Turns Out My Idiot Husband Isn't the Idiot. I Am.

I came thisclose to walking away from my marriage this past weekend. A bit surprising, for sure. Two days ago, things were fine.
But over dinner Saturday night, with my family and friend of my son gathered around the table, talk turned to the various #MeToo allegations. We discussed a well-known movie star, beloved by so many, including us. "Did more than one woman accuse him?" my husband asked.
In a movie version of that moment, there would be a pause. The camera would pan to my face, my 20-year-old daughter's face. And then the stricken face of my husband who realized what he'd said too late.
We piled on.
He doubled down.
What, to me, was an important discussion about the way we talk about sexual harassment and assault was, to him, lecturing and attacking.
He was still furious the next day.
Which infuriated me.
He told me he was sick of being lectured by me, that he said nothing wrong. I tried to explain to him the frustration of a lifetime of moments where I'd been silenced, where I'd felt threatened, and including a night when I'd been sexually assaulted. "Does that only count if there's an army of women who can confirm I'm telling the truth?" I demanded.
We talked about privilege. He – get this – honestly doesn't think that, as a white man who grew up as a 1 percenter, that he's had privilege. Though he admitted, "I've just never thought about it."
"Not having to think about it is the definition of privilege," I said.
I walked away frustrated. My thoughts went something like this:
I can't believe I'm married to this idiot. How can anyone be so UN-self-aware? What am I doing with him? We clearly don't share a value system. And so on.
I quickly moved to plotting my escape. The kids were getting older. I could easily leave the marriage. Imagine how great it would be to be with a man who listened, who didn't get defensive, who wasn't blind to his own privilege, who was a true feminist.
In the meantime, my husband has put the leashes on our two dogs and gone for a walk. I vaguely imagined that he, too, was plotting his escape from this marriage.
And then, he came home.
"Can I talk to you?" he asked, ducking into an empty bedroom so that the ears of our children, my father, and various of our kids' friends couldn't overhear.
I was still fuming but fear was growing in my belly. What if he really was going to tell me he wanted out?
"I"m sorry," he said. "I'm trying to understand what you're telling me but I don't. But, really, I'm trying."
And with that, my anger (almost) vanished.
My mind, having swung wildly in the direction of he's an idiot found equilibrium somewhere closer to the he's human part of the spectrum.
And, well, I hadn't exactly conducted myself with compassion or a genuine curiosity about his point of view, preferring instead of bludgeon him into acquiescence.
All of which is to say, all I've ever really needed in a relationship is someone who's willing to try and hear my point of view. And, I suppose, someone to call me out when my own behaviour could use a makeover.
He and I have come a long way but this weekend reminded me that, when tensions are high and self-regulation is low (I had been feeling resentful all last week about all the preparation I've been doing for houseguests we have coming, which is a sure sign that I'm violating my own boundaries and not practicing enough self-care), we'll too often fall back into our old, unhealthy patterns of engagement. Me chastising, him defending. My the mother, him the errant child.
Thanks to his ability to step out of that pattern, to examine it and to come to me as a mature adult, we got ourselves back on track.
So, I won't be leaving my husband after all.

What I Learned from Love Warrior

I recently finished reading Glennon Doyle Melton's Love Warrior, her account of rebuilding her marriage after her husband confessed to sex addiction. (And before the recent announcement that Melton has found love with soccer star Abby Wambach.)
H'mmm...where to begin. I didn't love Love Warrior and I really wanted to. I thought it started out strong but the second half devolved into a laundry list of coping strategies that, clearly, changed her life but that seemed almost perfunctory.
Yoga: check.
Therapy: check.
Meditation: check.
Positive church community: check.
Dare I suggest that it seemed as though her heart wasn't really in it? That she was telling her story because that's what she does but that she kinda sorta wished she wasn't? In hindsight, I wonder if she knew she was leaving the marriage even then and was hoping to write another ending in real life. Who knows. And, frankly, no matter.
Because, nonetheless, there is some sound advice in Love Warrior that I think we'd do well to look at more closely. She learned valuable lessons that changed how she viewed her place in the world and, consequently, how she showed up in her marriage and that, no doubt, also gave her the clarity and courage to ultimate make the choice to leave. And whether you stay or you leave, you want to do it with as much clarity as possible. You want, as much as possible, for your response to be a choice.

