My Overly Defended Heart

I wrote the title of this blog post on my phone and then emailed it to myself. That's how I keep track of interesting phrases, or quotes, of tidbits of info I want to Google later when I have time and when I don't have to strain my aging eyes reading things on my phone.

I don't know where I saw the phrase "my overly defended heart". Maybe Brené Brown's new Atlas of the Human Heart, which my son gave me for Christmas. (If you're not watching her TV series based on the book, please do! It's wonderful.) I do know that when I saw it, when I still see it, it feels true. It is true. My heart. It is overly defended.

I wonder if yours is too. It would be reasonable, of course, when our heart has been shattered, to build a wall around it. To defend it. To guard it from any threat.

And yet, I believe – with my whole heart – that what Nick Cave says is true when he tells a young reader, fearful of heartbreak,

"to resist love and inoculate yourself against heartbreak is to reject life itself, for to love is your primary human function. It is your duty to love in whatever way you can, and to move boldly into that love — deeply, dangerously and recklessly — and restore the world with your awe and wonder. This world is in urgent need — desperate, crucial need — and is crying out for love, your love. It cannot survive without it."

Heady stuff, huh? To imagine that the world wants, indeed needs our love! Nobody could blame us if we say 'no' to that. If we decide to stay small, to refuse to expose our hearts to more pain, more injury.

My therapist once told me how resilient I was. She pointed to the all the ways in which people had harmed me, from when I was young. Look at you, she said to me, urging me to see myself as strong. I pushed back. Surviving isn't strength, I insisted. I was tired of being resilient. Sick to death of forcing myself back onto my feet when what I wanted – what I thought I'd earned – was rest, solitude, to be left the fuck alone. Never again, I vowed. I would stay married because I couldn't imagine telling my children that their parents were divorcing. That wasn't strength, as far as I was concerned. That was exhaustion. I would build fences – walls! – around my heart.

It hasn't exactly turned out that way. For one thing, my default setting is a soft heart. It didn't seem to matter whether there was barbed wire around it, my heart wouldn't harden enough to make me invulnerable to pain.

My guess is yours won't either. But the good news is, you don't want it to.

Because an overly defended heart isn't one that doesn't feel pain, it's one that can't feel love. I know, I know. The two feel inextricably linked right now. Lovepainlovepain, all wrapped up in a ball of confusion.

But, as best you can, let yourself heal from this in a way that keeps your heart unguarded enough to enjoy the good stuff, too. As my therapist also explained to me once, by refusing to feel the bad stuff, you also numb yourself to the good stuff. Your heart can't be selective. It's either all felt, or none of its felt. 

Besides, Cave makes a compelling case. "To love the world is a participatory and reciprocal action — for what you give to the world, the world returns to you, many fold, and you will live days of love that will make your head spin, that you will treasure for all time." Love, he tells us, means we're alive. He concedes that heartbreak often comes with love, something he hardly needs to tell any of us, right? 

We are not given guarantees. Surely we know that by now. And yet, we act as if we can stop pain. We act as if we can insulate ourselves from bad things.

What we must do, the only option really available to us, is accept all that life brings our way. This is not the same as saying it's okay to treat us badly. It is never okay. We get to choose who gains entry to our day-to-day lives. But it is to refuse to let pain, our wounds, harden us against life's joys, because joy exists too. It is an act of self-preservation to stop and notice. Joy might be easily overlooked right now but it's there. The first spring flower. A brilliant blue sky. A puppy. A child climbing into your lap. A really good cup of coffee.

It's all there for our hearts to take in. But only if we haven't defended our hearts so thoroughly that we miss it all. 

Thursday's Thought

 

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.

Boundaries. Again. Because we (I) still struggle to set them...

I don't know about you but no matter how much I recognize the value in and need for boundaries, I still struggle. Years and years of being a pleaser has made "sure, I can do that" or "that's okay" my reflexive response to pretty much anything. You didn't have time to do that one thing I asked you to do? "That's okay." You need me to finish up a job for you? "Sure, I can do that."

Just this morning, I agreed to pay $40 at the dentist for a fluoride treatment that I kinda think is a gimmick because I wanted to be agreeable. Dammit, right? 

I'm getting better. I'm learning to build in a pause before I respond. Though it almost pains me, I now (mostly!) say, "let me think about that" when I'm being asked to do something that I'm not sure I want to. Too often, I don't know what I feel about something until I sit with it. My desire to please others remains, in the moment, stronger than my desire to please myself. But if I give myself that moment, if I allow myself time to check in with myself, then I remember: My job is to keep myself safe and my relationships free of resentment. And I can't do that when I'm agreeing to things that are disagreeable to me, or when I'm letting people off the hook for letting me down.

And so, here we are again: Boundaries.

Let's revisit what boundaries are not:

People think boundaries are a wall or moat around your heart, but they’re not

~Brené Brown

So what are they?

