Healing after betrayal in a long marriage is more complicated than most people realize.

There is something I have thought about a lot over the past couple of years, and it may not make sense to everyone.

As much as I would have liked to sit here and say I hated my ex-husband after everything that happened, the truth is, I never really did.

What I hated was what he did.

I hated the betrayal.
I hated the pain it caused.
I hated what it did to our family and to our kids and to the life we had built together.

But I never truly hated him.

Even in the very beginning, when everything was raw and my whole world had just been turned upside down, I remember him telling our kids that he knew their mom hated him.

And I had to stop him.

I told him not to say that to them, because it wasn’t true.

I didn’t hate him.

I hated what he had done.

Those are two very different things.

For over twenty years he was the person I loved. He was my person. He was the father of my kids. He was my best friend for a long time. We built a life together. We had so many good years as a family.

Family dinners.
Movie nights.
Game nights.
Vacations together.
Camping trips.
River days where everyone was laughing and having fun.

Before we ever even had kids, we had fun together too.

When we were younger, we used to go out more. He would play in tournaments in bars and I would go watch him. Back then it was fun. It was something we did together.

But as the years went on, things started changing.

Toward the end of our marriage he still wanted me to go out and sit in those smoky bars while he played in tournaments. And I just didn’t want to anymore. I was in a different place in life. I didn’t feel good about myself at the time and sitting in a bar all night wasn’t where I wanted to be.

I would rather have been home with my kids.

I was always fine with him going. I knew he enjoyed it. I never tried to stop him. I thought letting him go do the things he liked was enough.

Looking back now, I can see something I didn’t understand then.

I think we were at a crossroads and I didn’t even realize it.

Maybe he wanted someone there with him in those moments. Someone sitting next to him, watching, supporting, being part of that world with him.

And I just wasn’t in that place anymore.

For years, probably longer than I even realized at the time, we had two very different nervous systems. We lived life differently, needed different things, and somehow managed to gloss over those differences for a long time.

He even mentioned sometimes that other wives came to watch their husbands play.

And I remember thinking that just wasn’t me anymore.

Eventually he found someone who wanted to do those things with him.

If that is truly the kind of life he wanted, then I understand that part. But what I will never agree with is the way it happened.

If he knew that was the life he wanted, and if he knew I wasn’t the person to give that to him anymore, he should have ended our marriage first.

The betrayal didn’t just hurt me.

It hurt our kids.
It hurt our family.
It changed our entire life.

And I hated that. I hated it so much.

I was angry. I said mean things. I said hurtful things. I said things out of pain and rage and heartbreak.

But even in the middle of all that anger, deep down I knew something.

As much as I wanted to hate him, I didn’t.

Maybe that helped me heal faster.

Or maybe it just made everything more complicated in the beginning.

I really don’t know.

What I do know is that I can’t live my life with hate in my heart.

Hate keeps you tied to the pain. It keeps you stuck in the worst moment of your life over and over again.

And when I look back at those twenty years, I refuse to let the messy ending erase all the years before it.

We had good years.

Real years.

Happy years.

Years where we were a family and we loved each other and built a life together.

The ending was painful. It was wrong. It caused so much hurt.

But sometimes letting the worst chapter of a story define the entire book just creates bitterness.

And I don’t want to live my life that way.

So no, I don’t hate him.

But I will always hate what he did.

And those two things can exist at the same time.

If this reflection resonates with you, explore more of Jenny’s Journey where I share honest thoughts about divorce, betrayal, healing, and rebuilding a life that feels like home.

— Jenny 🤍