What To Do When There’s Betrayal In Your Marriage

A big part of me wishes I didn’t have to write this post.  The inner workings of me and Jonathan’s marriage are tender and vulnerable, but we are both called to reveal what’s been going on in our marriage this year with an intimate group of people and share about the remarkable healing and transformation we went through as a result.

When Jonathan and I sat down to create the Modern Marriage curriculum after 5 years of diligent work on updating our marriage from the unspoken, outdated patterns we ran in our relationship, we already thought we’d been through the hardest years of our marriage, but we were wrong.

The core curriculum of Modern Marriage focuses on creating an equitable sharing of responsibilities, creating a romantic relationship, better communication and how to get both partners on the path of growth.  This foundational work healed so many wounds for us and made our marriage easier, more fun and truly connected.

We recorded that curriculum last April, the pandemic didn’t end as quickly as we expected, we pivoted our lives to start a school and it just never felt like the right time to release Modern Marriage.

And then one Saturday morning in September Jonathan made one off-handed comment that blew up my life. It was like a small cut that revealed a systemic, infectious, cancer in our relationship.  It forced me to question our whole 14 year relationship.

There’s nothing scarier than waking up in the life you built with someone and no longer being able to see a future.

I realized in that moment I could sweep his comment under the rug (as I had so many times before) or go all the way into the shadows. I knew that going into the darkness could swallow us whole and could risk me not being able to be with him anymore, but it was better than living on the surface and letting this disease fester.

Through the long nights, ugly fights and endless tears, we both had to come to terms with where we were out of alignment with our souls and how we were showing up for each other.  I hated admitting that I had played a role, I really wanted to make him the villain, but in a Modern Marriage, we are committed to owning our own shit.

But all through those dark months, I felt the energy of our marriage holding us.  You see, an outdated marriage makes couples feel trapped in a mediocre life so each partner just keeps sweeping things under the rug.  In a Modern Marriage, the marriage holds the soul connection so each person can fall apart.

A Modern Marriage is a container for growth while an outdated marriage is a jail cell keeping people stuck in mediocrity.

Now, 10 months later, we’ve never been happier, we’ve never been more attracted to each other, we’ve never had this much fun, or had this much TRUST. And I honestly didn’t think the pain was ever going to end, but it did, and that death birthed the most incredible marriage.

We’re not going to share what happened or what we did to heal to our larger community because it’s tender and private. Instead, we want to be in conversation with couples who really want to dig in and do the work (even if you’re resistant and scared).

We are going to teach a 90-minute workshop on Betrayal live (also recorded) to our inaugural Modern Marriage class.

It’s going to be very intimate, both of us will definitely cry! But marriage is hard and sacred work, and we aren’t going to gloss over the very real and painful betrayals that can happen.  We are also going to share the steps we took to heal and create a completely new and WAY better marriage.  We really wish we had someone who had been through this before to guide us, and we want to be those people for you.

To join our workshop for free, you just need to sign up for Modern Marriage before the price increases on June 28th (5pm ET).

Click here to enroll in Modern Marriage.

Love,

Sarah