When I accidently discovered my husband’s infidelity on our lovely vacation in Tulum – it wasn’t just a mid-life fling I stumbled on. It was a long time affair with a married woman he’d been carrying on since before we even met! I kid you not.
We were only 4.5 years into our relationship at that point – 2.5 years married. He’d carried this on through 2 years of courtship, dating, proposing, getting married, being married, integrating families, building businesses – we had a LIFE together. I don’t even know how he pulled it off, to be honest – I’m a walking friggin’ lie-detecter. 🧐
And as shocking as all that sounds, the real clincher is – I stayed. I stayed for 5 years + 2 more weeks. To the day.
Let me be clear…this woman didn’t stay. She would’ve been outta there before they dropped the wheels on the plane back in Texas. But that woman – the one who went into shock, the one who went into damage control, the one who went immediately into shame (for not knowing, for not being enough, for so many reasons, take your pick) – she’s the one that stayed.
I thought I stayed because of love and commitment and “we’ve got this” solidarity, but now I know I stayed because of a deep-rooted abandonment wound (and everything that comes with it) that was there way before he was.
When I finally had my come to Jesus “WTF am I DOING?!” moment 5 years later, I did leave. I dug in and did even more work, and 2 years later, I understood what happened, I could see the patterns, I knew better than to let it happen again, and I was ready to get back to living my life.
But I couldn’t move. The anxiety was still there, and the eggshells, and the shame – always right under the surface. I had done the work, so why was I still so stuck?
Well, here’s what I know now: Even though the infidelity was devastating and the emotional abandonment was heartbreaking, the deepest wound in all of it was the abandonment of myself. That’s what the betrayal flooded to the surface. It’s the reason I stayed too long, ignored my instincts, made myself smaller, outsourced my self worth. It’s the reason this woman left the building.
And that, my Love, is codependency.
Betrayal was the event. Codependency was the root. And you can work on the event a thousand times and never even touch the root, because that’s what codependency does – it looks outside for what you need inside.
That’s why I’ve been talking about betrayal and codependency these last couple of weeks – because they go hand in hand. Two peas in a pod. PB & J. You get it. 🫛 If you’ve been through it and you’re still struggling emotionally, it’s not the betrayal you’re stuck in – it’s what’s deeper. And that you can do something about.
That’s what the Breakthrough Blueprint™ will help you with – not just the betrayal itself, but what it exposed. The real root of what’s been keeping you stuck so you can finally come all the way back to YOU.
Because it doesn’t get better by keeping busy, pulling the covers over your head, or just “moving on” – it actually gets worse.
