Don't Build the Same House

If a house is levelled, don't build the same house.

~Dr. Debi Silber, PBT Institute

If there is one fundamental misunderstanding by those who don't see the inside of our marriage (but who think they do, and yes, I'm talking about the other woman), it's that our marriage post-infidelity is pretty much the same as our marriage pre-infidelity. I've heard the wails: "He gets to go back to his wife and his marriage and I'm alone." As if we welcome them back with open arms. As if we aren't shattered by betrayal. As if...

But it's a mistake that, sometimes, gets made by those of us inside the marriage. We're so desperate to get past this, to have our marriage back, that we build the same house, as Dr. Debi Silber puts it. We recreate the same marriage with the same dynamics with the same guy and then expect everything to be different. Or at least one thing to be different: That he doesn't cheat again.

It's lunacy, isn't it? Even if we thought our marriage was great – even if he's telling us that our marriage was great, that his cheating had nothing to do with us, that he never stopped loving us – even with that, we still need to build a new house. Cause the old house is gone. The trauma of betrayal blew that baby to bits.

But the thing with trauma is that it can help us lay down an entirely new foundation. This is, in no way the same as saying that trauma is "good" because it helps us grow. (In some cases, it does exactly the opposite as Lisa Arends so beautifully described in a recent blog post on her site.) But trauma, when it hits us as adults, is lay bare all the cracks. In my case, the trauma of my husband's betrayal forced me to look at all the ways in which I'd been abandoning myself. I brought childhood trauma into my marriage. I was the capable one, the responsible one, the "fixer". Which left my husband the role of errant teenager, which fed into his family dynamic that, without an adult telling him what to do, he was likely to get it wrong. And so I seethed with resentment that I had to do everything. And my husband seethed with resentment that he was treated like a child. 

Enter the trauma of betrayal. I had the choice to either build the same damn house or build a new one. And though I still slip into that old house – my default as fixer shows up every single time I'm stressed – I nonetheless built a new one. One that required my husband to be a partner to me. One that required my husband to work through his own childhood stuff while I addressed mine. 

As Dr. Silber tells us, the problem isn't trauma, it's staying there. When you heal from it, you learn that even though it was done to you, it wasn't about you.

I had to learn that. And I don't know how else I would have learned that if I hadn't had my metaphorical house blown up. We betrayed wives tend to spend a lot of time playing "what if". What if he'd never cheated, would I be happier? What if he'd never cheated, would I feel more secure? 

It's a fool's game. He did cheat. And we are left to rebuild a new house with the same husband (or rather a husband who'd damn well better not stay the same), or to rebuild a life without him as our husband. Either choice is a perfectly reasonable one. But if you choose to stay, you cannot move back into that old house, no matter what the other woman thinks. That house is gone. 

Finding Your "Self" In Trauma and Transformation

 Healing from betrayal is very different than healing from other crises...because the self has to be rebuilt.

~Dr. Debi Silber, Post-Betrayal Trauma Institute

The self has to be rebuilt. That phrase brings tears to my eyes because, for me, it was the absolute truth. I was so shattered by my husband's betrayal that I had days when I felt like a ghost. A shell that contained only pain. I questioned my value. I considered suicide. I felt erased by him, as if everything I had done as his wife, as mother to his children, as his best friend didn't amount to anything. 

What betrayal also exposed was just how fragile my "self" was. I wasn't made of stone but of glass. But though betrayal levelled me, it also created the space for transformation. As Dr. Silber puts it, "if your house is levelled, don't build the same house". Whether you apply that statement to yourself or your marriage (or both!), the idea is the same. This is your moment to rebuild in a way that's stronger. 

In my case, it meant revisiting a whole lot of childhood trauma (which I had never considered "trauma" so much as just "shitty"). It meant paying attention to how things that I thought benign or ordinary had lain the groundwork for me to tolerate things that I shouldn't have. Consider this: My brother often beat me up. He was three years older, infinitely stronger and with a temper that frightened my parents too. They rarely stepped in. To me, it was garden-variety sibling stuff. Didn't everyone get the shit beat out of them by their siblings? Well, no, according to my horrified therapist who pointed out that my continued struggle with other people's anger likely had its roots in those early experiences where I learned that anger meant violence. 

Rebuilding my shattered self meant reexamining things I'd long believed or accepted and deciding what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to toss. It was a sort of psychological/emotional Marie Kondo-ing of my inner clutter.

That's available to you too. "Trauma is the setup for transformation," says Dr. Silber. The key is moving out of the trauma. I know, I know. Not easy and might require the help of a professional. I finally turned to EMDR when I found it too difficult to move past the trauma. I felt stuck in trauma, like the cement was hardening around my feet. But, as we've all discovered, the only way out is through. Which means feeling all the feelings, crying all the tears, moving through the stages of grief. 

I say that I discovered my self was built of glass, not stone. And yet...that self held seeds of this self. That self transported me to this place. Right here, right now. In which I consider myself worthy and lovable. In which I know myself to matter. It took strength, which must have already been there. Yours is there too.