Healing After Betrayal and Divorce: The Story God Is Still Writing

My Story of Betrayal and Divorce

I don’t share this to criticize those who have harmed me. Just like me, they’re complicated people who have their own lives and hurts to work through. I share this because I’ve spent a lot of time working through what happened, and while I still feel hurt and anger, it has become less directed at them and more directed at the brokenness of it all. Healing after betrayal is hard, and healing after betrayal can feel so isolating because everyone expects you to be quiet about it.

But I don’t think we’re supposed to be. Healing after betrayal demands to be done out loud. I share this because it’s the truth. It’s part of my story, and it has reshaped me beyond recognition, and that deserves to be shared. The background story behind God’s goodness matters. It matters to me, it matters to Him, and it matters to all the other women who are healing after betrayal too.

I haven’t spawned overnight into some perfectly healed woman. Healing after betrayal takes time.

The Night I Discovered My Husband’s Affair

I became a single mom after nearly eleven years of marriage to a man I thought of as my best friend. Even through some of our rough patches, he was still my best friend. Less than a month before our eleventh wedding anniversary, I discovered that he had begun an affair with a coworker he had known for less than three months.

In the early hours of the morning, I was awakened by what I can only describe as shimmering lights behind my eyelids. When I opened my eyes, I heard a voice whisper in the dark, “Check his phone.“

I ignored it and closed my eyes again.

The shimmering lights returned. Once again, I heard the whisper.

“Check his phone.“

This time, I quietly answered into the darkness.

“I don’t know that he’s really asleep.“

At that exact moment, my husband began snoring.

I Refused to Acknowledge My Own Suspicion

You might be wondering if I had no idea. No inkling that something was going on. You might argue that it wasn’t a voice in the night, but my own intuition speaking rather than a voice outside of my own. There had been signs, yes, and I had felt the shift toward suspicion more than once. But every time I felt it, I talked myself out of it.

Every story from work seemed to feature her, and they quickly began to spend time together outside of work hours. But I brushed aside the unease because I trusted my husband and because I didn’t want to believe what my instincts were trying to tell me.

Only hours before I discovered the truth, I had texted my best friend and admitted that I was concerned. Even then, I was talking myself out of it. I firmly believe the Holy Spirit spoke to me in the dark because He knew I would continue turning a blind eye to what was right in front of me. And so, He spoke.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire

And around three in the morning, I listened. I tiptoed around our bed, picked up my husband’s phone, and slipped into the bathroom. Shivering on the cold tiles, I sleuthed through all his apps until I found an ember of truth that confirmed my deepest fears: They were flirting at work and we were heading into the danger zone of an affair.

What I didn’t know is that we were already so far beyond that.

When I confronted him, he told me he had been unhappy for a long time and that she had been unhappy too. According to him, their mutual unhappiness with their spouses at home was what had bonded them in their short time of knowing each other. By his telling, they had only bonded as friends and were emotionally supporting each other. He told me I couldn’t possibly be surprised. The only apology I received was, “I’m sorry you’re finding out this way.”

I remember looking into eyes that seemed completely closed off to me. There was such coldness there. It’s a look I’ll never forget.

He left our room and went to sleep in the guest room.

The Fire Consumed My Home Before I Even Knew It Was Burning

While my sons slept peacefully on the other side of the house, unaware that their world had just changed forever, I sent a message to her husband. I told him that I feared things were escalating and that our spouses had an overnight work trip coming up and that we should act fast. In my naiveté, I thought we still had time to stop whatever was happening.

I was wrong.

As I drove my boys to school later that morning, her husband responded.

He already knew.

Their relationship had already become physical. He had discovered their messages in real time a week before I did. He sent me screenshots that have haunted me. Screenshots containing words that my memory still conjures up at times, words that can still make my stomach turn and my heart ache.

What hurt almost as much as realizing that my husband had already crossed so many lines was the fact that he had crossed that final line the day before my 32nd birthday. A day that I had been holding so fondly in my heart because of what I thought it signified.

I Thought We Were Turning a New Page

Throughout our marriage, I had always begged him to take a day off work and spend my birthday with me. The years he said yes were always a treat. I wanted a couples’ massage, a fancy lunch with afternoon cocktails, and simply the gift of being together. I loved being with him because he was my best friend.

Because he had just started his new job less than three months prior, I didn’t even dream of asking him that year, but he came home one day and announced to me that he had taken the day off and we would spend it together doing all of my favorite things. Without my even having to ask!? It felt like such a treat. I was beyond elated.

He even arranged for his mother to keep the boys overnight. He even made reservations at my favorite Italian restaurant. We spent the entire day together and even took a cozy nap on the couch before dinner.

I was so happy.

Like many couples, we had been battling disconnection. Parenthood, insomnia, stress, and life had weighed heavily on our relationship. We didn’t go on many dates outside of special occasions in those days. That day, the day he chose to take the day, my day, off on his own, felt like hope. It felt like a new page beginning to turn. He was finally turning back to me, I thought.

I felt honored, chosen, and so very loved.

It Was All Smoke

When I discovered the truth, contrary to his words, I was very surprised. He had behaved lovingly towards me in the months leading up to this discovery. He had even, to my delighted surprise, had a picture of me as a bride printed out to display in his new office.

But knowing what I know now, I can no longer view that season the same way. What I thought was a new beginning was, in reality, the final chapter of our marriage. And these efforts to make me feel special? At best they were to assuage his guilt, and at worst they were smoke and mirrors meant to fool me. That realization broke my heart.

He left that day that I found out and has remained with her ever since, and I hired a lawyer that same day because I knew in the deepest crevices of my heart that this was it. He was gone. Our family was broken.

The Trauma of Being Left for the Affair Partner

Within weeks, our children were being introduced to a new dynamic involving her and her child. By Christmas, she was attending my sons’ school programs even though we were not yet legally divorced.

The trauma caused by an affair, especially one that ends with being left for the affair partner and then facing near constant exposure to them and the new relationship through co-parenting and having to share my children with that person, has been physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually grueling.

At best, I have been treated coldly.

At worst, I have experienced moments that I can only describe as cruel.

And yet, God has dealt with me gently. Where I have experienced callous disregard, God has held me. Where I have been treated cruelly, God has tangibly loved me.

God Met Me in the Valley of Betrayal

In this season of rejection and abandonment, I have experienced transformation that could only come from Him. I have been cherished and cared for in a way that could only be by Him. He has dealt with me patiently as I’ve stumbled through this valley of betrayal, fear, anger, hurt, and sadness.

It has been more than two years since my life was set on fire because of decisions I didn’t make, and it’s been a wild ride of ups and downs, panic and prayer.

For the first year and more, I spent a lot of time crying out Psalm 37 to God. I prayed that He would vindicate me in the presence of my enemies. I focused on His promise that He would not allow the wicked to prosper. But as time has passed, He has shifted my focus away from His promises for the wicked to another part of that Psalm: His promises for those who delight in Him.

From Wanting Vindication to Finding Delight

Today, while it still hurts, I can sincerely say that I know the blessings that have come through this betrayal, and I can see it for the deliverance that it truly was. This is a truth I didn’t imagine would be possible when I first discovered the betrayal. Though I’ve stumbled, God has never let me fall.

While I will share more about my ongoing journey toward healing after betrayal and about navigating the complexity that is co-parenting, divorce, and post-infidelity trauma, this blog won’t be limited to only that.

In fact, I hope you’ll find recipes, pretty things, the joys of motherhood and womanhood, anchors to faith, laughter, and reminders that joy and delight still bloom after devastation, perhaps even more colorfully and fragrantly than before.