Victory Over Betrayal: Recovering the Joy Stripped Away by Infidelity

By Maria Eugenia Ramos

"Who is this person sitting next to me?" The secret double life is out! The person you married is not the person you thought it was. Finding out that a partner has been unfaithful feels like a knife to the soul that leaves a deep wound. The wound leaves us with emotions that cannot be comprehended right away. The trust towards the partner is gone in an instant. The betrayed is left with more questions than answers. The laughter turns into crying for days, months, or even years. The person we loved is unrecognizable after the disclosure of the toxic behavior. The raw emotions begin immediately leaving the individual feeling like they are going crazy.

Victory Over Betrayal offers the transparent story of a wife who experienced betrayal. Betrayal brought challenges that seemed impossible at times but overcame them with God's help. The secret was heavy on her shoulders as she struggled to decide if she should share it with others. The question, "Should Stay or Should I Leave?" was a difficult one to answer due to the lost of complete trust in her husband. The intimate disclosure of raw emotions may help the reader relate and feel validated as the story unfolds. The story brings hope as God takes control of the crisis and a miracle is requested of Him. The betrayed cannot get where she need to get without facing where she was. Scriptures and tips are offered at the end of each chapter to assist in the healing process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098394684

Book preview

Introduction

The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.

Psalm 9:9–10

Can the joy and sanity stolen by betrayal be recovered?

Based on my experience, the answer to the question above is yes. If you have suffered sexual betrayal in your marriage, your joy and sanity may feel lost forever, but they are not gone, they are just on pause. These life essentials vanish in a split second, as if someone had a remote control and pressed the Pause button. Negative emotions hide the stable life that was present seconds before the darkness of betrayal rears its evil head. Infidelity challenges every cell in the body at an unimaginable level, and only someone who has experienced it can understand the pain of this. The person who could make spontaneous decisions has vanished and now feels helpless and hopeless.

The person I’m describing is me. If you’re reading this book, it probably also describes you. Sadly, we have something in common: I experienced betrayal just like you.

My journey included multiple lessons, each building a foundation for my future as a healed individual. I no longer see the ugly and powerless person that betrayal led me to believe I was. I can now look in the mirror and see a beautiful confident person.

Betrayal speaks one language: deep core pain. I am amazed at the healing incurred by infidelity; I am sharing my story to help you recognize that you are not alone in your journey, perhaps the most fragile time that you’ve experienced thus far. I made mistakes along the way; mistakes that delayed the healing. But mistakes are meant to be learned from, and sometimes we can learn from other’s oversights—my hope is that you will learn from mine.

The pain caused by betrayal is not forgotten. Neither surgery nor medication can remove it. The death of my mother was more manageable than the pain brought by infidelity. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. But I also know there is hope. My desire is for women and men to find healing from the heartbreak that betrayal brings. I have shared my transparent story while facilitating support groups and been able to assist others in the healing process. Some of those women encouraged me to write this book.

It is because of those requests and my personal desire to bring hope that I continue to share the struggles and victory over betrayal.

While dealing with the trauma of my husband’s infidelity, I kept a journal. I will be sharing excerpts from it throughout the book, which I hope will validate your deep pain, emotions, and questions that come up as you process your own situation. Please understand that the thought process and grammar reflect the difficult place I was in at the time. My hope is that, through my raw words, you will see how destructive betrayal can be, and that you are not alone in your waves of anger, sadness, and grief. If you feel lost or crazy, I’ve been there too.

I encourage you to journal during this time. Whether you are in counseling or not, journaling is a great tool for our mental health. It helps us express what we can’t say out loud and provides us with a record of both our progress and God’s faithfulness in it.

You deserve to be free from the strongholds brought on by your partner. You deserve to press Play on the button that stole your joy and sanity. You deserve victory over betrayal! I pray that this book will take you one step closer to that freedom.