Let's start with
Giving your insides a voice: Melton learns, as she's trying to find her way back to her husband, that she has spent a lifetime silencing her insides (as she refers to her inner thoughts). And I don't know about you but, wow, me too. In fact, I still do it. Maybe not as much as I used to but still...time to pay attention to that.
Case in point: My husband and I are both in the market for new vehicles. Mine has recently adopted a death rattle to let me know that it's about to start costing me a lot more money at the repair shop.
This past weekend, we visited a dealership and my husband encouraged me to test-drive a car that, I figured, was out of the price range. He makes more money than I do and I've historically deferred to his budget setting. But I drove it. And loved it. Right size. Right fuel economy. Drove like a dream.
But...I found myself afraid to say so. Money remains a point of power in our relationship. And though, intellectually, I believe that my contribution to our family – not just what I earn but the hours I put in as primary caregiver, meal-preparer, homemaker, pet carer (the list goes on. And on) – puts us on equal footing, the fact that he largely pays the bills creates feelings of disempowerment in me.
However, reading about Melton's consciousness around giving voice to her insides reminded me that I must do the same.
So I did. And now we're negotiating with the car dealership. The sky didn't fall. I didn't stutter or die of shame. Instead, I said I would really like that car if we decide we can afford it. My insides were given voice. And you know what? It feels really good. You know what else? It reminded me that, when I'm afraid to give my insides voice, it rarely has anything to do with the right now and instead is about way back when. Way back when I was told my needs weren't important. Way back when I learned, from my alcoholic mother, that wanting nice things made me selfish.
Lesson learned: Give voice to your insides. Or at the very least, challenge your thoughts about silencing them. Is it really about now? Or are you still being the good girl who doesn't want to rock the boat?

"Maybe, for now, the only right decision is to stop making decisions." There are plenty of sites out there for betrayed wives that offer up a prescription for a marriage in crisis. Some insist the only option is to dump the guy. Others push a marriage-is-sacred agenda. As you all know, I don't presume to know what's right for anyone but me (and I'm often not so sure about me). But this idea that we need to immediately do something in the wake of betrayal forces so many of us who are paralyzed by anxiety, or reeling from the shock to wonder what's wrong with us. Surely this is a no-brainer, right? We should stay. Or go. Or...something. Anything but just sit with our pain and see if the right path reveals itself with time and consideration and a gentle tending to our own hearts.
Lesson Learned: As Doyle Melton writes, "I'm trying to fix my pain with certainty, as if I'm one right choice away from relief. I'm stuck in anxiety quicksand: The harder I try to climb my way out, the lower I sink. The only way to survive is to make no sudden movements, to get comfortable with discomfort, and to find peace without answers."

"We started out as ultrasensitive truth-tellers. We saw everyone around us smiling and repeating "I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm fine!" and we found ourselves unable to join them in all the pretending." This passage stopped me cold. I know there are plenty of emotionally healthy women on this site who's husbands are less so but I cast my lot in with the ultrasensitive truth-tellers who've spent a great deal of their lives being told they're "too sensitive", that they expect "too much", that they should just sit there and look pretty and not expect anyone to care about what's going on inside. My 20s were dedicated to numbing my own anxiety with booze and a crappy boyfriend because admitting my pain sounded self-indulgent. I was a white, middle-class, university-educated woman. What did I have to feel sorry for myself about? I went to therapy, which certainly helped but I buried so much of that pain that it didn't emerge until my husband's affair. And then, it emerged with the thunderous roar of a wounded animal. All that fear – that I wasn't worth loving, that there was something wrong with me, that I didn't deserve good things to happen, that I couldn't trust anyone, that I would always be left for something/someone better – refused to stay buried any longer.
Lesson Learned: And so my healing wasn't just about my husband's betrayal, but my mother's and my father's. And, most of us, the ways in which I'd betrayed myself.

