Don't Dare Ask Us for Reconciliation Without Doing the Work of Accountability

There is no repair without accountability

~Brené Brown

Last week, one of our secret sisters posted here that her husband chose to stay with her instead of the 18-year younger girlfriend but only if she agrees to not bring up his cheating because he can't move forward if she keeps reminding him.

I share this because it's a sentiment (threat?) I hear perhaps not a lot but more than I should. And I share this not to embarrass the woman who came here with her shattered heart open but because a lot of guys, even if they're more subtle about it than her husband, really want us to "move forward", to "stop living the past", to "focus on the future". They want us to know that they "chose" us over the OW but only if we remain on our best behaviour. The threat is there, even if they don't say it. I have other options.

But we know that, don't we? It's clear they have other options. And the worst part of those early days following D-Day for me was that reality hanging over my head – that offered both comfort (he chose me!) and humiliation (but he chose her too. Also...why do I even want this asshole?). 

So let's unpack this a bit, shall we? Let's take a look at what these guys are really saying to us when they remind us that they "chose" us, when they let us know that all this talk of heartbreak and pain and fear, all these goddamn tears, is really getting on their very last nerve and can't we shut up about it already, even if they phrase that sentiment as you're keeping us stuck in the past and you need to move on from this and I want to move forward. After all, they point out, they're here aren't they? With us. We should be grateful.

Except we don't feel grateful.

We feel angry. And sad. So profoundly sad. We don't feel chosen, we feel rejected. We feel humiliated. Our feelings are overlooked. Inconvenient. Ignored.

Because we chose him when we said, I do. Or when we agreed to move in together. When we agreed to have a baby with him. When we signed a mortgage, or visited their mother in the nursing home, or reminded them that they'd find another job when they returned home having been "downsized".

He didn't choose us, though. He looked elsewhere. He didn't say 'no' when she suggested a drink after work. He didn't refuse when she flirted. He didn't delete the DM, or the nude photo.

And so all his talk of choosing us now is meaningless unless it's followed by actual real-life, every-minute-of-the-day evidence that he is, in fact, choosing us and that he is prioritizing our healing from the pain they inflicted.

And, while we're at it, talk of "moving forward" is meaningless too because there is no "moving forward" until we have fully excavated the past. His past. Until he is willing to examine the lines he crossed and interrogate himself to understand why he crossed them, then "forward" will never come. We will be left in the interminable past – unable to trust that we know what happened and unable to trust that it won't happen again.

There is no repair without accountability. There is no repair without acknowledging what's broken. What he broke. What he damaged.

And so, our only healthy, self-respecting response when we are told that we need to stop talking about this, that we need to move forward, that, after all, he chose us, is to say no. To say that there is no repair without accountability. That there is no moving forward without a full reckoning of the past.

He chose us? Maybe. But let's get clear on what was going through his head when he was choosing something, someone, else. When there's accountability, there can be repair.