Healing from His Affair: Myth-Buster Version

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."
I heard that recently, offered up by someone who feared that taking a teaching job implied that her career was stagnant, that she was past her "best before" date.
And it dawned on me that, despite the ubiquity of the saying, it's patently untrue. I've had the good fortune of fabulous teachers who are also highly successful in their careers, including one who is at the top of her game, with a bestselling novel and celebrated career at the New York Times.
But what's particularly dangerous about bromides like that is that, like many, they hold enough truth to make them seductive. They're impossible to dismiss entirely because we can point to one, maybe two, examples where they've held true. Or at least true-ish. Truth adjacent. Not a total lie.
And so they slither into our brains and lodge there, feeding on our insecurities.
You have only to log onto Twitter to find plenty more examples of these pithy sayings passed off as wisdom but which are myths – one part truth to nine parts bullshit.
But – gah – they're hard to shake loose once they set up residence in our psyches.
Far too often, they don't aid or accelerate our healing but actively get in the way of it. They undermine healthy thoughts, they sabotage efforts to move forward. Sometimes they do just enough damage to make us feel badly about our choices. Other times, they completely destroy progress, pulling us back down into the cesspool of self-loathing, fury and hopelessness.
So let's examine and challenge these simplistic sayings:

Myth: Once a cheater, always a cheater
Long-time readers know this one particularly gets under my skin. "Once a cheater..." gets pedalled by a particular tribe of heartbroken women. And yes, serial cheaters most definitely exist. But this tribe (sometimes more like a mob) insists that it's true for everyone. The rest of us are disregarded as fools, and remorseful transformed cheaters as "unicorns".
But "once a cheater, always a cheater" is a myth. We need look no further to many women on this site, including me, who have rebuilt marriages in which our formerly adulterous spouses have not cheated again. I have far more friends married to guys who transformed themselves into husbands who deserved their second chance than friends whose partners either continued to cheat on them or cheat on subsequent partners. It's not even close. Stats back me up.
So why is this one so hold to release? Well, in part because we didn't know our husbands were cheating in the first place. So the "once a cheater" slogan plants doubt. And doubt is our Kryptonite. "Once a cheater..." keeps us constantly doubting, constantly suspicious, constantly shame-filled for even considering giving a partner a second chance because who the hell is that stupid, right?
This one just won't die. Because those who've left feel armed with this "wisdom" that they've just saved themselves from further heartbreak because it was only a matter of time before their partner cheated again. Except most don't.
The worst part of this myth is that it's so cynical. It rejects, totally, the possibility that people can change, that they can learn from their mistakes, that they are forever after to be defined by the worst thing they did. That, having cheated, they are branded a cheater until their dying breath.
Let's reframe this one: "Once a cheater, sometimes still a cheater but more likely someone who learned a very painful lesson".  Not nearly as pithy but far more true.

Myth: "I have to divorce"/Only doormats stay in a marriage with a cheater
Who here thought that before they discovered their partner's affair? And maybe believes it still? Yeah, count me among the former. I was definitely in the "kick him to the curb" club. And then it happened to me and, like so many others, I realized that black-and-white thinking did not serve me well.
So...here I am. More than 12 years post-D-Day. Happily married. Healed. And with a nuanced understanding of why good people sometimes make really horrible choices. An understanding that taught me how to set clear boundaries to keep myself safe while allowing my husband the time and space he needed to understand how he could have let himself down so profoundly. I made the choice to stay with my husband if he was willing to seek help for himself and to recommit to a honest, transparent marriage.
I would not have stayed in a marriage if he continued to cheat, refused to seek help or otherwise expected me to continue with the status quo. I wanted a second marriage with my first husband. Or I was out. We got it, but only by working hard together.
But here's the thing: I'm talking about my marriage. You get to decide what happens with your marriage. None of us knows what it's really like inside another's marriage so none of us is qualified to tell you how to respond. We each get to walk our own path and that can also change with time. You can stay now and leave later. You can leave now and reconcile later. You can leave and not look back.  My heartbreak, my healing.

Myth: "If he loved me, he couldn't have cheated"
More black-and-white thinking. Another myth that persists.
I was as confused as anyone to finally understand that my husband loved me. All the time he cheated – years and with many others – he loved me. WTF?
Yep, it's confusing.
But no more confusing than finally understanding that my mother continued to drink and love me simultaneously.
Hurt people hurt people. Another adage but this one is the absolute truth. When we have unexamined wounds, we often hurt others. We often, also, hurt ourselves. That pain is going to show up.
In my husband's case, it showed up as sex addiction. In my mother's case, it showed up as alcohol/substance abuse.
Your husband, assuming he wants to rebuild your marriage, likely loves you very much. It's himself he hates.

Myth: Affairs are about sex
Affairs are about escape. They are about trying on different parts of our personality. They're about the reflection in the affair partner's eyes, a reflection that we're sexy, or interesting, or youthful, or exciting.
So, in some ways, yes, affairs are about sex but it's more accurate to say they're about what the sex represents. A chance to step outside day-to-day lives and be someone else. A different version. One who doesn't have a mortgage or children or a horrible boss or a dying father or...or...or...

Myth: He cheated because there's something wrong with me.
100% untrue. He cheated because there's something wrong with him. If he was unhappy, there are many many ways he could have shared that information with out that did not involve blowing up your lives.
Or as @Masharky put it on Twitter: "He wasn't looking for someone better than you, he was looking for someone worse than himself."

Myth: Emotional affairs aren't as bad as physical affairs
I've heard it so many times. It wasn't the sex so much as the lying. That's what hurts so much. Of course, knowing our partner was physically intimate with another person is devastating. And the mind movies can be killer.
But it's the gaslighting, the deception that can really mess us up. Cheating hurts, no matter what form it comes in.

Truth: I will never be the same
I hear this one all the time and it's usually said wistfully, or with deep deep sadness. And it's true. You will never be the same. The profound would of infidelity changes us. For a long time, I was convinced that it had broken me in some way that would never be fully healed.
What I didn't know then but what I can promise you now is this: You will never be the same and that's okay. Healing from infidelity helped me reshape myself into someone I liked far more than my old self. It helped me recognize how strong I was, how deserving I was of love and belonging, how worthy I was of taking up space in this world. Healing from infidelity helped me heal a lot of old trauma. Healing from infidelity brought this blog into the world and all the incredible women I've met here. Healing from infidelity changed me. And I wouldn't change that for anything.