What Feminine Empowerment Books Don’t Tell You

Leaving was Right. It Still Cost Me Everything

My marriage ended because my husband had an affair. He refused to stop. I had no choice but to leave him. It was what everyone told me to do. It was the right thing to do.

But… that didn’t mean I was entitled to a happy ending.

I remember walking through my house, an apparition of my former self. With each creak of the floorboards, my back tightened into painful knots. When I disciplined the kids or set boundaries, my voice felt tremulous and weak, a wisp of warm breath in cold air. The walls were quiet. There was no one to back me up.

At night, I missed his presence, the soft, steady breathing that had quietly anchored me into sleep. I missed having a husband.

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, messy—and divorce is the embodiment of 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?

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 this: if a woman decides divorce is the best option, it is only because she cannot stand who she will become if she stays.