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

Six and a half years ago, I was carrying a secret that felt absolutely terrifying to say out loud.

I was so scared that anyone would find out about my affair - I felt ashamed, sick with guilt, hiding behind the version of me that looked “fine.”

Today, that same story has been printed across a double-page spread in The Daily Mail.

And it proves to me, once and for all, that shame no longer runs my life.

In this episode, I share what it took to move from silence to self-acceptance - the texts, the trembling honesty, the waves of liberation that come each time we tell the truth.

I talk about the fear of exposure, the moment I told my ex-husband, and why vulnerability became my doorway to freedom.

If you’ve ever felt trapped in guilt or terrified of being seen in your truth after an affair, this conversation is for you.

You’ll hear what healing actually looks like on the other side of secrecy - messy, human, and deeply freeing.

 In this episode

• The moment I stopped letting shame define me

• How honesty became my path to liberation

• What happened when my story went public

• Why exposure doesn’t destroy you - hiding does

• The truth about healing guilt after betrayal
  

🤍 Join me inside The Softening Sessions

If you’re ready to release the weight in your chest and be witnessed in safety, join my bi-weekly circle for women healing after infidelity.

You don’t have to share your story, just come, breathe, and be held.

Sign up here → The Softening Sessions

🔗 Connect

Instagram | @iamalexcroxford

Website | www.alexcroxford.com

When I cheated on my husband, I didn’t just lose him, I lost my friends too.

For years, those friendships had felt like family. We spent birthdays, weddings, holidays together - I thought they’d be there for life. But when my marriage ended, it all changed. Some drifted. Others ended overnight. And the loneliness that followed was unlike anything I’d ever felt.

In this episode, I talk about what really happens when the friendships you thought were forever can’t survive your awakening. How shame shapes connection. Why longevity doesn’t equal intimacy. And how, through the ashes of everything I lost, I found women who could meet me in my truth, and love me there.

If you’re standing in the wreckage of your old life, wondering who’s left, this one’s for you. You’re not alone, and this isn’t the end of your story.

💔 What’s in this episode:

• The grief of losing friendships after betrayal

• Why some people can’t come with you after awakening

• The myth of “forever friends” and what true intimacy means

• How new, soul-aligned friendships begin to form

• Finding belonging again after everything falls apart
  

🕯 Come to the next Softening Session — live community ritual and practice to reconnect to your heart. 👉 https://www.alexcroxford.com/softening-sessions

🤍 Connect on Instagram: @iamalexcroxford 🌐 Website: www.alexcroxford.com

This week I had the pleasure of meeting Kristina Joy - a devoted Christian wife and mother, until the secret she carried for seven years forced her to face everything she believed about love, faith, and herself.

In this conversation, Kristina shares the story she once swore she’d never say out loud, the affair that became both her deepest shame and her greatest awakening.

We speak about the loneliness that hides inside “goodness,” the pressure to be the perfect woman, and how religious conditioning can separate us from our own desires. We explore what happens when your body remembers what your beliefs taught you to forget, and how honesty, rather than punishment, becomes the way home.

If you’ve ever whispered “I can’t believe I did this,” this episode will remind you that you are not alone, and that your past is not your downfall, it’s your portal home.

In this episode we explore:

• The emotional disconnection that began long before the affair

• How silence and shame keep women living double lives

• The “good girl” mask and the repression of desire

• Confession, forgiveness, and finding safety in truth

• Why honesty, not morality, is what heals
  

Resources & Links:

Kristina Joy is a Christian coach and host of the Intimacy After Infidelity podcast. Once trapped in cycles of shame and self-sabotage, she experienced deep healing and freedom and now empowers other women to do the same. Her work helps women cut the cord to the past, move forward in confidence, and find joy beyond what they thought was possible.

• Learn more at:  www.kristinajoycoaching.com 

• Follow Kristina on Instagram: @kristinajoycoaching 

✨ If this episode speaks to you and you want to explore these patterns in a safe, guided space, join me for the next Softening Session – a 90-minute healing circle for women navigating the shame and confusion after infidelity: www.alexcroxford.com/softening-sessions

 📲 Instagram: @iamalexcroxford

 🌐 Website: www.alexcroxford.com

Ep 11 — The Phoenix Rising: When the Affair Becomes Your Awakening

We think the affair is the end.

