Stuck Between "Now" and "Not Yet"

I had never heard of Jen Hatmaker and remain somewhat mystified how she came to my attention but I think it was around the time her marriage was falling apart. I didn't recognize the name but I recognized the story. A couple everyone seemed to love – a public couple – was announcing divorce, shocking those who knew of them. Hatmaker herself issued a statement along the lines of being blindsided, not wanting this, pleading for privacy, and so on.

Ah, I thought to myself. He cheated. 

And though Hatmaker's language remains somewhat cagey, you, my dear readers, know as well as I do how to read between the lines. He cheated. Of course, he did.

But though I still don't know a lot about Jen Hatmaker and am not part of her cool Christian girl club (no disparagement – just not my scene), I've become quite fond of her as a public figure. For one thing, she's funny. She's honest about who she is. She's eloquent. And recently, she was on Glennon Doyle's We Can Do Hard Things podcast at which point she made reference to that stage – one we're all familiar with – of being caught between "now" and "not yet". 

"Now" is what's happening. It's the gut punch of D-Day. It's the sleeplessness, the churning anxiety of "what if he's still cheating? How will I know?", it's the mask we wear to work. It's the "how long will I feel like this?". 

"Not yet" is that water hole up ahead, the one that promises to quench our thirst, the one that keeps being just a few steps (a thousand steps!) beyond where we are right now. 

You'll reach "not yet", I promise you will. And I know how agonizing it is to feel stuck somewhere in between. Maybe the pain isn't quite so acute. Maybe you've decided to stay and it seems to be working. Maybe you've decided to leave and you're settling into this new reality. Maybe you're still figuring out your next right step. But you don't feel there yet. You don't feel like this is in the rear-view mirror. You haven't made it to "not yet". Not yet, anyway. 

Be patient with yourself. Be patient with your shattered heart. Stop periodically and check in with yourself. Am I where I want to be? Or, if that's impossible, am I where I can find a way to be my best self? Sometimes we can make the choice and sometimes that choice is forced onto us. But we can still honor ourselves. Jen Hatmaker makes that clear too. That we can make healing our focus and that, no matter how much we may have not chosen our new reality, we can center ourselves and keep our hearts soft and find joy in the world. 

Let those of us further ahead beckon you forward. Let us be the light that helps you see your way through. Though I'm not as active on this site as I was (when we get to "Not yet", infidelity becomes something that happened long ago), I do still read your comments. And I do hope this site remains a safe space for all of you to find community and the reassurance that though you might feel stuck right now, "not yet" is possible, indeed a promise, for all of us.

Thursday's Thought

 "Every time you're given the choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappointed that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself."

~Glennon Doyle, Untamed

The Door is Not Locked

Glennon Doyle, author of Love Warrior, survivor of marital infidelity/sex addiction, and host of We Can Do Hard Things podcast was talking about why she moved from one state to another. She was surrounded by people, she says, who not only didn't "get" her, they were actively hostile. And she was reminded of something she told herself when her marriage felt untenable: "The door is not locked."

It's something that applies, metaphorically, to so many things in our lives that feel un-leave-able. The toxic boss we think we have to continue to please because "it's a tough job market out there". The cruel friend we continue to tolerate because her cruelty is couched in assurances that she just wants us to be happy. The parent who demands our loyalty because "look at all I've done for you".

And yes, the marriage. The marriage that now bears the mark of infidelity.

The door is not locked.

Believing it is locked keeps us trapped. It keeps us tolerating the intolerable. It keeps us responsible for everyone else's happiness. I told myself that my children needed stability, which isn't untrue. But it held me in place. It kept me from even testing the door to see it gave, even an inch.

I don't regret staying. But it was only when I realized that I wasn't trapped, that staying was a choice I could make did I develop the self-respect to begin making demands. If I'm going to stay in this marriage, I need total honesty. If I'm going to stay in this marriage, here are my rules. 

