I used to laugh at the idea that my husband would ever cheat on me. "He's the most principled man I know," I would say. "Besides, he's clueless when women are openly flirting with him."
And the universe laughed.
I miss that conviction. The absolute certainty that my husband would never cheat on me. He just...wouldn't.
Except he did. He was.
And, if you've read my story either on this site or here, then you know what happened. I fell apart. I considered suicide. I blamed my mother for grooming me for betrayal. I blamed every horrible boyfriend I'd ever had. I blamed friends who'd betrayed me in the past. And I absolutely blamed my husband who knew what I'd gone through...and hurt me anyway. I blamed myself for not knowing better. For trusting someone who didn't deserve it.
Eventually I got out of bed, got off the floor and got on with it. At first, that was all I could do. Put a fake smile on my face, pretend I was fine.
But with more time, it became clear to me that I was becoming fine. Not great but fine.
I was doing the work to heal. Seeing my therapist, briefly attending a 12-step group for partners of sex addicts, being gentle with myself, practising radical self-care. Meditating. Running. Hiking. Culling toxic people from my herd.
But the lesson that continued to elude me was this: Learn to trust myself.
It seemed counter-intuitive. How could I trust myself when I had been so wrong? I was the last person I should be trusting.
And yet.
And yet, when I got still and paid attention to the still small voice, I could acknowledge the ways in which had tried to protect myself, the ways in which I had tried to get my own attention. I could acknowledge that the problem wasn't that I couldn't trust myself to know what was right for me, the problem was that I couldn't trust myself to follow through. To protect myself. To create and defend boundaries. To treat myself like I mattered.
And that's a problem I could fix.
It can be hard for those of us who have spent much of our life as pleasers, those of us who dedicate ourselves to not rocking the boat.
We can confuse assertiveness with aggression.
It's a process. Of checking in with ourselves. Paying attention to where our feelings are showing up in our bodies. Noticing that fight or flee response and sitting with it to trace it back. Our bodies give us really valuable information that women, especially, are taught to over-ride in favor of not being rude or angry or disruptive.
And so rather than trusting ourselves, we trust those around us. Who tell us that everything's fine when our body's alarm signals are going off. Who tell us to "calm down" when there's an emotional emergency. Who dismiss our concerns or our wants or our needs as selfish, self-centered, silly.
It's not that we can't trust ourselves, it's that we can't hear ourselves over the loud voices of a culture that has long believed women can be believed.
When I think back, I knew something wasn't right. I knew my husband was emotionally absent. I knew he was often physically absent. I believed the "working late" and "stressed" and "too busy" excuses. I congratulated myself for being such a supportive wife, even as I was exhausted myself, and my own career was being held back.
In other words, I knew. I knew...something.
Not all the signs are so clear.
Maybe you also didn't suspect cheating.
But were you aware, on some level, that he had disengaged? Do you notice when your kids seem particularly worried? When your best friend is distracted or unavailable? We're so much better at paying attention to others' pain than our own.
But that's something we can fix.
It isn't about becoming self-absorbed, it's about becoming self-aware. Noticing what's happening in our bodies. Paying attention to our thoughts. Respecting that internal alarm system that goes off when something doesn't feel quite right.
When we feel that trust in ourselves deep in our bones, it's an amazing feeling. It's a healing feeling.
I get it now.
It has taken a long time but I get it.
I don't need to trust others when I can trust myself. That doesn't mean I don't trust others, including my husband, it just means that I'm not reliant on them to keep me safe.
That's an inside job. And I'm on it.
The kickass survival site for anyone who's ever been lied to, cheated on and left for dead.
“When your best friend is distracted or unavailable?”
ReplyDeleteMy best friend was the OW - the one he got caught with. The one who opened the floodgates of truth. He admitted to cheating throughout our 21 years (2014) of marriage.
Four years later life is so much better. We are doing ok. We just got back from a trip to Paris! My first time out of the country!
But I do still struggle with trusting myself.
Thank you for your book, by the way. It’s on my nightstand. I’m sure my book is destined to be loaned to someone else someday.
littlejen,
DeleteI am so SO sorry though with 21 years of cheating, clearly she wasn't anything special. But just...ugh. Such a double betrayal.
I'm glad you're doing better.
And you're welcome for the book. Really glad that it's helping and that it will, undoubtedly, live to help another (sad that we know this will happen, isn't it? Infidelity is epidemic).
As for trusting yourself, it comes with time and a concerted effort to pay attention to yourself. It doesn't make us psychics or anything -- we can't predict who may or may not hurt us. But it does give us the absolute knowing that, no matter what happens, we will be okay.
