The Deeper Love Podcast: For the Woman Healing After Betraying Someone She Loved

🌻This episode is taken from The Sanctuary - a private online community for women who’ve had an affair. Find out more and join today at https://www.alexcroxford.com/the-sanctuary 

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The part of you that feels like the worst person alive - the part that's been waiting for someone to confirm that yes, you deserve every moment of this - that's who this episode is for.

In this episode, Alex goes directly at one of the most urgent questions in the aftermath of an affair: whether suffering is the price you have to pay to become a good person again. 

She talks about the difference between real accountability and self-punishment, why punishment keeps you stuck rather than changed, and what it actually means to meet the part of you that acted out - not condemn her.

Listen to this when:

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Ready to go deeper?

If this resonated, and you’re ready to be supported in the real healing, the kind that shifts you at a soul + nervous system level, you’re so welcome inside The Sanctuary.

It’s where we soften the survival strategies, and make space for a new kind of love to land.🔗 Learn more about The Sanctuary at ⁠https://www.alexcroxford.com/the-sanctuary⁠ Instagram: @iamalexcroxfordWebsite: www.alexcroxford.com

🌻This episode is shared from The Sanctuary - a private online community for women who’ve had an affair. Find out more and join today at https://www.alexcroxford.com/the-sanctuary 

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It's the question that keeps so many women awake at night. Stay or go. Rebuild or walk away. And the more you turn it over in your mind, the more impossible it feels to answer.

This week's question is one I suspect many of you are carrying right now — and the honest truth is, I can't tell you what to do. But what I can tell you is why the answer isn't coming yet, and what actually needs to happen before it can.

In this conversation we explore:

This episode is not about choosing a direction. It's about finding the ground to stand on before you do.

If you are spinning in your head right now, searching for the answer outside of yourself - this one is for you.

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Ready to go deeper?

If this resonated, and you’re ready to be supported in the real healing, the kind that shifts you at a soul + nervous system level, you’re so welcome inside The Sanctuary.

It’s where we soften the survival strategies, and make space for a new kind of love to land.

🔗 Learn more about The Sanctuary at https://www.alexcroxford.com/the-sanctuary

Instagram: @iamalexcroxford

Website: www.alexcroxford.com

Nobody tells you how to have the conversations that come after an affair. The reveal is the biggest, followed by the questions that come after and the conversations that go round and round in circles and leave you both completely destroyed. The ones where you give every single detail, because you think that's what accountability looks like.

In this episode, I'm joined by Eve Stanway - psychotherapist, divorce coach, bestselling author, and one of the leading experts in difficult conversations. Eve has worked with couples, with men, with families - all navigating some of the hardest moments a relationship can go through. And she brings something to this conversation that I think is genuinely rare: real compassion for both people in the room, and a practical framework for how to actually navigate these conversations without destroying yourself or each other in the process.

We talk about what people get most wrong when they walk into the reveal conversation. Why the impulse to confess everything - to answer every question, share every detail - actually re-traumatises both people rather than helping. Why your needs and your partner's needs are in complete misalignment in those early conversations, and what to do about that. And Eve shares her five-step framework for structuring a difficult conversation - something I genuinely wish I'd had access to when I was in the middle of it.

We also get into the idea that affairs don't happen in relationships where there is healthy conflict, emotional intimacy, and both people are having their needs met. That the affair isn't the beginning of the problem. And that the invitation of all of this pain, if you're willing to accept it, is to finally start having the conversations that should have been happening all along.

This one is practical, honest, and full of things nobody else is saying out loud. I think you're going to want to listen to it more than once.

This week I had a reel go pretty much viral on Instagram. 424 shares, hundreds of saves, so many messages. And I think I know why.

Because I was saying something that almost nobody else in the infidelity space is saying.

The world is fixated on the moral judgement of people who cheat. And yes, there is real betrayal trauma. Yes, there has to be accountability - I am not dismissing any of that. But if we get completely lost in the moralistic conversation, we miss everything that this pain is actually inviting us into.

Because I believe that an affair is a portal, an initiation, a moment of pain so impossible to ignore that it finally cracks open all the ways you haven't been living true to yourself, maybe for your entire life.

That's what no one else is talking about. Everyone else in this space is focused on the affair and the affair partner. I go a layer deeper. Because that's where the real change lives.

In this episode I share six things I genuinely believe about infidelity that I don't hear anyone else saying out loud. Some of them will feel uncomfortable. Number six is the spiciest. But all six of them point to the same thing - that there is a way to feel the aliveness and freedom and being truly seen that you felt in the affair, without the chaos, without destroying your life, and without needing something outside of you to make you feel it.

That's what this work is. And that's why I'm here.