Maybe you need reminding that the door is not locked. You have choices and they run the spectrum – from leaving entirely, to a trial separation, to rebuilding together. And you have so many other choices too. To quit that job that makes you feel useless and unvalued. To join a group of people who share your interests. To find a good therapist. To leave a lousy one. To lay down boundaries with friends, parents, children that give you the space you need to love both you and them simultaneously. 

A locked door is a story we told ourselves. The door is not locked, my secret sisters. It never was. 

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

On Drowning in Grief and Learning We Have Gills

It was like I was drowning, I was so weighed down by my own heartbreak. Then one day I decided to just dive all the way down into it, sink into this unbearable ocean of grief, only to discover that I had gills. For weeks, it was like I lived at the bottom of my own soul, digging my feet into soft sand at the depth of an ocean, learning about the quietest, scariest parts of my soul. And, when I was ready, I kicked off and swam.

~from https://bossgirlproblems.com/f/becoming-fireproof---grief-longing-and-resilience

For weeks, I struggled to breathe. I, too, felt like I was drowning. And when we're drowning, we often panic. We fight for air. We flail. We exhaust what little energy we have. 

Surrendering to the pain feels terrifying. We are so sure we'll never recover. We are convinced that we will drown in our own "ocean of grief" created by our tears, that if we're not fighting to survive, we'll die of the heartbreak. 

And then...the opposite happens. We learn, as the writer says, that we have gills. We learn that surrender isn't giving up at all, it's accepting. All the flailing and panicking and fighting and denying in the world isn't going to save us from the pain. What will? Accepting it. Inviting it in. "Diving all the way down into it." 

I know it's terrifying. I also know it's necessary. In all my years of hearing your stories, listening to those of you who've healed from this, navigating my own path through heartbreak, I've come to the conclusion that there is no other way back to a fully-lived life. Sure you can survive this without diving into the grief. And, honestly, in those early days, surviving was my goal. I couldn't imagine anything on the other side of survival. It would be enough, I decided, to just not die from the pain.

But then, as it became clear that I would survive, it also became clear that survival wasn't enough. And that meant diving into my grief. That meant I had to stop pushing my pain away and invite it in. It meant sinking into this unbearable ocean of grief. I discovered not just the heartbreak of my husband's betrayal there but so much more. Heartbreak I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge. All the ways in which I had been betrayed and all the ways in which I'd betrayed myself. It's a lot. Having a therapist handy with a life-ring helped. Having friends who could sit with me in my pain helped. Having my mother, the source of much of my long-buried pain, able to acknowledge it with me, to tell me again how sorry she was. Having a dog into whose furry neck I could sob until I felt empty also helped. 

You also don't have to do this alone. But, if you want not only to survive this pain but to emerge with your heart still open to love and life, then you do have to do this. You have to surrender to the grief. You have to stop flailing and fighting to stay at the surface. You have to "dive all the way down into it, into the unbearable ocean."

But know this:

What happens when we reach that bottom is we learn we have gills. We can stay there, still breathing, as long as we need to. And then, I promise, we rise. 

I will not abandon myself. Not again

I will not stay – not ever again – in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.
~Glennon Doyle, Untamed
 
