I think I'm easygoing. I think I'm calm, even when everything feels chaotic and loud. I think I'm the steady hand on the tiller. And yet, the other day, when I said something about how "moody" my brother is and how glad I am that I'm not "moody", my daughters exchanged a look.
"What!" I demanded.
"Well..." they said.
Turns out, they don't see me as calm and steady and not moody. They see me as sometimes volatile, mercurial, prone to flare up.
How was it possible that my sense of self was so different than their perception of me?
Because, as Walt Whitman so perfectly put it, "I am large, I contain multitudes."
At first, I felt like I'd been slapped. How could these kids be so wrong about me? I wasn't moody, my brother was. I was the opposite of moody. I was calm and reasonable and....
Was I? Always?
Of course not.
I used to know that I was mercurial. My mother described me as a "tornado" when I was a kid. My most serious boyfriend before meeting my husband repeatedly told me I was "too emotional", which meant that I had moods he wasn't particularly interested in experiencing.
But one of the things that changed in my marriage was me. Long before I discovered my husband's betrayal, I'd given up fighting with him. It never got me anywhere. I used to say it was like arguing with a brick wall. He couldn't/wouldn't/didn't see my point of view. Ever. Instead, my anger (I saw it as "passion") shut him down. As we learned later in therapy, anger paralyzed him. So what I saw as passion, someone vehemently arguing their position, he perceived as a threat. Suddenly, he was a kid again with a domineering abusive father, an emotionally manipulative mother. He wasn't hearing me anymore, he was hearing his parents.
I wasn't domineering or abusive. And yes, others could easily have seen my behaviour as passionate. Many did. But not him. He saw it as angry. And he couldn't deal with it.
So when my kids informed me that my self-perception was perhaps a bit skewed, I thought about it. I'm not moody. Really. But I'm also not always the steady hand on the tiller. Sometimes, I freak out because I've asked 8,000 times for the kids to put their shoes away and I just can't stand it one more time that they ignore me. Sometimes, I'm furious because some pint-sized misogynist at my daughter's school calls girls "dishwashers" (yes, this is a thing. A way of demeaning young women) and I make my fury clear and I urge my girls to feel that same fury and use it. Sometimes, I'm tired and overwhelmed and it shows.
"What!" I demanded.
"Well..." they said.
Turns out, they don't see me as calm and steady and not moody. They see me as sometimes volatile, mercurial, prone to flare up.
How was it possible that my sense of self was so different than their perception of me?
Because, as Walt Whitman so perfectly put it, "I am large, I contain multitudes."
At first, I felt like I'd been slapped. How could these kids be so wrong about me? I wasn't moody, my brother was. I was the opposite of moody. I was calm and reasonable and....
Was I? Always?
Of course not.
I used to know that I was mercurial. My mother described me as a "tornado" when I was a kid. My most serious boyfriend before meeting my husband repeatedly told me I was "too emotional", which meant that I had moods he wasn't particularly interested in experiencing.
But one of the things that changed in my marriage was me. Long before I discovered my husband's betrayal, I'd given up fighting with him. It never got me anywhere. I used to say it was like arguing with a brick wall. He couldn't/wouldn't/didn't see my point of view. Ever. Instead, my anger (I saw it as "passion") shut him down. As we learned later in therapy, anger paralyzed him. So what I saw as passion, someone vehemently arguing their position, he perceived as a threat. Suddenly, he was a kid again with a domineering abusive father, an emotionally manipulative mother. He wasn't hearing me anymore, he was hearing his parents.
I wasn't domineering or abusive. And yes, others could easily have seen my behaviour as passionate. Many did. But not him. He saw it as angry. And he couldn't deal with it.
So when my kids informed me that my self-perception was perhaps a bit skewed, I thought about it. I'm not moody. Really. But I'm also not always the steady hand on the tiller. Sometimes, I freak out because I've asked 8,000 times for the kids to put their shoes away and I just can't stand it one more time that they ignore me. Sometimes, I'm furious because some pint-sized misogynist at my daughter's school calls girls "dishwashers" (yes, this is a thing. A way of demeaning young women) and I make my fury clear and I urge my girls to feel that same fury and use it. Sometimes, I'm tired and overwhelmed and it shows.
But I've also worked hard at measuring my words carefully. I have trained (thank-you meditation!) to respond rather than react.
