SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I was packing up one of my bookshelves last night and came across a title I had almost forgotten about. When I mentioned it here years ago, it didn’t get much traction, but flipping through it again stopped me in my tracks. I found my old highlights, the paragraphs I lingered over, the pages I folded down because something in them hit me hard at the time. It reminded me why this book mattered so much in my own rebuilding, and I thought it might be worth reintroducing it now.

I read it more than ten years ago, at a time when my life felt like it had been split open. I was freshly out of my affair, standing in the wreckage of what I had done, trying to rebuild something with my BH while also trying to understand myself. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I didn’t know how I had become someone capable of causing that kind of pain. I didn’t know how to move forward without repeating the same patterns.

I didn’t know what I was looking for when I wandered into the self-help section at my local Half Priced Books. I was just standing there raw, ashamed, terrified, but determined, scanning spines without any real direction. I came across How Could You Do That?! The Abdication of Character, Courage, and Conscience by Laura Schlessinger. It wasn’t a book about infidelity specifically. It didn’t give me steps or scripts or marriage advice. It didn’t tell me how to comfort my spouse or how to rebuild trust. It didn’t tell me how to stop the bleeding.

It told me the truth.

And it told it in a way that I couldn’t wiggle out of, rationalize, or soften.

Most WS know the two big books, How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair and Not Just Friends. They’re essential. They teach us how to show up, how to behave, how to rebuild boundaries, how to prevent future vulnerability. They’re about the relationship, the damage done, the repair required, the steps forward.

But How Could You Do That?! is about the part of infidelity that almost no book touches, the internal collapse that made the betrayal possible in the first place.

It’s about character, not the shiny parts you show the world, but the quiet parts you abandoned long before the affair. It’s about conscience, the voice you ignored until it went silent. It’s about courage, the kind you didn’t use when you needed it most.

This book doesn’t ask, "Why did you cheat?" It asks, "Where did you stop being yourself?"

And that question matters.

Because infidelity doesn’t begin with a kiss or a message or a moment of weakness. It begins with a slow erosion of your own integrity, tiny moral compromises, small avoidances, quiet rationalizations. The book calls this abdication, the surrender of your own character. Not to another person. Not to temptation. But to your own fear, insecurity, or emotional avoidance.

Reading it felt like someone finally turned the mirror around.

Not to shame me.
To wake me up.

It helped me understand that I didn’t cheat because I was broken or unloved or misunderstood. I cheated because I abandoned my own courage. I cheated because I stopped listening to my conscience. I cheated because I let my character slip into autopilot and then pretended not to notice.

This book doesn’t let you hide behind "I didn’t mean to" or "I was confused" or "I didn’t know how to stop." It doesn’t let you blame your marriage or your childhood or your stress. It doesn’t let you soften the truth.

It says, You made choices. Now understand them.

And that’s why it belongs beside How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair and Not Just Friends. Those books teach you how to repair the relationship. This one teaches you how to repair the person who broke it.

It fills a gap that waywards desperately need, the internal work, the character work, the moral work. The part that determines whether you truly change or simply comply. The part that determines whether you become someone trustworthy again or someone who just behaves better for a while.

When I read it, I was trying so hard to rebuild my marriage, but the truth is, I needed to rebuild myself first. I didn’t know that at the time. I thought the work was all external, transparency, boundaries, honesty, repair. But this book made me stop and look inward in a way I had been avoiding. It helped me see not just what I did, but who I had slowly become in the years and choices leading up to the affair. And it showed me who I needed to grow into if I ever wanted to be someone trustworthy again.

It's and oldie but goodie.

Thanks foreverlabeled, I will give the book a go.

After a good breakthrough in IC, I have been stalling for a few weeks now. I have been doing a poor job at healing as well as reconciling in this past couple of weeks (although all my attention and energy are towards my M).

Thank you, and I hope you are well

Hey LG! I'm well, thank you.

I’ve noticed that after a breakthrough, things can get shaken loose in ways you don’t expect. Sometimes that creates a stall, and it really doesn’t mean you’re failing. It usually means something big shifted and your system is trying to catch up. The important part is that you’re aware of it and still pointed toward healing and reconciling, even if the last couple of weeks haven’t felt like your best work. It’s okay to stop and rest. I like to call it "integrating."