And that's the best part of Love Warrior. It's a love story to ourselves. It's about learning to value our own voice. It's about paying attention to our own hearts. It's about all the things we talk about on this site – holding ourselves with the deepest compassion.

What does Glennon Doyle Melton's divorce mean for those of us looking for healed marriages?

Glennon Doyle Melton, whom many of you know from her Momastery site and her first bestseller, Carry On, Warrior, a collection of her many incredible essays about what it means to find sobriety, to find a higher power, to find that you were enough all along, shared the truth about her husband's betrayal a few years ago.
In the time since, she has also shared a few details about their healing, a story that became her second book Love Warrior, which will be released in September.
But, just a few days ago, she shared another part of her healing journey, an unexpected and, to many, difficult piece of news. She and her husband are separating.
It can be hard for those of us hopeful that we can rebuild our marriages after betrayal to witness what we see as the failure of another couple to move past the betrayal. I know, early on after D-Day, I clung to the happily-ever-after stories. I needed desperately to believe that the path I'd chosen wasn't foolish. That it was possible to create something wonderful out of such pain.
It has been almost ten years. And while I hesitate to confess that my husband and I are ourselves going through a tough time right now, the truth is that our marriage is probably a lot like many of my friends who haven't experienced betrayal. It's got its ups and its down, its disappointments and its joys. Some days I look at my husband and wonder how we're going to make it another twenty years together (hell, I wonder how I'm going to make it to dinner without strangling him) and other days I wonder how I could ever live without him. The legacy of betrayal still rears its head now and again but mostly our challenges are more pedestrian. Disagreements over curfews for our children, frustration with who does more around the house (spoiler: it's me).
But there's no doubt that we've had to grow in order to heal from betrayal, in order to create a marriage that can weather the storms. And there have been (still are!) times when our growth doesn't keep pace with each other. Part of our most recent challenges have been around exactly that. I was worrying that he had...stalled. That his dedication to our marriage was flagging. I wondered, with little humility, if I was simply more psychologically evolved than he was. That he had reached his limit.
And then, with me handwringing that I just didn't understand why our son would behave in a certain way, he stunned me with his insight. In one simple sentence, he clarified the situation. Then he went back to watching some idiotic show on television, leaving me aware that a lot more goes on behind his brown eyes than I give him credit for.
And so I offer you this assurance. That, if you choose the path of healing and self-love post-betrayal, you're in for a brutal, beautiful journey ("brutiful", as Glennon puts it). You will change. There's no other way to reach healing. You will change in ways you can't imagine and that will alter how you show up in the world. Your partner might grow alongside you, not necessarily at the same pace and sometimes not in the same direction. Or he might choose a different path, one that leads not to growth but to a continued life in the shadows. But you, I hope, will continue to choose light. You, I hope, will keep your inner compass pointed toward the truth of yourself and your worth and knowing that you are, have always been, enough.
And so you'll be able to make your own choice about your marriage. No matter whether those around you are able to rebuild or choose to leave those marriages behind, you will be able to follow, with clarity and compassion, the path that's right for you.
It's what Glennon Doyle Melton has done. She has not betrayed those of us who've hoped that she could light the way toward a healed marriage. She has simply not betrayed herself and it is that truth that lights the way for all of us.

Is the Affair the Problem? Or the Symptom...