Resources mentioned:

• The Aftermath Survival Guide (free): your first step if you're right in the middle of it: https://www.alexcroxford.com/free-resources
• The Sanctuary: my private monthly community for women in the aftermath: alexcroxford.com/the-sanctuary
• The Healed Heart™: my six-month group programme for women ready to go to the root: https://www.alexcroxford.com/the-healed-heart
• 1:1 Coaching: fully personalised six-month work with me: https://www.alexcroxford.com/1-to-1-coaching

I was Googling at three o'clock in the morning how to forgive myself for cheating. And if only it had been as simple as Google giving me a list and then everything being right with the world. But it wasn't, and the truth is, self-forgiveness wasn't actually the thing that set me free.

That might be uncomfortable to hear, because right now, forgiveness is probably the thing you want most. You want to forgive yourself, you want your partner to forgive you, and then you want to be able to move on and get on with the rest of your life. I get it. I wanted exactly the same thing.

But here's what I know now: skipping from the pain of betrayal straight to forgiveness means missing the rich, brutal, beautiful journey of self-discovery that this pain is actually calling you towards. And in this episode I want to tell you what that journey actually looked like for me (including the moment I met a three-and-a-half-year-old version of me, standing in my nan's lounge, and realised I had been living my entire life from a story I made up in that moment)

This is the episode I wish someone had played me when I was in the pits of it.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why self-forgiveness isn't the goal, and what actually is
• What I mean when I say the affair is calling you home to yourself
• Why I thought I'd had a perfect childhood, and what happened when my coach pushed me to look closer
• The story of being three and a half years old, getting lost on the way to the park, and the decision my nervous system made in my nan's lounge that ran my entire life
• How that one moment created a survival strategy of perfectionism, needlessness, and putting everyone else first - and how that strategy led directly to the affair
• The difference between understanding a wound and actually healing it, and why going over it in your mind doesn’t work
• What inner child and parts work actually looks like in practice, and why it's different from anything psychotherapy has given you
• What happened as I started to meet those young parts of myself, the joy, the opening, the aliveness
• Why women coming through the Healed Heart ask me towards the end: is it bad that I don't feel the guilt and shame anymore?
• What thriving actually feels like, and why this pain is the invitation into it
• The first step I'd recommend if you're right in the middle of it right now

Resources mentioned:

• The Aftermath Survival Guide (free) — your first step: https://www.alexcroxford.com/free-resources
• The Sanctuary — my private monthly community for women in the aftermath: https://www.alexcroxford.com/the-sanctuary
• 1:1 Coaching — fully personalised six-month work with me: https://www.alexcroxford.com/1-to-1-coaching

Once a cheat, always a cheat.

If you've been unfaithful, that sentence is probably going around and around in your head. Maybe you're asking it about yourself. Maybe someone else has said it to you. And I think rather than brushing it aside, we actually need to look at it. Because the truth is, and I'll be honest with you, in some cases, yes. If the pattern underneath the affair isn't addressed, it can happen again. And that's exactly what I want to talk about in this episode.

Because I had cheated on every single partner I had before my marriage. And when I first had to face that in a coaching session, I was mortified. I considered myself a good girl. I had morals. I judged people who cheated. And yet there it was staring at me in black and white.

So this episode is about why. Not the surface-level why - not "I was lonely" or "we'd grown apart." The real why. The pattern underneath. The part of us that is performing a version of herself she thinks is lovable, suppressing everything she actually needs, feeling dead inside, and then finding in an affair the first moment in years that she finally feels alive.

And more importantly, what it actually takes to break that pattern for good. Because understanding it isn't enough, and this is where so many women get stuck.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why "once a cheat, always a cheat" deserves a real answer
• Why I cheated on every partner before my marriage and what I had to face about myself
• How we can't see the pattern we're inside until someone helps us take them off
• What performing the "perfect" version of yourself actually creates inside a relationship , and why it leads to feeling dead inside
• Why the affair partner feels like finally being met, and what that feeling is really about
• The difference between understanding a wound and actually healing it, and why this is where most women get stuck
• Why traditional therapy can give you insight but not always transformation
• The young, wounded parts running the show in our adult relationships, and what it means to finally meet them
• What changes when the pattern actually heals - what I notice in myself now that tells me I'm different
• The real answer to the question: no, once a cheat is not always a cheat, but only if you're willing to go to the level where the change actually lives

If this episode landed

If you recognised yourself in the performing. In the deadness. In the part of you that finally felt alive in the affair and couldn't understand why.

If you've been in therapy for years, you understand your patterns, and you're still scared you'll do it again.

