The Epilogue!! It Happened To Me: When My Ex Destroyed Our Marriage, I Gained And Lost 93 Pounds, Cut Ties With My Mom, And Dated Younger (Super Hot!) Guys

I drifted in a fog of depression after the divorce, until I found EMDR and Somatic Therapy … and Tinder. Now I’m ready for a real relationship (on my own very specific terms).

Happy New Week and it’s a good one already!

It is so uniquely thrilling to give you something I know you want. Today’s featured post is, statistically speaking, the best possible example of that perfect present for perfect you. Because this series from Leslie about her husband’s affair and the remarkable way she handled it has been hands down our best-read, most-talked-about, most-anticipated (based on comments and messages and pleading phone calls even) of anything we have run. Way more liked and shared than anything I have written, that’s for sure.

(I would be remiss here – and who wants to ever be remiss? – not to also mention Sarah Swinwood’s brilliant and blockbuster series, which ran earlier in AJPT's trajectory when we didn't have quite the same numbers of subscribers to send it to, but if you haven't read that one, I highly highly recommend it also. It starts here.)

So if you are new here, or haven’t completely caught up, you may want to read parts one, two, three and four of Leslie’s incredible story and then come back here to read today’s installment below.

Enjoy and Big XO (you should see all the words I just cut in order to get you more quickly into today’s story – and you will see them because I will reuse them tomorrow. I love you!)

-Jane

By Leslie Ward

This epilogue took a hot minute to write, for a couple of reasons.

(The dumbest part about this is that I asked Jane if I could write an epilogue. It was my idea! So now I feel extra stupid for taking so long to deliver something I asked to do!)

First, I needed some time to breathe after sharing my story with you. Talking about an experience is cerebral, and I have told the Cliff Notes version of this story to ONLY a handful of people over the years without a second thought; writing about the experience, for better or worse, took my nervous system back into that whole episode, something I hadn’t counted on. It was a mild-to-moderate response, not a full re-triggering, but some of that anxiety came back, causing my cortisol to rise, which then taxed my adrenal glands, which then caused my body to go into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

This mostly manifested in mental and emotional fatigue, but I know that the best thing I can do for myself when my nervous system is dysregulated is to rest, take some downtime, spend time in nature, and/or just allow myself to do nothing (I still struggle mightily with allowing myself to do “nothing”, which is one of the most creatively productive things you can do. Anyone over a certain age remembers lying on their bed, listening to music, and daydreaming. It was the best!)

At the hotel just before getting dressed for my wedding, 1994.

The other reason I have been stumbling over this epilogue is that, in the re-telling of my entire ordeal, it became clear to me that everything that transpired in the aftermath of the affair is another story in and of itself, some of which I am about to recount to you now.

My life looks and feels vastly different today than it did in 2012, when I left my marriage, but it was a long road. I found myself dating younger guys, discovering my love of painting, going through very intense EMDR and somatic therapy, and eventually writing all of this down.

I would love to tell you that after six painful weeks of reading about my husband’s infidelity in the journal he co-wrote with his mistress, I just moved out and never looked back. I don’t remember having a clear vision of what my post-divorce life would look like as I was attending sporting events, faking my way through two holidays, my dad and son’s birthdays, secretly hiring a divorce attorney, finding an apartment, speaking with the dean of my son’s school, and consulting a psychologist about how to talk to our son about the divorce.

In the middle of the Mojave Desert for the RiSE (lantern) Festival circa 2017.

I was juggling a lot and just trying to breathe through each day.

But I know any vision I had didn’t include going into complete emotional shutdown, bingeing nine seasons of “Breaking Bad” every day over several months, and gaining ninety-three pounds in a year. Yet, after I finally left him, that is exactly what happened.

So, finally, here is your Epilogue.