Never take criticism from someone you wouldn't ask for advice.
~Matt Haig
I went for a run this weekend with a couple I've known a long time. Many years ago, she discovered he was cheating. He was a military vet, returned from a couple of tours in Afghanistan. She was so glad he was home safe. Until...
Until she found the e-mails. Until he told her about the Other Woman. Until she began to wonder just how this stranger was that looked like her husband but certainly wasn't acting like him. She reached out to me.
To see this couple now, you would never imagine the hell they went through. The sexual addiction counselling, the couples counselling, the fights, the tears, the separation. They laugh together more than anyone I know. They adore each other. She has seen his darkness and loved him anyway. He has faced that darkness and brought light. They both know they are stronger for what they've endured.
I walk a fine line on this site. Though I make it clear that marriages can survive infidelity, I don't tell anyone that they should remain a marriage they don't want to be in. I make it clear that we often don't make our best decisions in the early days following discovery of a partner's infidelity but I don't tell anyone that they must stay, or they must go. There is the occasional exception. When I sense abuse, I call it out.
Occasionally, I get called an affair apologist. I am not. Remaining in a marriage with a partner who cheated should never, in any way, be confused with condoning infidelity, or somehow accepting it. We can accept his remorse while never agreeing to stay should it happen again.
Once or twice, someone has returned to this site and suggested that they stayed because I told them to and they now regret that decision. But I don't tell people to stay and I don't tell them to leave. I tell them to make their own choices. I have pointed out, in my response, that I never told them what I thought they should do. I reminded them that this is their life, not mine. That I got to make my own decision based on what was right for me and they get to do the same thing.
It's hard. I know. The voices in our head are loud. Voices that insist we should stay for the kids. Voices that insist we should leave for our self-respect. Voices that whisper that he'll cheat again. Voices that scream that without us, he'll fall apart. The challenge is always to separate those voices from your own deeper voice, our deeper knowing, as Glennon Doyle calls it.
It's damn near impossible in those early days. I sleepwalked through my days and was afraid to close my eyes at night. Up felt down, black felt white. My entire world was shattered. But deep down, I knew that I wanted my family whole, which included my husband. I didn't know if he deserved that. But I knew I did.
And so, despite what seemed like every online resource I found telling me I was an idiot for staying, I stayed nonetheless.
Because that's the thing. The people insisting that there was just one acceptable response to infidelity – kick him out – weren't people I would seek out for advice. Not that "kick him out" is wrong. Just that it was wrong for me. At that moment. I don't seek out people who refuse shades of grey when I want advice. I want considered advice, not kneejerk. I want people who make space for what I want, what's important to me. What's more, I want advice from those who understand that I can change my mind. That what I decide today may not be what feels right a month from now. A year. A decade.
I had a friend respond to my request for her advice by telling me, simply, "I couldn't stay." It was true. But it wasn't helpful. I wasn't asking her what she wanted, I was asking her to help me figure out what I wanted.
And that's what I hope we do here. Help you figure out what you want. Without magical thinking. I hope we help you create what you want within the very real albeit inconvenient understranding that others – such as our unfaithful partners – might not cooperate. That's okay. Let's ask for what we want anyway.
But we can only do that when we learn to listen to ourselves first.
