There’s no easy fix when someone we trust betrays us. Our entire world is upended. Betrayal is an earthquake that catastrophically upheaves the foundation of our entire life and leaves us broken and trembling in the aftermath. Suddenly everything we knew to be true is no longer true, leaving us to question everyone and everything. So how do you come back from something like that? Can you find true restorative, lasting healing after betrayal? Today we have author and speaker Jill Savage, and she’s passionate about encouraging families. She’s the co-author of 14 books focused on motherhood, family and marriage, including “No More Perfect Moms,” “No More Perfect Marriages,” and her most recent book, “Empty Nest, Full Life.” Jill and her husband Mark lead a ministry which encompasses their speaking, writing, coaching, and marriage ministry so they can encourage, educate, and equip families. They have five children and eight grandchildren, and they live in normal Illinois.
Can we just start off with you setting the stage for your story so we can guide our listeners through how to get to forgiveness?
Our story begins about 14 years ago. My husband was a pastor. He’d been a pastor for 20 years, and served on a large church staff for the first 10 years. He was a senior pastor of a church plant for the second 10. That second 10 was rough, and we both weren’t our best selves during that 10 years. So he left pastoring. He was pretty burned out and thought that he would take a break, started his own construction company, and he looked pretty good on the outside, but on the inside he was still spiraling and was not in a good place emotionally or spiritually. It was really, really dark. I knew he was struggling and he had struggled with depression off and on all of our married life (28 years at that point). And so I thought, “Man, he’s just in another depressive cycle,” but this was bigger. And he really was having a full-on midlife crisis.
Eventually I discovered the emotional affair and we talked about it and he promised that he would stop having conversations, but it went underground and eventually became a physical affair. And that was just such a dark season. I actually confronted him during a counseling session; I had discovered the infidelity the night before, and we had a counseling session [scheduled], so I thought, “I am not even saying anything until we’re there.” And I’ll never forget, he looked at me and he said, “Yep, I’m having an affair and I am not stopping.” And I thought, “Who is this person? This isn’t my husband. My husband is gentle and kind and loving and loves Jesus.” It was not him at all. And so that began almost a year of darkness. He eventually left. We had five children: three were in their twenties, two were still teenagers at 15 and 17, all five of them were at home, absolutely heartbroken. And they would later say, “We knew dad was off. We just couldn’t figure out what it was.” God took me on quite a spiritual journey during that dark year. I stood for my marriage. I believed for my marriage. But honestly, I was getting to the place where [even] my Christian counselor was starting to say, “Jill, I really think you probably need to be preparing your heart to move on from here.” And part of what God took me through is beginning this journey.
I heard author and speaker Jennifer Rothchild talking about her blindness several years before this happened in my life. And she said, as it related to her blindness, “It is not well with my circumstances, but it is well with my soul.” And I recalled that in the midst of that darkness. And I was like, “Lord, it is not well with my circumstances, but I am determined that it is going to be well with my soul.” And so that’s what I really focused on. I had a really good friend that challenged me in the midst of that darkness and said, “Jill, do not make saving your marriage an idol.” And I realized at times I was doing that, so I tried to get back in line with that in its proper place. It was a really, really, really dark year that ended on Easter Sunday of 2012, when my husband had his own personal resurrection. He actually made a U-turn. I didn’t trust it at first by any means. He’d actually made several U-turns, but he’d always gone right back around. He would leave the other relationship, recommit to me, and it would last about two, three weeks, maybe a month. And he did that seven times. So when this one happened on Easter, I was like, “Yeah, we’ll see.” And it ended up being the real deal. He really did surrender on Easter, and we began putting the broken pieces of our relationship back together. And it took about 18 months. We thought that journey was going to be just for us. But about three years later, we started sharing it more publicly. We’re so grateful God takes our pain and sometimes turns it into purpose. And now we have the privilege of coaching others through betrayal, some whose marriages make it, some whose marriages don’t, but we have the privilege of walking through it with them because we really wish we’d had somebody to walk through it with us.
Where does healing even begin? How do you start working towards this sense of “It is well with my soul” and what does that look like?
