Letting go of the idea that the past could have been different is the key to true freedom, according to a woman who spent nearly two decades in a marriage built on a secret.
The challenge, she writes, comes from a deep need to validate personal experiences. Many people feel that accepting the past as it was would mean invalidating their own pain. This is especially true for those who have endured profound betrayal or trauma.
After almost 19 years of marriage, her husband, her high school sweetheart, told her he was gay and had never been attracted to her. The news shattered her sense of reality and left her grappling with years of pain and confusion.
She spent weeks wishing she had noticed warning signs, listened to therapists, or that her husband had been honest from the start. The idea of simply accepting what happened felt like a betrayal of her own suffering.
For months, she refused to consider acceptance. The rejection she felt over the course of her marriage was something she would not wish on anyone. She knew something was wrong, she said, but she could not name it. She felt crazy, invisible, and ugly. Many nights she went to bed in tears, feeling unseen by the man she married.
Once the truth came out, she faced a mountain of grief built over two decades. The hardest part, she said, is that other people’s choices can cause deep wounds, and the only way to live a healthy life is to stay connected to others. She tried to live in isolation, convinced she could be fully self-sufficient, but that only brought more emptiness and pain.
Human beings are wired for connection, she wrote. Those who thrive have deep, meaningful relationships. They experience great highs and deep lows when trust is broken. That is the human experience.
She had to reframe what letting go means. It does not mean that her ex-husband’s choices were acceptable. The pain was not worth it, she said, and living in a relationship built on deception for 20 years will never be okay. Letting go, she explained, means feeling the grief of reality so she can accept what she cannot change.
She cannot change his lies. She cannot change her own choices to believe them. She cannot change the years she spent abandoning her own needs. What she can do is feel the pain and grieve until it stops tormenting her. By allowing herself to feel, she validates her own experience. She is not waiting for anyone else to acknowledge her pain.
No one will ever know the full depth of another person’s suffering, she wrote. But people can validate themselves. They can share their stories so others know they are not alone.
She advises others who feel stuck to fully experience their feelings. She recommends doing this with the support of a therapist, mentor, or trusted friend. The work is hard and scary, she said, but there is freedom on the other side.
She also spoke about compassion, which she described as the intersection of love and suffering. Her ability to let go and feel free came when she was able to see her ex-husband’s suffering as well. She met him with compassion, though it was not easy. Both were raised in a culture that valued being good and loyal over being happy and seen, she said. Their tragic story, she concluded, is the product of valuing rules over love and self-expression.