And here's the other thing. My kids have grown up in a far more stable, loving home than either my husband or me did. So when I compare my children's homelife to my own, it's night and day. I feel proud of what we've created and I can't believe my kids can't see the difference. But of course they can't. All they've ever known is a sober mother (which I did not have). All they've known is a house that goes quiet at 11 p.m. rather than the sound of breaking dishes and sobs (which is what I had). They've never felt the sting of a hand on their cheek (like my husband did).
A woman commented recently that she was stunned in a therapy session to hear herself described as a bully. Here she was, the injured party in this, and she was the one being criticized. We're already so wounded that any criticism or judgement can feel devastating and we hear it as an indictment, as evidence that we deserved to be cheated on, or at least a justification for his cheating.
But if we are to heal our marriage, we have to be able to speak honestly. It can be really really hard at the beginning because we feel so brittle and fragile. And perhaps this husband needs to learn to better choose his words, to use "I" sentences instead of "you" sentences. Communication clearly isn't his strong suit.
And just because he says she's a bully (something she vehemently denies), doesn't mean she is. It means that's how he perceives her behaviour. (It could also mean he's rewriting history to make himself look less like an asshole!) Maybe, like my husband did, this guy perceives a strong woman as threatening (also attractive but definitely threatening). Maybe this guy doesn't like to have his authority challenged. There are many many reasons he called her a bully that don't mean she's a bully. But maybe, just maybe, sometimes her behaviour comes across as bullying. And, given that she doesn't want to be a bully, that's important information to have. It means we can self-correct. We can take a good look at our own behaviour and determine whether the problem is ours or not.
None of this, of course, makes cheating okay. If she was truly a bully and he was deeply unhappy, he had many tools available to address that. He chose to cheat. Which, we all know, is a coward's response. So maybe the problem isn't so much that she's a bully but that he's a coward. He can take that in and determine if that's true. And if so, what he's going to do about it. Or maybe it's a bit of both.
It certainly was in my case. I had to learn how to communicate with my husband in a way that didn't shut him down. And he had to learn to remain open, even when he wanted to shut down. Neither of us had particularly healthy communication styles and we've worked hard to remedy that.
It's the only way our marriage could have been rebuilt in a way that's healthy. I will not ever take responsibility for my husband's infidelity. That's on him. But I will acknowledge my part in a marriage that felt increasingly empty and lonely.
It can be really hard to get there. We already feel so unloveable, so abandoned, so alone. It feel excruciating to have to take a hard look at ourselves. Which is why our immediate self-care is so important. To remind ourselves that we are lovable and worthy. That we did not deserve this. Nobody is saying that you aren't worth being faithful to. What I'm saying is none of us is perfect. Which is very good news. Perfect people are insufferable.
And here's the other thing. My kids have grown up in a far more stable, loving home than either my husband or me did. So when I compare my children's homelife to my own, it's night and day. I feel proud of what we've created and I can't believe my kids can't see the difference. But of course they can't. All they've ever known is a sober mother (which I did not have). All they've known is a house that goes quiet at 11 p.m. rather than the sound of breaking dishes and sobs (which is what I had). They've never felt the sting of a hand on their cheek (like my husband did).
A woman commented recently that she was stunned in a therapy session to hear herself described as a bully. Here she was, the injured party in this, and she was the one being criticized. We're already so wounded that any criticism or judgement can feel devastating and we hear it as an indictment, as evidence that we deserved to be cheated on, or at least a justification for his cheating.
But if we are to heal our marriage, we have to be able to speak honestly. It can be really really hard at the beginning because we feel so brittle and fragile. And perhaps this husband needs to learn to better choose his words, to use "I" sentences instead of "you" sentences. Communication clearly isn't his strong suit.
And just because he says she's a bully (something she vehemently denies), doesn't mean she is. It means that's how he perceives her behaviour. (It could also mean he's rewriting history to make himself look less like an asshole!) Maybe, like my husband did, this guy perceives a strong woman as threatening (also attractive but definitely threatening). Maybe this guy doesn't like to have his authority challenged. There are many many reasons he called her a bully that don't mean she's a bully. But maybe, just maybe, sometimes her behaviour comes across as bullying. And, given that she doesn't want to be a bully, that's important information to have. It means we can self-correct. We can take a good look at our own behaviour and determine whether the problem is ours or not.
None of this, of course, makes cheating okay. If she was truly a bully and he was deeply unhappy, he had many tools available to address that. He chose to cheat. Which, we all know, is a coward's response. So maybe the problem isn't so much that she's a bully but that he's a coward. He can take that in and determine if that's true. And if so, what he's going to do about it. Or maybe it's a bit of both.
