigger than it really is. I started dating way too soon, mostly out of a need to prove to myself that someone, anyone was going to want me. But what I learned was that people who barely knew me could treat me with kindness, be thoughtful, be affectionate and that I had been starved of that in my marriage. I decided that I had to find, create or be a source of that for myself, to be whole before I went looking for someone else. And where I’ve landed with the whole dating thing now is that I’m not in a rush. My life is full. I’m proud of who I am and I don’t need a romantic partner to be complete. Of course, I’d love to have a best friend who gets me and thinks I’m awesome and all the closeness that real intimacy can bring but I’m content to wait and see who shows up. And if no one does, that’s okay too. I’m living a good life.

When I look back at everything I’ve done and gone through and all the therapy and coaching and reading and running and meditating, I’m not sure I would have arrived here without the divorce. I needed the space to breathe and explore without those old dance moves getting in the way. And you should know that, after we separated, he tried to come back three times. Each time, I trusted my gut and said no. I knew he hadn’t done the work. I knew, on two of those occasions, that the OW was still in the picture and all he really wanted was for me to rescue him from the mess he had made. So, as I said to him, "I finally choose me".

Do I sometimes still feel like I was robbed of what I thought our future was going to be? Yes but the real talk voice reminds me that that was just my idea of a future and reality was not likely to have been what I imagined, even a little bit. And reality, my life on my own now, is so much richer than I would have believed possible in that first year after D-day. So, blessedly, infidelity and all the complex stuff around it, is becoming a thing that happened, in the past, and without much impact on my day-to-day life. It is diminishing in the rearview mirror with increasing speed. I know I’m fortunate in that regard. I want you to know that no matter how your story goes, if divorce is in your future, you can keep yourself safe. Not by hiding and closing off from the world but by running toward it, by claiming a space for yourself, by loving yourself fiercely, by choosing you.

Thursday's Thought

"Why did you cheat on me?": Asking the wrong questions

Why did you cheat on me?
We ask this often, don't we? Or a variation of it? 
Why did you do this to me? 
What is wrong with me? 
Why is this happening to me?
It's not surprising, is it? That we center ourselves in this crisis. After all, it is happening to us. We are the betrayed ones. We're the ones left looking at the pieces of our shattered marriage. 
And yet, not all of us frame the experience like this. Some, like another betrayed woman I know, ask this question:
Why did you cheat?
Notice the difference?
Not Why did you cheat on me? but rather Why did you cheat?
Two tiny words that make a huge difference. It's the difference between seeing the cheating as a personal indictment -- of our looks, our talents, our value as wives – or seeing the cheating as his poor choice. It's the difference between taking all/some responsibility for the cheating or leaving it entirely on his shoulders.
Cause something that I will continue to remind you of is this:
You did not make him cheat. 
You are not responsible for his choice to cheat. You are not the reason he cheated. 
He cheated because opportunity arose and he lacked the moral courage to walk away from that opportunity. He cheated because he gave himself permission to. He cheated because he lacked integrity either in that moment or all the time. 
That is not to say that you have no responsibility for the state of your marriage, which may or may not have contributed to his choice to cheat. There are a whole lot of men who use the state of their marriage – my wife doesn't understand me – as an excuse to cheat. It's so common as to be cliché. 
Maybe you don't understand him. Maybe you nag him daily about leaving his dirty underwear on the floor. Maybe you emasculate him in front of his friends. Maybe you resent him for how little he helps with the kids. There are lots of ways in which we contribute, negatively, to our marriages.
But the choice to cheat is still on him.
And, frankly, most of us aren't wives from hell. Sure we get annoyed when he's late for dinner. Again. Sure we get hurt when he falls asleep in front of the TV instead of coming to bed. Again.
But marriages are give and take. They are negotiation. They are compromise. They are two adults trying to navigate needs and wants, along with, often, little people whose needs and wants usually take priority.
So he thinks you don't understand him. Maybe it's true.
But that's not licence to cheat.
It is a good opportunity to talk to you about it. It is a good time to suggest marriage counselling. 
Instead...he cheated.
Which is like setting off a nuclear bomb to fix a rodent problem.
We would have suggested something a little less drastic, wouldn't we? Like live traps maybe?
So think of that next time you're wondering to yourself why he did this to you. Changing how you frame this experience can mean the difference between believing there is something fundamentally wrong with you, or unlovable about you, and keeping the responsibility for this firmly where it belongs: With him.
He cheated. For a whole lot of reasons that have nothing to do with you. Reasons that he needs to get understand if he wants to rebuild his marriage. Reasons that are likely fiction, once he pulls them into the harsh light of reality.
That's his job – to figure out what stories he was telling himself that allowed him to cheat.
Yours is to disentangle yourself from his choice. Yes, you're affected. Of course, you are. And it's devastating. But, as hard as it might be to believe right now, you're collateral damage. It's like he chose to drive drunk and you got run over. 
Tend to your wounds. But don't believe for a second that you had anything to do with his choice to drive.