We. Want. To. Know.
We thought we did know. We thought, when we said our vows, we knew how this story was going to end. A long and happy life.
But that's now how it worked out, is it? And I don't just mean the infidelity, though that's certainly a big surprise.
I also mean the stroke your dad had in his 50s. The depression your daughter suffered in her teens. The friend who turned on you for reasons that you still don't entirely understand. Or maybe you anticipated some of those things. Maybe, unlike me, you didn't think that life was going to be all smooth sailing after such a turbulent childhood.
But you didn't anticipate the cheating, did you? You might have acknowledged it was possible. After all, it's surprisingly, disgustingly common. But he wouldn't, would he? Of course not.
Except he did.
And now you want to know what happens next.
Does he still think about her?
Does he wish he was with her?
Will he get over her?
And what about you? What about your kids?
Accepting uncertainty is one of life's big challenges, isn't it? Humans hate uncertainty. We would rather know bad news than anticipate it. We would rather have answers, even if they're the answers we didn't want to hear than have to listen to "I don't know."
"I don't know what I want."
"I don't know what I was thinking."
"I don't know why I did that."
It all sounds so wishy-washy. How can he not know? What is wrong with him?
What is wrong with him is for him to figure out. And it's a perfectly reasonable, indeed entirely necessary thing to ask him to do: Find out why you risked your marriage and family. Find out why you lied to us instead of just leaving. Or being honest.
But what you can't expect is to know. When he says he doesn't know, it's possibly the only honest answer he's given you in a while.
And here's the thing: You don't have to know either. In fact, the more quickly you can accept that you can't know how this is going to turn out, the better you'll feel. The faster you'll heal.
Because none of us knows. And that's the sad, frustrating truth about life. None of us knows how it's going to end. None of us knows.
We can sometimes see what's just up ahead. But further down and around the corner? Nope. That's going to be a surprise. Whether a pleasant one or not remains to be seen.
I sometimes think back to my 25-year-old self and wonder what she'd think of where I am now. Could she believe she's published 15 books when, at that point, she could scarcely image publishing one? Could she imagine being mom to three awesome kids, even as two of those kids continue to struggle with mental health issues? Could she imagine staying in a marriage with a man who cheated on her for much of their marriage? Could she believe that she would lose her mother and the world would continue to carry on? That she could feel the grief without losing herself in it? Did she have any idea just how strong she would be?
We're bad predictors of our future selves, an expert once told me. We think we'll always feel the way we do today. We think we'll always want what we want today.
And yet, the only constant is change. All of us. We change.
And that's good. What's also good news is that we have control over our own change. Not what happens to us but how we respond to what happens to us. As trite as it sounds, we can let it make us better or we can let it make us bitter. Our choice.
But it starts with accepting what we know today and releasing any expectation of tomorrow or the day after that.
It starts with working with what we can see. And then, seeing what we can when we're further ahead.
As the saying goes, life is like driving in the dark. We can only see as far as our headlights but we can make the whole trip that way.
Thank you for your post--and your insights. I wrote this tonight and then read your post and felt some sense of clarity--clarity in the not knowing which reality is real.
ReplyDeleteThis morning I sat outside a restaurant and waited. Waited to see my husband walk out. Waited to see who else walked out with him.
In the end my panic in this moment was unwarranted. While he hadn't been at the location he said he would be, he was in fact eating with the rather unattractive and not threatening female coworker he said he would be with. He had wanted to take her to breakfast to congratulate her on her well deserved promotion--a nice kind gesture for a friend.
I sat there in my car for an hour waiting. I moved several times to find the place in the parking lot where I could see the door but he would not see me. I watched them walk out--relieved that it wasn't the other woman. And sick to my stomach from that hour of sheer terror.
While I am not proud of that hour, I don't condemn myself for it. Less than six months ago I found the proof that I knew existed--the proof that he was lying to me, that there was in fact someone else. And now I feel like I am living two lives at the same time. Only I don't know which one is real or if they both somehow are equally real.
In one reality, my husband spent three months cultivating a "friendship" with another woman--much younger, not prettier, but much easier than me to deal with. She represents everything I am not--and never was. She's almost 20 years younger than me--an event planner who wears cute dresses and fixes her hair and her makeup just so. She's funny and I'm sure finds him charming. He spent somewhere close to fifteen hours at her apartment (which I know from tracking toll tag records now). He bought her gifts. He texted with her. And during that same time, my marriage with him fell apart. While quarantine insanity struck us all, I was home with all of our kids struggling for sanity, for even footing. And he eventually told me he "couldn't be married to me" because of so many things--blended families, my apparently difficult children, his fear of failure (not that he ever put it that way), and a laundry list of crimes I committed against him that I had no idea existed.