CHAPTER 1:

The Painful Truth

It was a tuesday evening, 8:20 P.M. my husband had called earlier to inform me that he had cooked us T-bone steaks for dinner. It was no surprise that I got home late, tired, and hungry after a long day at work. The thought of having a warm meal waiting at home was comforting but seeing my husband felt more exciting than food. There was no place like home, warm pajamas, and a loving hug to end the day on a happy note.

The drive home was peaceful with no surprises in the traffic. When I finally arrived home, I glanced at the new mail as I entered the front door. I was not expecting anything, but something caused me to check the mail anyway. The stack contained a large manila envelope addressed to me. I did not pay close attention to it. Instead, I proceeded to the kitchen to greet my husband and eat the steak. I said hello to him and greeted him with the usual kiss. We shared about our day, ate, and went upstairs to change for the evening.

My mind became preoccupied with the fact that the envelope I’d found in the mail did not have a return address, and it was very thick and heavy. My curiosity could not wait until I changed, so I grabbed the envelope, headed upstairs, and opened it. The first page was a yellow handwritten note, and the rest were printed double sided papers. The handwritten paper read, Recently left my wife of 15 years after finding these on her computer. Thought you should know what she and your husband have been up to. The individual who’d written the note provided his full name and email address. I thought, This guy must have the wrong address. I assumed Id gotten someone else’s mail by mistake, but I proceeded to read the first printed page anyway. The content was explicit sexual dialogue between two individuals. The conversations included information from a trip that I had with my husband to celebrate my birthday. Is it possible that someone else took a trip to the same location in the same month as ours? I wondered.

Sometime after reading more content, I realized that I did not recognize the email addresses. Interestingly enough, the male in the conversations had the same name as my husband. Doubt lingered in my mind. My husband’s name is quite common. Either way, I decided to verify the email address with him. My instincts were telling me to double check before discarding the stack of papers.

Disbelief and denial prohibit me from becoming suspicious. Id known him for twenty-five years. The man in the chats did not sound like him at all. My husband was a good Christian who served in church and would never betray his family or God or devalue himself.

The more I read, the more my stomach felt sick with disgust at the thought that someone was unfaithful to their spouse. Clearly both individuals involved were married. The female in the chats was giving marital advice, including a suggestion to propose an open marriage. I can honestly share that I did not know what that meant. I later looked it up and was stunned at what it implied.

I just knew my husband would tell me this was not him. I was prepared to hear him say that he would never do that to me and his kids.

My husband eventually made it to our bedroom. It was time to find out the truth. I sat on the floor holding the stack of papers and asked him to sit down with me because I had a question for him.

Do you recognize this email address? I read it to him confident that he would say it was not him.

Yes. He answered without hesitation.

I was stunned, shocked, deaf, blind, and paralyzed. The stranger Id been reading about was my husband.

Words cannot express what I felt while hearing his answer. The sexually explicit language in the printed pages I’d received came from the person across from me. The cheater in the emails was my husband?

No! There had to be another answer. This had to be a nightmare. I was just having a bad dream, and my marriage would be intact upon waking up.

I know that I asked him questions but all I can remember saying to him was, How could you? and Who is the woman?

He told me about the affair and said he’d wanted to tell me, but he did not want to hurt me. My shocked body, mind, and spirit felt the need to yell at him but could not. I was still paralyzed from head to toe. This is the moment when the Pause button was activated on my joy.

Time stood still. I eventually walked out of the bedroom with the mysterious envelope. I drove to my best friend’s house, which was about fifteen minutes away, in the late hours of the night. I needed someone else to see what I’d found in the envelope and confirm the information was inappropriate. The numbness was wearing off as I was driving. Anger was the first emotion that I expressed. I started to yell. My heart was racing like never before. It felt like someone had stabbed me with a sharp dagger on the chest. It was as if my heart was struggling to stay alive.

Finally, I arrived at my friend’s house, shoulders heavy, and my torso empty. Still, I was able to get out of the car and walk to the front door in the hopes that she would be home. My friend opened the door and asked me what was wrong. I don’t recall much of what I said that night, but she told me later that I was very factual, not crying, and simply talked to her about what had happened.

What will you do? She asked with a legitimate concern expression.

My response was, I don’t know.