Honestly, this book might give you the pep you need. It’s not a feel-good read, it’s more of an "oh shit, I need to get my act together" read. Lol. But in the best way. I’d really love to hear your thoughts on it down the road.

Foreverlabeled,

I have so many questions. I truly don't mean to be argumentative, and I hope that's not how this comes across.

What if "stop being yourself" isn't always the right question?

What if some people have spent most of their lives being good, useful, caring, and self-sacrificing? Not as a performance or because they were pretending to be someone they weren't, but because that genuinely became who they were. What if there wasn't an identifiable moment when they abandoned their character because that way of being had become so deeply ingrained that it simply felt like character?

And what if their conscience never went silent? What if they heard it clearly and simply chose something they wanted more than they valued obeying it?

What if you didn't "stop being yourself" long before the affair because there was no clear distinction between who you were and who you had learned to be?

What if the work isn't finding where you stopped being yourself, but discovering who you are when you finally have the opportunity to choose?

NotMyIdentity I know your questions are for FL, but I hope you don’t mind me chipping in.

Several points you raised are also part of "the work" I am doing.

I don’t think there is only "one question" to address, a "fit-for-all" path etc..

If you feel the points you raised are important for your work, to understand better what went on with your situation (at a deeper level), you should address them I think.

It’s not "either this or that".

I appreciate you chiming in, LG. I think I'm asking something a little different, though.
I'm not really suggesting these questions should simply be added to "the work." I'm questioning the premise underneath them.

What if "where did I stop being myself?" isn't the right question at all? What if someone developed in childhood along a particular path, without much opportunity to explore who they might be because doing so wasn't safe or was met with punishment? What if those ways of being became so deeply ingrained that they simply felt like normal, like who they were, rather than something they had consciously chosen?

And what if their conscience didn't go silent? What if they understood the conflict and still made choices that went against values they genuinely held?

I'm not arguing that FL's framework wasn't useful for her. I'm questioning the leap from "this was the work I needed" to "this is the work waywards need."

NMI, I actually think we may be closer in perspective than it initially sounds, because I agree with a lot of what you are challenging.

I don't think "where did you stop being yourself?" is necessarily the right question for every wayward. And honestly, when I look at my own story, it isn't quite the right question for me either.

I grew up with survival mode switched on so early that I had no idea it had happened.

How was I supposed to know I was living from survival when I had been living that way for as long as I could remember? I didn't have the language for it. More importantly, I didn't have the knowledge. I didn't know there was another way to exist.

I left home at 16. Well into my 20s, I was still operating from that same survival system. I was making choices based on fear, insecurity, people-pleasing, emotional avoidance, the need for approval, and the desperate need to feel safe and in control. And because that was normal to me, I experienced a lot of it as simply "who I was."

So when I ask myself, did I ever really know myself?

Probably not.

I didn't have some fully formed authentic self that I knew intimately and then abandoned somewhere along the way.

A huge part of my work after my affair was actually discovering who I was underneath everything and everyone that had shaped me. I had to learn the difference between who I actually was and who I had learned to be in order to survive.

And ironically, it took blowing up my entire world for me to see that.

The affair and its aftermath forced me to confront things about myself that I had been completely unaware of. And as devastating as that was, it became the doorway out of survival mode for me. Not because the affair was somehow necessary or beneficial, but because the consequences finally made it impossible for me to continue living unconsciously.

That said, I don't think any of this removes responsibility.

This is where I think the distinction matters.

Just because I didn't know my authentic self doesn't mean I didn't know right from wrong.

I did.

I had values. Maybe some of them were inherited. Maybe some of them were shaped by my environment. Maybe I was still figuring out which ones were actually mine. But I had an understanding of loyalty, honesty, integrity, love, and what I believed I should be doing.

And I think this is where your question about conscience gets interesting for me.

My conscience wasn't necessarily absent. I wasn't walking around with absolutely no idea that certain choices were wrong.

