P2YL | 40. Remember this if your femininity feels attacked by another's infidelity
An extract from my book-in-progress, Part 2 Of Your (Love?) Life: reclaiming love and feminine confidence after a broken marriage
If you were left by a husband for another woman, did you, like me, feel like you’d been kicked out of an exclusive club as though you weren’t considered good enough?
Tinged with a sense of feminine failure?
Reject that thought
Why?
Here’s what I wrote about it in my book-in-progress Part 2 Of Your (Love?) Life
Book extract
Your feminine self feels under attack
When you are let down so irrevocably by a trusted partner, confidence in yourself as a loveable woman can drop to zero.
We get these accusing voices in our heads: ‘If I were more beautiful...more sporty…had a posh job...was smarter...a domestic goddess...’.
‘This is just the sort of thing that would never happen to her.’
We find ourselves comparing ourselves with others.
I remember looking enviously at Candace, a friend who seemed to have every quality that makes for a great life-partner: kind, attractive, loving, intelligent, hospitable, a lovely mother to two sons. Stably married for over twenty years.
‘This is just the sort of thing that would never happen to Candace,’ I remember thinking.
‘Divorce can happen to anyone and any marriage’
Fast forward a few years after my own divorce, and I received a confidential phone call from her with tears in her voice: ‘Well, Katrina — my husband’s done the same thing to me as yours did to you.’*
At first I absolutely could not believe what I was hearing. Now I have seen more of life I see the truth in what a younger but wiser-than-her-years friend once told me, though at the time I shrugged off her words in blissful ignorance:
‘Going through a broken marriage — divorce — can happen to anyone and any marriage.’
Those self-appointed judges in our heads
Yet little, know-all opportunist judges set themselves up in our minds, telling us if we were different and, well, better, this wouldn’t have happened.
They are outrageous liars.
Just look at the reality:
Women of consequence with unfaithful husbands
The late Diana, Princess of Wales was stunningly attractive, considered a kind-hearted and compassionate woman. Her husband at the time, Prince Charles, although seemingly a conscientious man in many ways, appeared to prefer resuming and prioritising his affair with a former girlfriend, herself also married.
Film star Audrey Hepburn was thought of as one of the most beautiful and desirable women in the world. Her husband was unfaithful to her and it led to divorce.
Tina Turner, mega-famous singing and acting star, was cheated on by, and eventually divorced from, her husband.
Karisma Kapoor, Bollywood actress, suffered a broken marriage due to alleged infidelity on the part of her husband.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, whatever you think of her politics, is a woman of high intelligence and acumen. She was publicly and humiliatingly cheated on by her famous spouse.
Elin Nordegren was described by many as faithful, devoted, and family-orientated. Her famous husband Tiger Woods conducted multiple affairs, leading to their divorce.
The inescapable conclusion
- 💋 Beauty
- 💡 Brains
- ♀ Womanliness
- 💳 Money
- 🤗 Personality
- ⚡️ Power
None of these desirable attributes stopped someone’s partner cheating on a standout woman.
The stark truth is, anyone can cheat and then come up with a reason to suit them. It doesn’t take much character to do that.
It’s also true that at any point someone can choose to stop. That takes more character.
So if betrayal and infidelity has wounded your feminine sense of self please be assured that:
Infidelity towards you never says anything meaningful about your worth as a woman.
It says much more about your partner, than it does or ever will do about you.
🪷
