Episode Details

If you’re staying married after infidelity, it may be helpful to hear the stories of other women who have also chosen this path. If you want to stay married, but you’re also looking for safety, consider The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop to give you strategies to use to keep yourself emotionally and psychologically safe after his betrayal.

Transcript: Staying Married After Infidelity? What You Need To Know

Anne: We have a member of our community on today. I’m going to call her Linda. She discovered her husband of nearly 17 years had been repeatedly unfaithful to her throughout their marriage. Linda decided to use some of The Living Free Strategies while staying married after infidelity.

The Living Free Workshop is to help women determine the type of character their husband has through strategy. In Linda’s case, she decided to use the strategies and stay with her husband. So Linda, let’s start with your story. How would you have described your marriage before you discovered your husband’s infidelity?

Linda: Before I found out, I would have called our marriage an idyllic marriage. I would have said that we had pretty much a storybook relationship. We were best friends, were each other’s favorite person in the whole world. We’ve always enjoyed spending time together. All of our friends, all of our family, a lot of them look to us as the example for marriage. It seemed, it seemed really great.

The Devastation Of Discovery Day

Anne: What was it like to realize that everything you believed was a lie?

Linda: It was devastating. It shattered my whole world. I’ve described it to people like a puzzle. If our life is a puzzle. And before that day, I felt like my puzzle was all together, all the pieces fit. It was a really pretty puzzle. And that day, when I found that out, it was as if someone took that puzzle and just threw it. The pieces went everywhere, maybe some of them even broke and went under pieces of furniture or something.

And, for the next however many months staying married after infidelity, it was this scramble. This panicky scramble to try and find all those pieces and get them to fit back together. Except now I realized they don’t fit. All this perfect picture that I thought I had, isn’t what I thought it was, and it doesn’t fit together like I thought it did.

Anne: We’ve talked about D-Day on the podcast before, which means Discovery Day. The day you find out that your husband lied to you, d-day the reality you’re living in is not actual reality, right? It is mind bending.

Navigating The Fog Of Infidelity With Truth

Linda: if I’m honest, I would say the first at least three months, maybe longer than that. After the first D-Day, I didn’t navigate it. I went into this deep, deep, deep fog staying together after infidelity, and I didn’t know which way was up, and I didn’t even try. I call it a zombie phase where you’re dead on your feet. You get up, and go through the motions. And you do the things that need doing.

I have very few memories of that time, and it was almost like I was just a robot or something going through that time. I don’t know. My brain was just off. I really, really struggled with my relationship with God during that time. And didn’t understand how he could let that happen. I had spent my whole life following him, praying for my husband and for our marriage. I never thought about how do I know i