On Accountability and Transformation

I screenshot this comment many months ago because I was so struck by how this question was framed:

 "How we do hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?"

It's the question that's a part of the heart of this site. (I saw a part because I think the larger part of the heart of this site is to provide a safe space for betrayed wives to heal and chart out their next steps.) 

There are other sites, of course, that traffic in vitriol, in revenge. There are sites that peddle forgiveness. I like to think that this site does neither — I have tried to create a space in which we acknowledge the deep deep wound of betrayal while at the same time recognizing that a cheater isn't necessarily a monster. But neither is a cheater automatically deserving of our forgiveness. I've tried to find a path somewhere between the two where we can keep our focus on our own pain, our own healing, while — if we choose to — remaining in touch with the humanity of the person who's caused the deep wound. 

Because I remain convinced that, as upside-down as it seems (and I acknowledge that there are exceptions), most cheaters are trying to fix something broken inside of themselves. And whether or not you're interested in rebuilding a marriage with the same person, it can accelerate your own healing if you're able to remain in touch with the humanity of the person who caused your pain.

The reason is simple: In order for us to be able to extend true compassion to someone else, we need to know it ourselves. I had long been a harsh judge of others. I had no time for liars, for scoundrels, for cheats. But when I discovered I was married to someone who was all three, and that I lacked both the energy and the bandwidth to leave right away, I had to try something else.

I wrote about it in 2015: 

"Transformation, I've discovered, isn't a bolt of lightning from the sky. It wasn't magic.
For me, transformation was showing up each day, slowly opening my heart to the possibility that I could handle this. That I was worth fighting for. Not someone else fighting for me but ME fighting for me. That I was enough, just as I was. That I had always been.
And within that transformation, there were many many gifts. Much suffering too. But that, it seems, is where transformation takes root."

By truly coming to believe that I had value, I accepted that my husband had value too. And — it shocks me still to know this — I came to believe that she had value too. That she cheated with a man she knew was married because she had no self-worth. Where had she learned to live on crumbs? 

None of this is to argue that you need to stay married. That you need to forgive him. That you need to forgive her.

It is, however, to say that if we can learn to thread that needle — to hold him accountable for wrongdoing and yet remain in touch with his humanity — we learn healthy boundaries. We learn our own worth and that of others. 

When we believe in others' capacity to be transformed, even in light of wrongdoing, we create the conditions for our own transformation. 

After Betrayal: Putting Ourselves Back Together

It sometimes feels like we are all forever putting ourselves back together, but I have only ever felt stronger for doing it. It seems to me our griefs are the very things that keep us within the world as active participants in its story, making us more effective and ultimately more joyful, despite, or perhaps because of, our breaking down.

~Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files

It has been a very long since I was where so many of you are. Reeling from the discovery of a partner's affair, or lying awake wondering if he's still cheating, or gaming out what life will look like if you stay or if you go. 

And yet, the pain can still surprise me — a sudden pang when my husband doesn't answer his cell phone, or an ache that settles in my chest watching a TV show in which a wife is betrayed, or a quickening heart when one of the young people in my life confide that they don't understand why their partner broke up with them. And I think but don't say, "I do. I know. I heard the way she talked about her new lab mate." 

"It sometimes feels like we are all forever putting ourselves back together," writes the always wise Nick Cave. And I know we all imagine a time when we are whole again, when the pain is entirely behind us.

Cave is writing to a reader about grief following the death of someone loved but grief is grief. And there is absolutely no question in my mind that betrayal leaves us grieving. Betrayal is loss. Whether or not the person remains in your life. We lose the person we thought we were married to. We lose the blissful ignorance of our wedding vows (or, if you're unmarried, of the belief that you both were similarly committed to monogamy). We lose the smugness that, somehow, our marriage would beat the odds — that it would remain unmarked by infidelity. 

If we're not careful, we lose ourselves. At least, until we find ourselves again.

But though it might seem to be bad news that "we are forever putting ourselves back together again", I am here — 15 years after my own D-Day — to tell you that pain is pain is pain. And if you can accept that, if you can acknowledge that we all go through pain in this life, it might both make you feel less lonely and more empathetic, to both your own and others' suffering. And pay attention too to the rest of what Cave says: "I have only ever felt stronger for doing it." None of us would ever choose this. And I'm not someone who embraces suffering because I think it's 'good for me'. (Insert eyeroll.) But this pain is yours right now and though I'm not sure it's making you stronger, I do believe it is revealing to you the strength that was always yours. 

And I believe this too: When the pain is mostly behind you, when you are only occasionally surprised by it, you will know also joy that tastes all the sweeter. If you have healed well — with self-respect and time and a soft heart — you will savour any morsels of joy all the more for having felt such deep pain. 

It has been a long time since I've posted here. But know this, too, my secret sisters: I think of you often. It remains an incredible privilege to have been trusted with so many of your hearts. And if this site does just one thing, I hope it is this: To remind you every single day that you are not alone and that you will get through this.