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

Alex Croxford
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Relationships
  • Updated Weekly

Join Alex Croxford on The Deeper Love Podcast as she guides women healing after betraying someone they loved. Through raw, compassionate conversations, The Deeper Love Podcast dives beneath the affair to the silence, the self-betrayal, and the parts of yourself you’ve forgotten. This is your space to release shame, face the truth, and begin again. With honest stories, intimate interviews, and deep guidance, The Deeper Love Podcast will help you rise from the ashes into love that feels safe, soft, and true.

  1. 1d ago

    S2#050 – How To Forgive Yourself For Cheating (And Why That's Not Actually What You Need)

    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 isWhat I mean when I say the affair is calling you home to yourselfWhy I thought I'd had a perfect childhood, and what happened when my coach pushed me to look closerThe 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 lifeHow that one moment created a survival strategy of perfectionism, needlessness, and putting everyone else first - and how that strategy led directly to the affairThe difference between understanding a wound and actually healing it, and why going over it in your mind doesn’t workWhat inner child and parts work actually looks like in practice, and why it's different from anything psychotherapy has given youWhat happened as I started to meet those young parts of myself, the joy, the opening, the alivenessWhy 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 itThe 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

  2. Jul 14

    S2#049 – "Once A Cheat, Always A Cheat" Actually True?

    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 myselfHow we can't see the pattern we're inside until someone helps us take them offWhat performing the "perfect" version of yourself actually creates inside a relationship , and why it leads to feeling dead insideWhy the affair partner feels like finally being met, and what that feeling is really aboutThe difference between understanding a wound and actually healing it, and why this is where most women get stuckWhy traditional therapy can give you insight but not always transformationThe young, wounded parts running the show in our adult relationships, and what it means to finally meet themWhat changes when the pattern actually heals - what I notice in myself now that tells me I'm differentThe 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

  3. Jul 7

    S2#048 – The Year We Tried To Save Our Marriage After My Affair

    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 soThe conversations we kept having on repeat that were re-traumatising us both, and why I couldn't stopWhat the couples therapist told us to do, why it made complete sense, and why it was almost impossible to actually doWhy I kept giving him every detail he asked for, and what I now understand about what actually helps repair and what doesn'tThe two things I genuinely regret about how I handled that periodWhat it felt like to move back in during the second lockdown, and realise almost immediately it was too soonLosing two of my closest friends in the same period, and the true isolation of thatThe moment I asked for something I needed for the first time, and what happened when I didHow I eventually knew it was overWhy, 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

  4. Jun 30

    S2#047 – How My Spiritual Awakening Helped Me Heal The Shame Of My Affair

    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 lifeThe Kali card, and why even without any spiritual belief, I knew in my body that it was trueWhat 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 becomingWhy 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 hadThe moment I was shown that the fear I'd been carrying in my body was ancestral, and what my mum said when I told herHow I met Adam and why I believe, genuinely, that it was not a coincidenceWhat 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 relationshipsThe 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

  5. Jun 23

    S2#046 – The Affair Wasn't the First Sign Something Was Wrong

    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 storyWhy 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 aboutHow living almost entirely in masculine energy showed up in my body, my relationships, and eventually, the affairWhy I went to IVF appointments alone, and what I now know that version of me actually neededThe connection between emotional numbness and fertility struggles that nobody was telling me aboutWhat 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 34How the affair, the infertility, the exhaustion - none of it was the beginning. All of it was the body sending the same message, louder and louderThe 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

  6. Jun 16

    S2#045 – What Nobody Told Me About The Year After The Affair

    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 itselfThe unconscious decision I made the moment I saw his devastation, and how it cost me everythingWhy 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 yourselfWhy those two-hour crying sessions on the sofa were re-traumatising us both, and what we actually needed insteadHow self-abandonment continued (and amplified) in the repair phase, and I didn’t have a clueWhy the shame of the affair made me believe I had no right to need anything at allThe 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

  7. Jun 9

    S2#044 – After My Affair, I Thought The World Was Better Without Me. This Is How I Found My Way Back.

