Dear Reader,

August 21st, 2026

It’s been over a week since I’ve written anything, and honestly, I don’t really know anything encouraging to say right now.

I see every day how many people read my blog posts, and I know some of you are waiting for the next thing I’m going to say. Some are looking for the gossip. Some are wondering if I’m going to mention something about you. And some are simply looking for someone who understands what they’re going through.

The truth is, I’m just going to let God decide what I write about. And I’m not going to force it. I had a dream about infidelity last night, so maybe that’s what I’m being led to write about this week.

If you’ve followed my blog from the beginning, or if you know me personally, you know I’ve been married twice. The marriages were very different, but in a whole lot of ways, they were also painfully similar.

Infidelity was one of those similarities.

My first marriage was never loving or healthy. Infidelity entered the picture before we were even married, and it was never because of something I did. I was young. I thought I was making the right decisions. I believed in love, marriage, and building a life with someone.

Instead, I spent almost 12 years feeling like I was never chosen.

Imagine being married to someone but never truly feeling loved or cherished by them. Imagine constantly watching the person who is supposed to choose you chase after other people instead.

Off-and-on affairs, by my spouse, became a part of my life. And I spent years fighting for a marriage that I eventually became so bitter toward that even his presence could make my eyes roll. I’m not saying that was healthy or that I handled everything perfectly. I didn’t.

But I knew something.

I knew I wasn’t loved the way I deserved to be loved. I knew because of his choices. His actions. The repeated decisions he made.

And that is devastating.

It slowly killed the love I had for myself because I began to believe that if the person who was supposed to love me couldn’t choose me, then maybe I simply wasn’t worthy of being chosen. And no one ever made me believe otherwise.

When that marriage finally ended, I went searching for anything that felt like love. I was desperate to feel wanted. To feel chosen. To feel like I mattered to someone.

And guess what?

I ended up in another situation that felt like love in the beginning, only to find myself in many of the same emotional circumstances all over again.

Different man.

Same pain.

When other women become more important to your spouse, you start questioning everything about yourself.

Maybe she’s prettier.

Maybe she’s skinnier.

Maybe she’s more womanly.

Maybe she has something I don’t.

Maybe I’m not enough.

And when someone cheats on you repeatedly, they can somehow turn around and make you the problem for being hurt, angry, insecure, or suspicious.

That part has always been difficult for me to understand. And what has been even harder to understand is why women sometimes participate in that cruelty toward other women. Why do we tear each other down instead of protecting each other? Why do some women willingly pursue married men, knowing there is another woman on the other side of that decision who will be devastated?

I’ve experienced that more than once.

And I’ve learned something through all of it.

I didn’t pick the right men. I confused what I thought was love with what I desperately wanted love to be. I can take accountability for the people I chose. I can acknowledge the mistakes I made. I can look at the patterns in my own life and admit that I should have walked away sooner.

But taking accountability for my choices does not mean I deserved what happened to me.

I didn’t deserve the cheating. I didn’t deserve to be made to feel worthless. I didn’t deserve to have someone else’s choices become a reflection of my value. And I didn’t deserve to be blamed for the anger and hurt that came from being repeatedly betrayed.

Infidelity changes a woman.

It changes the way she sees herself. It changes the way she sees relationships. It changes the way she trusts. It can make her paranoid when she enters a new relationship, even when the person in front of her hasn’t done anything wrong. It can make her constantly search for signs that history is repeating itself.

Because once someone teaches you that love can coexist with betrayal, you start wondering when the betrayal will come again.

And that isn’t a fair trade.

You shouldn’t have to lose your peace because someone else refused to protect your heart.

You shouldn’t have to spend years rebuilding a version of yourself that someone else helped destroy.

And you shouldn’t have to convince yourself that you weren’t enough simply because someone else couldn’t be faithful.

Maybe that’s the lesson I’m finally learning.

Their inability to love me properly was never proof that I was unlovable.

Their decision to choose someone else was never proof that I wasn’t worth choosing.

And their betrayal was never a measurement of my worth.

I spent so long asking myself, “What was wrong with me?” I still ask myself this question today.

Maybe the better question is:

“Why did I keep believing that someone else’s inability to love me was evidence that I didn’t deserve to be loved?”

I don’t have all the answers yet.

But maybe I’m finally learning that being betrayed does not have to be the end of the story.

Maybe one day, I’ll be able to love without expecting betrayal.

Maybe one day, I’ll trust without being afraid.

And maybe one day, I’ll finally understand that I was always worth choosing—even when the people I chose refused to see it.

Love always,

Kelsey