The Sanctuary is my private community for women in the aftermath of an affair, where understanding the pattern starts to become breaking it. With me, and with a room full of women who are carrying exactly what you're carrying.

You don't have to figure this out alone.

Click here to find out more about The Sanctuary

The year after I told my then-husband I'd been unfaithful to him was the hardest year of my life. I pray to God I never experience a year harder than that.

I don't think anyone talks about that year enough, because the moment the truth comes out feels like an explosion, but what comes after is total devastation. And it is so hard to navigate.

In this episode I'm going deep into that year - The couples therapy on Zoom, the conversations we kept having that we didn’t realise were just re-traumatising us both. Moving out into my mum's little cottage in the middle of COVID, curled up on the sofa, crying every single day, barely able to think straight.

I share the two things I genuinely regret about how I handled that period and what I now understand about what actually helps repair and what doesn't. The moment I actually asked for something I needed, and was absolutely petrified he'd say no. How I eventually knew it was over, and why, even in the terror of walking away from everything I'd built, I chose to trust there was something on the other side.

If you're in the repair phase right now, this one is for you.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why the year after I told him was the hardest year of my life, and what made it so
• The conversations we kept having on repeat that were re-traumatising us both, and why I couldn't stop
• What the couples therapist told us to do, why it made complete sense, and why it was almost impossible to actually do
• Why I kept giving him every detail he asked for, and what I now understand about what actually helps repair and what doesn't
• The two things I genuinely regret about how I handled that period
• What it felt like to move back in during the second lockdown, and realise almost immediately it was too soon
• Losing two of my closest friends in the same period, and the true isolation of that
• The moment I asked for something I needed for the first time, and what happened when I did
• How I eventually knew it was over
• Why, even in the terror of walking away from everything I'd built, I chose to trust there was something on the other side

If this episode landed

If you're in it right now. If you're having the same conversations on repeat. If you feel like you have to sit through everything because you're the one who caused this. If you're so lost you can't see the end of your own nose.

The Sanctuary is the space I wish had existed when I was going through what you're going through right now. A private community for women in the aftermath of an affair, where you don't have to do this alone, don't have to perform fine, and don't have to have it figured out before you walk in.

The door is open.

Click here to find out more about The Sanctuary

Seven years ago, I would have rolled my eyes at everything in this episode.

I thought crystals were bollocks. I thought energy healing was bollocks. I thought past lives were definitely bollocks. I was a rational, logical, practical TV executive, and nobody could have convinced me otherwise.

And then my life imploded, and I got desperate. And desperate women do things they never thought they'd do (like spend over £800 on a two-day retreat in a converted chapel in East London, covered in sage smoke and quartz crystals, surrounded by complete strangers).

And within about forty minutes, I was sobbing on a yoga mat, having never cried in front of a stranger in my life.

That was the beginning of something and I had no idea what. Something that would take years to understand, and that I still don't fully understand now. A spiritual awakening that wasn't rainbows and unicorns… it was bloody terrifying. A complete dissolution of everything I thought I was.

In this episode, I share all of it. The card that was pulled at that retreat - the goddess Kali, the beginning of the end. The synchronicities I couldn't explain. The ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon that broke me open and showed me things I still can't quite believe. The moment the plant told me that the fear I'd been carrying in my body wasn't even mine (it was my mother's). And the conversation with my mum, weeks later, that confirmed every word of it.

This isn't an episode that will tell you what to believe. It's an episode about what happens when the life you've controlled falls apart, and something else (something you didn't expect) starts to appear.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why I walked into that retreat as a complete sceptic, and left sobbing on a yoga mat, surrounded by strangers, for the first time in my life
• The Kali card, and why even without any spiritual belief, I knew in my body that it was true
• What a spiritual awakening actually feels like (spoiler: nothing like the Instagram version)
• The dark night of the soul - the terrifying in-between of who you were and who you're becoming
• Why I kept swinging between "maybe there's something more" and "Alex, you're being ridiculous"
• The ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon - what happened, what I heard, and why it broke me open in ways nothing else had
• The moment I was shown that the fear I'd been carrying in my body was ancestral, and what my mum said when I told her
• How I met Adam and why I believe, genuinely, that it was not a coincidence
• What it actually means to stop controlling and surrender - not as a spiritual concept, but as something you have to practise in real time, in real relationships
• The question that changed everything for me: what if your life isn't over? What if you're standing in the middle of a chapter, not the end of a book?

If this episode landed

If something in this episode cracked something open. If you've been white-knuckling your way through the aftermath, trying to think your way out, trying to control your way back to safety.

Sometimes we need to sit with other women who can see possibilities we can't yet see for ourselves. Women who have been in the middle of it and come out the other side. That's why The Sanctuary exists.