It starts with us examining our trust in Jesus, because when it comes right down to it, when difficult circumstances happen like betrayal, we can go one of two directions: We can go the route of “Where is God?” and “He’s not here, he’s left me. He has abandoned me.” Or we can go the route of going, “God is my anchor.” So we start there and sometimes we have to examine what is causing me to feel like God has betrayed me or abandoned me in some way.The Bible tells us in this world you will have trouble. And even as Christians, we’re not exempt from that trouble. And so I had to start with, “What do I believe about God?” Do I really believe that A, he can heal? And whether that is healing by marriage or healing me, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen and B, that he can be trusted to guide me through this journey and that his word is true. That was a place I had to begin. I had to come to realize that I struggled with trust issues because I also had control issues. They often tie together. I can’t control what my husband’s doing. I can’t control the circumstances. I can only control what I bring to the party. And so I think that was the other piece. In healing, you begin the process of going, what do I need to look at? Where do I need to heal? What have I been carrying that isn’t serving me well? And beginning that process.
I also love what you said, Jill, about worshiping your marriage. I was walking with a friend a couple years ago that was really struggling to know whether to let go of the marriage; there had been infidelity, there was a diagnosis of some mental issues, and he was just heartbroken. I remember saying to him—we’ll call him John. I’m like, “John, do you know what God loves more than marriage? He loves you more than marriage.” And I think you’re right that in Christian circles, we idealize worship the institution rather than God’s sovereignty and his wholeness and his love for us. And so when it doesn’t work out, it’s so devastating and it is devastating. I’m not diminishing that, but a lot of it for me was undoing that I’m a failure. I let down the God-given institution of marriage. And I have found relief personally in letting go of some of that. Yes, it is a covenant. Yes, it is sacred, but it is not to be worshiped. You have to care for yourself. You have to understand your relationship with God. And that’s one of the beautiful things that comes out of a solo season is if you can transition from just trying to keep it all together and surrender and allow that there are just things beyond my control. We can’t control outcomes. We just control what we put into it.
What do you want people to know as it relates to forgiveness and betrayal and how those two play together or don’t play together?
There’s two really big things that I really want us to understand. The first is that forgiveness is layered. Forgiveness is layered in betrayal. And it isn’t that you are going to just forgive them for being unfaithful and it’s done. You have to forgive all the different layers of what happened when they were unfaithful. They misused money. They were deceptive about where they were. They took risks. They brought risks to your life. There’s so many layers of it. By a year and a half afterwards, I’d probably forgiven 500 different things in the betrayal. And most of us don’t understand that. We don’t understand that when something raises up in us again and we’re like, “But I thought I already forgave that.” Well, you’ve forgiven. But I am guessing that there’s an angle that you haven’t done business with. And just to clarify what forgiveness is, in my mind, when we have unforgiveness, it’s cluttering up our heart and then our heart isn’t available to God and it isn’t available to our other relationships that mean the most to us. That’s the ultimate hardheartedness. I always think of forgiveness as taking it out of my heart and handing it to Jesus. That’s the way I think of it. And when I had to work through all those layers, I’d recognize that I’d drive by a hotel I knew that they had met at, and one day that would bother me. The deception part of it would bother me, but the next day, the misuse of money would bother me. So I’ve got to deal with the deception one day, and then a different angle of it. So it is layered.
When you would get triggered like that, what did that process look like?
I’d first have to go, “Okay, why was that hard today?” Sometimes part of it is you don’t even know that it was rising up. And quite frankly, there were times where it was something that I had picked back up. We hand it to Jesus and then go, “Oh, can I have it back?” So part of it was sometimes I had to say, “I’m sorry I took that back. It’s not mine to carry, it’s yours to carry.” And then if I could identify what it was, then I was able to recognize it and then forgive: I am really burdened today by the amount of money that he misused, and I am going to choose to hand that to you today, right now. And specifically the amount of money used at that hotel then. But here’s also where it becomes layered. I tend to be the one that pays the bills. So every month when I sit down to work through the bills, guess what comes up, the misuse of money because we have debt. And so here we go again. But that’s another layer of the misuse of money. Do you see how that’s different than at the hotel? Because now we’re dealing with the debt. So that’s why it’s so layered and that we really have to work through all of those pieces.