But when I discovered the lies, he said they were just friends. That nothing physical happened. He stuck to that even after I found the condom in his car's glove box. I am not so stupid as to believe that lie. He swore it wasn't about her--that she wasn't the issue--that instead it was all those other problems. And he promised that it would end.
I have no proof it didn't. In fact in this other reality I live in today--he is kind and loving. Funny and charming. He plans weekends with me for my birthday. He won't recant his statements about the issues with our marriage but he acts like the husband I thought I married. I am happy in this reality. I love him very much and he acts like a husband who loves his wife and enjoys her company. Here I feel like I can find a path forward, one where maybe that other reality fades from view. Except, its not so simple. A breakfast at a different location, dreams in which she is back and oh so real in his life, condoms found in more locations--any one of those things brings that other reality back to me. And I don't know which one is real. Am I dragging along a past that is actually behind us? Or is that past reality just reminded me that it is not done with us yet.
Even now as I type this, he is downstairs with his older son who just had his heart broken by a girl, keeping him company. Bu ttexting me to see what I am doing--talking about this weekend and what to do to cheer his son up. I find it so hard to imagine that it is only a bit over 12 hours from my sitting in a car petrified that he would walk out of that restaurant with her. I don't know how I came to live in these competing realities and I want it to stop.
Ugh. Everything you've written strikes some long-buried chord in my gut. I'm so sorry.
DeleteWhat stands out, though, is that there doesn't seem to have been any sort of reckoning with him. Perhaps you just didn't write it, but there's no mention of him realizing how he'd rewritten his life to justify cheating, or understanding how he'd never spoken to you about the ways in which he was unhappy rather than cheating. So...what's changed? Why has he stayed? And that, I wonder, might change your level of emotional safety. For me, I had to know that my husband recognized and acknowledged the pain he'd caused and knew why he'd made such a painful choice. I needed to see that he got it. Once I saw that -- once I knew that he disliked the person he'd become as much as I did -- then I could begin to feel safe again, to trust that given that choice again, he would choose differently.
Your reality is that you feel unsafe. Your reality is that you can't believe that he's being honest with you. And that's a reasonable feeling to have when he has lied to you. You are not the crazy one here.
Anon, I'm noticing the same thing as Elle. There was no reckoning or accountability. No wonder you don't feel safe. I obviously don't have the whole story here, but it seems as though he's just getting and acting as if nothing ever happened. sweeping this under the rug doesn't address your justifiable need for safety or hold him accountable in any way. Is he in counseling? Are you? Are you in couple's therapy to start rooting out the truth behind the things has said were an issue while he was in affair-crazy land? No marriage is perfect (does not EVER justify cheating) and going to a counselor together will potentially create a safe place where you can ask your questions, set boundaries about what it is you need to be safe. Maybe solo lunches with co-workers is off limits for the time being. You are allowed to set those boundaries. I just don't read anything above that shows he's done any work to dig into why he did this, how he let himself get there. And if he hasn't begun that work, you are not going to feel safe. Part two, counseling for you. Just you. an ally who can help you navigate this trauma. Someone who can help you dig into your own stuff (we all have stuff) and get clear on what you need, want, deserve from your life and the people in it. Sometimes I find my therapist is just a sanity check. Hearing her say, you know this is a totally normal reaction, given what's happening and having her guide me while I figure out how I want to handle something is so valuable.
DeleteAnd finally, that disconnect and dual reality sounds really normal given what you are going through. The shock and trauma of betrayal hits us all pretty hard and feels pretty damn surreal. One of the things that helped me manage these competing realities and feeling torn in two was radical acceptance. You basically make statements to yourself that accept the two conflicting states. "I accept that I love my husband and I accept that I am so angry that he cheated." "I accept that I want to know everything and I accept that I may not ever now everything." And you keep going until you have hit all the things that bubble up. Writing them down can help or just repeating them to yourself until you feel clear. Good luck Anon, sending love.
Thank you both for your replies. You aren't wrong--there is a lack of willingness on his part so far to do the hard work. He has apologized and promised not to repeat--and he has done everything I've ask as far as dropping contact with the other woman and being much more present and connected with me. Eventually though something will have to shift--either going to couples counseling with me or some other manner of addressing why it happened. I have been going to therapy which has been very helpful but at some point, I have done the work I can do on my own.
DeleteIn the meantime I will work on following your advice. Thank you for the insights and support--while nothing makes this easy, it has helped immensely.