It's my private community for women in the aftermath of an affair. Not a programme. A room. A place where you don't have to tidy yourself up before you walk in.

The door is open.

Click here to find out more about The Sanctuary

I want to take you back to 2019. Sat in Homerton Hospital, in the fertility department with my then husband next to me. Signing the consent forms for IVF.

And the whole time, I was carrying the secret that I had been unfaithful to him.

That moment, I can see now, contained the whole story. Because I was sitting there trying to create life whilst being completely disconnected from my own.

The irregular periods, the fertility struggles, the rage at my own body for not doing what I needed it to do - I thought that was the problem. I thought my body was failing me. But what I understand now is that my body wasn't failing me at all. It was trying to get my attention. It had been trying to get my attention for years.

The affair wasn't the first sign something was wrong - It was just the loudest one.

In this episode, I share what was really going on underneath the high-achieving, always-pushing, never-needing version of me that walked into that hospital. The woman who went to IVF appointments alone because asking for support felt weak. Who was so disconnected from her own emotions that she didn't even know she was carrying grief. Whose body was screaming, and who had no idea how to listen.

And I share what happened when I finally did.

In this episode, we explore:

• The moment in Homerton Hospital that I can now see contained the whole story
• Why the woman who can fix anything - organise a crew to the North Pole in three days (!) - couldn't fix her own menstrual cycle, and what that was really about
• How living almost entirely in masculine energy showed up in my body, my relationships, and eventually, the affair
• Why I went to IVF appointments alone, and what I now know that version of me actually needed
• The connection between emotional numbness and fertility struggles that nobody was telling me about
• What it means that my cycle became regular after eight months of deep emotional work, and why I'm more fertile at 43 than I was at 34
• How the affair, the infertility, the exhaustion - none of it was the beginning. All of it was the body sending the same message, louder and louder
• The question I never once stopped to ask myself: how am I actually doing?
• What it feels like to stop trying to force and control, and surrender instead

If this episode landed

If you recognised yourself in the pushing. In the never slowing down. In the part of you that had built an entire identity out of being the one who didn't need anything - until something cracked open and demanded to be heard.

The Sanctuary is my private, ongoing community for women in the aftermath of an affair. Not a programme. A room of women, carrying what you're carrying, where you get to be completely honest, to say what's actually happening and to begin to listen to yourself again, surrounded by women who just get it.

Because after my affair, as I started this, there was nowhere for me to take any of this. I built The Sanctuary because that place needs to exist.

Click here to find out more about The Sanctuary

Everyone talks about the moment the affair comes out.

Nobody talks about what happens next.

In this episode, I'm going inside the year that broke me far more than the affair itself - the year I spent trying to repair, trying to make it right, and completely disappearing in the process.

Because here's what I know now that I didn't know then: telling the truth was not the lowest point. The lowest point was the twelve months that followed, when I gave him everything - every answer, every conversation, every piece of my nervous system - because I had decided, in the moment I saw his devastation, that I owed him all of me.

I thought absorbing his pain was the same as taking accountability.

It wasn't, it was self-abandonment but it just looked different. And it was more painful than anything that had come before it.

In this episode, I share what I wish someone had told me: there is a difference between listening to how you've hurt someone, and using their pain to punish yourself. And if you don't know that line exists, you will cross it again and again without ever knowing you're doing it.

If you're in the repair phase right now - trying to hold it all together, trying to make it right, shrinking yourself around his moods - this episode is for you.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why the year after the affair broke me more than the affair itself
• The unconscious decision I made the moment I saw his devastation, and how it cost me everything
• Why I thought absorbing his pain was the same as accountability (and why it wasn't)
• The difference between being answerable for what you did, and using someone's hurt to punish yourself
• Why those two-hour crying sessions on the sofa were re-traumatising us both, and what we actually needed instead
• How self-abandonment continued (and amplified) in the repair phase, and I didn’t have a clue
• Why the shame of the affair made me believe I had no right to need anything at all
• The sneaky thing about self-abandonment: it doesn't announce itself. It just feels like being a good person.
• The one question to ask yourself if you're in the repair phase right now

If this episode landed

If you recognised yourself in the shrinking. In answering every question at whatever cost to yourself. In the part of you that believes you have to earn your way back to being allowed to need something. I see you, and I know how hard this is to navigate alone.

The reason I built The Sanctuary is because when I was in the midst of the aftermath, I longed for a safe place to go where I wouldn’t be judged, and I could heal with other women who understood the pain I was in.

The Sanctuary is my private, ongoing community for women in the aftermath of an affair. Join today and have immediate access to the sisterhood.

You don't have to keep doing this alone.

Click here to find out more about The Sanctuary