It certainly was in my case. I had to learn how to communicate with my husband in a way that didn't shut him down. And he had to learn to remain open, even when he wanted to shut down. Neither of us had particularly healthy communication styles and we've worked hard to remedy that.
It's the only way our marriage could have been rebuilt in a way that's healthy. I will not ever take responsibility for my husband's infidelity. That's on him. But I will acknowledge my part in a marriage that felt increasingly empty and lonely.
It can be really hard to get there. We already feel so unloveable, so abandoned, so alone. It feel excruciating to have to take a hard look at ourselves. Which is why our immediate self-care is so important. To remind ourselves that we are lovable and worthy. That we did not deserve this. Nobody is saying that you aren't worth being faithful to. What I'm saying is none of us is perfect. Which is very good news. Perfect people are insufferable.
Thank you Elle. Tears flowing for both the pain I feel and your insightful response.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, None of this is easy. And it can feel like we're being kicked when we're down to hear anything that sounds remotely like criticism. A good therapist, however, will create space for each of you to speak candidly and feel safe and supported. My husband and I discovered that each of us secretly felt that our marriage counsellor liked us (ie. he thought she liked him better than me and I thought she liked me better than him, which is kinda childish on our part but kinda amazing on our therapist's part).
DeletePlease know that his framing of you is SO much about his stuff.
The other thing I always find so enraging about the way wives are described re. infidelity, is that we were "bitches" or "nags" or "cold". To which I always respond: These are women who have, likely, had months if not years of a spouse who is absent and/or unfaithful. Even if we don't know it outright, we generally feel the emotional withdrawal. In my case, I was largely raising three kids on my own because his had to "work". So...resentful? Damn right I was.
Thank you for this. Our journeys sound similar but I am only ten months out and trying to see the big picture. We both have a lot to learn and unlearn and yet the pain of the infidelity is so raw. Yes, we both let the cracks in but what a coward to not confront the problems. I asked for therapy three times (and we went) and yet he thought it was to "fix" him. Maybe in my mind back then I thought that too. I should have sought help separately. I needed to change too. Here we are trying to rebuild and it's amazing. I just HATE where it came from. We at least hope to stop the cycle for our children like you say. They will learn from this like we are...far from perfect. His 50th birthday is Friday. It's hard to celebrate him knowing what he did and how he celebrated these past two years (yes, I didn't trust or question myself for two years because he traveled a great deal for work). However, I want to celebrate the NEW him and honor the twenty years of a good marriage before we both turned away from each other. Barely holding on...thanks for your support. A sad community to be a part of but some brave, kick-ass women.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, You sound like an amazing human people capable of hug forgiveness. Ten months out? At that point, I would have been tempted to give my turning-50 husband a swift kick to the balls for his birthday.
DeleteKeep holding on, even if it's barely. To yourself. He is very lucky to have you and I hope he knows it.
Correct me if I am wrong. It seems to me when people start instituting boundaries in their relationships negative assessments arise with regards to the newly found attitudes of those setting those boundaries. People don't like boundaries especially when they are used to getting their ways when buttons are pushed. So when we enforce those boundaries we are seen as moody, emotional, harsh, aggressive, argumentative, loud just to name a few.
ReplyDeleteDo you think maybe because you now have boundaries your family is seeing those boundaries and just wish Mom would go back to being the old Mom they know with the same buttons they learned how to push to get her to behave as they wanted and needed and expected her to? Not judging just asking :)
Personally I've given up caring what others think of me. That is their problem right?
That's an important point, particularly when women are expected not to ask for what they want/need, to be more passive. When we change the game -- by creating and enforcing healthy boundaries -- there is often pushback. The three types of countermoves (begging/bribing/gnashing of teeth, anger/aggression, sulking). All designed to get us to back down, to go back to the old rules where we swallow our resentment. No way. Better to be a bitch who's respected than a doormat who's not.
