Rising Phoenix: The “Why” Was Never About Her

This post is part of an ongoing series written by “Rising Phoenix,” a woman giving an honest account of how she’s learning to rise out of the pain and destruction of betrayal. Read all her posts by clicking the Rising Phoenix link above. To read all her posts chronologically, start with her first post and then click the “Read Rising Phoenix’s Next Post” link that appears at the bottom of each article.

The affair wasn’t the story. 
The pain was.

When the truth came out, it broke something deep inside me.
Not just because you cheated, but because of how easily you let it happen. How slowly you slipped away.

Over time—through therapy, hard conversations, and painful self-reflection—I began to see what we couldn’t back then:
It was never about her.
And it wasn’t about me, either.

Even before the diagnosis—ADHD, BPD, trauma responses—I could feel something shifting in you. You were unraveling. Your moods deepened. Your energy changed. The medication meant for depression stopped working because depression wasn’t the full story. But we didn’t know that yet.

What We Know Now

And then, she started messaging you.
Your friend’s wife.
Someone who had no place in our story.
You didn’t shut it down. You didn’t set boundaries. You kept replying, and with every message, you let her in a little further.

With the full picture in view, it’s clearer than ever. She gave you exactly what your nervous system was desperate for: a dopamine hit. Validation. Admiration. The thrill of something new. She made you feel wanted—but only on the surface, shallow and fleeting. 

She became your drug dealer, each message a dose you couldn’t resist. You kept coming back for the high, even as she fed your insecurity with empty praise: “There’s nothing wrong with you… you’re awesome.” Over and over again, drowning out the parts of you silently begging for help.

The Catalyst of Your Unraveling: How One Crisis Shifted Your Mental Health and Choices.

Then my unforeseen accident changed everything. You witnessed my fragility like never before—something I was never supposed to be. I was the strong one. The capable one. The steady center of our life. But suddenly, I wasn’t. I was broken. Healing. Relearning how to do simple tasks. That tragic day, something inside you shifted, something raw and deep. You couldn’t protect me. You couldn’t fix it. And that terrified you. Because if I was breakable, then everything else you depended on—our life, our roles, your own image of who you were—felt like it could shatter too.

And instead of facing that fear… you ran. You ran because seeing me in recovery wasn’t just hard; it filled you with guilt. You watched me struggle, and instead of stepping closer, you stepped out. Because being present meant facing what you’d already broken, and what you might break again.

And she was waiting. She and her husband had been there that day, too. She saw your vulnerability. She saw her opening. Within days of my recovery, her “friendly” you’re-so-awesome messages quickly turned sexual—bold, explicit, and manipulative. And you didn’t stop it. You leaned in. 

You say you didn’t think it would go anywhere,but it did. Because you kept choosing the distraction. The hit. The escape.

She used your unraveling, and my trauma, as an opening for her own betrayal. She wanted her “free pass” to hurt her husband. And she used you to get it. And still, you allowed it. Not because you loved her. Not because you were confused. But because she expected nothing of you. She didn’t ask you to show up. She didn’t ask you to heal. She didn’t reflect your guilt or your damage. She offered a shortcut. A fantasy. A way to avoid what was real. And you went all in.

Grieving the Comparison: Why Letting Go of the Affair Partner Is Vital to Healing

As I began to heal, I realized I wasn’t just grieving the "us" that had broken. I was grieving a version of myself that got lost in comparison—a version shadowed by every insecurity and every doubt that betrayal drags into the light. Because when betrayal happens, the other person takes up space in your mind they never earned. She became the symbol of every question I couldn’t stop asking: What did she give you that I didn’t?

But eventually, much much later, I saw the truth. She didn’t give you anything real. She offered a void. She slipped into a crack you created and called it connection. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t depth. It wasn’t truth. It was never real.

