Wednesday, December 18, 2019

After the Cheating Comes Reconstruction

I screamed horrible things at my mother after my husband's betrayal. Despite the fact that she was the first person I called, despite the fact that she was my absolute rock, I nonetheless said horrible things. The latent pain that my husband's betrayal awakened was there because of my mother's addiction when I was a kid. 
I couldn't separate the pain of my husband's betrayal with the old pain of my mother's. Both betrayals told me that I wasn't lovable, that I didn't matter, that I wasn't worth fighting for, that I was expendable. 
And so I screamed at my mother that she was the reason I married someone who would do this, that I never felt worth being loyal to, that she had taught me to settle for crumbs.
She listened to it all. And then, as she had so many times before, she held me while I cried and reminded me how sorry she was, how desperately she wished she could go back and do those days over, do them differently.
It's hard for me to disentangle the pain of my husband's infidelity with the earlier pain of my mother's addiction. Complicating things further, my mother died six months after my first D-Day and weeks after my second. Her loss left me bereft. Long sober, she was the person I spoke with daily, who knew my story. She was my cheerleader, my champion. She was fierce in her love for me but equally fierce in her belief in forgiveness, in the human capacity for change, in earning redemption. She had lived it herself.
And so I've taken particular interest in Richard Rohr's recent look at addiction and sobriety. Rohr is a priest of the Franciscan order and though I'm not Catholic, his progressive views about life (not just religion) give me lots to consider. 
Such as this, from Alcoholics Anonymous:
There is a long period of reconstruction ahead. We must take the lead. A remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won’t fit the bill at all. We ought to sit down with the family and frankly analyze the past as we now see it, being very careful not to criticize them. Their defects may be glaring, but the chances are that our own actions are partly responsible. So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Higher Power show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love.
The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to finally live it.

This is what so many cheaters resist, even those who genuinely want to move past this, who swear they'll never cheat again. They resist the period of reconstruction. They imagine they can put this behind them without really doing the work of reparations. They want us to "stop living in the past", to "focus on the future". But without the work, without the reconstruction, the past is our present, and will be our future. Because we're still living it. Every single day.
Imagine the difference if a remorseful cheater sat down with us and listened to our experience without getting defensive. Just listened and tried to understand what it feels like to discover that our reality wasn't reality at all. How crazy-making that is. How terrifying that is. How humiliating that feels. 
Imagine if a repentant cheater was willing to do more than mumble "I'm sorry", if he was truly willing to "clean house", to take an inventory of the ways in which he's harmed other people, to take steps to make amends, where appropriate.
Thanks to my mother's sobriety via 12-step meetings, I've long believed it's a powerful way of living, whether or not addiction plays a role. It centres personal responsibility, accountability. It includes plenty of mercy. But ultimately, it's about showing up in our vulnerability, heart and eyes wide open.
While healing from my husband's betrayal, I was able to also heal a lot of old wounds from my mother's betrayal. And those 12-steps, at which I'd rolled my eyes when my mom was newly sober, were a valuable guide. 
Both my mom and my husband were able to make reparations, to listen to my pain and take full accountability for their role in causing it. It's impossible to overstate how healing that is. To feel heard. To feel seen. To feel valued. 
Those unwilling to do that get in the way of our healing. Telling us to "stop living in the past" is not only useless, it's harmful. 
Instead, we need to enter a period of reconstruction, which includes a sober look at what got us here. 

















3 comments:

  1. I am a big Richard Rohr follower/fan...AS a Catholic I had heard of him but he was not on my radar. After D-day I read an amazing book by Henri Nowen called THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON...hence began my road to healing...Enter Richard Rohr and his daily meditations...everything he wrote about pulled me in ...I wrote a letter to him about my betrayal and he wrote back to me the most profound letter that I still have and read when I feel my world rock even just a little...That was almost 7 years ago. I saw him a few years ago at a talk and spoke to him very briefly and had my letter with me. I had to thank him personally for his heartfelt letter to me and thank him for showing me the way to acceptance and forgiveness. Thank you for this post today. I have been intrigued with the last week or so with his 12 step theme. Although he has used it before in his daily devotionals, just not this detailed.

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  2. This post made me think.

    My reaction was so opposite to yours, Elle. I never screamed or shouted or even really cried. I am so good at "ploughing on" and putting on a brave face, that I think I cried maybe half a dozen times at most with the latest D day, and fewer times for the multiple D days before. Your reaction is the healthy one, mine has done me no favours. I haven't properly processed the pain or grieved the loss of the relationship I thought I had or wanted - I have had so much therapy to try and help me "feel the emotions" but so far nothing has worked, and now 2.5 years out, the pain is automatically lessened, so I don't think I will ever truly feel I have reacted as much as I would have liked in hindsight.

    With my lack of external demonstration of pain, though, comes yet another downside. My H hasn't really truly understood the hurt he caused, because he can't see it. He sees I am depressed or sullen or withdrawn, but he doesn't truly see the hurt that is causing those moods. He is sorry for what he did, but he hasn't chosen to follow the 12-step model into sobriety, so this idea of "period of reconstruction", or even the step where they "Make a list of persons harmed, and make amends to them all wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others" hasn't happened.

    I think the reasons are also because the path that my H DID take to escape his addiction took the view that addiction is an unhealthy "habit" (albeit taken to an extreme) to cope with negative or stressful emotions. Feelings of guilt or shame around the addictive behaviour only go on to fuel further negative feelings and a vicious cycle starts with even more acting out as a result. The answer is to look at the underlying reasons for feeling rubbish - what stresses are being poorly managed in life etc, and ultimately to find healthy habits to help overcome negative emotions. I strongly feel this is a very positive and healthy way to facing addiction, but as a partner of someone caught up in it all, it doesn't provide any real focus on repairing the damage caused.

    I guess it is never simple. The problem is not just that I need to feel more, nor is it that I need my H to react and reflect more. All of that needs to happen, along with a million other small steps that daily will help us along this path.... but I realised reading this post that I had skipped over two of the big ones...

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  3. Ali, I'm not a therapist not even close, I can only talk about my experience. I felt like you and it took 2 years to process the pain. I learned I didn't feel or see emotions like other people. Growing up my opinion didn't matter on anything, how I felt, what I liked, what I disliked. I learned how to be defensive and have a filter in my mind where nothing good comes in only negative. Even if someone handed me a million dollars I would only see it negative, she must have stole it. Your expectation about HIM feeling your PAIN. I did some pretty outlandish stuff during the first 2 years. Guess what he never felt it as deeply as I did no matter what I did, said or howled. So along with I never will know 100% of the truth and he will never know my pain, I learned to tolerate it, live with it somehow. I was in therapy for 3 years then as needed. Just because it didn't come out D day doesn't mean someday it won't come out.

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