“To abandon myself.” I’ve been thinking a lot about those three words. And I’ve been thinking about the myriad ways, over many years, that I abandoned myself. Or, as I sometimes put it on this site, that I betrayed myself. And it is that betrayal, of myself, that was even more painful than my husband’s betrayal of me.
Not all of you have betrayed – abandoned – yourself. Among our mighty tribe are those who held their ground, who knew themselves, who never tolerated disrespect or silencing, who, when they found out, fought like hell for themselves and never doubted their worth.
And then there are the rest of us.
The pleasers. The silenced. The don’t-rock-the-boaters.
Even now, almost 14 years after D-Day, I struggle with not betraying myself. Those old lessons, carved into my cranium in childhood, are hard to unlearn.
I have to challenge myself constantly, in matters big and small. If someone is upset, I always ALWAYS try to fix things. I didn’t know this about myself. Not at first. It’s like that comic of the two fish swimming around when one fish says, “The water is nice.” To which the other fish replies, “What’s water?” I didn’t see myself pleasing because I didn’t realize there was another way to be.
Fixing things was the water I swam in.
Pleasing was the oxygen I breathed. And it was killing me.
But though, when I read words like those of Doyle’s, I respond with a raised fist and a “hell yes!”, when I try to imagine living those words, things get a bit fuzzy. Like…what exactly does it look like to never again stay in a room or conversation or relationship or institution. I’m all for not abandoning myself, but…how?
In a word, boundaries. Boundaries, I have learned, are the single best way to ensure we don’t abandon ourselves. Boundaries are a superpower. And yet, most of us have grown up in a culture and a society in which boundaries were often confused with being selfish.
Consider this conversation I had with my father when I was visiting him. My 22-year-old daughter called, stressed about an event she was holding at our house. I had been out of town visiting my dad and the house was “messy”, she told me. And where was the bucket for ice? And…and…and… I could feel my own stress rise. I wished I was there to help her and lower her stress. It’s a familiar dynamic between my daughter and me. When she stresses, I over-function, which leads to her underfunctioning. Her anxiety pulled me in, like a fishing line hauls in a fish. So though I kept telling myself, “this is not my problem. This is not my problem”, I nonetheless felt that THIS IS MY PROBLEM. I told my dad about the conversation with my daughter. “It’s because you care,” he said. No. Wrong answer. But that’s what I’ve always been taught. That we over-involve ourselves because we care. That we take on problems because we care. But I now know that’s just not true. I take on my daughter’s problems because I lack boundaries around her. I want to fix things for her because her anxiety triggers my anxiety. It’s not about caring, it's about reducing anxiety. I can care and be empathetic without trying to fix things. In fact, I now know that it’s more caring (and healthy!) to trust that she can handle things herself. Which, incidentally, she did, given that I wasn’t able to step in and fix things. As the old saying goes, constantly holding our child’s hand leaves them one less hand to use.
But, wow, is it hard! We women have been told for so long that “caring” is the same as “fixing”, that loving is about pleasing. And so, in all our fixing and pleasing, we abandon ourselves. By the time we read something like what Glennon Doyle says, we sense its truth. But often we’re so far gone we don’t recognize ourselves. We’re no longer sure where we end and other people begin. So when we’re asked not to abandon ourselves, we might think, “hell yeah” but when it comes down to it, we aren't even sure who "ourselves" is anymore. 
That was me. Maybe it’s you too.
But I’m here to assure you, it’s not a lost cause. YOU are not a lost cause.
You have abandoned yourself. But you are worth rescuing.
It’s going to be a steep learning curve. You are going to have to flex some atrophied muscles. You are going to have to retrace your steps sometimes to figure out exactly where you veered off the path. You are going to have to learn that “no” is a complete sentence. You absolutely must prioritize your own needs, within reason. Agreeing to something you disagree with is a surefire way to mix resentment into your relationship. You are going to have to disentangle the idea of a wishbone and a backbone. You can’t wish someone into caring about you. You must insist on it as the price of admission into your life.

You will mess this up. That's a given. But our job is not to know, it is to learn. And be willing to self-correct. 

Let's do this together. No more abandoning ourselves. No more pretending we're fine when we're not.  No more taking one for the team. No more sacrificing our own wants and needs to ensure that every else gets theirs. 

No more.

Who's in?