Good boundaries are a drawbridge to self-respect.

~also Brené Brown

Put another way, boundaries are about behaviours, not people. 

Put another, another way: Our problem isn't with the people in our lives, necessarily. It's with what they are/are not doing. And when we keep our focus on their behaviour and not on them personally, it's a lot easier to understand how to keep ourselves safe and to have the necessary conversation. These people can still be welcome in our lives but we can put limits on what we will and will not tolerate from them.

What's more, boundaries can change. What feels unacceptable to you right now (going to your husband's company BBQ because he cheated with his assistant) might feel acceptable in a year, or two, or three. In my case, I put limits on how often I saw my husband's family after D-Day. I found them critical and cruel and I decided I no longer would put myself through that. With time, I was able to see them more often while still respecting my limitations.

Boundaries confuse a lot of people because they feel dictatorial. Or selfish. But let's let Brené Brown's words be our guide. They are not a wall or a moat, they are a drawbridge to our self-respect. What do you need to be respectful of ourselves? 

•People may not _______________ (For me: People may not lie to me or be dishonest by omission)

•I have a right to ask for ________ (I have a right to ask for honesty)

• It’s okay for me to _______________ (It’s okay for me to say no to things I don't want to do or to take time to figure out what I want to do)

What might you add? I have the right to ask for...what I need to heal (counselling, a separation, a babysitter for time away). People may not...consistently be late. It's okay for me to...prioritize my needs.

It's hard if you don't have a lot of practice. And far too many of us have spent a lifetime squelching our own wants and needs to the point that we often can't identify what ours are. What makes me happy? Well, when everyone else is happy. Sad, huh? 

But, I'm learning. Slowly. But I'm learning. 

Stay tuned for a post on consequences. What they are and what they're not. Inspired by a Twitter conversation!

 

Making Space for Your Reality

It may sound innocuous on the surface, but when you share something difficult with someone and they insist that you turn it into a positive, what they're really saying is, My comfort is more important than your reality.

~Dr. Susan David, Author of Emotional Agility

My friend Diana is a good person. She's kind and funny and generous. A couple of weeks ago, she called me. It was a day after I'd had a run-in with my brother. Long-time readers of this site might recall that my former therapist attributes much of my issues with anger to my brother. She insists that what I always chalked up to normal sibling stuff was actually full-on emotional and physical abuse that my parents largely ignored. I suspect she's right. But I'm a grown woman now. So when my brother called to scream at me because he doesn't believe I'm taking good enough care of my elderly dad, I told him, calmly and clearly, to stop speaking to me that way. He responded by hanging up on me then texting me to "grow up and step up".

A few years ago, that would have sent me into a tailspin. I would have questioned myself (Am I really not doing enough for my dad?" Am I a bad daughter? A bad sister? A bad human being?). I would have lain awake at night beating myself up while also mentally cataloging all the ways in which my brother is a jerk. I felt angry, absolutely. But a healthy anger. An anger that says, "you don't get to treat me like that".

But here's the story: I was filling in my friend, Diana, about what happened. Matter-of-fact. Telling her that I'm done with letting my brother take his fury out on me, I'm done dutifully following his instructions. Just...done. 

Diana responded with some murmurs of support but then she said, "you don't really mean that. You want your brother in your life. You'll get over this."

I felt...unheard. I felt disrespected. I felt patronized. And so, when I read the above quote on Brené Brown's Instagram, it resonated. Because that's exactly how it feels, right? When we share something that feels personal, that feels...raw, and the person in whom we've confided responds with platitudes or minimizing, well, it's clear that our feelings are putting them in supreme discomfort and they want it to stop.

A whole lot of us know that experience, don't we? It took me more than 40 years to finally understand what people were really saying to me when they called me "too sensitive" or "too emotional". What they were saying is, "your feelings are making me uncomfortable. Please stop having them."

I've learned over the years to not share a lot with Diana. She minimizes her own feelings too.  No matter what is happening in her life, it's "all good" even when it's clear to all that it's not. So what I learned from my most recent conversation with her confirmed what I already knew: Feelings make her horribly uncomfortable. She can't show up for me because she hasn't yet figured out how to show up for herself.

What does any of this have to do with betrayal and infidelity? Infidelity triggers strong feelings in people, uncomfortable feelings. And if, when you confide in someone you trust (please be discerning) their response is to minimize or to try to turn this into a positive, then I want you to recognize what's happening. 

You are entitled to your feelings, no matter what they are. They are real and deserving of acknowledgement. Your job is never to prioritize others' comfort over your reality. Never. 