But I also wasn't this fully self-aware person making decisions from a deeply grounded, authentic sense of self.

I was a person who had spent most of her life responding to fear, insecurity, unmet needs, avoidance, and whatever seemed necessary in the moment to regulate herself.

That doesn't excuse anything.

It explains the landscape in which my choices were made.

And I actually think that is where the "micro and macro" piece becomes important.

I didn't suddenly betray myself when I had an affair.

I had been betraying myself in smaller ways for years.

Every time I ignored my own boundaries. Every time I abandoned my own needs. Every time I chose approval over authenticity. Every time I knew something didn't feel right and talked myself out of it. Every time I allowed fear to make a decision for me. Every time I shaped myself around what someone else needed me to be.

Those were all little acts of self-abandonment.

Some were conscious. Some weren't.

And eventually, those patterns mattered.

So I actually agree with you that there may not be one identifiable moment where someone "stopped being themselves." For some people, there may never have been a clearly defined authentic self to return to.

That was much closer to my experience.

But I also don't think that means there was no self to betray.

I think there was a developing sense of right and wrong. There were values. There was a conscience. There were moments of knowing. There was agency.

And there were also years of conditioning that made it incredibly difficult for me to recognize myself beneath the conditioning.

That's why I don't see the work as simply "finding where I stopped being myself."

For me, the work became something much bigger.

It was learning who I actually am.

Learning what I genuinely value.

Learning what belongs to me and what I inherited.

Learning how fear had been making decisions for me.

Learning how to tolerate discomfort without immediately trying to escape it.

Learning how to listen to myself without turning every feeling into a justification.

And learning how to make choices that align with my values even when those choices are uncomfortable.

That is also why Laura's book was so important to me.

I don't see it as the one framework that explains every wayward or the one piece of work everyone needs to do in exactly the same way. I don't think any book can do that.

For me, it was important because I was very capable of explaining myself.

I had reasons.

I had history.

I had wounds.

I had survival patterns.

I had insecurities.

And all of those things were real.

But I needed something that would not allow me to use any of those truths to escape the most uncomfortable truth of all:

I still made choices.

And some of those choices hurt someone who trusted me.

That was the part I needed to own.

So I don't think our perspectives are necessarily in opposition.

I think you're asking whether "where did I stop being myself?" should be treated as a universal question for waywards.

I wouldn't argue that it should.

My own experience actually demonstrates why it shouldn't.

I didn't need to find my way back to some version of myself that existed before all the conditioning.

I needed to discover myself for the first time.

And at the same time, I needed to take radical ownership of the ways I had betrayed myself and others long before I had the language to understand why I was doing it.

For me, those two things had to happen together.

Understanding why I became who I became was necessary.

But it couldn't become an excuse for what I chose to do.

And discovering who I actually am couldn't become an excuse either.

At some point, I still have to choose.

That, to me, is where the work ultimately lands.

Not simply in finding the person I was.

Not simply in understanding the person I became.

But in consciously deciding who I am going to be now, and then having the courage to live in alignment with that person.

I would encourage you to check the book out. You might learn something new about yourself.

FL, I think I’m understanding your position better, and I agree there’s a lot of overlap in what we’re saying. I hear you saying that for you, the work wasn’t simply finding where you stopped being yourself. It was discovering parts of yourself for the first time, understanding the survival patterns you had lived from, and still holding yourself fully responsible for the choices you made. I think that distinction matters.

What I keep wondering about, though, is Person B.

They grow up believing that being good means being kind, sacrificial, useful, and putting others first. They don’t experience that as self-abandonment because it feels like morality. They aren’t seeking validation, feeling entitled, testing boundaries, or consciously building toward an affair.

They develop an ordinary friendship, do ordinary friendship things, and then realize their feelings have changed. Not because they were secretly building toward an affair, but because they hadn’t even recognized those feelings as something to examine until they became conscious.

Then comes the choice.

They can still do all the work afterward—find the wounds, understand the patterns, and change things that genuinely need changing. That work may absolutely make them healthier and change future choices.

But what if those wounds shaped the person who arrived at that moment without actually being what forged the path to the affair? What if they never recognize that distinction?

