Dear Reader,

Let's talk about things that aren't in your control. Because if you're impacted by infidelity, on any side, you know just how confronting the lack of control is. If you're the spouse in the affair, you may be trying to control everything -- whether your affair partner is willing to keep waiting, whether your spouse discovers what's happening before you're ready to deal with it, or whether you lose precious parts of your family unit if you leave. You may want to control the narrative, so you end up controlling everyone.
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If you're a betrayed spouse, then you also know well the trauma and grief of betrayal itself that results so intensely because of the lack of control over what happened. Outside your control were your spouse's choices that have irrevocably changed the course, fabric, and feeling of your life, too. You may then try to control so much, too, much like your unfaithful spouse is; you may try controlling the outcome, controlling their behaviors and choices, controlling recovery.

And then, affair partners can feel such a lack of control. They often feel helpless to leave and helpless to go. As an affair partner, the only thing in your control is to leave the relationship with someone who isn't properly available, or making themselves available; but the loss, the grief, and the fear that no one else will ever feel this way, understand you this way, or be loved by you this way; none of that can be controlled. So you may stay.
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Enter three essential prayers; three words I uttered often in the most confusing and uncertain days of my own life, and which I still turn to often: Help, Thanks, and Wow.
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The book "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers" by Anne Lamott is a little book that changed the way I spoke to the universe in the face of all I could not control (what I could control, it turns out, was very very little).
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When my divorce was final, my friend wrote me this quote from the book, and framed it:

Then she wrote beneath: "Lauren, you are free. Rejoice! Love, Alicia"

But I could not rejoice. I could not bring myself to rejoice. In fact, I could not stop crying. My grief was a deep and endless well.

Help.

I said to the universe each morning when I woke up. Help.

Then, later, I might say, "Thanks" when I noticed that there were still good things happening in my day, still good in the world. Good moments, a good bite of food, a good walk, a good friend.

I might say "Wow" over a particularly stabbing pain in my heart; grief again. Then later, still, I might say, "Wow" as I watched the moon rise over the waterfront at the end of my street.

Help, Thanks, Wow. Three prayers for all the moments, things, and people we can't control and never will. The wild and the wonderful. The pain and the beauty. Two sides of the same coin, this life. But reaching for those three essential prayers has gotten me through many a time where I feel lost and unmoored.
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When I feel more "Help" than anything else, I always end up finding a life that's even more full of "Wow" on the other side.

I urge you to listen to the audiobook version. Anne makes me positively cackle with delight when I listen. Her reading is funny and irreverent in the best way.

But it's the kind of book you want to own, too, just in case you want to flip to the page where it reminds you about the freedom in the great unknowing. You know?

Ask yourself, today, what or whom am I trying to control?
And what is that doing TO me, and also what is that doing FOR me?

Then, ask for help. We're here for you (we meet with clients privately every single day), or you can begin a self-led program to give yourself the lifeline you were missing.

Today and tomorrow I'm leading two straight days of training for therapists who wish to become certified in betrayal recovery. Help (I hope I can teach them well, for two straight days!), Thanks (for being in the position to teach this topic as an expert in the first place), and Wow (I'm training alongside giants in the field, like Esther Perel, Bessel van der Kolk, and Janina Fisher).

Those three essential prayers are good for everything. I hope they are good to you in this season, too.

With all my love and support,
Lauren
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