The second part of forgiveness is so very important, and some people struggle forgiving because they feel like if they forgive, they’ll have to trust. And forgiveness and trust are two very different things. To forgive does not do anything for trust except open the door that trust could possibly be rebuilt and that is if the other person is humble and the other person is willing and the other person does the work and opens up their life. Those I’m walking through betrayal with are struggling. “I don’t want to forgive because I can’t trust him or her.” And it’s like, “No, you don’t need to.” Trust is rebuilt. One visual we use when coaching is trust is like a bathtub full of water. And when you are in a relationship, some of that water gets sloshed out here and there. But when something like betrayal happens, it’s as if somebody pulled the plug and there’s no water in the bathtub, or at least just a very little bit. And often the one that betrayed wants to say, “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again.” They can turn on the spigot and fill the bathtub up but it’s not the way it works. You cannot refill the bathtub by turning on a spigot after infidelity. You have to refill the bathtub one tablespoon at a time, one quarter cup at a time. And so the only way is consistent changed behavior over time. The only thing that forgiveness does is take the top off the bathtub and says, “Well, if you can refill it, I will open myself up to you refilling it, but that’s going to take a long time.” And so it’s really important to understand that’s all that forgiveness does as it relates to rebuilding trust.
So while you may be so hurt because of betrayal, how can we look at the situation with clear eyes and acknowledge our part in it?
One of the things that I often say is “I did not cause my husband’s infidelity, but I contributed to the dysfunction in our marriage, and that was my responsibility to look at.” And quite frankly, I began to realize and deal with that before there was ever any evidence that there would be a U-turn on my husband’s part. Because honestly, I began to go, “You know what? I brought some unhealthy things to this situation, and God’s calling me to look at those.” That’s a part of holiness in my life, separate from reconciliation, separate from any of that. That’s my call. Because I can truly say that those things that I brought, the dysfunction that I brought, I wasn’t like Jesus. And isn’t that the call on our life—that discipleship is we’re to become more like Jesus? So I had to look at it and become more like Jesus in those areas. And so I began to dig into some of those places. I told you about the counseling appointment where my husband said, “Yes, I’m having an affair and I’m not stopping.” And that was the last one we went to together until a year later after his U-turn. And I kept going for myself. In the midst of that, I read a book that was a game changer for me and eventually became a game changer for him. It was a book called “How We Love” by Milan and Kay [Yerkovich]. And it was on attachment styles from childhood. I’ll never forget reading the chapter on the avoider attachment style. And I remember reading it going, “Oh my gosh, this is me, this me.” I came to understand that my avoider attachment style was sending an unintentional message to my husband that I did not need him. Because as an avoider, you grow up needing no one. You learn to buck up, you get strong, you’re not needy. And so I was like, “Jesus was a secure connector. He wasn’t an avoider. I need to work on becoming that secure connector.” I began to take that journey with my counselor, with my own reading and listening to podcasts and doing anything I could. I’d never even heard of this. I didn’t even realize that. And it played out in so many different ways in the relationship. Mark used to say that it felt like I was parenting him. And so it was like, “You know what? If my marriage doesn’t make it and I have another relationship in the future, I need to figure that out. I don’t want to bring being an avoider into a new relationship.”
I believe that anytime there’s a crisis in our life, it’s an opportunity for growth. In fact, we offer an online course called The Wait is Not Wasted, and it’s for an individual who is married, but their spouse is checked out or having an affair, and they’re believing for their marriage and using this time for personal growth. And we tell people right up front, “I can’t promise you if your marriage is going to make it or isn’t going to make it. I can promise you that you can use this time for some incredible personal growth.” In fact, one of the things we say is, “This is a really crappy situation, but the best use of crap is fertilizer. So let’s use this for fertilizer and your life for your personal growth.” And sometimes when one person grows, it spurs hope in the other that maybe in essence, that’s what happened. And my husband started seeing change in me, and it spurred hope for him. That doesn’t always happen. But if you can experience that growth and even if your marriage or your relationship doesn’t make it, you have a new “you” to take into the next one.