Hi Elle, this is a great article and hits me where I am today in my journey. I’m 10 months past the first DD where I discovered an 18 month affair and shorter term affair that seemed to be new. He only admits to sleeping with the one I was able to speak with of course. Fast forward, I begged for the full truth so I can assess whether this is something I can forgive. I had to dig through the bills but I found it. Turns out it wasn’t 2, but a total of 15 different women over approximately 2 years with most labeled as emotional “platonic” relationships. I already tried to forgive him for a prior major transgression where he was addicted to hookers. Claimed he didn’t sleep with them but was obsessed with seeing and hearing them and I verified that he called thousands within the year But honestly didn’t find a dollar missing, but he was more forthcoming and truthful as he gave me access to his credit report and every dollar spent seemed to be accounted for. Presently, he is delusional and in denial that he has a problem. He thinks he was just escaping our marriage. He spent thousands of minutes (in excess of 12k minutes talking in one month plus thousands of text exchanges to these different women located both locally and across the country) so he has a major issue. He has been in therapy but claims to be in there going over our weekly arguments so he never gets to his issues. Typical of him to throw up smoking mirrors to avoid his truth because he thinks he can snap his finger and change because he “learned his lesson”. He says statements like “that’s who I was” while in 10 months he does no work and replaced us with his male friends . For example, the night I found out about the other women we argued and he left to host a hangout for his guys at is place for one of their birthdays....crazy. I’ve been in therapy all year and had to switch because the therapist became so aggressively anti my H that I switched and this new one turned on him by session 3 so I go into the session and come out worse than I went in. They diagnose him from afar as an entitled narcissist and also a man-child who is stuck at 15 and just wants to be popular. We have young kids who are hurting because we are fully separated and things are getting worse and they’re begging us to work it out so he can come back home. He lost is job also during all this, and he is just a mess. I have been obsessed with trying to figure out what’s wrong with him. I’ve read books, I’ve self diagnosed and now 10 months in I don’t have the answers. You’re right that I just need to give it up. It doesn’t seem that he knows or wants to find out. He just wants to gloss over this and “change”. From reading your article it’s clear that I should just drop it. Maybe that also requires me to drop the last thread of hope because he is a man-child and won’t actually face what he did. He kept the other emotional affairs a secret knowing I could’ve easily uncovered it on the phone bills which I had printed out but I was begging all year for him to reveal himself. It’s a relief knowing as much of the truth as I can find out on my own, because he was never and will never tell the truth. He has demons and he thinks he can hide them in plain sight. This is painful but I will have to stop driving myself insane. This blog has been so much more therapeutic for me than therapy. It’s disappointing to have therapists who can’t be objective.
ReplyDeleteHopeful,
DeleteI always love when someone comes here and, essentially, answers their own question. I was part way through your post, thinking to myself, "I need to tell her to stop encouraging him to fix himself and start focussing exclusively on herself" and -- voila! -- you reached the very same conclusion. Yes. Your job is to heal yourself. Your children will be disappointed. But it is not your job to sacrifice yourself for them. It is your job to model self-respect and boundaries so that, God forbid, they ever find themselves in your situation, they don't also sacrifice themselves. It is your job to be their mother and to love them through this difficult time. Your husband's job is to get his shit together but I suspect as long as he has you to blame or distract himself (talking about your arguments, for instance, rather than his cheating), he's not going to. That's fine. That's his choice. And some people never learn. It's always someone else's fault, it's never really a "problem", etc. Time to extract yourself from that.
You can do this, Hopeful. Your name says it. Maybe you were hopeful that you could salvage this marriage but that's a two-person job. But what you can be hopeful about is that you will emerge from this and be okay. Your kids can be okay. Your life can get free of all this wishing things were different.
Hopeful, I was (almost 5 years ago now!!!) standing where you are. I realized I had to stop wasting my energy on him and trying to convince him to do the work to fix his shit (he was also in denial about his particular addiction and blamed me for tings being so wrong). I had so much wanted to have the saved marriage redemption story, but like Elle says, that takes two and I had been trying to do all that lifting on my own. Hopeful take your time and figure out the next right step for you. Some of what I am about to say might be scary and hard to process right now, but first and foremost I promise you that if you focus on taking care of yourself, you will be OK. I want to tell you that when my now ex moved out, I felt like I could breathe for the first time since dday. Not hiving his toxic bs, not having to manage or be next to his moods, not having to tolerate him carrying on his affair under my nose was such a massive relief. I had an inkling then that I was on the right path, even though I could barely see one step ahead. If he is not really doing the work to figure out how he got here, he does not deserve to have full access to you. Not your time, energy or support. As long as he is getting this from you, he has no reason to change. Focus on you. What do you need to heal? What do you need to feel secure in your self and your own life. Where can you get safe support (the right family, friend(s) or professional, clergy etc.)? I'm not telling you what your next step is, but I'm offering to you the idea that all your attention can be on you. You deserve to be the center of your own story. sending so much love
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for the advice ladies! It is so helpful to get this advice from someone who has been there. I’m working on my list of things that I need to get him completely out of my life and set boundaries so he interacts with the kids in his own space and stays completely out of my space. I already feel so much clearer today because of this advice.
