Dear Reader,

I’m finally back from my trip to Paris and London. It was a magical time exploring and learning together with my daughter (before she returned home to begin middle school! Yikes! How did we get here?).

Time away was so valuable. Sometimes you really need to do something different to experience something different, and to become different yourself.

It had me reflecting on what in my life has gotten me from there to here. And I realized there have been two quantum leaps my life has taken; after, of course, it all fell apart with the affair and my subsequent divorce.

The first came seven years ago, when my marriage was over and I was out in the Wild West of the dating world.
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I was a 35-year-old single mom who’d just been through hell and back, and I knew I couldn’t afford to go through what I’d gone through ever again. And so I applied a level of personal discernment to my personal and love life that I’d never done before. I decided that I’d rather be alone than be with the wrong person or in the wrong situation.

That one decision allowed me to a) trust myself, b) make thoughtful choices instead of reactive ones, and c) get crystal clear about what I wanted for my life, how I wanted to feel inside that life, and know quickly what fit and what didn’t. It also, d) left room for things to come in, because I worked through the discomfort and difficulty of continuing to let go of what wasn’t a fit or wasn’t serving me, and tolerated the uncertainty of what was or wasn’t coming next.

I needed to leave space for the good that eventually found me to come in.

And it did.

But I didn’t know it would; the decision was about elevating my standards for life and love, and the right person fit into that, but not on my timeline or by force.

The second quantum leap came four years ago, in my professional life, when everything else had finally stabilized. I’d been running a thriving and solid private practice for years, when the continued internal work I was doing on myself led to a nagging feeling I couldn’t ignore or let go of.

There was something more I was meant to be doing.

Once again, I left room to discover what it was, and continued to do my work. Soon enough, I was writing Beyond Infidelity, educating about infidelity on Instagram, and everything catapulted forward from there. It happened organically, because I was listening to my inner knowing. I was continuing to, as my favorite poet Rainer Maria Rilke says, “live the questions” until I lived into the answer.

Both leaps started the same way: with a decision, and with self-created room to sit in the question of what could be by tolerating the discomfort of the in-between. A decision about what I would no longer accept, and room for what I couldn’t yet see. That’s the pattern I want you to notice, because it’s available to you too, exactly where you are.

You can’t get from here to there without making a decision inside yourself to follow your highest knowing.

And to make pivots, changes, and shifts that allow for change to happen.

Do the same thing, get the same result.

Change your input, your stance, your approach, get a different one.

It's exactly why I created the three core programs anyone can use at home to get unstuck from infidelity and take their own quantum leap:

​A quantum leap for people stuck between their marriage and their affair​

​A quantum leap for people who finally want to get out of an affair for good​

​A quantum leap for betrayed spouses who need to heal; and go beyond healing​

If you already have one of those programs, as many of you do, I encourage you to go back in. Do the deeper work. Return to it and ask where your leap is hiding.

And if you don’t have one of those programs already, I encourage you to ask yourself what you’re waiting for. The first decision is to show up for the work. The second decision is to commit yourself to actually doing it, even when you’re not sure, even when you’re hesitant and want to fast-forward to the outcome.

The outcome comes from the work. From letting go of the timeline and doing the work. Again, and again, and again.

On a parting note, I watched the movie Crazy Rich Asians on the plane ride home from London. It made me reflect on just how painful it is to attend a wedding when your own marriage has been dealt the silent, massive blow of infidelity. The scene where Astrid shows up to Araminta and Colin’s wedding after letting her husband, Michael, know she discovered his affair is heartbreaking and powerful.

Why does attending a wedding hurt so much after an affair? There's so much dissonance and grief in the contrast between the promise of new love and the secret decimation of the same vows you once made. Bearing witness to promises, vows, hope, cherishing, honoring when you're silently bleeding out is a feeling you can't describe unless you've been through it. It takes your breath away, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
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I’ve been there, too. I’ll never forget the feeling of sitting in the pew at my college friend’s wedding while my heartbreak over the silent state of my own marriage consumed me, and my then-husband, who was sitting next to me.

Watching that scene in Crazy Rich Asians was a powerful reminder. If you’ve had that experience, reply to this email and let me know what it was like for you. You’re not alone, and I’m always here to let you know that.

With all my love and support,

Lauren

P.S. — I was also on Kristina Joy’s podcast recently, Intimacy After Infidelity, and it's linked right here for you to listen!​

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