A friend of mine recently posted this image on Facebook and I was torn by it. While I wholeheartedly agree with its truthful message, I was a little jarred by its delivery.

In my past life, I would have reposted the image with hearty agreement, and all the judgment and condemnation I could muster to go along with it.

(Note: I’m not criticizing the poster for posting. I don’t know her story. Maybe there’s a woman pursuing her husband right now, and these words are coming from a fragile, threatened heart? I’m just saying in my past life, I would have clicked “post” from a place of self-righteous pride.)

But for me today, my heart is much more compassionate to the people who find themselves in these fallen relationships. I’m not justifying their actions or behavior, it’s wrong. But I understand it.

While I was married to my first husband, I had an affair.

Well, more than one actually if you count emotional affairs – which you should – because an affair is an affair. Anytime you give any part of yourself to someone else other than your spouse, you’re having an affair. My husband had affairs too. We were both so longing for the things missing in our marriage, we desperately sought to find them outside of it.

This isn’t something that I have ever talked about on social media, but if you’ve read my book “Now What?” then you already know.

My husband and I tried to fix our marriage at first but eventually it just became easier to get what we were looking for from someone else rather than from one another.

During that time, I convinced myself that God wanted me to be happy (not miserable like I was in my marriage) and this new person was who I had been waiting for all along. I reasoned that I had made a mistake in marrying my first husband and now God was making it right by blessing me with this new, perfect person.

In my moments of clarity, I would have thoughts like, Rachel don’t be an idiot, God wouldn’t give you someone else’s husband. That man isn’t yours to have. But what I’ve found about people contemplating or going through an affair, is that their moments of mental clarity are starkly fewer and far in between their moments of mental disorientation.

When you’re involved in an affair, you effectively take your brain out of your head, put it in a box, and slide it under your bed for a while.

You can’t think straight because you’re emotions are overpowering your logic and reason. Your hurt, your desires, the unmet, unfulfilled longings in the deepest part of your heart and soul are steering your decision making. You will literally do, think, and say anything to obtain what you think you are missing, the things you think are going to make you feel better – without considering any of the consequences. You imagine this person/relationship and all that comes with them is going to fix your problems and your pain, that they will fill up those gaping holes inside your heart.

But none of that is true.

Now don’t get me wrong, what you get from an affair, of course, is fun and exciting and fulfilling – utterly exhilarating, actually….

…for a very short period of time.

Eventually, the facade crumbles.

And, just like every other relationship you’ve ever been in, the honeymoon ends. That’s when you realize what you’re stuck with and what you’ve done and all the havoc you’ve wreaked. You can suddenly see clearly how much hurt and pain you’ve caused, not only in your own life and family, but in another family’s life and potentially, in the lives of everyone around you.

Listen to me: I PROMISE you the fleeting moments of temporary pleasure and ecstasy are nowhere near the weight of the long-term effects that an affair brings.

This is a tough topic for me to address because I know what this mental state is like. It’s like a heavy cloud of total fog; deception.

I know the crushing pain and disappointment and betrayal of a broken marriage is so real, that you will reach and claw and grasp for anything to try to numb and medicate that pain.

Since going through my own, I have had friends who have confided in me they are walking down the road of an affair. And while I’m glad they feel comfortable telling me – this is a totally judgment-free zone – I try to warn them it won’t be worth it.

But that isn’t something that you can even hear when you’re in that place. You can only figure it out for yourself. So it feels like a futile effort. What’s the point of even talking about it if I can’t open their eyes or change their minds?

One friend, who was having an affair with a married man, like I did, came to me in hopeful bliss. She talked about how her marriage had been dead for a while and told me about all her future plans with this new lover.

I desperately wanted to save her from the heartache I knew was in store for her. I assured her she would just end up alone and even more heartbroken.

“I’ve been there and done this, please believe me. Please use my experience as your lesson: This doesn’t work out for you, you don’t win, you do not get the guy. The married man never actually leaves his wife, no matter how many times he promises to.” I continued, “I get it. I know it feels good and right and blissful, like the most exciting thing in the world! But the aftermath, the amount of hurt and shame and regret that you will live with for years, is NOT worth it.”

Of course she didn’t listen.

She continued head-first into the affair, and when the guy continually made excuse after excuse for why he wasn’t leaving his wife “yet”, she eventually ended up with her heart broken.

So this is why I’m so torn, because I know I can’t stop the people in that place, on that brink, and it feels useless to even try. Why even bother?

You simply can’t know that it’s not worth it until you’ve experienced it for yourself.

Like trying to warn a toddler, “Don’t touch, it’s hot!” Does any toddler ever actually listen to that? (I’m not a parent, so I don’t know) But I feel like the answer is “No”. They have to touch it for themselves and get burned at least once, before they will learn and never do it again.

What’s more, I don’t even know what advice or consolation to offer you if you’re in that dark, lonely, hurting place in your marriage, because my marriage did not have a happy ending. We got a divorce. I am remarried to a totally different man.

I can recommend incredible marriage books and resources that could help you, but I only used these things as weapons against my first husband, they were not helpful for us.

I could tell you to seek marriage counseling, because I’m a big advocate for therapy, but, my ex-husband and I went to a year of marriage counseling and we still ended up divorced. So that’s not the silver bullet solution either.

Sometimes the idea of trying to help just feels overwhelming to me, like a lost cause. I just want to hug you and whisper to you, “I get it,” while you cry.

What I can tell you is that I am a completely different person now. I still deal with a lot of the same frustrations and issues in my second marriage that I did in my first marriage, but my perspective on them, on my husband, and on marriage in general, is entirely different than it was 10 years ago.

Before saying “I do” the second time around, I discovered I had an entire brain full of unhealthy expectations of what I “should” be getting from marriage and a marriage partner, and once I dumped those out and replaced them with right, healthy expectations, marriage got a whole lot easier for me. (And would be, no matter who I was married to.)

You see, no one human being is ever going to make you happy or fix your pain and problems. (Even though that’s the bill of goods you’ve been sold your whole life.)

It’s an impossibility. That’s not even what marriage is for or about. And once you stop looking to a person to do that for you, marriage becomes much simpler and enjoyable. Once you find a way to fill that emptiness outside of a human being, your disappointment in them dissipates. (Spoiler alert: I found out I could only be truly fulfilled through my relationship with God.)

There’s a lot more to this conversation, and there’s not enough room in this blog post for it. The entire 7th chapter of my book, “Now What?” is dedicated to everything I learned on my journey to remarriage. I recommend you grab a copy and flip to there if you are having, or have had an affair, or, you find yourself in a place of bitterness, resentment or discontent in your marriage currently.

Having had an affair is not something I’m proud of, and is not particularly comfortable to talk about. But I have found talking about the messy parts of my life makes people with similar stories feel not alone and gives them permission to share the messy stuff in their lives.

So…I don’t know if this blog will keep another person from having an affair, or save a family, or save a marriage, but if it does then it will all be worth it.

And PS, I’m here if you need to talk.