How to Deal with Paralysis (aka You Have Options)

There was nothing I could do. I was convinced of that. Absolutely nothing. I had no choice but to resign myself to a life of misery. I would sacrifice any chance of future happiness for myself in order to preserve stability for my children. What else could I do, right? I had no choice.
That felt absolutely true to me in 2007 when I was absorbing my husband's betrayal. I was desperate to avoid creating chaos for my children. My own childhood was marked by instability -- my mother's addictions, her psychiatric hospital stays and rehabs, a constant sense of foreboding. I would spare my children that but at the price of my own happiness.
Or so I believed.
Maybe you've convinced yourself that, no matter which door you choose – Door A means staying with a man who cheated on you, Door B means throwing him out and Door C means being left for the OW – what's really behind it is misery. Loss. A lifetime of unhappiness.
I hear it so often on this site. "I don't have any good choices." We feel paralyzed. Caught between shitty and shittier and, sometimes, shittiest. And it's true. There are no good choices because any of them are a response to heartbreak. And what we really want is to choose some magical door that will transport us back to a point in our marriage where there was no infidelity. What we really want is to not have to make any choice at all.
I know. It's not fair.
But here we are. Shitty. Shittier. Shittiest.
No good choices.
But let's not lose sight of the fact that we do, in fact, have choices. We are not paralyzed. We have options. Even if we don't like them, we have options.
And that's crucial to remember. Because it reminds us that we have power.
We say it a lot here, don't we? We cannot control other people but we can control ourselves. And, with time, we come to realize that's all we ever could control. And it's all we ever will. And we also come to realize that it's enough to be able to control ourselves.
So let's examine what some possible options are to us when we're reeling from the discovery of our partner's infidelity.
We could make an appointment with a therapist and, with the guidance of a trained and objective person, draw up a list of terms for reconciliation. Terms that include absolutely no contact with the OW. Total access to electronics. Access to any and all financial records/bank accounts. Disclosure of the infidelity to his family and friends. A weekly appointment for him with a counsellor experienced in helping unfaithful partners. Or whatever you need to begin to feel safe.
Another option might be to ask him to sleep on the couch or a guest room until you feel ready to sleep next to him again.
You might choose to ask him to leave. Or you might leave. Temporarily or permanent.
You might take some time off work, if possible. You might take a solo vacation.
I could go on but you get the idea. The point is, you have options. They might all seem horrible but, if you refuse to give in to all the reasons why the options are stupid and simply make a list of any and all options, you'll see that some are better than others.
Let me tell you a story.
Years before I knew my husband was cheating, we were arguing a lot about him not walking the dogs. Dogs, I might add, that HE wanted more than I did. I was pregnant, then nursing and sleep-deprived, then pregnant again. And still, he wouldn't walk the dogs. I was, literally, vomiting from morning sickness of people's lawns (they must've LOVED me!!) while I walked the dogs. Why was I walking the dogs? Because he wouldn't. No matter how much I begged and pleaded and tried to shame him into doing it.
I went to a therapist to complain about my lazy-ass husband who wouldn't walk the dogs. What was wrong with this guy? I asked. Why wouldn't he just do what I was asking? She listened and then she said: You can't make him walk the dogs. You are choosing to walk them yourself. What else could you do?
I kept coming back to ways I could get my husband to walk the dogs.
No, she said. He's made it clear he's not walking the dogs. What else could YOU do?
I was stymied. What could I do? I thought and thought.
Finally, exasperated she said to me, "I can think of a half-dozen other options."
Really? I couldn't think of one.
So she listed them:
Hire a neighbourhood kid.
Hire a dog-walking service.
Give the dogs away.
Move to an apartment with access to a yard.
And so on.
I had excuses why these were stupid options. It would cost money, it was a hassle. But what I was doing wasn't working. I resented my husband. He was sick of my nagging. And, on some level, I was enjoying feeling more responsible, more magnanimous, harder working.
Having to relinquish that role in which I felt superior made something clear to me: We were in an unhealthy dance and I was the one who needed to change the steps.
What I did was change my attitude. I decided that walking the dogs gave me exercise, which I needed. I packed up the kids in the stroller and off we'd go. It helped me meet some of the neighbours. I combined errands, like grocery shopping, with walking the dogs. I stopped asking my husband to walk them. I DID ask him to come with us to the dog park to let them run, which he often did.
My husband didn't magically start walking the dogs. But I stopped resenting him for it.
This might seem like a trite example. After all, dog walking isn't cheating. But it is about trying to get someone to change and feeling paralyzed because they won't.
And there's some connection to me post-betrayal.
Once I decided that staying was MY choice – a choice I could change at any time – I felt more empowered. Yeah, my choices might have been shitty, shittier and shittiest but they were my choices. Even not making a choice was a choice. MY choice.
So...you are not paralyzed, even if it feels like you are. You have options. And each choice will introduce new options.
There is no right way through this. There is only what feels most right to you. You get to decide what that is.