Recovery.

Something is happening to me.

I'm calling it recovery.

Of course the pain is still there, and the anger. But it's different.

I feel empowered. I don't feel like the victim anymore. I was wronged, yes, but I'm not a victim.

I'm in a place where I can start to look at our marriage and the years leading up to the affair and try to find the cracks in our relationship that led him to stray.

I do not feel that the affair was in any way my fault. It was 100% his fault, all the way, no question about it.

However, people don't cheat in a perfectly good relationship. (Unless there is an underlying issue with the cheater, such as sexual addiction, which my husband does not have.)

There must have been a communication breakdown somewhere along the way. There was a reason he felt that I didn't love him, and there was a reason he didn't love me enough to be faithful. There had to be something there that led to this.

I don't know what that was. I don't claim to know what led to him straying, or how he was feeling for the months or years leading up to it. But I am finally in a place where I feel like we can work together to discover what the problems were, and maybe work on resolving them.

I don't know that I forgive him, and I certainly don't trust him. I don't think I'll ever trust him like I used to, but maybe I'll learn to trust him little by little as time goes by. I don't think I'll ever love him the way I used to, but maybe I'll learn to love him as we work together to fix our marriage.

Recovery. I never thought I'd be on this path.