(Editor's note: These are the words of our wise and compassionate StillStanding1. They are the result of mining her own pain and sifting through her own story to find what's true for her. Her words might be difficult for some to read so please do what's best for you.)
I know many of us post D-day wonder how our spouses could be
so selfish, how they could choose to hurt us, the people they promised
to protect and love How could they do it?
What were they thinking? As it happens, I am a mad hatter – someone who
has both cheated and been cheated on. I’m in a position to shed some light on those questions, with the caveat
that it is just one person’s experience and perspective.
The Backstory
Those of you who have not seen my posts over in “Separating
and Divorcing” may not know that I cheated on my ex husband while we were
married. Before I begin a brief description of the setting and factors, know
that I own and recognize that this is one of the most awful, hurtful things I
have ever done, that I have worked hard to understand why and to make amends.
That I was the one that gave him the words “this was not your fault.” That we
stayed together for another 12 years before his cheating brought our marriage
to an end.
I grew up in a dysfunctional family marked by my mother’s
alcoholism (in response to PTSD after her house was blown up around her during
WW2) and the codependency and denial of everyone around her. I was the poster
child for shame and self-loathing. Nothing I did was ever good enough and when
I needed something it was always too much. I was raped by my best friend in
college. Not surprisingly, I struggled with depression and intimacy for years.
Also, not surprisingly I married an emotionally unavailable guy with secrets.
Fast forward to post 2nd child, I had severe postpartum depression.
I shut the door to my office, so I could cry during the day. I went to the
doctor and a well-intentioned NP put me on a megadose of an anti-depressant.
It felt pretty good. Too good. (Go chug two glasses of wine. That’s how I felt
all the time.) The problem was, I was still in enormous pain (i.e. the postpartum)
but now there was medication mania layered over it.
Throw
into this flammable mess a lighted match: turns out mom was a serial cheater in
addition to a boozer and she used me as a cover for her party lifestyle. All
the sleepovers at my friend Kristen’s house, where my mom would come too, were
not our special mother/daughter weekends. They were just a blind. Kristen’s mom
(single) was one of her drinking buddies and they would get themselves fancy,
go out to party and pick up men. As a child, I loved going to Kristen’s house,
playing with her Snoopy doll, watching Wonder Woman and having her
grandmother put us to bed. The revelations from my sister (who was dealing with
her own anger with my mother at the time) filled in some of the details that I
did not realize were significant as a small girl. The sense of betrayal at the
hands of my own mother was enormous and indescribably painful. Any last shred of
hope that she might actually love me was gone. I don’t know how else to describe what
happened inside me other than “I broke.” This was the
final confirmation that I was the most worthless, unlovable person on the
planet.
The Why
Each cheater’s “why” is different, but I promise you it
boils down to shame, fear and self-loathing. All of these feelings stem from unresolved
childhood trauma. Many of you will look at your spouse and think “what
trauma?” he says he had a great childhood. Trauma doesn’t have to be big. It could have been ongoing micro cuts, a prolonged series of
shaming events, lack of love or attention. Boys, just like girls, get so many
messages about how they don’t measure up and when parental figures don’t
help pick them back up or when they even reinforce those messages, they accumulate.
Over time, we become convinced that we are not worthy. Big trauma also happens to
boys, as we see increasingly in the news but they have less venues to
talk about it and get help.
And then there’s this: Trauma is passed on when undealt with
– the trauma doesn’t have to be first person. So if your parent has PTSD,
this can be scary for you as a kid. And double whammy, you learn their numbing and avoidance behaviors as life skills. As a child you take it personally when a parent is withdrawn or emotionally unavailable (I still have such a hard time with this in relationships). As
a child, you can either over identify and take on the behaviors in an attempt to
connect with the parents, or you may become the rescuer or “parentified” and
take on responsibilities your parent should have done for you. Or you may end
up emotionally uninvolved, withdrawn, depressed and have relationship troubles
later in life.
Some of this stuff feels pretty familiar, right? Pieces
falling into place? The bottom line is that each of us brings some messed up
stuff with us into adulthood. For cheaters, it’s often a deep-rooted belief that we are unloved
and unlovable. It’s a place of tremendous pain. At some point, the pain becomes
too much or is triggered in some way and we take too many steps in the wrong
direction.