She didn’t replace me, though over time, she wanted to. Her “free pass” grew into something more, fueled by jealousy and mimicry. She tried to become the parts of me that once held your heart—using my words, calling you “lover,” a name I had reserved for you alone, spoken in trust, in intimacy, in love. And for a brief moment, something inside you stirred. You told her, “No, you can’t call me that. That name belongs to my wife.” Because even in the middle of betrayal, you knew some things couldn’t be duplicated. Some things were still sacred. That word—my word for you—was one of them.

She wanted what we built. She even asked for another season with you. But she didn’t understand the weight of what it took for me to keep us standing. She didn’t understand what it cost to hold space for a relationship that had already been bleeding for years.

And then came the part that broke me: you told her you didn’t like me. Not in anger, but like a quiet confession. While I was giving pieces of myself to hold our life together, you were out there rewriting the story, casting me as the villain. Because I saw you—all of you. I saw the pain beneath your reactions, the mental fog, the confusion, the shame.

There wasn’t a clear reason. Just pain—unspoken, unhealed. And instead of facing it, you blamed me. She was happy to play along. I had been carrying the parts of you that were unraveling long before anyone else noticed. I didn’t run. I stayed. I showed up. I carried us both, but the weight was too much, and you resented me for it. You resented the mirror I held up, because I didn’t reflect back the version of you that was easy to love. 

I reflected the truth, and you couldn’t bear to look. So you turned to someone who didn’t ask questions. Who didn’t challenge you. Who only saw the version of you that you carefully curated: the surface. She was never safe. She was just convenient. You gave her what was light, and left me holding everything heavy.

You didn’t tell her about the depression. You didn’t tell her about the shame. You didn’t tell her about the guilt, or about the years I spent trying to hold things together while losing myself in the process. You let her affirm your denial. She validated the part of you that wanted to feel good, not grow. The part of you that didn’t want to do the work.

And now I see it clearly. It was never about her. It wasn’t even about me. It was about pain. Avoidance. Years of emotional chaos left untreated. An unregulated mind chasing relief in all the wrong places.

You didn’t love her. You didn't even really like her. You used her. She offered distraction, not depth. You took the hit, chased the high, and ran from what was real. She became the shortcut, not the solution. 

And while it nearly destroyed us, that destruction also brought everything into the light—the betrayal, the deeper truth beneath it, the diagnosis, the trauma, and the long-buried wounds that shaped who we were becoming.

Letting go of her wasn’t just about ending contact. It was about reclaiming the space she never deserved to take up. It was about releasing the false narrative that she had anything I didn’t. She never had what mattered. She never had you, not the real you. Because the real you had been lost for a long time, too. And if there is anything healing has taught me, it’s this: comparison is the thief of not just joy, but identity. And choosing to let go—of her, of the version of me that felt not enough—was the beginning of choosing myself again. Not because I wasn’t worthy before. But because I always was. I just needed to figure out how to do that. 

My breakdown was a reset. A reckoning.

A return to myself. And the healing? It wasn’t for him. Or her. It was for me.
For the version of me who had been silently falling apart while holding everything else together.

She needed care. She needed truth. She needed someone to choose her. And that someone had to be me.

I opened every door I once avoided—every crack, every corner, every carpet. I stopped protecting all the lies and started rebuilding something real, beginning with me.

The marriage I knew ended. But one new moment gave me a new outlook. That was the beginning. A new foundation, built day by day, trigger by trigger, choice by choice.

I’m not “fixed.” But I’m still here. Still healing. Still choosing.

If You’re Here Too…

Healing didn’t start with an apology. It started with the truth about what happened and what it cost. It started when I stopped running from the pain and finally faced it. I had to get brutally honest—not just about the betrayal, but about everything that came before it. Because I wasn’t only healing from the affair. I was healing from years of feeling unseen, unheard, and emotionally worn down. From disappearing to keep the peace. From carrying more than was ever mine alone.

This is what rebuilding looks like now. Not perfect. But honest. Not easy. But real. And somehow, that was enough to keep going. Maybe not with certainty, but with just enough hope to take the next step. If you're reading this, maybe that's true for you too.

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