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Why Shame is the Wrong Tool to Deal with Infidelity

Here are some of the things I said to my husband after D-Day:
You're a liar.
You disgust me.
You are nothing but a cheater and a liar.
Why would I ever believe you because you are incapable of telling the truth.
The list goes on but my memory has grown fuzzy.
Pretty horrible, huh?
I'm not saying he didn't deserve my wrath. He did. He most definitely did.
What I am saying is that that those words not only did nothing to create the possibility for healing, they also weren't true (well, except for the disgust bit. I was pretty disgusted at that point).
But they hurt him. And that was really my intention. I wasn't capable of thinking more long-term than the next five-minutes. I was in the midst of survival mode – fight, flight or freeze. And I was fighting like hell. I wanted to hurt him like he'd hurt me. I wanted him to know that I would never forgive him for what he'd done. Which also, as fate would have it, turned out to be untrue.
But more to the point, if I'd been able to stop and think, to determine what my goal was, I might have realized that what I was doing – shaming my husband – wasn't going to help me achieve it.
Which is the great misunderstanding of shame.

We think shame makes people change their behaviour. But famed shame researcher Brené Brown gives us the bad news. It doesn’t. If anything, shame makes people double down on their bad behaviour (we’re seeing this shame-and-name culture online right now and it’s ugly).

What happens, Brown explains, is that shame hijacks our limbic system – we go into survival mode. That’s our primitive brain, our reptile brain. Shame, she says, “corrodes that part of us that believes we can ever be different.”

Sadly, a lot of us grew up being shamed. More than likely, our partners did too. It’s a frequently used tool by those in authority. But shame drives a lot of bad behaviour. Shame doesn’t urge us be better, it tells us we never will be.

You’re never going to be anything but a loser, we might have heard.

Why can’t you do anything right?

Or, my husband’s father’s favorite: You’re nothing but a quitter.

And here I was, post D-Day, shaming my husband, albeit unintentionally. I was doing to him exactly what had been done to him as a child. And what he’d done to himself ever since.

Shame drives bad behaviour, Brown reminds us again.

So much of my husband’s acting out was rooted in his childhood shame. Shame kills intimacy. Shame kills empathy. Brown puts it this way: “It’s much more likely to be the cause of harmful and destructive behaviours than the cure.”

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of infidelity lately. I’ve long thought that our culture, while it loves a redemption story, loves a consistent narrative more. While we hold the possibility that people can change, we’re suspicious of it. That “once a cheater, always a cheater” mentality leaves no room for redemption, for reinvention.

Why do we make it so hard for people to redeem themselves? Why do we insist on labelling people rather than labelling their behaviour? It might seem like semantics but it’s rooted in shaming. That’s not, of course, to say that bad behaviour shouldn’t be called out. It absolutely should, especially cheating, which causes so much damage and pain to partners and kids. But there is a world of difference between expecting someone who cheated to figure out why he did and how to ensure he never does it again, and labelling them a cheater. The first allows for change. The second…does not.

I’ve long believed that my willingness to give my husband the chance to change stemmed from having grown up with an alcoholic who got sober. I had seen someone, who everyone else had given up on, choose a better path. And I had watched her not only get sober but get wise about it. I knew people could change because I’d seen it. Might my perspective have been different if she’d never stopped drinking? Probably.

We need to see that change is possible to believe it. What’s more, if we’re going to give our partners the opportunity to change, we need to see that they are willing to do the hard work that change requires. We need to see them doing the work, no matter how uncomfortable it makes them. Without that, we’re just clinging to hopes and dreams.

It must be a careful dance, between wanting to believe our partners can change and being realistic about whether they will. Change is not a straight trajectory. It zigs and it zags but someone truly intent on becoming better will self-correct.

As Brown reminds us, when you see someone making amends, apologizing, doing better, that’s about guilt not shame.

But if they do not make amends, if it becomes clear that their words are not backed up by actions – if they refuse counselling, if they resist giving you passwords, if they push back against boundaries you’ve set in order to feel emotionally safe with someone capable of cheating, then that’s important information. And all the shaming in the world isn’t going to create that change if it isn’t coming from a reckoning within.

Thursday's Thought

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving 

to be your best. Perfectionism is the belief 

that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, 

we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, 

judgement, and shame. It's a shield.

~Brené Brown

"Becoming" pain vs "self-betrayal" pain

There is the pain of just being human, the pain of loss of losing people and animals and relationships and situations we thought we couldn’t live without. But there is another kind of pain and that is a pain that is chosen. That is the pain of a woman who has slowly abandoned herself. And that is a pain I will never choose again. If I can choose between pain and joy, I will choose joy. 
~Glennon Doyle

There is becoming pain and there is self betrayal pain. And you have to know the difference