A few years ago, a friend of mine, Mary, left her husband for another guy, with whom she had only just started an affair. I was bewildered. Her husband was a good guy. I thought they were happy. This new guy was kinda...creepy. But, Mary insisted to me, she'd never been happier.
That is...until a few months ago. When she dumped this new guy, after a few years of emotional abuse that was inching its way toward physical abuse, I figured she'd be filled with regret. After all, her first husband was really nice guy. And they'd cobbled together a really good friendship, with their three kids as a common denominator. She must be sorry for the way she'd treated him. Sorry she'd left.
Right?
Nope. Not at all.
Mary's affair had really nothing to do with wanting IN to another relationship and everything to do with wanting OUT of the marriage she was in. She just didn't have the clarity or courage at the time to recognize that.
They're called "exit affairs". And they're basically the coward's way of getting out of a relationship. They're frequently the affair of choice for conflict-avoiders, people who don't have the guts to face their spouse and state what they want.
And, at one point in my life, I was one of those cowards.
I was 21 and in a relationship that was getting out of hand. I knew I wasn't happy. I knew it wasn't healthy. But tentative steps out the door resulted in threats of suicide or bitter recriminations. I lacked both the maturity and the sanity at that point to just keep walking.
Instead, I took up with an ex-boyfriend, knowing full well that my current boyfriend would find out. And that his pride simply wouldn't stand for being cheated upon. He, I knew, would dump me.
Which, though totally passive-aggressive, worked just fine for me.
Now though, through the lens of betrayal, I recognize how hurtful my actions were. How immature.

Within a marriage or committed relationship, and when there are children involved, the exit affair makes a painful proposition – the dissolution of a committed relationship and family – so much more painful. It makes a complicated situation so much more complicated. And it makes it far more likely that bitterness and acrimony play starring roles in the divorce proceedings.

Mary was lucky, if you could call it that. Her first husband was as unhappy as she was and, though he initially directed some anger and spite at my friend for her affair and subsequent departure, he ultimately recognized that he was somewhat relieved the marriage was over. He was able to move past his anger and develop a relationship with Mary based on their mutual love for and interest in their kids.

If you suspect your husband had an exit affair, ask yourself whether you think, honestly, the marriage is worth saving. Often by the time one of the spouses wants out, the marriage has actually been dead for awhile. That's not to say it can't be resurrected – and it's worth exploring that option if you genuinely see a future together, even if your spouse doesn't right now.
But some marriages are dead for a good reason. There is a such a thing as a bad fit, two people who, when it's all said and done, simply don't want to be together for any good reason (and no, money, prestige, laziness, fear of being alone, etc. etc. are NOT good reasons).

Was your spouse's affair the problem? Or was it simply a symptom of a dying marriage? Once you can answer that, the next step often seems a whole lot more clear. Either working damn hard to build a marriage that fills both of your souls...or pulling out your best self to work toward a dignified divorce.

Getting Unstuck: Ask Your Body For Answers

In many ways I envied the women who, upon learning of their spouse's infidelity, simply walked out the door with a breezy buh-bye over their shoulder. But even more than I envied what I believed to be the shiny new life they were walking into was their certainty.
I sometimes blame the fact that I'm a Gemini (on the one hand..., but on the other...) for my inability to simply, uncategorically make choices without second-guessing, regrets or what-ifs. But whether it's the stars or my parents or my second-grade teacher who's to blame for my wavering, I seem stuck with it. I can barely decide whether to buy the generic toilet paper or pay extra for the name-brand, let alone whether to stick with my unfaithful spouse and keep my family intact, or make for the hills.
Which is why I found the following (thanks to Martha Beck's Finding Your Own North Star) so interesting:

Your social self lives by what psychiatrist Alice Miller sees as the cardinal rule of all repressive social systems: "Thou shalt not be aware."... Don't know what you know, and don't feel what you feel.

Once you've learned to obey this rule, you can easily lose access to your own experience of joy and desire, loathing and revulsion... Since the only way to find lost feelings is to feel for them, the search for your own heart is always a blind one. Instead of any clear impulse, you register only flat nothingness, a hollow, yearning ache that doesn't lead you clearly in any direction at all.

