What Feminine Empowerment Books Don’t Tell You

Leaving a marriage is never easy, not even when you’re justified in doing so. One of life’s hardest lessons is that there is a cost in doing wrong and a cost in doing right. In the real world, right and wrong are rarely clean lines. We are human, flawed, and messy, and divorce is the embodiment of all that mess.

Betrayal was at the center of my decision to leave, but the pain of infidelity forced me to face the fears of the unknown. If I left my marriage, what would be waiting for me? This was the question that kept me up at night, because I already knew the answer. A lot of struggle. A lot of suffering.

This is what the feminine empowerment books don’t tell you. Choosing to leave your husband, even one who is cheating on you, carries a cost. You might regain your dignity, but you may also lose your financial stability, companionship, comfortable routines, the family unit, your sense of belonging, even parts of your identity. The list goes on. What it means is that if a woman decides divorce is the best option, it is only because she cannot stand who she will become if she stays.

The truth is I wanted to save my marriage. Despite my anger at my husband’s deception and lies, I could still look back with fondness on parts of our life together. I remembered the good times, the laughter, the way we once approached life with a sense of adventure. But longing could not change his choices. I could not make him leave the other woman, choose me, and live a clean life, no matter how much I wanted it.

There’s a Bible story from Genesis 19 that used to confuse me. It’s the story of Lot’s wife. Sodom was set in a beautiful, lush valley. It was desirable land. But the land was only beautiful on the surface. Sodom was a wicked city, openly defiant to the goodness and order God had established. The author of Genesis describes an “outcry” rising from the city. God was not responding to people having a good time. He was responding to cries of anguish. Because sin by its very nature is not harmless, but exploitative. Sin thrives on the sacrifice of innocence. That was the true engine of Sodom and exactly why God chose to destroy it.

Lot and his family are told to flee and are given one clear command: don’t look back.

“But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.”

The narrator never tells us why she looked back. But the reason seems painfully human. Sodom was still home. It was familiar. It was where her life had been built. Turning away from it meant turning toward the unknown.

The symbolic significance is hard to miss. When darkness pervades our lives, we have to run from it. We may have to leave our belongings behind, our comforts, the lush land of Sodom for the dry plains ahead, but we cannot turn back and look longingly at what is destroying us.

If I had stayed in a marriage where my husband continued to cheat on me, I know it would have eaten me from the inside. Instead of facing what was broken, I would have tried to pacify it, ignore it, do anything to keep the surface of my life intact, even as the inside was rotting. It would have consumed me.

When I left, life was harder. I took a financial hit, an emotional hit, and I was incredibly lonely. Most would call it rock bottom. I didn’t really have a choice, but I did have the opportunity to rebuild my life on a different foundation. Now I see it as an incredible gift. Growth often looks like pain and grief, but there was opportunity in it, and I see that now.

My broken marriage left me with one strong foundational truth. Sin is not harmless, and softening sin is not a theology that brings us closer to God. My husband’s choices were hurtful and destructive, but they also opened the door for bitterness, anger, and resentment to take root in my own life if I wasn’t careful.

I credit my faith for helping me survive the difficult time of separation, divorce, and healing. I also credit my faith for helping me recognize what was dark and destructive in my own heart.

Because sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is refuse to keep looking back at a life that is slowly destroying them.

If this resonates with you, I write often about the quiet places where faith, truth, and real life collide.

You can read more here: The Peace That Wasn’t Peace

I also explore these same themes through the novels I write for women walking through hard seasons of faith, doubt, and rebuilding.