What St. Francis of Assisi Teaches Us About Healing from His Affair

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

~St. Francis of Assisi (October 4th is St. Francis of Assisi Day)

Those of you who find me here on this site often comment that you hope to someday be where I am, by which you mean in a happy marriage with the remorseful and recovered man who betrayed me. And I understand that desire. It's what I wanted to, back when I was devastated by the discovery of my husband's infidelity. I clung to the stories in which the marriage survived, even as I wondered if my own would. And those stories were hard to find. Much easier to find were sites that insisted he would cheat again, that all but guaranteed that the only way to get over cheating was to leave the cheater.

It's not true. 

But...

It's not untrue either. 

And that's what I try to always convey here. 

You can stay. 

You can leave.

Neither will guarantee your happiness nor your misery. 

Because whether you find happiness or misery depends on you, not on him.

But...let me back up a minute. Because staying with someone who is refusing to hear your pain, refusing to be transparent, or refusing to stop the affair altogether is most definitely going to contribute to your misery and all the meditating and exercising and self-care and kumbayas in the world aren't going to make you a happy person if you want fidelity in your marriage and he's being an ass. So I am most definitely not minimizing the role that our partners play in our happiness or misery. 

What I am saying is that, in the presence of healthy boundaries that you've put in place and anticipate him abiding by, your happiness or misery is in your hands. 

Let me clarify something else too: I don't subscribe to the Happiness Industrial Complex that tells us that if we do x, y or z we will achieve "happiness". Happiness is a mood, not a state of being. None of us is happy all the time. But, for lack of a better word, let's use happiness as referring to a state of being in which our good days outnumber our bad, in which we have the resilience to respond to life's inevitable ups and downs and in which we generally anticipate positive things in our life rather than negative.

By that metric, happiness is absolutely in our hands.

And it works by doing exactly what St. Francis of Assisi urges. (St. Francis is my favorite saint in large part because he loved animals so much and animals = happiness.) First we do what's necessary. Then we do what's possible. And we discover that we have done the impossible. 

What does the look like post-betrayal? 

What's "necessary"? Well, what's necessary is to take care of ourselves. To absolutely prioritize our health. Many of us are not just wives but mothers. We have young people in our care. So we must keep ourselves well. 

Eat: I could hardly take a bite without throwing up so I ate smoothies. I choked down toast. I swallowed a few gulps of soup. Take a multivitamin. 

Exercise: I ran. It was the perfect outlet for my fury. The sound of my feet pounding the pavement, my thumping heart. I ran at night so I could cry and nobody would see me. You might walk. Or hike. Or bike. Or hit the gym. Or do yoga (which I did too. A reminder to slow down and just be). But reconnect with your beautiful body. Cherish it. Nurture it.

Support: Friends can be a bit iffy at this point. They don't often know what to say and can sometimes step in it. Or they take sides. Or they get judge-y. If you have one or two good friends that you can trust with this, then by all means, tell them. You need support. But get a therapist or a pastor or a social worker or someone who can support you as you process the grief of betrayal, the trauma of betrayal. A safe space that's just for you.

Boundaries. Yep, you guys know all about boundaries because I won't shut up about them.

What's "possible"?

What's likely is that, by giving yourself time and care, you'll feel much more clear about your marriage. You'll be able to assess it based on what it truly is rather than what you want it to be or thought it was. And with that clear head, pretty much anything is possible because you will have created the space to make it happen.

What's "impossible"? 

It isn't impossible but I know it feels that way when you're first reeling from a partner's betrayal. What feels impossible is being where I am. Where so many are. With a partner who has done the work. In a marriage that feels safe and interesting and vital and loving. 

What also feels impossible but isn't is discovering your happiness outside the marriage, beyond the marriage. Leaving and discovering that you are okay. 

What feels impossible but isn't is getting past the pain, finding joy again. 

And it all starts by doing what is necessary.