Excavating our deeper fear: How can I be sure I won't be hurt again?

 In our awareness, we can change.

~Elle's yoga instructor

I do not know if my yoga instructor has experienced infidelity but she knows grief, having lost two children to death from suicide. She speaks of her loss with pain in her voice. She is honest about her grief. But she is also upbeat. She is kind and has a compassion that radiates. And so, when she speaks, I listen. This is a woman who has much to teach because she has been willing to learn at the knee of grief.

The other day she told us that “in our awareness, we can change.” She was referring to a particularly challenging pose. But her instruction about yoga often morphs into instruction about life. Pausing. Being gentle with ourselves. Letting go of judgement. Breathing. Always, always it is about breath and the wisdom we find there when we let our minds release all of the chatter.

What struck me about her comment on awareness is that so often we get it backwards.

Consider a comment that was posted recently in which the betrayed asked if it was “normal” for her husband to not want to talk with her about what she shared in therapy. How was she to know if she was truly willing to change? she asked. How was she to know if was worth a second chance? Within her question, of course, was the deeper question: How can I be sure I won't be hurt again?

It’s a familiar worry. I, too, wanted to know that my husband was “fixing” himself because I imagined that fix would insulate me from future pain. I had a mental list of his flaws and I wanted them gone. I wanted him to address his fealty to his critical, occasionally cruel mother. I wanted him to address his anxiety about money. I wanted him to appreciate my role as mother to his children, to acquiesce to my ideas of how to raise them. And of course, I wanted some sort of proof that he would never ever betray me again.

How was I to know if he was fixing himself if he didn’t return home from therapy full of new insights and ann acknowledgement that I was right about things all along?

It’s amusing now. But at the time, I was very very serious.

His therapist made it clear that what they discussed was private. My therapist made it clear that what they discussed was private, just as what we discussed was private. Therapy is a safe, private place to explore our deepest beliefs and shames and desires.

I fumed but accepted it.

What happened was that, released from my insistence that he tell me what they discussed, my husband occasionally wanted to share what he was learning with me. 

What’s more, I was seeing change in him. He had an awareness that he hadn’t before. And, as my yoga teacher pointed out, in our awareness, we can change.

So often though, we demand the change quickly, in ourselves and in others. Whether it’s weight loss, or kicking an addiction, or working through a relationship problem, we want the change now. We are impatient for it. But without the awareness, change, even if it does happen, often won’t stick. And that’s because we have yet to pay attention to the why. Why do I reach for a glass of wine when I’m tired? Why do I endlessly scroll social media when I’m feeling bad about myself? Why do I overeat when I get off the phone with my mother?

And, of course, why did he cheat? What was he seeking? 

Within that why is the seeds of lasting change. Change rooted in a genuine desire to have different and, possibly, to be different.

Within our awareness, we can change.

So yes, it’s normal for your husband to not discuss his therapy with you. It is, frankly, healthy. Because he needs to reach awareness without you pointing to it.

It’s scary, I know. We want control when we’re scared. 
We want to choreograph his remorse, his recovery.

We can’t.

But we can reach for our own awareness. And within that, we can be the change.