The end of love.The end of trust.The end of who we thought we were.

But what if it’s not the end at all?

What if it’s the moment you finally wake up?

Before my affair, I was sleepwalking through life.

On the treadmill of doing everything “right” - the job, the marriage, the house, the plan.

Smiling. Performing. Holding it all together.

But underneath, I was empty. Numb.

Disconnected from what I truly wanted.

The affair shattered that illusion.

It forced me to face everything I’d been avoiding

my exhaustion, my silence, my needs, my truth.

It burned down the version of me who survived by pretending.

In this episode, I talk about:

• Why affairs often happen as a wake-up call from the life you’ve been asleep in.

• What “collapse” really is — and why it’s the beginning, not the end.

• How your soul uses chaos to bring you back to truth.

• The moment I stopped trying to rebuild the old life and started to rise from the ashes.
  

If you’re in that place now, where everything feels like it’s burning,

please know you’re not losing your life.

You’re losing the illusion.

And underneath it is your return.

💌 Join the next Softening Session - a live space where we hold what’s collapsing, let go of who you’ve been, and begin the return home to yourself.

Join here: Softening Sessions

Ep 10 - You Can’t Heal What You’re Still Hiding From Yourself

There’s the version of you everyone sees.

Smiling. Functioning. Saying you’re fine.

And then there’s the version of you no one sees.

Carrying the secret.

Numb. Anxious. Afraid of what would happen if the truth ever got out.

I know that version well — because I lived her.

After my affair, I didn’t collapse on the outside.

I became “better.” More successful. More accommodating. More perfect.

But the whole time, I was hiding. Not just from my husband. From myself.

In this episode, I talk about:

• Why pretending to be fine keeps your nervous system frozen.

• How “performing healing” stops you from actually healing.

• The truth about what happens when you hide even from yourself.

• Why the part of you who cheated doesn’t need judgment — she needs space to speak.
  

This is the episode I needed years ago, when I was still carrying the secret that almost ate me alive.

✨ Listen in if you’ve been holding something inside — whether it’s the affair, or another truth you’ve never let yourself fully feel.

You cannot heal what you’re still hiding.

But you can come home to yourself.

💌 Join the next Softening Session — a live space where we stop performing, stop pretending, and meet the part of you still scared to be seen. Click here to read more about the Softening Sessions.

Content note: This episode contains references to sexual assault, harassment, and STI. Please listen with care and take the space you need.

I thought the hardest part was over when my marriage ended.

I’d told my husband I cheated. We’d tried therapy. We’d separated with kindness. I moved into my own place and thought: I’ve survived the worst of it.

But what came next was what I now call the year of the clusterfuck.

A year of red flags I ignored.

Boundaries crossed and crossed again.

Love bombing disguised as intimacy.

Freeze responses I didn’t understand.

And the deep shame of asking myself, over and over: Why am I still doing this? I should know better.

In this episode I share what really happens when you keep finding yourself in relationships that hurt, even after you’ve “done the work.” Why smart women repeat painful patterns. Why your gut isn’t always your truth. And how choosing celibacy at 39 broke the cycle for me, and opened the door to meeting Adam.

We’ll explore:

• Why “I should know better” keeps you stuck in shame

• The truth about boundaries (and why they only work with consequences)

• How freeze can show up long before a violation

• Why chemistry can actually be anxiety in disguise

• What it feels like in your body when safety arrives

• Why you’re not broken if you keep choosing the wrong men

If you’re in the aftermath of an affair, a divorce, or a breakup, and you keep getting pulled back into chaos, this one’s for you.

Because you’re not broken.

Your body just doesn’t know safety yet.

And that can change.

The Healed Heart - my 6-month group programme - is where we break the pattern at the root so you can choose love differently.

We begin Thursday 9 October.

Ten spots only. 

The Healed Heart

You can love someone and still betray them. You can be strong, independent, the cool girl… and still find yourself in an affair.