~Brené Brown

I didn't see it at first. My husband's betrayal eclipsed all else in my life. So devastated by it, I couldn't see anything beyond what he did to me.
I completely missed what I had done to myself.
But over the following months and years, it became impossible to ignore. Yes, my husband had betrayed me, profoundly. But the deeper betrayal was how I had betrayed myself.
It had happened slowly. In hindsight, there wasn't one moment I could point to and say "there, yes. That's when I abandoned myself." 
Rather it was many smaller moments, where I chose him over me, where I prioritized his comfort over my own, where I silenced my voice so that his was all either of us heard. Let me be clear. This was not abuse. My husband isn't cruel or domineering. Rather, I had learned in childhood to keep the peace, to not rock the boat. And so, when marriage got sticky, I let him define the narrative: I was "too sensitive", I was "looking for problems". And when I pushed back, which I still had the guts to do, I was "crazy". Want to know what "crazy" looked like in my house? Let me tell you. Crazy was me pointing out when his mother was judgemental and cruel (my son was a "momma's boy" because I comforted him when he cried, for instance). Crazy was me insisting that our sex life seemed off. Crazy was me stating my truth. 
Our culture has a long history of silencing women with "crazy". And it worked. Mostly. I silenced myself. Why bother pointing out that his mother was unkind to me? Why bother asking for more help with the kids? Why bother bringing up that my work was important too?
Why bother? 
Far more important to find workarounds, to call on other people for support, to not rock the boat. Marriages are about compromise, right? All marriages have rough spots, rights? And when you've never seen a healthy marriage, you believe that yours is probably better than most. Certainly better than any you've seen modelled.
And in those words – 'why bother?' – lay my own betrayal self.
Why bother? Because I was frustrated by how low on the priority list my own career fell? Why bother? Because his mother's unkindness hurt me. No matter that he'd lived with it his entire life. No matter that she "old and unlikely to change." It hurt me. That should have mattered.
Why bother? Because we matter. Because our wants and needs matter. Because what we identify as impediments to us living a full, rich life matter. 
And when we pretend they don't, or when we convince ourselves that we can work around them rather than ask those invested in keeping them in place to help us dismantle them (and yes, I'm not just talking about my marriage here but a patriarchal, misogynistic culture), we betray ourselves.
I operated under the mistaken belief that I needed my husband to agree with me in order to create the change I wanted. If I couldn't convince him, then maybe the barriers I identified didn't exist. Maybe my wants and needs were the problem. Maybe, like we women are told so often, we want too much. We are too hungry. We are too much.
But now... Now we know that was never the case, don't we? With our blinders off, having been brought fully to our knees by another's betrayal, it's crystal clear, isn't it? The way we betrayed ourselves first. The way the system works against us. 
Everything I had identified was revealed as truth. My husband, who formerly defended his mother and dismissed me as "crazy", revealed years of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her and his father. Our sex life? No wonder it felt like something was wrong. It was. My husband was a sex addict. The household labour imbalance felt wrong because it was. I had taken on the lion's share because I bought into the idea that the person making the most money should have the most power, completely, of course, misunderstanding the value of all the unpaid labor I did.
Every single time I questioned what I knew to be true, I betrayed myself. 
No longer.
There is the pain of becoming, says Brené Brown, and then there is the pain of self-betrayal. I know both. And I resolve to always, always choose the former over the latter. I hope you will too. 

How "My Heartbreak, My Rules" points us toward truth

Honesty is simply a declaration of one’s own vulnerability — it is its keen, bright edge — and my own vulnerability and the vulnerability of others became, in the end, a kind of shared armour. I learned that, ultimately, our own truth and sense of self is all any of us have. We are enough, if we could only allow ourselves to be.
~musician Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files