DeleteLmao Elle a swift kick to the balls omg I am laughing so hard and I agree!! I am 8 months In and only recently my partner has said he doesn’t want to do counselling as he thinks it is only to benefit me? Yet a few months ago when he was trying to get me back he was willing to move heaven and earth promised me therapy and now that I’ve said once we are out of lockdown (due to covid 19) we can actually go he is being so resistant in going. That is a huge step back for me, you would think he would still say even though it may only benefit you I am willing to go to support you and us, his last comment was I cringe when you bring up therapy that to me is a big red flag. It’s very disheartening, I’ve told him to go and stay at his dads, he thinks I am trying to be controlling and control him. I don’t no what to do, I still haven’t forgiven him and I honestly keep asking myself will I ever coz atm it feels like I won’t. I am so worried it’s going to mess my kids head up in the future I don’t no whether to stay or leave. Any advice would help feeling deflated
ReplyDeleteAlso I might add I feel as though the last month he has not wanted to reassure me or when he does it’s like an eye roll type feeling. I don’t want to suppress my feelings of heart ache and I feel like he just wants to sweep it under the rug like he wasn’t having an affair for the the past 9 months!
ReplyDeleteNope. Not an option for him. And don't make it one. You agreed to consider reconciliation under the condition that he agreed to seek therapy to help you both process what went wrong and how to heal from it. He doesn't get to go back on his agreement unless he wants to make it clear that he's learned nothing and that going back on agreements (shall we call them, I dunno, "vows"?) is kinda his brand.
DeleteAnd, like (almost) always, I've written about these guys, who don't "believe" in therapy: https://betrayedwivesclub.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-he-doesnt-believe-in-therapy.html
I just found this blog. I am so called married for 45 years and found out 9 years ago that I was cheated on in every possible way for 35 years. I have been through individual and marriage counseling and remain in individual at this point. I live in pain but anxiety. My husband is narcissistic and wants to try. He is no longer abusive or cheating that I am aware of, but this topic is taboo to talk to most people and I continue to struggle. I hope to find compassion in this group.
ReplyDeleteI am very glad to come across this support group. I have been married over 40 months now found out many years ago that my husband cheated from the beginning of our marriage and throughout all the years in many types I relationships. We both have been in counseling but my pain and anxiety hasn’t diminished. I hope this support system will aid in my recovery.
ReplyDeleteThanks Elle I just read this and it’s so true, when he fed me all the stuff in the beginning that yes I will go and now say everytime you mention therapy I cringe is huge red flags for me, it does say I actually don’t want to have to keep reassuring you and I don’t want to make you feel better. Another thing we spoke of was having joint accounts so I didn’t have to have my hand out all the time asking for money it’s very degrading and that’s another thing he’s now taken back that he doesn’t see as necessery. We have a house two kids all that jazz but still wants to be seperate? Having that will make me feel secure and that we are equal and I’m not just the stay at home mum slave who does everything ! Man I love this page and having you all support and put your opinions in thank you.
ReplyDeleteWelcome Naomi it must be very difficult and such heartache for you to be just finding out now. You are among friends here and nothing you say will be judged.
ReplyDeleteOoh I'm in! Where do I sign up? I'm a month out from discovery day. Sadly, not the first time either. But this time was way more serious. And your story feels similar to mine when you describe your husband. SO much to process I feel like I'm living that old 80s tune... "should I stay or should I go?" I take no responsibility for his choice, have no pity for the poor guy who chose to cheat instead of talk to his wife of 20 years. I speak and he perceives it as an attack, shuts down, then passive-aggressively ignores me... so I learned not to speak, to eat all conflict, then, eventually, to eat my resentment. Have no idea what the future brings. No idea what I want it to bring with regards to my marriage. Ambivalent as to the outcome. I have 3 children, all with special needs. As you say, I dont have the bandwidth to fall apart.
ReplyDeleteSo glad to have found this group. I am 1 month out from discovery, receipt of anonymous letter which he confirmed when confronted. 1 year affair with colleague, he says already ended. Not the first time he's cheated but definitely more serious this time. I am swinging between ticked off/being done with him and we'll get through it, don't know if he can fix it, and dont even know what I want, totally ambivalent about outcome. Feel like I'm in a constant state of the old 80's song, "should I stay or should I go..."
ReplyDeleteMarried 20 years, 3 kids, all with special needs. Happened twice that I know about, porn and sexual intimacy issues from the start.
ReplyDeleteSo glad to have found this group. I am 1 month out from discovery, receipt of anonymous letter which he confirmed when confronted. 1 year affair with colleague, he says already ended. Not the first time he's cheated but definitely more serious this time. I am swinging between ticked off/being done with him and we'll get through it, don't know if he can fix it, and dont even know what I want, totally ambivalent about outcome. Feel like I'm in a constant state of the old 80's song, "should I stay or should I go..."
ReplyDelete