In this conversation with Australia’s leading anxiety therapist, Georgie Collinson, we go deep into the ways anxiety and self-betrayal shape our relationships:

• Why silence and “I don’t need you” energy always lead to disconnection

• The hidden link between childhood wounds, yearning, and affairs

• Georgie’s first public share of her own affair story — and what it taught her about love
  

• Why consistency and availability in a partner regulate the nervous system more than chemistry ever will

• How to stop abandoning yourself and start asking for what you really need
  

If you’ve ever thought, “I’m fine, I don’t need anything,” but secretly felt starving for connection — this episode will crack something open.

Resources & Links:

• Georgie’s Instant Calm Meditation: https://anxiety-reset.mykajabi.com/instantcalm
  

• Follow Georgie on Instagram: @georgiethenaturopath
  

• Learn more at www.georgiecollinson.com
  

💔 The Healed Heart — 6 months of real healing after betrayal

If you cheated and you’re drowning in guilt, shame, or self-doubt, this is for you.

This isn’t about talking it out one more time — it’s about coming back to your body, feeling what you’ve been running from, and learning to love without abandoning yourself. We start October 9. Nine spots only.

Book your free call here → The Healed Heart

🔗 Follow me on Instagram: @iamalexcroxford

🌐 Website: www.alexcroxford.com

Episode 7: Why Cheating Is a Pattern, Not a Moral Failure

This one’s for the woman asking herself:

• “What is wrong with me?”

• “Why didn’t I just leave?”

• “How did I do this again?”
  

In this episode, I explore why cheating isn’t just a one-off mistake, it’s often part of a deeper survival pattern shaped by emotional disconnection, shutdown, and unmet needs.

We look at:

• How your nervous system drives the behaviour you can’t make sense of

• Why shame keeps you stuck (and moralising doesn’t help)

• What actually creates lasting change
  

This isn’t about excusing what happened — it’s about understanding it, so you don’t keep living in fear of repeating it.

🎙 Free Masterclass: Breaking the Cycle of Shame

Thursday 18th Sept @ 8PM BST

If you were the one who cheated, and you’re still carrying guilt, confusion, or regret, this is for you.

100 spots only. No replay.

👉 Save your seat

—

Instagram: @iamalexcroxford

Website: www.alexcroxford.com

You didn’t cheat because you’re a bad person.

You cheated because something in you was trying to survive.

Your chest tightens.

Your stomach drops.

The shame rushes in.

And you think: “Why did I do that?”

Most people miss this part: Cheating isn’t always a conscious choice.

It can be a nervous system response.

In this week’s episode of The Deeper Love Podcast, I break down:

✨ Why cheating can be a survival response, not a choice

✨ How you were already disconnected long before the affair

✨ What fawning, freezing, or running look like in love

✨ Why logic can’t heal you — but safety can

✨ How to stop the cycle in your body, not your head

This isn’t about excuses.

It’s about truth.

It’s about rebuilding without shame.

And if this lands in your body…

🕊️ Join me live for my FREE masterclass: Breaking the Cycle of Shame

📅 Thursday 18th Sept, 8pm BST

⚡ Only 100 spots, no replay

Comment HEAL or go to this link to sign up

📲 Instagram: iamalexcroxford

🌐 Website: alexcroxford.com

We’re taught to see cheating as a simple equation: one person betrays, the other is betrayed. End of story. But the truth is never that clean.

In this episode, I share why an affair is never just about the moment it happened or the person it happened with. It’s about everything that came before - the silences, the unspoken needs, the glass walls that build up between two people - long before a boundary is crossed.

You’ll hear:

• Why loneliness inside a relationship is one of the deepest fractures of all

• How silence and swallowed needs slowly erode connection

• Why cheating is never about “suddenly making a bad choice”

• And how understanding this bigger picture can loosen the grip of shame

If you’ve ever felt like you were screaming silently inside your relationship - or carrying the unbearable weight of guilt after betraying someone you loved - this conversation will help you see what was really happening underneath.

This isn’t about excusing or blaming. It’s about understanding.Because when you can finally see the truth of what was there, you can stop carrying it alone.

✨ Join the Softening Sessions Every other week we gather on Zoom for 90 minutes of release, reflection, and return. This is where shame softens, guilt loosens, and your heart remembers what it feels like to be held. Click here to join.