How does it start?: I think for most, it is a kind of
validation seeking. A chance to feel “better” or “ok” even for a split second.
We can pretend like we aren’t hurting or not completely ashamed of who we are.
I believe there is one point of entry; the slippery slope. It’s little steps. I’m not doing anything
wrong.
This isn’t hurting
anyone: I was just chatting online with men. It was just chat. The
attention felt good, made me feel less worthless. And it wasn’t cheating. He
used porn every day, so I was allowed to chat (justification). It's just the
same. But I also wasn’t telling him what I was doing because I was afraid he
might not like it (sneaking, denial).
He was not thinking of
you. Except for when he was: I was not thinking about my husband when I was
chatting with men online. Just like I didn’t think about him when I was talking
to people at work. I did sometimes feel guilty. I ignored those warning signs
because I was getting some deep pain temporarily numbed. And when I finally met
up with some of those men in person for drinks, I wasn’t thinking about him
then either. Not until after, when I felt terrible and guilty and absolutely
sure, now, more than ever, that I was the worst person alive. I can remember
being out on a run and thinking over and over “what am I doing? What if he
finds out? He’s going to leave me and take the kids. I have to stop. What am I
doing?” But I couldn’t stop. It was like a compulsion.
When he says he
doesn’t remember, he’s probably telling the truth: There’s so much I don’t
remember. Details that no longer matter to me because those people never
mattered at all. But I’m sure my husband recalls situations because he was
doing that piecing together the timeline thing. When I was here doing X you
were off doing Y. I don’t even remember names at this point, it’s been so long
and those people don’t deserve any space in my head. And denial and
self-protection kick in. Our minds take over and soften these
things, so we can keep going.
Why do they keep going
back to the poisoned well: If they are so wracked with pain and guilt and
shame, why do they keep doing it? Why not just stop? Because it is just like
any other compulsion/addiction. You do some and it feels good and then it feels shitty, so
you do some more in the hopes it will feel good again. I can also say that from
my own experience, it felt like cutting myself. I was already a horrible
person, why not just do more damage to myself. I was going to end up a
prostitute because I was so worthless. I was hoping, at one point, that one of
the men would kill me and dump the body. Pain and shame.
Rewriting history: I know that during the affair, cheaters will
often rewrite history, your story, to justify what they are doing. They have a
rotten life, a neglectful, nagging spouse, so they deserve to pursue a little
“happiness.” This was my husband when he cheated. Life was so bad with me that
he had to escape. Turns out he was trying to escape, not from me, but from
himself and from years of lying and denying his own story. I do not recall
needing to rewrite history to justify what I was doing. I knew it was awful, I
was simply imploding, destroying my life. It was a cry for help no different
than my suicide attempt after being raped. Some of your spouses are rewriters and some
are simply imploding. Both behaviors are driven by shame and guilt.
Being mad at you while
he’s acting out or being super nice to you while he’s acting out – both are
faces of guilt: Some will be short-tempered and angry with you. Nothing you do
is right. If they make you the villain in their rewritten
history then they are justified in their shitty choices. Or they are so
consumed with guilt, they go out of their way to do nice things, to pay
attention to you, buy you presents, get extra affectionate. It seems like life
is great. Until you find out that it isn’t. I was in this second camp. My
husband was in the first. Both behaviors are driven by shame and guilt.
Discovery vs
confession – why I think this matters to your recovery timeline
I think there is a difference between confessing and
discovery but it's nuanced and it doesn’t mean you can’t bounce back and stay
together. A cheater who confesses is taking steps to own what they have done,
be honest and make things right. One who is caught can definitely get there
too but they are reeling, just like you. I think it takes longer to get to a starting point from discovery. The
timeline is extended by the cheaters’ fogged brain and waffling and trying to
sort out what they’ve done and what they want. Some are caught and are instantly remorseful and want to work on fixing
things. More often they are ambivalent.