I sometimes struggle to articulate just how deep and broad the change has been to my life since that horrible morning on December 10, 2006, when I asked my husband if he was having an affair, already knowing the answer. One might assume that much of the change has been horrible. After all, infidelity can lead to other dominoes falling – divorce, financial calamity, custody battles, substance abuse. When my mother discovered my father's affair, it ignited a decade of alcohol abuse interspersed with stays at various psychiatric hospitals. It left me motherless for ten pivotal years, from the age of nine to 19. 
And though I felt largely powerless in the hours and days and weeks following confirmation of my husband's infidelity, I can look back and see that I made one very clear choice: I would not go down the same path my mother did. I would do it differently.
It can be hard to talk about choice when responding to a partner's infidelity because we feel stripped of it. We didn't choose for him to cheat on us, we certainly didn't choose the skank(s) he cheated with, we didn't choose this pain. Indeed, our exclusion for any of his choices is exactly why we're in this mess. 
But denying that we have a choice only compounds our feeling is disempowerment. We hold enormous power in the wake of infidelity, if only we can recognize it. And use it.
Which is why I was struck by Nick Cave's newsletter response to a question about his ability to be so honest, to lay himself so bare for the public.
I had created armour over the years to protect myself from..what exactly? Rejection, certainly. Embarrassment. Humiliation. A sense of being excluded. Growing up with an alcoholic mother had left me marinated in shame. I carried it with me everywhere, fearful of other discovering the truth beneath the armour. That I was defective. That I wasn't enough. Not enough to keep my mother moored in reality. Not enough to make her choose me over booze. Not enough.
I didn't know then, of course, that my mother's choices weren't about me at all. They were about her own pain, her own fear of not being enough. Just as I didn't know, on D-Day, that my husband's choices were about his own pain, his fear of not being enough. Her addiction, his addiction had nothing to do with me at all. But I hadn't yet learned that lesson. And so I suited up, as Brené Brown puts it. If I was perfect, I wouldn't be rejected. If I was perfect, my husband wouldn't cheat. If I was perfect, I wouldn't be excluded.
My perfection did nothing to protect me. It only insulated me from genuine connection, from the actual truth – that I was enough, and so was everyone else. "We are enough, if we could only allow ourselves to be," as Nick Cave writes.
Stripped of that armour, faced with the reality that it hadn't protected me at all, I had a choice. You have a choice. Continue to operate by rules that don't work for you, or change the rules. Write your own. The tagline on this site, as I so often remind everyone (and that was coined by the brilliant Steam) is: My heartbreak, my rules.
And those four words change everything. Within those four words is your liberation. They are a battle cry.
Those words are about prioritizing your comfort over his. They are about operating as if your pain matters. Because it does. They are about rediscovering your worth and only allowing people into your life who see your worth too. They are about refusing to go along by rules that harm you, about refusing to stay small. 
It is impossible to overstate just how powerful those words are.
He wants you to stop looking at it phone? My heartbreak, my rules.
He won't stop texting a female co-worker? My heartbreak, my rules.
He wants you to get over it? My heartbreak, my rules.
He refuses to see a therapist? My heartbreak, my rules.
You cannot make him do anything he doesn't want to, of course. But you can refuse to play by his rules. Because, frankly, his rules have actively harmed you. The game has changed and he can either join you or sit this one out. 
What I struggle to articulate is just how much better my life is. And, honestly, I thought my life was pretty good prior to D-Day. I loved my husband, I had three awesome children. But I had betrayed myself long before my husband betrayed me. I routinely trusted others' perceptions over my own. I consistently silenced myself to avoid rocking the boat. I kept myself small to ensure that others have all the room they wanted.
No more. 
I will never say my husband's affair was the best thing for me just as Nick Cave will never say his son's death was good for him. What he and I are both saying is that, out of that pain, as a result of being stripped of our armour is the realization that nothing matters more than living our own truth. Knowing that I am enough changed everything. May it change everything for you too. 

Anatomy of an Apology

An apology is not a bargaining tool for which I get something back, including forgiveness.
~Harriet Lerner, author of "Why Won't You Apologize", speaking with Brené Brown

There are many ways to say you're sorry for cheating on your wife. You might have even heard some of them.
I'm sorry but I thought you didn't love me anymore.
I'm sorry but you invaded my privacy, which is unacceptable.
How many times do I have to say 'I'm sorry'?
I apologize but you need to apologize too because we were fighting all the time.
I shouldn't have done that but you cheated on me four years ago.
These apologies likely didn't make us feel better. And that's because, as Harriet Lerner would say, they aren't very good apologies.
A good apology after betrayal is as rare as a diamond in the mud. 
Even the truly sincere ones often come with strings attached. Yes, they're truly sorry for cheating but, honestly, when are you going to let this go? Yes, they recognize that what they did was wrong but you're not making this any easier by crying all the time and making them feel awful.
Which is why I was so struck, listening to Dr. Lerner on Brené Brown's incredible new podcast (seriously! Listen!!), when she noted that a good apology asks for nothing in return, not even forgiveness.
A sincere apology, she says, is about soothing the other person. The offender's feelings don't matter in the context of an apology. This isn't about them at all. It's about us. It's about the injury inflicted by them to us. We are under zero obligation to accept their apology, not right away, not ever. We are under zero obligation to make them feel better about apologizing. An apology should never come with the demand to be forgiven.
And yet...isn't that what most offenders are after? Forgiveness? Absolution?
I get it. Your spouse having to live with the acknowledgement that they have grievously harmed another person, particularly another person who loved and trusted them, is horrifically uncomfortable (unless they're a sociopath, in which case, run, don't walk, to your divorce attorney). I imagine that must feel terrible. Too bad. That's the price they pay for terrible behaviour. It sucks. We get it.
But it was a choice they made. And, if they're sincere about making amends, an apology is the perfect place to start. 
A sincere apology. 
An apology in which there isn't a "but" to be found.
An apology that doesn't expect anything.
An apology with just one purpose: To soothe the injured party.
Too often, apologies are framed as weakness. But can you imagine something that takes greater strength than facing down your own abhorrent actions and apologizing for them? (Okay, perhaps healing from infidelity takes greater strength, but you get my point...)
Unfortunately, few of have seen sincere apologies in action. Our parents might have seen apologizing as undermining their own authority. Our siblings might have seen apologies as a something one offers under duress ("Apologize to your sister!"). And spouses (and, gulp, we) might have seen an apology as a "get out of jail free" card. We apologized already. For goodness' sake, let it go.
None of which gets us where we want to go. Which is to healing. Which is to responsibility for hurtful behaviour and sincere desire to sooth the injured party.
After listening to Lerner, I tried out her advice. My eldest daughter and I have been struggling lately. She tells me how she's feeling and I immediately begin telling her how to mitigate those feelings. She feels blamed for her feelings, I get frustrated that she doesn't take my advice.
I told her that I was sorry. I named the hurtful behaviour ("for not just listening when you talk to me"), I told her I would work on it and aim to do better next time. And I meant it.
Not a perfect apology. But a darn good one.