That’s where I wonder about false closure. We can find something very real about ourselves, something that genuinely needs work, and still not have found the explanation for this affair.

I think part of what makes me wonder about this is how much affair literature encourages us to dig deeper and look to the past. I understand why, and I think that work can be incredibly valuable. I just wonder if we sometimes give the past more explanatory weight than it deserves.

Maybe there really is a slippery slope. But what if there isn’t? What if the more important work is understanding what was happening in the present—the feelings, when they became conscious, the choices that followed, and why those choices were made?

And I wonder if we’re sometimes hesitant to examine the present because we’re afraid it becomes blame-shifting. But acknowledging that present circumstances had influence isn’t the same as blaming them.

Maybe both things can be true: the past shapes who we are and how we make choices, while the present circumstances and choices still need to be understood on their own terms.

The past shapes the person who arrives at the moment of choice, but it doesn’t necessarily explain the choice itself.

I guess that’s the piece I’m still curious about: could we sometimes send waywards digging backward for an explanation when the more useful questions are actually in the present?

*** I just finished the first chapter 😊

[This message edited by NotMyIdentity at 12:01 AM, Sunday, August 16th]

Apologies, I don’t mean to thread jack. Your post simply got me thinking in a new direction.

The past shapes the person who arrives at the moment of choice, but it doesn’t necessarily explain the choice itself.

I agree. But we need to take it further. Because I don't think the present completes the story either.

(bear with me lol)

I didn't spend a lot of time digging into the "whys" the way it is often recommended here. Without much effort I already had a pretty clear idea of why I cheated. Selfish cake eater. Scared to leave the perceived safety of my home. Even if i didn't have the language for it yet I also innately understood the lack of character,  vulnerabilities, shit coping mechs. Instead of circling those reasons over and over, I looked at who I was in the moment (not great) and who I wanted my future self to be. And that became the bulk of my work.

There was a quote I found in my research to becoming a more whole person, I wrote it out and taped to my mirror "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." ​I believe in that wholeheartedly.

There is value in understanding how our past shapes us, but there is also a fine line between using past trauma to understand vulnerability and using it as an escape hatch to avoid facing our choices. Where looking to the past was most helpful for me was understanding the survival mode I lived in, untangling my codependency, and recognizing how much of my early identity was shaped by staying small and staying safe.

It is exactly what helped the most in building the new. The self-examination was tough. I had to be honest with myself in ways I never had before. I had to dismantle 27 years of a self I never poured into. I had to undo programs and beliefs that never belonged to me while actively rewiring my brain. It is hard work. But necessary.

On the other side, treating the affair like a spontaneous present-moment anomaly has its own problems. I can see how that framing might fit a ONS, but it does not hold up for most situations.

There will always be hesitation to look at present circumstances, and that makes sense to me. In affair recovery, focusing too much on what was happening in the present almost always turns into blame-shifting. Marital stress, emotional disconnect, workplace chemistry. All of it becomes a way to explain the choice instead of owning it. Present factors can give context, but they are also not the cause.

( And I would caution Person B that framing the affair as waking up one day with sudden feelings risks treating infidelity like a natural disaster that hit out of nowhere. It ignores the tiny, unexamined micro-steps that always come first. Lingering over conversations. Sharing private emotional details. Quiet mental comparisons. Romantic feelings do not appear without a trail.)

The difference between an explanation and an origin story is one of the most frustrating paradoxes in affair recovery.

If the past only supplies the vulnerability and the present only supplies the pressure, then digging through the past or analyzing your circumstances will never reveal the whole truth. Permission comes from the internal structure we carry, not from the environment we came from or are standing in. Permission did not happen to me. Permission did not happen to you. Permission was something we granted.

Moving forward, the work shifts from trying to explain why the collapse happened to actively rebuilding the internal structure so that permission can never be granted again. Locating permission inside yourself forces the realization that, no matter how wounded or pressured you were, your internal agency was active. You were not a passive victim of your conditioning. You were the author of the green light.

This is where I land. The past shaped me. The present pressured me. But the permission came from me. And the work now is making sure it never does again.