Wow. Sounds a whole lot like me. And, likely, a lot like you if one of the ways you coped with your spouse's betrayal was to stop feeling.
Cutting yourself off from feeling can work in the short-term. It can get your kids to soccer practice. It can get you to your desk. It can get dinner on the table.
What it can't do is get you to your next step. At least not decisively.
It's taken me a few years of putting in time to realize this. Of not feeling and simply moving along in my life and marriage. Not so much deciding what I want in my life as letting life decide for me. Which isn't a bad thing for a period of time. It can make sense to simply bide your time until choices become clear. But they won't – can't – become clear if you're so divorced from your own feelings that you don't even feel them anymore.
What Beck suggests sounds rather odd. She maintains that the answers rest in your body. Literally. That by taking an inventory of your body parts and soliciting their opinions (I'm not kidding here!), you'll find your answer. She takes her view on this from Asian philosophy which, as she points out, insists that it's our bodies that hold the answers, not our minds, which bend and change to all sorts of untrustworthy beliefs.
It's an interesting exercise and one that I recommend, if only because it can't hurt and doesn't cost a thing.
How?
Get as relaxed as you can without the benefit of drugs/alcohol. Try and still the mind, which, if yours is as annoyingly toddler-like as mine, is no easy task. Then start paying attention to your body, starting with each toe. (Settle in, this is going to take awhile.) Ask yourself what it's feeling, Beck suggests. Hot, cold, itchy... "Don't think," she admonishes, "just describe." Again, if you're like me, you'll likely start to notice, if you don't on a regular basis, that certain parts of your body are...tense or tight. Beck advises us that there's likely a lot of information being stored in those parts.
Think of these tense parts as frozen. Try and breathe warmth into them and let them thaw.
This is where the exercise can get uncomfortable emotionally. Locking feelings up keeps us safe from them. And letting them out releases the capacity to once again feel pain. And as we all know far too well, pain sucks. A lot.
The thing is, NOT feeling pain doesn't serve us either. It keeps us alive...but not living.
The time will come when you have to let it out. Sadness, anger, hatred, fear. You have to allow the feelings to breathe...and within them to find your answers.
You'll also be surprised to discover that, rather than paralyzing you with pain (though it can be excruciating to feel them) these feelings will actually make things a whole lot clearer. You might not miraculously know what the rest of your life will look like, but you'll be far clearer about what you want it to look like. And therefore, what you should do to create it.
It's not magic. And it takes a certain conviction, not to mention suspension of judgement to undertake such an exercise.
But if you stick with it (even making it a daily practice, as Beck does), you just might find your answers aren't in the stars at all...but in your kidney.

When "Worst" Gets Worse

There were a couple of comments to The Worst Is Over post that gave me pause. Perhaps that's easy for me to say. Three-plus years from D-Day and the dust has pretty much settled. I'm able to see far more clearly that the worst is indeed over.
When you're still navigating the emotional debris wrought by the D-Day bomb, it's not always so clear.
And with the very real possibility that there's more D-Day bombs to follow (men rarely let it all out in one clean sweep. It's called the "trickle truth" because it trickles out, like a faulty faucet over days and weeks and sometimes months). Or the reality of a looming divorce. And when there are kids involved, sometimes the worst (finding out about your spouse's infidelity in the first place) pales in comparison to having to tell children that a divorce is inevitable.
I've dodged that bullet. Thus far, anyway.
Though my marriage is slowly being rebuilt, brick by back-breaking brick, the threat of divorce hangs like a storm cloud just on the horizon. And I know for me that would be the worst. Because it's something I can control – whether to leave or stay – and that it affects my children who wouldn't have a choice in the matter.
So, I'll be honest, there are degrees of worst.
There's the "worst" we can't control – the shocking, devastating news of betrayal. The STD we contracted. The "other child" that's born. The divorce we don't want.
And there's the "worst" we can control – the boundary setting that completely freaks us out because it seems so unnatural to relegate our husbands to the couch until they offer up full disclosure...and a clean bill of health. The "other child" we choose not to acknowledge. The divorce we do want.
Wherever your worst falls on the spectrum, acknowledge it...then let it pass. It won't last forever, even if it feels that way.
You will be able to say, sooner than you expect, that "the worst is over."

Guest Blog: I'm Ready to Be Ready to Let Go

by Meg






Last Monday my divorce was final. I took the day off to go to court and the hearing took less than 15 minutes. I call this the year of my humbling and believe me it was humbling to have my marriage disolved quickly and without my ex husband there. People kept telling me congrats and I didn't know how to respond. I didn't feel like congratulations were in order, but what are you supposed to say? Lord knows, I don't know the rules for this.  I know I'm another step closer to something and hopefully that something is peace. My wants and needs are so different. I want my husband back, I want what I thought was my life back, but I know I need a life without him in it. I'm so lonely and I'm just ready to move on and I'm closer and closer to truly letting go of my old dreams. 