Are You Willing to Learn?

If you are not willing to learn, nothing can help you.

If you are willing to learn, nothing can stop you.

These are the words that Samuel, who works with Overcoming Infidelity, posted on his Twitter feed. It was one of those things that underscored an earlier conversation I'd had with a friend. You know how once you notice something, suddenly it's unavoidable?
My friend and I had been talking about her husband's refusal to better learn how to speak with their teenager, instead descending routinely into anger and blame, which, not surprisingly, was shutting down conversation altogether. My friend was frustrated. She wanted her husband to have a better relationship with their son, a good kid who was doing little more than following his own values, not just his father's. And his own values included a piercing. Her husband, this boy's father, simply couldn't – or rather wouldn't – acknowledge that yelling at a kid wasn't going to change anything other than further damage the father-son relationship. It certainly wasn't going to un-pierce his ears. 
I get it.
For years, I couldn't – I wouldn't – stop going to my family cottage even though I knew the weekend would consist of too much drinking, total chaos, and, occasionally, some violence. I had a therapist who, increasingly exasperated, would ask me why I kept putting myself in a situation that I knew was harmful to me. My answer sounded weak even to my ears. Translated into plain English, it amounted to this: I didn't know what else to do. And so I did what I'd always done. Even in the fact of evidence that what I'd always done wasn't working for me.
You too perhaps?
Perhaps, despite a partner who has lied to you, who has betrayed you, and who refuses to take steps to remedy the damage he's caused, you're unable to take steps to protect yourself. Perhaps you've been told to seek therapy, or to set boundaries, or to file for separation.
But you don't. Your reasons sound weak even to your own ears. Thing is, you're doing what you've always done because you don't really know what else to do. It requires skills that we don't yet have. Skills we'd need to learn.
I eventually learned those skills and you know what? It wasn't as hard as I'd always thought. There was no secret code I needed to crack. There was discomfort. Horrible discomfort. I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. If I wasn't at my family cottage to prevent catastrophe, then...anything could happen. And that felt terrifying to me. But me being there hadn't prevented chaos. It hadn't curbed the drinking. It had only made me witness too and sometimes victim of it. It had only harmed me.
So...I sat with the discomfort. I distracted myself from the discomfort. I did what I could to ignore the discomfort.
I learned to do things differently.
The sky didn't fall. Catastrophe might have occurred but I wasn't there for it. I discovered it wasn't my job to protect other adults from the consequences of their choices. It was my job to protect myself from the consequences of their choices. My only job.
Yours is to protect yourself from the consequences of your husband's choices. To learn better.
If you refuse to learn, nothing can help you through this.
If you are willing to learn, nothing can stop you.
It's not easy to unlearn old ways of doing things. Those habits have worn deep treads in your brain. But my guess is those old ways of doing things aren't exactly making life great. My guess is those old ways of doing things long ago stopped working for you and now, possibly, are actively hurting you.
If your husband wants you to consider giving him a second chance, he's going to need to learn new ways of doing things. That's his job.
Yours is to do the same. To set boundaries. To demand transparency and respect and kindness. To take steps to only allow people into your life with whom you are emotionally and physically safe. To sit the horrible discomfort of making these changes, knowing that discomfort is just part of the process.
If you do that, nothing can stop you. I promise. 

Guest Post: Trust: Is your marble jar full or empty?

One of the many challenges we face as a betrayed wife (or partner) is around trust. How can we trust him again? Who can we trust with ourstories? Will I ever trust anyone again? Will I be able to trust my own judgment?

