"My husband cheated on me and our marriage is better than ever. Read it again. A tough pill to swallow, I know. And the fact that our marriage is thriving is a real shock to me. What's happening to me is out of any script."

But here I was, 11 years into our marriage, and there was an infidelity. When I found out, it was a relief. For months before I made this discovery, I was falling apart as a person. 

I was losing sleep. I felt irritable. I would wake up with a pain in my chest. I even went to the doctor and had blood tests done to find the cause. Google on the other hand had led me to believe that it was either cancer or early Alzheimer's.  

So, when the lie was discovered, a weight was lifted from my shoulders, I calmed down. All the pain that tormented me was not an illness, it was my intuition.

And then again, I deviated from the classic script. I didn't yell at him. I didn't even raise my voice at him. I didn't even do any violent scenes.

Part of me knew that this man I had married was a really good person. Throwing away a decade and everything we had built just wasn't an option. We talked. We had the kind of conversations where you take your hearts out of your chest and put them in each other's hands. We had the crazy sex that people usually only experience in the early throes of love and passion. 

The hardest part, surprisingly, hasn't been repairing the marriage. Our marriage is wonderful. What I don't have now is the support of society. There is no invisible collective cheer when you reveal that there has been infidelity accompanied by reconciliation in your marriage.

What society doesn't accept is that this change has come after a lot of pain and uncertainty. There are no guidelines for those who want to "repair" relationships after infidelity, and there is no public support for this.

If my husband had died and had a body to bury, there would be prayers and condolences for me. But betrayal is a pain that has no physical form, and that makes it harder for others to understand because they don't see the process of change in a relationship.

People want to know, but they don't want to interfere. So, many people have a hard time understanding that my marriage is stronger now, because this is a story that has no place in society's norms.

Ultimately, the betrayal changed us, but it also made us reexamine what we had built, transforming our marriage into something stronger and more real than ever. It sounds harsh, but I am grateful for my husband's betrayal because it revitalized our marriage to levels I had never imagined before."

Note: The article has been adapted by the editorial team for editorial purposes and clarity. Copyright Anabel.al / Reprinting without the permission of the editorial team is prohibited.

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