Friends threw me a divorce party and I highly recommend one. It was a way to release tension and have a few drinks and even some laughs. My party was the day after my divorce and a friend took a photo of me asleep on the couch after several cups of "D Punch". I can't get the image of me on the couch out of my head. She laughed about it, but I could see the pain in my face and my jaw was clenched tightly.  I don't want to be that woman anymore!

My last year has been so full of pain that I haven't enjoyed anything, so I'm ready for change. I've always been a bit of a homebody, a comfy couch and good book are two of my favorite things, but I say yes to almost every invite issued. Even if I'm tired I go out if someone offers. I've started taking yoga classes and that has helped immensly. I'm taking a break from the self- help books and I'm trying not to dwell on my pain. It used to consume me, and it still does at times, but I don't want it to define me. I want the cheesy clichés to apply to me: It's all for the best. I'm better off. It will get better. I'm determined to make those statements true. I'm ready to be ready to let go.

Survival Guide to your Heartbroken Holidays

Let me share with you how I spent the holiday season 2006, which – oh how the gods spite me! – took place within days of DDay #1.
I woke up early. Had I even slept? My parents were here to share the holiday my family, including our three young children.
After opening presents and trying to smile nice for the camera, I can only recall that I somehow lost my mind.
I became obsessed with finding the Other Woman (OW) and letting her know that she had ruined my Christmas. I got into my husband's car and began driving to her part of town. I didn't know her address, only an intersection. So I cruised. And sobbed. And cruised and sobbed.
Eventually, I gave up and came home. Where I sobbed some more.
My husband and parents had been, of course, frantic.
My kids were confused.
And I? Well, I was sobbing. And reeling from the shock of my life.
So I'm hardly in any position to be offering up advice on how to handle the holidays...when your heart is breaking.
Except that I can at least offer up lessons. You know those things we learn from extreme suffering:
Lesson #1: Give up on traditions. Maybe the holidays in your house involve an elaborate gingerbread decorating event, followed by a family skate and hot chocolate. If you can pull it off, go for it. But many BWC members remember that any attempt to do "what we always did" simply magnified the one BIG difference this time around. Perhaps it's time to create some new traditions, like make voo-doo daddy dolls. Or beat the daddy-shaped piñata. Maybe a gingerbread home-wrecker? Seriously, this might be the year to implement the holiday movie marathon (Black Christmas, perhaps?). Give it some serious thought – and only commit to events and activities that you can handle. Give yourself the gift of peace.
Lesson #2: Peace is not to be found at the bottom of the punch bowl. Trust me on that one. A happy drunk can make merry. A sloppy bitter drunk just makes Mary, Larry and Harry cringe. (And remember, too, if you're hardly eating a thing, have lost weight and aren't sleeping, alcohol will hit you hard.)
Lesson #3: Look forward, not back. Sure it's tradition to reflect on the past year and make resolutions for the one to come. But nostalgia is often dishonest.
Take stock of where you are right now – even if that happens to be in a smelly bathrobe rummaging through the drawers for a sleep aid. This is NOT where you'll be in a year. It might not even be where you'll be in a month (fingers crossed). So face forward and march into your future – whatever it is – with a trust in yourself that you will handle this the best you can.

Guest Blog: Endless Questions...

by Meg


I've been coping with the fallout of betrayal for about a year. I keep asking myself "When do I get to be happy again?" I ask myself hundreds if not thousands of questions a day. Probably not healthy – maybe a bit obsessive. I've got to work on that negative self-talk problem.
There are the usual questions: "Why wasn't I enough?", "How didn't I know?", "Will I always be alone?", "Will I be able to trust again?"
It's hard to feel hopeful with those questions constantly running through my head. They are filled with doubt about my future and my ability to be me again. What if I find love again, will I be able to believe in it?
 For me, and for many of us, my life changed in an instant. The day before my D-Day my husband sent me a lovely note: "10 reasons why I'm so lucky you're my wife." How many women have a husband who says stuff like that out of the blue? I read that and felt so lucky, so loved, so safe. Now I think back to that list and think maybe he was was making a pros vs. cons list about me...and just decided to share the pros with me. 
Today I got an e-mail from him asking why our divorce is taking so long. My how times have changed! Yesterday, I spent a lot of time asking the question I ask the most: "What happened to the man I loved?"  Can I just ask all of you – when do the questions end?

