The Truth About Infidelity

Our culture tells us that when it comes to relationships, lying and cheating are no big deal. Look at our elected officials, people in the public eye, even the other parents in your community. So many people are having affairs on their spouse that it’s become “normalized,” and the family courts created the “No fault” divorce laws. In the divorce world, we are told over and over by lawyers, judges, and therapists that it is “no big deal” to have an affair. Everyone is doing it.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I found, in my own experience, that lying and cheating are very big deals, actually. Intimacy and and sensuality are a connection to the divine. Sexuality is sacred, creativity in its purest form, and lying and cheating desecrates it. When my ex husband lied and cheated, it was a violation of the sacred feminine in me, and it annihilated me. My ex literally said to me, “I’m not the first person in the world to have affairs.” With an attitude like that, we had nowhere to go.

And oh family court, a divorce caused by infidelity is definitely someone’s fault — the person who decided to cheat. Every marriage and relationship has its issues of course, and how we communicate and address those issues makes up our character and who we are. The moment one person in a marriage decides to betray their partner is the moment they slime the relationship, causing irreparable harm, and it is 100% their fault. I’m not talking about open marriages, or people who make their own rules together — I’m talking about people who commit to another person, create a family together, and then desecrate that holy ground. And if family court, or the cheating spouse think it doesn’t affect the children, they are flat out wrong. The children are the collateral damage of a spouse who lies and cheats. These actions harm everyone around them, while honesty and integrity heal everyone around them. My Dad always said, “Be honest and let the cards fall where they may.”

When I was married, I had multiple dreams of being chased with a knife or sharp scissors by a dark figure. My dream analyst told me to turn around and see who the dark figure was. She said the knife and scissors represent “discernment,” a willingness to cut away the veil to show me the truth, something I’m not seeing and don’t want to face. I spent a lot of years in a marriage full of toxic lies that I didn’t want to see.

So after I chose to step into the clarity of truth, I committed to my heart’s healing, spending years reclaiming my soul. It has not been easy to hold the pain of betrayal, in fact it feels a bit like sticking my hand into a hot pan of sizzling oil, but I’ve done it, I’ve stayed with it, and allowed it to change me. No one chases me in my dreams anymore because I turned around, took the scissors, and cut out the darkness myself. I get to create my own cloth now, cutting out dangerous toxicity and creating the gown I now choose to wear, a holy gown made of everything I love: my love and compassion, my fierce unshakeable dedication to my children, my devotion to protecting that which I find to be sacred and holy.

For me, the richest place I can live is in the truth.