I was recently in a two-day Brené Brown - Dare to Lead, intensive workshop facilitated by a certified Daring Way coach. We spent a lot of time on trust. How to build it, how to lose it, how to recognize it when it is there. We listened to the story of Brené’s daughter losing trust in her best friends and her deciding to never trust anyone again, ever. Brené uses the analogy of a marble jar to help her daughter understand how trust is built. As people share stories about themselves, engage in small, everyday acts of empathy, or show up for real when you need them, marbles are added to their jar. The more stories they share, and show up, the more marbles you are able to add to their jar. It is easy to trust someone whose jar is overflowing. Your marble jar people aren’t necessarily people who are in your life all day, every day, but over time, with small acts, they’ve filled up their marble jar. And if you think about it, you know who those people are. There may not be a lot of them, but I think that’s appropriate. Trust is earned.

When you are going through hell, you only need one marble jar person. That one person will hear your story without judgement and will ask, what do you need? how can I help? And if you listen to your body, you already know who your marble jar person is. You’ll feel a yes. You’ll feel relief when you think about sharing with them and being in their presence. You will likewise have friends, who are your day-to-day besties or even close family but whom you also know, for whatever reason, do not have a full marble jar. You’ll get a no from your body on them too. You’ll feel resistance or anxiety when you think through sharing your story. And that resistance may be because of the ways they haven’t showed up for you in the past. Think carefully about your people and see if you can identify one marble jar person. Sharing with them can make a huge difference in your journey back to trust.

Now think about our partners. They’ve managed to empty the marble jar in one go. And we wonder, as betrayed wives, why we can’t trust them again completely right now, as if trusting them was somehow on us. It’s not. Of course, you don’t trust your partner in the way you did before. The jar is empty and it is not your job to fill it for them. They must make the effort to put the marbles back in the jar. And this is where shit gets real and difficult. Because refilling that marble jar is a function of time and consistency. Is he doing the hard work of figuring out his own stuff, consistently, over time? Plonk, in goes a marble. Is he showing up for and holding space for your pain, consistently, over time? Plonk, in goes a marble. Is he making an effort to let you know where and when he’ll be and checking in, consistently, over time? Plonk, in goes a marble. Is he being trustworthy, consistently, over time? Plonk, marble. (The marbles are going to plonk for a long time because that jar is big and really empty.) You don’t suddenly arrive at trust, just like you don’t suddenly arrive at forgiveness or “over it.” It all takes time, that four-letter word.  Elle tells us that her trust for her husband came back over time because he consistently showed up and did the hard work that refilled the marble jar. You can take as much time as you need, and you’ll know, eventually, whether he’s making the effort to fill the jar or not.

Now think about you. Learning to trust yourself is a bit harder.  This may require the help of a coach or therapist because sometimes we need an outside perspective to remind us to be gentle with yourself and to help us dig in to the old stuff that keeps us stuck. Learning to trust what we know begins by being gentle with ourselves, by tuning in to the way we talk to ourselves about ourselves. Are we going to trust someone whose words are harsh and full of judgement? Probably not, even or especially if that person is us.  We can build trust in ourselves by tuning into our bodies and learning to trust what t tells us.  Are you hungry? Eat. Are you tired? Sit down, lay down, take a break.  Restless, mind whirring? Journal, go for a walk. But start giving yourself what you need, and you’ll start filling your own marble jar too.  This also takes time, practice and consistently showing up for yourself.

For more resources and reading, please consider visiting https://brenebrown.com/ . Her work is both accessible and life changing. It’s a great first step in reconnecting with yourself and learning about how love and trust are inextricably linked.