Oh wow, so much the same here Elle. Yes, my h was disengaged, stressed. Work was blamed, engagement I asked for was "not possible" due to work etc etc. He began to have weird symptoms, not being able to talk right, retching, heart flipping, became very hostile and even punched walls at times but we had tremendous stresses with our son and his work stress so I blamed it all on that. You say your husband knew you suffered and still hurt you more. In my case it was him knowing what we'd gone through with my son, then with the affair, the total devastation and then doing more (inappropriate friendships and lunches, porn) after that. It's one of my main sticking points, so hard to get over. To be so messed up that he became devoid of basic human compassion for those closest to him and caused so much more pain. I still find it chilling. And so much deception, over and over, over porn, finances, second d-day, new lunches, lied direct to my face when I asked for the truth, said that his automatic response to the last incident was to hide it. There are things I've only found out because I checked his PC but I know I'll not do that again, it sickens me to do it, it's no way to live and he's a master at cover up anyway. How do you trust yourself? I don't want him to have the power over me to make me live a life I've stated I don't want to simply by lying again. I'm good now at setting boundaries but I'm still not sure I can tell if there is something amiss or I'm just retraumatised. It's an inexact science. I'm strengthening myself with running, meditation etc too and learning to listen to instinct and voice things that seem off. It may not save me from being deceived again but at least I'm advocating for myself now.
ReplyDeleteFOH,
DeleteLike I wrote above, trusting ourselves isn't about having some sort of psychic ability to read people's thoughts and know that they're lying. But if we really pay attention to ourselves, we can notice when our radar is flashing. Sometimes it's post-trauma, absolutely. But it nonetheless demands our attention and we can examine by talking to our partners, etc. If he's going to lie to you, then he's going to lie to you. But if he's doing any sort of recovery work at all, eventually he won't want to lie to you.
In the meantime, just keep paying attention to your body, notice how anxiety and stress and fear show up in it. You'll begin to trust that you are the calm place that you need, you'll catch yourself when you're spiralling and you'll know that you're going to be okay. What's more, you might notice something that's happened for me with my kids (who have mental health issues) -- that my ability to remain calm (genuinely calm, not emotionally detached calm) helps them calm down. Anxiety is contagious but calm can be too.
Trusting myself means being fiercely on my own side, not constantly second guessing myself. My therapist tells me to do it even if I might be wrong (to be clear, we have established that I am somebody who is very thoughtful, careful, and considerate so it isn't a license to do wrong things, it just that I need to give myself some room to do things without worrying that I am going to mess up or do something bad). That is a scary thought but pretty much the only answer to this mess that feels right.
ReplyDeleteI think all of us never thought our h's would cheat. He always hated the other men he worked with that did cheat. And when it all came out that he did people who he had known him for years couldn't look at him in the face. He had fallen off his pedestal and not only in their eyes but his too. He suffered shame, embarrassment, and mental health issues that were missed diagnosed.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first came to this site in pain and looking for answers I posted a lot about his sleep deprivation, mixing his meds up, the OW putting drugs in his coffee and the plan that she and her friends had carried out. At the time I really didn't know that my h was as depressed as he was, I knew that his injury from work affected him but not as deeply that it did. I had no idea until recently, that when he was a teenager that he had a manic episode. Nothing about his affair made sense to me. I couldn't find the answers I needed. He couldn't remember some of it. So I would ask the OW. Sounding desperate which she enjoyed. I accused the OW in an email of putting something in his coffee and she turned it all on me and said that I was the one putting something in his coffee. I hadn't given him a cup of coffee for two weeks while this went on. She told lie after lie when I had contact with her. But in those lies she told me exactly what she had done and the plan she had carried out. She knew my h was sick is what she said to me in an email. He had been on citalipram for depression and had only been on it for a few weeks at this time. I remember being so angry with the Dr's for not listening to him when he went for help. I spilled my guts on here over and over trying to make sense of it. Nothing that happened to us was like what others had in common regarding their h's affair. This is where I learned to trust myself. To trust that what we had gone through was scary shit, that his suicide attempts were a call for help again and still he was diagnosed wrong. I hated the medications that he was on and I wrote how much I hated them. It ended up being a commercial on TV that he saw that made us realize what he had experienced, researching bipolar 1 disorder, understanding that it runs in his family and getting help for that 3 years after his affair. Now we know what to look for in case he has another episode and how to get the help that he needs. I got called crazy from not only from the OW and her friends but by women I worked with and was told to let it go, drop it, and get over it. I'm glad that I never gave up and listened to my gut that something was never right with this whole shitty situation.