You had no agency.
You are not to blame.
You will never be to blame.
Jesse Herzog
Statistics say thatone-third of all marriagesinvolve infidelity.
But I think this number should be higher.
Affairs and illicit love chase the corners of our hearts.
Cheating bites at our heels like a tired, relentless dog.
We walk into it or away from it.
Sometimes I feel that cheating is this dog, even after the fact.
It is a seven-layer wound.
It builds a web of scar tissue that, when excavated, bleeds afresh.
I used to think that it was impossible to heal from infidelity.
But nothing is impossible, my friend.
(You, for example, are always possible.)
Healing from the wound of infidelity takes some careful, unfortunate mining.
It will require some work on your part.
Yet it is worth it, and Ive got youin the meantime.
This is what you oughta realize.
You couldnt have stopped it.
I wrote and rewrote my past.
I began with certain days, certain afternoons, certain trips.
I drew little boxes filled with cartoons.
I drew dotted lines and speech bubbles.
I drew arrows and wrote captions.
As a writer, Im the queen of storylines.
I change plots with the swipe of an eraser.
It is the empaths old trick: put yourself in the ring.
We give too much, even when were grieving.
You couldnt have worked harder to retract his (or her) decision.
What I mean to say is: you ceased to have a role in this a long time ago.
The decision to cheat was not yoursit was your lovers.
You had no agency.
You are not to blame.
You will never be to blame.
In fact, infidelity is similar to abuse in this way.
Survivors, too, are not to blame.They are never to blame.
Your trust will hidefor a long time.
Some people move on from infidelity rather quickly.
I used to think such people were more evolved than I was.
I envied their capacity to treat affairs like shopping splurgessomething unfortunate and careless, but not something grievous.
They glanced at the receipts and then tossed them in the trash.
I, however, cannot so easily let a cheater go.
I love deeply and fully.
I honor my partner.
I see love (and sex) as sacred, lasting things, infinite, terrifying, primal.
Infidelity, remember, is the seven-layer wound.
It eradicated my trust, which I already give too freely.
For a time, love disgusted me.
I distrusted family members.
I placed Bumble, engagements, marriage, hookups in a bar on the same level.
Your trust will hide.
It will find a closet and close a door and refuse to emerge, even when you call it.
Recognizing your trusts desire to rest and reflect in the dark is fundamental to your healing.
You cant prevent it from happening again.
In fact, he (or she) may do it again.
You may encounter infidelity, even when youre ready to love and be loved fully and honestly.
People who have cheated once are350% more likely to cheat again, on the same partner or otherwise.
I did not, you see, wish to be left out in the rain again.
Yet, once again, in most cases, infidelity is not something you might cut up yourself.
You cant lock it out.
You cant follow a checklist to prevent it.
All it’s possible for you to do is love.
Its not necessarily the others fault.
You may want to villainize the Other Woman or the Other Man.
Its easy to do this, to turn that complicit lover into a demon.
In both of these pictures, the Other is also to blame.
But this may not be the case.
There are also those who will not refuse.
There are those who are hurting.
There are those who are deceived, unhappy, looking for something just as you are looking for something.
In all cases, there is simply not enough information to assign blame.
When you cease to blame the Other, you give yourself the freedom to heal.
Youre not the one who needs to change.
In the greasy wake of infidelity, I stopped eating.
Then I ate a lot.
Then I tried to work out as much as I could, lose weight, get lean.
I obsessed over new clothing lines and red high heels.
I browsed fashion blogs andbeauty playbooks like theseand turned them into my private bibles.
I thought about changing the way I spoke, what I talked about, my interests.
Part of this was my desire to fumble my way closer to a true and authentic, unfazed me.
Part of it was spurred on by a profound, vital kind of anger.
We are so good at thinking we are responsible for our wounds.
You are not the one who needs to change.
The cheater always is.
And, in some way, the cheater may not ever change.
You may never know why.
This is perhaps the hardest truth to pass on to you, my friend.
It doesnt work this way.
Some cheaters are abusers, sex addicts, misogynists,telltale narcissists.
Others are confused and lonely souls craving something they cant even identify.
Still, others are afraid.
You may have been too bright and shiny for your lover.
You may have been too exquisite.
They may have been too intimidated by this, or blinded, or saddened.
All this could have been the reason and more.
Abandon this guessing knowledge, sweet one.
It may not ever make its way to you.
And you may never feel satisfied.
The why that you’ve got the option to answer is why you chose to move on.
Thats the one that matters most of all, yes?
Why did I move on?
I moved on because I deserve the fullness of the love I give.
I deserve honor and something akin to piety.
I deserve to be with someone who does not have to lie to patch things together.
I deserve lightness, ease, and a floating, anchored kind of love.
You are deserving of it, and always will be.
And if you wont find it in this life, youll find it in the next.