    Six years ago, I genuinely didn't know if I wanted to keep living. The shame of what I had done felt unbearable. I couldn't think straight, I couldn't be present, and I couldn't imagine a future where I felt okay again. And yet today, I'm sitting behind a microphone telling that story publicly. So what happened? How did I get from there to here? Because I can tell you, it wasn't time. It wasn't understanding what went wrong in my relationship. And it definitely wasn't listening to podcasts. In this episode, I share the part of my story I've never told in this much detail: the year after my affair, when I was convinced that forgetting was my only option. We were about to start IVF. We were mid-way through a huge house extension. My then husband was deep in his accountancy exams. Telling him felt like it would collapse everything, so I said nothing, looked functional on the outside, and quietly fell apart on the inside. I talk about the pressure in my chest I didn't recognise as anxiety, the obsessive overthinking, the secret crying, and the loneliness of carrying something 99% of my friends knew nothing about. And I share the realisation that changed everything: the affair wasn't actually the thing I needed to heal. The affair was the thing that exposed everything that had been running underneath my life without me even realising. The mask of perfectionism. The self-abandonment that started long before the betrayal. The needs I didn't know I was allowed to have. In this episode, I explore: Why "just forgetting it" felt like my only option, and why it quietly destroyed me insteadWhat it's really like to look functional on the outside while falling apart on the insideHow shame lives in the body: the chest pressure, the bracing, the obsessive overthinkingThe moment my first mentor said "let's put the affair to one side and focus on you," and why that changed everythingHow I'd abandoned myself long before I betrayed my husbandWhy I couldn't ask for my needs to be met, and the IVF clinic moment that blew my mindThe mask of perfectionism: the achieving, the control, the confidence that wasn't realWhy books, insight, and even therapy alone weren't enough, and why the work had to go into the bodyWhat the willingness to be seen as my most messy, raw, vulnerable self actually gave meWhy the shame might not be the punishment. It might be the doorway. If you're carrying this right now If you're desperately trying to forget. If you're trying to figure out why you did it. If you feel like you're drowning with no way of getting to shore. I want you to know that everything I was trying to avoid became the path back to myself. And the best first step you can take is one I wish I'd taken sooner: letting yourself be supported. The Sanctuary is my community for women in the aftermath of their own betrayal. We meet twice a month on Zoom, and it might be the first space where you get to share your truth out loud and have it met with nothing but compassion, and no judgement. That is the first step to becoming truly free from the shame and guilt you're carrying. Click here to discover more.

  8. Jun 2

    S2#043 – The Secret That's Eating You Alive

    For two years after the affair, I told no one. Not my husband. Not the friends I’d call sisters, the ones who’d held me through my own heartbreak years earlier. I sat at New Year’s parties and weddings and birthdays, keeping it light, breezy, fine. And inside, I was dying. Dying of shame. Dying of guilt. Dying of the fear that if anyone really saw me, they’d stop loving me. In this episode, I talk about the secret almost no one names: not the affair itself, but the secrecy that comes after it. The mask of “I’m fine.” The exhaustion that sleep can’t touch. The way secrecy and shame feed each other in a loop that feels like it will never end. I share how this particular mask wasn’t new. It was one I’d been wearing since childhood, a survival strategy that told me I had to have it all together to stay safe and stay loved. And I share what finally began to loosen its grip: not more hiding, but being witnessed by other women who had walked the same path and simply understood. This is an honest look at why we keep the secret, what it costs us, and why being truly seen, even in the smallest, most terrifying moment, is where the healing starts. In this episode, I explore: Why the secrecy after an affair can be lonelier and heavier than the affair itselfThe “I’m fine” mask, and how it can be a survival strategy first learned in childhoodHow living as “two different people” depletes your life force and exhausts you in a way sleep can’t healThe vicious cycle where secrecy compounds shame, and shame demands more secrecyWhy public affair scandals (and the conversations around them) can leave you bracing in silent terrorWhat changed when Alex was witnessed by women who had been through the same thingWhy we don’t feel seen in our marriages, and the first step to changing thatHow allowing yourself to be seen in your messiest moment radiates out into the rest of your life Key takeaways Secrecy keeps shame firmly in place. The energy it takes to suppress the truth is what depletes you, not the truth itself.The mask of “having it all together” often predates the affair. The affair simply cracked it open.Healing accelerates when you’re witnessed by someone who genuinely gets it. Not to be validated or excused, but to be held without judgement.We aren’t seen in our relationships partly because we don’t let ourselves be seen. Being witnessed by other women who understand is the first step toward changing that. If this resonated If you recognised yourself in the mask, in the exhaustion, in sitting among people you love while feeling completely alone, that matters. The Sanctuary is an ongoing, gentle space for women in the aftermath of their own betrayal who are tired of carrying it in secret. It exists for the woman who is doing all the right things on the outside but still feels tight, disconnected, and alone inside: the woman who needs somewhere she can finally take the mask off. Inside, you’re not asked to explain yourself, justify what happened, or rehash the past. You’re witnessed by other women who simply get it, while you learn to stay connected to yourself and regulate your nervous system. It’s completely confidential, with two calls a month and a sisterhood circle on Telegram for the in-between moments, so you’re always held. You don’t have to do this part alone anymore. Click here to explore The Sanctuary.

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About

Join Alex Croxford on The Deeper Love Podcast as she guides women healing after betraying someone they loved. Through raw, compassionate conversations, The Deeper Love Podcast dives beneath the affair to the silence, the self-betrayal, and the parts of yourself you’ve forgotten. This is your space to release shame, face the truth, and begin again. With honest stories, intimate interviews, and deep guidance, The Deeper Love Podcast will help you rise from the ashes into love that feels safe, soft, and true.

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