Deletehello
ReplyDeleteWow. I have been in a funk ALL day and today has been a very rough day for me mentally and this post is EXACTLY how i have been feeling. I have googled and read so many articles about infidelity. Seems weird but when I notice that my mind wont stop with thoughts about my husband betraying me i google things. "How to stop obsessing over infidelity" "obsessing over the other woman" you name it ive googled it all. I have noticed that it helps me. It really helps me validate my emotions and it has become almost therapeutic for me. I found out 3 weeks ago that my husband had been sexting another woman. What hurts the most about this is that we have only been married for 3 months and this started during that time frame. We have both been seeing therapists individually and he is actually going to be doing it weekly. There are days where I am fine and I want to smother him with love and spark that passion we once had and other days this betrayal consumes my whole day. This morning i woke up feeling worthless and felt complete sadness. I dont like feeling hot and cold I know it is not healthy for my mental health but also not healthy for the marriage I am trying to rebuild with my husband. He is supportive of my emotions but I dont think he fully comprehends the hurt I feel some days and the way it can blind side me out of no where sometimes. I want to rebuild but theres some days where I want him to be miserable like I am. I find myself obsessing over the thought of the woman and the fact that she had my husband's attention for this time frame. There's days I regret not reacting back at her laughing at me when I messaged her letting her know she needed to stop messaging my husband. I am tired of feeling this way and having rollercoaster days. it is really draining and what I fear the most is that it will last a very long time. I understand that this was very recent and it will take some time but it can be extremely frustrating dealing with conflicting emotions all the time. I miss feeling safe with my husband and I dont know if i will ever feel that again.
ReplyDeleteYes, you will feel that again but you're right. It will take a long time. Grief takes time. And you're grieving. The loss of the marriage you thought you had, the loss of the man you thought he was, the loss of control you thought you had. So be patient with yourself. Please. This hurts. But you compound the hurt when you're hard on yourself.
DeleteI have been reading this site over the last year and it has been very helpful for me to know that I am not alone. I feel like a fool. I have always prided myself with my instincts about people. I am 1 year and 3 months post d day. My husband and I have been together for 17 years. He was the love of my life. We were always a strong couple who always enjoyed being together. The past few years we had become distant for numerous reasons. Demanding career and our daughter keeps us pretty busy. He had been going out with his friends a few nights a week. I would ask him to stop then he would for a bit but then the behavior would continue. I was honestly in a space where I was thinking that we had just drifted too far apart. I was in the mind set that if someone wants to be with you they will. I was not going to beg him to spend time with his family. I am a person where actions speak louder than words to me. I was suspicious that something was off. He was irritable with me and short attention span. In which he has never been like that. I found out by using his phone and something inside me told me to look. Long story short he was having an emotional affair. Not only with a younger women but a stripper. She was clearly filling his ego and for a smart man he fell for iit. He told me everything after many lies. We have decided to make it work and underneath all the hurt and pain we have realized how much we love each other. We have talked about how things were with us over and over. He has been very understanding, is patient and answers all my questions. We have even gone to marriage counseling. The marriage counselor says we have done a lot of work and are good to continue the work ourselves. The problem is most days are good. But I still have many days where I am scared to trust him. I had a very difficult child hood with abuse and lies. So I am aware that I do not trust easily. I just don’t know if I will ever be able to trust him again. I get a pit in my stomach that he could be lying to me. I figured it out the first time so I’m sure I will again. It’s the fact that he was capable of lying to me until he had to come clean because I had proof. I am stuck because I can’t imagine breaking up our family and don’t think I would be happier with out him. At the same time I don’t know if we will ever be the same because I can’t shake not trusting him when he is doing all the right things.
ReplyDeleteStaying strong
Staying Strong,
DeleteI'm glad you found us and kudos to both of you for all the hard work you've already done.
That's good news. The bad news is, it sounds as if you still have work to do. A lot of us discover through our husband's betrayal that we have deep trauma that was never really healed. This newer betrayal brings that deeper pain up from the depths where thought it was buried. Those of us with childhood trauma often have to do additional work to heal that old stuff because it keeps us stuck. Even if you've done a lot of work to heal that childhood stuff, a new betrayal can dredge it back up. I thought I had dealt 100% with my own childhood trauma but when my husband cheated, it brought up all sorts of old stuff around abandonment and worth.
So I would urge you to see a counsellor on your own to deal with that stuff, to help you process it through this new lens. It will make a difference, I promise.
"Because none of us knows. And that's the sad, frustrating truth about life. None of us knows how it's going to end. None of us knows"
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU
I don't get tired of hearing it because it feels really good to imagine that I'm offering even a measure of comfort during this hellish time. So thank-you!
Delete