Hell Hath No Fury: Is Violence Justified Against a Cheating Spouse?

“Swing it again, Elin!” wrote Jan Helin, editor-in-chief of Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest newspaper.

While we BWC members have undoubtedly felt the rage, the unbridled fury that Elin Nordegren felt when she learned of husband Tiger Woods' cheating, we are dismayed by the popular support of the alleged golf-club attack.
Media has been ripe with jokes, jeers and cheers, lending an air of endorsement to violence...at least against someone who's cheated.
Sure, we joke about wanting to murder our philandering spouses (or ex-spouses). We might even fantasize about carefully exacted revenge. The thing is...we don't act on it.
It's kinda like cheating itself. It's okay to have...errrr...impure thoughts about the neighbor...or his 17-year-old son, for that matter.
We might even acknowledge that it's similarly okay for our husbands to have fantasies about another woman (or women!). But – and it's a big but – it's the actual doing of it that's the problem.
And the fact that she's a woman is no excuse.
Imagine, if Elin had been caught cheating. Would there be the same public support if he had taken a golf club to her? Of course not. That would be considered domestic violence.
I ache for Elin Nordegren and the pain and humiliation she's enduring...whether she divorces or not.
But at no point am I proud to be part of a group that encourages violence against anyone.

Why Women Stay with Men Who Cheat

I was recently interviewed for an article on Why Women Stay with Men Who Cheat. You can read it here.

Of course, the article offers up arguments for both sides -- why a women would simply walk out (for starters, if he plans to carry on the affair) or why she might stay.

The fact that we're asking the question why is indication that society – those who haven't necessarily been in our shoes – are still a bit baffled. Admittedly, I was, too. I've met many many women who've been cheated on and without fail all of them (and me!) had always maintained that infidelity was a deal-breaker. Now?? Not so much...

Damned if I do, and damned if I don't is how many women feel in the wake of discovering their husband's infidelity. If they stay, they fear looking – and feeling – like a doormat, implicitly suggesting that their husband's actions were acceptable. If they leave, they often wonder if they're giving up too soon, or if their kids will be okay (or, perhaps, blame Mom). Either way, they risk regret.

The conventional wisdom is to try to avoid making any big decisions for anywhere from six months to a year, assuming your husband has broken it off (honestly!) and willing to work it out. And assuming you'd like it to work, too. That gives your traumatized brain a chance to start thinking clearly. It gives both of you the chance to take a proverbial deep breath. It doesn't necessarily mean you need to BE together. In some cases, a physical separation can give both of you the space you need. It just means that making the lifelong decision to divorce can be held off until you're absolutely sure.

After the affair: Should you stay or go?

As if discovering your husband's affair(s) isn't enough, now you feel you're expected to do something about it. At a time when brushing your teeth seems like a Herculean task, determining whether to fight for your marriage or show him the door is a decision that might be best left for now.

Pre-adultery, when we're still thinking of infidelity in the theoretical sense, most of us consider it a "deal-breaker". Yet, in the cold light of day following the discovery, the situation doesn't always seem so black and white. Karen was willing to give her husband a chance...until he kept saying he "couldn't make up his mind" between the two women and Karen decided her dignity was worth more than her wishy-washy husband. Ericka, a successful lawyer, had the resources to leave, but knew that she wanted to at least try and salvage her marriage. Others – like me, for example – spend months vascillating between the two choices.

What some of us can forgive or at least work at forgiving, others can't. Elizabeth Edwards reportedly believes that serial cheating is worse than a long-term affair.

The thing about betrayal is that, suddenly everything we think we know, we don't.