Fox News spoke to Pastor Ellie to find out what she has learned from divorce.
Be honest with yourself – there is a chance that your partner is cheating on you. The odds are stacked against you – studies show that cheaters are 85 percent more likely to cheat on you and it’s as simple as that. So how do you spot the signs of cheating?
Ellie shared, “You can tell from body language. If the beginning of the conversation and the end is almost identical – if you notice as soon as you see the conversation start that there’s a change in body language, start to notice a change in attitude – the emotional side of that conversation – things like that.”
Ellie revealed that when her husband told her he was leaving, she instinctively assumed that his betrayal was with her. “Honestly, it’s kind of like it was the perfect couple that I was married to,” she said. “Until he came into my life.”
I struggled with trust in marriage and knew that my partner had cheated on me in the past. As a social media addict, I had shared information about my marriage with trusted friends and family. “They asked me one day, ‘well how do you feel about your marriage?’ The answer that I gave was ‘unhappy,’” Ellie recalled.
By sharing that information Ellie created a sense of need to uncover the truth in order to begin a new relationship. “I told myself that I needed to give myself permission to start over,” she said. “So I wrote down on my journal what I needed to do to get back into the good books.”
“My whole life was being built on lies about how my marriage worked,” she reflected. “I completely lost faith in the idea of trust in that relationship.”
“In my heart of hearts, at the time it had to do with trust,” she continued. “I was thinking, ‘this is too close to home.’ I needed that trust that I just lost so badly.”
Ellie remembered, “After four years of not hearing from him, I went into the home and I confronted him about his infidelity. If he had not already confessed that he had been cheating I would have done it, I would have told him that I wasn’t going to tolerate this anymore. He stayed, I got another lie detector test, it blew him off the test.”
After the test Ellie decided to walk away from the marriage. “I knew in my heart that I needed a break,” she said. “I did not need it anymore.”
Ellie learned a valuable lesson about herself. “I had to get out of my comfort zone to understand myself,” she said. “I felt weak, in control – and in control of my circumstances. I was nobody’s caretaker, somebody else’s maid. I became a single woman and it was so freeing, it was liberating.
Ellie shared a bit about what she’s learned since going through a divorce. “Stay calm,” she advised, “allow yourself to have the emotions. Don’t punish yourself – you can go and find out things that are great and present for you, maybe a great exercise group, or something healthy for you to do.”
Ellie’s story is heart-breaking and her message is simple – fight for your best relationship and keep a positive attitude.
Ellie Vansickle is a wife, mother, and motivational speaker. Her heart-warming story is delivered from the unique perspective of being one of those marriage-ending spouses.
You can follow Ellie on Twitter or visit her website to follow her live. To send Ellie a thoughtful message, please email her at [email protected].