I don’t want to speak on your behalf, but I’m sure in your case, a lot of the memories become tainted. Do you recommend rewriting the memories or finding a way to break through that? Or do you preserve what it was at the time for you? How do you have a right view?
There’s a Bible verse that has been a big part of my healing journey. Romans 8:5-6 says, “For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh. And those who live according to the spirit, set their minds on the things of the spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.” And especially with betrayal, we can just kill ourselves on the inside. We’re just experiencing death because we are ruminating on what we are imagining or we’re ruminating on what they did. And it brings this death to our heart. It’s a death of joy. It’s a death of peace. It’s a death of contentment. And so I would catch myself doing that, and I would be like, “I have got to push.” I mean, that scripture says “set your mind.” And there’s a reason the Bible tells us to take our thoughts captive, to renew our mind, to set our mind on life. And what I found is I had to do a lot of pushing of my thinking in a more helpful direction for my own healing. And so sometimes that would be thinking of it differently. I’ll give you an example. When I discovered my husband’s infidelity, it had been going on for several months. Well, when that happens, and anyone listening that’s been there understands that you have to go back and rethink through those months. And during that time, my mother and father had their 50th wedding anniversary, and we all went as a family up to the Wisconsin Dells. We rented a house and Mark kept leaving because he would say that he needed to talk with his crews back home on his construction company when in reality, he was talking to that person. So here I am with what I thought was one memory, now I have another one. And see, this is part of this struggle back to forgiveness. Then that was another layer: I had to forgive him for how he behaved at my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration with the family. So instead of ruminating on his deception there, I began to think, “Where was Jesus with me there? How was he holding me? How was he present with me?” So I began to think through that. So the question you asked is, Do we need to remake those memories?” And I encourage people to remake those memories from the God perspective instead of from the betrayal perspective.
How do you move out of a place of fear that it might happen again while you still protect your heart and are not being naive?
We could put a little bit of a blanket statement here over any sort of forgiveness when someone’s betrayed you. And this could be a friend, a coworker, a boss, a parent, a child; they’ve betrayed you in some way, and that trust factor comes back into play. I just want to encourage everyone to listen to it through that lens as well.
The only way that trust can be rebuilt is consistent changed behavior over time. It’s a formula. In fact, we sometimes write it out, CCB x T equals TRUST. Consistent changed behavior over time equals trust. And that’s the only way it can be rebuilt. However, what’s also really important to understand is there is no way that you can ever open up your heart again without some form of risk. There will be risk. There is no promise that your trust isn’t going to be broken again by that person or someone else. I thinkwe learn to see things through a different lens. Let’s say the relationship ends and you entertain a new relationship. You’re going to be looking for some different things—whether they are true to their word, and maybe red flags that you missed in the first relationship are bigger red flags now because you’re wiser. But there has to be an element of risk that we’re willing to take. There’s no way we can be totally protect ourselves from that. But if we’re unwilling to take that risk, then we are in this constant self-protective mode, and we can never open our heart back up to a new relationship. So we need the risk. We have to be willing to take the risk, but at the same time, we’re also looking for trustworthiness in the other person.
I’ve talked to several solo parents who are currently dealing with the pain of seeing their ex move on with the other person that they chose, or they’ve just moved on with someone else. But whether there was betrayal or not, what encouragement do you have for those people who are dealing with that?
First I would say, I know that’s incredibly painful, even for that short period of time. I mean, a year isn’t a short period of time. But during that, seeing that it was very painful. I think one of the most important things is to remember that God understands because he too was betrayed. And so when that wants to rise up in you, when that pain really hits you hard, you don’t have a God that is disconnected. He experienced that. He experienced disappointment when he was in the garden of Gethsemane and he asked the disciples to pray with him and they said, “Okay, we will.” And then he came back and they were asleep. And then certainly Judas betrayed him. He gets that. That is a moment where we have to set our mind that your God chooses you and he will not leave you and he understands your pain. In those moments where I had the tendency to look at my husband choosing someone else, it was me moving my mind to: “That’s really painful.” And talking to God about it and then reminding myself of the truth: God will never leave me. He chooses me. He chooses me day in and day out, and he will not leave me. He will not betray me. And so when you have those moments and it is painful for you, don’t stuff the pain down. Don’t be an avoider. Grieve it and pour your heart out to the Lord, but then set your mind on that relationship that will never leave you.