Betrayed Wives Club: Here's What I Know

I was recently invited by Samuel (find him on Twitter) to speak with him for his Overcoming Infidelity podcast, which you can listen to here – I'm on episode 3.
Samuel pointed out that my site is "safe space" for those who come, which is something I intended but something that I sometimes forget about. Until someone else notices and points it out.
So let me explain:
Like so many of you, after D-Day I turned to Google for...what exactly? I wanted someone to make sense of my messed-up life. I was desperate for answers, just like those of you who come to me via an Internet search for "why did my husband cheat?" and "how can I make the pain of my husband's affair end?" (Those key word searches break my heart, you guys.)
More than anything – and though I likely couldn't have articulated it back then – I sought community, a safe place where I could lay down my pain and trust that it would be held so that I could take a deep breath. I couldn't find it. Too often, I'd read something that triggered my shame, made me feel stupid, told me I was searching for unicorns.
So I created my own, which is where are you right now.
I wanted to create a safe space. I knew how terrifying it was to share my pain. With strangers! Maybe I'd be outed. Could I trust these people?
I decided to not include advertising, even though it would have been nice to subsidize the time I worked on the blog. But I didn't want a soul to come here and then find an ad for escorts or lube or anything else that might be trigger-y. I crafted each blog post to best share my own experience, noting that this was just my path. We are each free to choose our own, I wrote.
(Eventually, when I was considering whether to continue with my site or shut it down – the time required was impacting the time I had to pursue paid work – I decided on the Donate button, leaving it up to anyone who wanted to contribute. I absolutely value every cent that's been donated over the past few years since I added it. It makes my work feel...legitimate.)
But for all my writing over the past 12 years, for all the work of Esther Perel and Brené Brown and others who have worked hard to shift our conversation around infidelity to one of nuance and critical thinking, there remains this pervasive myth around cheating. Namely, that anyone who cheats on you will continue to cheat on you. Something that is patently untrue. And also, that anyone who stays with a cheater is basically asking for more of the same.
My anger flares just by typing those statements out. They're absurd. But they persist, largely because they trigger our deepest fears about our partners and ourselves. And fear, we all know far too well, is powerful. But these statements remain dominant in infidelity discourse because there's just enough truth in them that we can't dismiss them outright. Some cheaters do continue to cheat. And some women who stay with cheaters – those who haven't set boundaries or who don't insist on change – are, potentially, accepting more of the same.
And so we wonder: Is that us? Are we the idiots who'll be cheated on again? Will there be a chorus of "I told you so's" when we discover his second affair. His third?
It's just enough to keep us frightened, isn't it? Just enough to keep us silent.
But what's most surprising about those sentiments is that they often spring from the lips of other who've been betrayed. Others who've been hurt and, rather than process that pain, inflict it on others. But that, my secret sisters, is not support. We must never value being "right" over being compassionate. Our role isn't to tell another how to respond to her pain but rather to bear witness to it.
Betrayed Wives Club isn't about answers, it's about sitting with the questions. It's about giving you – me, all of us – permission to figure out what's right for us. Without blame. Without shame.
I haven't a clue what you should do (except, and yes I know I'm a broken record, set boundaries. And also love yourself. You are so so awesome. Really.)
The rest? Search me. I don't know. I can barely muddle through my own life.
And it's not my place, or anyone else's to tell you what's right or what's wrong or to predict your future. I wrote last week about being skeptical of easy answers.
Nothing about healing from infidelity is easy, whether you stay or go. But it can be simple. By that I mean:
•prioritize self-respect
•set boundaries
•trust yourself
Betrayal can destabilize everything we believe. But our worth – and our right to determine our own path through the pain – shouldn't be called into question by anyone.

Books That Saved My Life

I have a stack of books on my bedside table that threatens to fall over and trap me. At the top of the pile is First We Make the Beast Beautiful (which is a reference to a line from Kay Redfield Jamison's brilliant An Unquiet Mind, about living with bipolar disorder), which I'm reading to try and understand my daughters' anxiety. I've put it aside, however, because I have Educated by Tara Westover out of my local library, which means I have only three weeks to read it and it's incredible. And I also just picked up Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, which I had on hold and which just came in and which I also have only three weeks to read (and which is about an affair so don't go there until you're ready). My book club is reading the incredible Famous Last Words, which I read a zillion years ago but that I should probably refresh my memory. And I just ordered the always ALWAYS amazing Anne Lamott's new book to keep all the others of hers I have on my shelf company.
But it's no exaggeration to say that reading has changed my life. From the first book about growing up with an alcoholic that I tentatively pulled from the shelf of a bookstore near my office when I was in my mid-20s, to Melody Beattie's Co-Dependent No More, which got me out of a toxic relationship, to Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, which finally FINALLY gave me the blueprint I was searching for to write my own book about healing from betrayal...

So, in that books-can-change-your-life spirit, let me share the rest of my bedside table (and please, share your own in the comments). These aren't necessarily books about healing from betrayal. You can find more of those here. But they are about living life with hope and humor and humility and an open heart:

Each Day a New Beginning: My mother gave me this, which was her own bible in AA recovery. It has become my own. I don't struggle with addiction but the meditations in here work for anyone just trying to get through life.

The Impossible Will Take a Little While by Paul Rogat Loeb: This is a collection of essays about "perseverance and hope in troubled times". It features such writers as Maya Angelou, Marian Wright Edelman, Tony Kushner, Mary Pipher, Alice Walker and the amazing list goes on. Dive in and feel restored.

Leaving My Father's House by Marion Woodman: This revered feminist and Jungian will change how you view your place in this world, both historically and now. I also love the companion book of meditations.

Rising Strong by Brené Brown: Is there another writer who has done more to help me understand boundaries, vulnerability, shame? I think not.

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron: I don't know a single creator who hasn't read this book and been inspired by it. But it's not just for those of us who make a living creating but for anyone. It's a meditation not only on art but on the art of living.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline: I was lucky enough to hear this brilliant Indigenous woman speak recently and I wished I could sit at her feet and soak in her wisdom. She has a way of threading together historic wrongs with hope. She's also an incredible writer and this book is Exhibit A.

Get Out of My Life, but first could you drive me and Cheryl to the mall? by Anthony E. Wolf: I have teenagers. This is the best book out there to keep me sane.

This is just the beginning, kids. More to come...