And this is the shittiest, hardest path. So if your spouse has
confessed, take a breath and think about what you need to feel safe and to move
forward together (or not together, if you'd prefer). If you’ve caught your spouse, then you have the same options but you also will determine how long you wait for them to get sorted
and what you will and will not put up with in the meantime.
His response will be shame. What he does with that shame
depends on what he learned about shame growing up and the other shame he’s been
carrying around. No matter whether he’s confessed or been discovered, there is
going to be so much shame. And his behaviors and choices are going to have a
lot to do with what drove him to cheat in the first place. He’s likely to
display the same shitty coping strategies he’s been using all along. You are lost and
it is so hard to know what is the next right move, even when you know you want
to make amends. Understand that when he gets mad that you want to talk about it
again – that’s his shame talking. When he refuses to go to a therapist – that’s
his shame talking. When he wants to act like it is all in the past – that’s his
shame talking. And until he’s ready to
deal with and root out the source of his shame, he’s going to stay stuck.
And remember, even the poster boy for the most
remorseful spouse ever is going to screw up at some point. He could be doing everything right and then
one day forget to check in at lunch. It may not mean he’s cheating again. It
may mean that he’s starting to recover (and it's going to piss you off that he’s
even remotely moving on if you are not). Talk about it in a safe venue for you
both. Reset the ground rules. Begin again if that works for you. I went to a
work happy hour a few months after I confessed to my husband. I forgot to check in. I
drank too much (medicating my shame, still). My husband panicked and asked my mother-in-law to watch the kids while he looked for me. So the price I paid for
screwing up was that my MIL learned that I had cheated. The price of undealt-with shame is more shame. I was so lost in my own pain and misguided attempts
to recover that I had no idea how much my action would frighten and hurt him.
None.
Why doesn’t he
understand how hurt I am?: Because
you don’t get it until you get it, very often until it happens to you. Just
like our friends don’t really get it (and why we feel so heard and understood
here). You know when I got it? About a month after he cheated. I was deep in my
own pain. We were in false reconciliation. I was weeping uncontrollably on him
(full oceans of tears and boogers) while he held me and all I could say was “I
did this to you. I did this to you.” Because I finally grasped how much I had
hurt him. And I was horrified.
Why does he want to
just “move on”?: One word: shame. He doesn’t want to have to feel the shame
of what he has done. He doesn’t want to have to face the hurt he’s caused or in
himself. Its okay to want to take a break from being in that space. I get it. It's
exhausting. But you have to both come back to it until you both are ready to
leave it behind.
Some final thoughts:
Problems in the marriage are not an excuse to cheat – he’ll try to lay that on
you anyway. Our marriage counselor definitely held my husband responsible for
not taking better care of me, whatever that means. It’s a shame we didn’t know
better and find a more qualified therapist. My marriage was not perfect when I
cheated. We were in the thick of the childbearing years. You’re exhausted and
often lonely together. He was absorbed with work. I was drowning in babies.
None of it meant it was okay to cheat. My cheating was not his fault. It was a shitty coping strategy for dealing with old, old pain triggered by new news. His
cheating is not your fault. It was never about you. It was and is 100% about
his own pain and shame and history.
There are different kinds of cheaters. There are true
narcissists. People who are solely out for themselves and remorseless about hurting
others. I think these folks are rare and are still operating from a place of
pain. Self-centeredness is a deeply lonely and isolated place. I believe most
cheaters were once decent humans who truly lost their way. Some find their way
back and some just don’t, either because they can’t or because they are too
afraid to do something different.
Getting a second chance with my husband was one of the most
important and loving things that had happened in my life up to that point. And I did my broken, imperfect best with it.
I’ve spent years in therapy and I feel like I understand how I got there and why I will never be there
again. I knew, for a little while, what
it felt like to be chosen and how important that was for my recovery. It’s why
I stayed and fought for my ex for so long. I understood where he was and how
much you need someone to believe in you when you are there. I’m not excusing
cheating and I’m not advocating for staying longer in any situation than is
good for you. At some point, I had to
take responsibility for believing in myself, in both stories. At some point our spouses need to be
responsible for believing in themselves too.