Takeaways
- Forgiveness is clutter that prohibits us from moving forward.
- Understanding that there are nuances and layers to forgiveness. It doesn’t have to be a sweeping statement. If you think about cleaning a whole house, if you say, “On Mondays, I’m going to clean the kitchen. On Tuesdays, I’m going to clean the bathrooms,” it breaks it down. It makes it feel not so overwhelming and gives freedom in knowing that different things are going to come up at different times and that’s okay. Being able to look at it and surrender it gives you the ability to take it as it comes instead of feeling like, “I’ve got to forgive this person for this massive thing.” And the whole shifting of mindset with rumination, I know I get caught up in going over and over it in my mind, especially when there’s hurt I haven’t dealt with. I can get more and more angry or bitter about the little things that have happened. Forgiveness is all these different rooms, and you’re addressing one thing at a time and they’re all tied to a central theme. Actually taking each little thing and working through that and freeing yourself—think of it as being pure freedom.
Listener Question
My co-parent refuses to communicate, sends messages through the kids, and lets the kids make the arrangements or plans. How do I co-parent with someone who refuses to actually co-parent?
I think first of all, realize that there are certain things that are completely out of your control. My caution is that if you’re trying to control that, it takes away your ability to be present with your kids. I know we’ve talked to Tammy Daughtry about this, who’s a phenomenal expert on co-parenting. She talks about how you can’t control what happens there. All you can control is what happens in your house. And so don’t let overzealousness prevent you from being fully present with your kids. That’s on one side of the pendulum.
The other side is that if it’s harmful, especially to the kids by continuing to involve them, then you probably need to look at going back to court and reestablishing boundaries or reminding of boundaries legally. And that’s something that we can’t give specific advice on because every situation varies. But if you can control what’s going on at your place and realize that there’s not much you can do beyond that, and it still continues to happen even though you remind them, then it might be time to open things up again. But that again, is a big thing. The primary thing is just do your best to not try to let that steal your presence with your kids.
When it came to my ex’s first wife and their two kids (my step kids) there was a lot of this going on where the kids were playing middleman. And if I’m in your shoes, listener, I’d say, tell my kid, “Hey, thanks for telling me that. I’m going to get with your dad on it. Or, I’m going to get with your mom on it. You don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’ll take care of it. And then go and send the email or the text, however you need to communicate: “Hey, so-and-so brought this up to me. Just want to connect with you directly on it. Whatever it is, this is what we need to do.” And yes, there is, “Hey, just want to ask you again, please communicate through me. We can talk directly about this. I think my biggest caution would be to not get caught up in the anger of it (“I can’t believe they’re doing this again”). Just keep it cool and consistent and keep going back and saying, “Hey, just a reminder, please don’t involve them. I let them know I’ve talked to you directly about it. Here’s what my questions are. Here’s what the thing is. Here’s where I’m at with it” and just stay consistent with it. And yes, eventually you may have to take it to court. If your parenting plan says that things are supposed to be communicated directly between the parents, it says that they can be held in contempt of court. And that’s not anything you need to tell them, you don’t have to threaten it; it happens consistently over time. You can say, go to court or to your lawyer and say, “Hey, I want to file for contempt of court because of X, Y, and Z,” and then you have record of it as well. In your communication, if you’re texting or emailing, you’re keeping a record of it and being able to go back and say, “This has been going on for two months. Here’s a record of all of it happening. I need this to stop.” I’m just thinking if you can be strategic about it, either way, you come out on either side. Best case scenario, your ex starts communicating like an adult. Worst case scenario, you have a trail to be able to hold in contempt if needed.
The point is, break the cycle of communication that comes through kids: “[Our kids] shouldn’t be asking you to ask me that.” Just break that cycle. Don’t play into it. A lot of times an ex can use that as a way of trying to get under our skin or trying to prove a point. And if you just break that cycle, sometimes it has a way of autocorrecting.
We love hearing from you. If you want to send in a question, go to our website and you will find instructions on how to email, call, or leave a voice message. You can also head over to Instagram or Facebook and send us a question there as well.
Resources