 
 

How to Save Your Own Life

It was stunning, in hindsight, how quickly I went from euphoria to devastation. I had just wrapped up a wildly successful fundraiser that I was incredibly proud of when I finally had time to take a breath, look around...and realize that my husband was having an affair.
By the time the shock wore off a few months later, I fell into total despair. Plenty of old demons that I thought I'd banished were back taunting me.
The pain was so excruciating, I wished I was dead.
It's hard to write that though I know it's the truth. It feels pathetic. Humiliating. What sort of woman is so reliant on a man's validation that she wishes herself dead if he cheats on her?
Well...this sort of woman.
I'm able to see now how my husband's infidelity reopened those old childhood wounds, and confirmed for me the belief that I was unlovable. At the time, however, I just knew the pain felt bigger than my ability to handle it. I felt so unworthy of love that I thought everyone would be better off without me.
My own mother attempted suicide more than once and so I had that stroke against me too. Statistically speaking, I was more inclined.
I didn't kill myself, obviously. Instead, I doubled down on therapy. Found someone who did EMDR to help me with post-trauma. I ran. I journaled. I meditated. I read volumes of books written to help people like me find their way back. I offered myself affirmations, even though it felt ridiculous and I hardly believed them.
I saved my own life.
And whether or not you want to actually die or, like me, are unable to imagine ever again not feeling this crippling pain, you can save your life too.
How? 
Let me tell you:

1. Save yourself first
Think of this way: You're are drowning. And before you worry about whether your husband on shore is going to throw you a rope or whether he's flirting with another woman on the beach, start swimming toward shore. Keep your head above water. Which is a metaphor for reaching for everything that can keep you afloat. Find a therapist who understands infidelity. Read books by reputable authors about infidelity. Once you shift focus from your unfaithful spouse, you will begin to understand that infidelity is rarely about the person being cheated on. He didn't cheat because there's something wrong with you, he cheated because there's something wrong with him. And fixing it is an inside job for him. Your job is to swim like hell for the shore, with the guidance of a therapist, non-judgemental friend(s), and honest, straightforward support, such as this site, books, podcasts.
As part of this first step, you should set down some non-negotiables, among them: He must end the affair and have zero contact with his affair partner, he must give you any/all access to his modes of communication and he must seek therapy/12-step group or whatever you deem appropriate. Failure to commit to "My heartbreak, my rules" is a loud, clear message that his comfort/privacy is more important than your healing. That's valuable information for you to have as you grapple with whether your want your marriage.

2. Rediscover your worth
We are born worthy of love and acceptance and belonging. Those of us with unhealthy families of origin often forget that. We take the blame for our parents' problems, we assume failure. What I'm proposing sounds deceptively simple. I want you to love yourself back to wholeness. I want you to stop cataloguing your faults (an elastic band around your wrist can serve as an "ouch" reminder to stop. Give it a snap when you criticize yourself for anything from burning dinner to not having a supermodel figure to getting frustrated with your toddler. You are doing your best and our best gets better in an environment of self-compassion. And instead of criticism, I want you to make a concerted effort to offer yourself compliments. Stick with me here, I know it sounds dumb. But science tells us affirmations work. I learned this from my youngest daughter, who was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder when she was 11. She began posting notes around her room to remind her that she didn't have to be perfect (and that, in fact, trying to be perfect exacerbated her OCD): "It's okay to make mistakes", she wrote. "You are an imperfect human just like everyone else", she wrote. I asked her to write some for me, which I posted on my bathroom mirror and read them daily. "You are beautiful, talented and brave," she wrote for me. Just think about it: Every single day started out with me reminding myself that I am beautiful, talented and brave. Don't you think my day is going to go better than if I started out with those words instead of, as I used to, chastising myself for having thick thighs, or crow's feet? You bet! Try it and stick with it for four weeks, minimum.

3. Give yourself compassion
The most surprising thing about infidelity for me was just how crippling it was. Nothing prepared me for the emotional devastation. Most of us imagine anger. We imagine revenge. We don't imagine just how hard it will be to function. To get out of bed. To parent children. To show up to work. To get through a day without completely falling apart.
What's worse is that we blame ourselves for our difficulty managing this. Infidelity is trauma. Of course, we can barely function, we're traumatized. When we accept that, it becomes much easier to extend compassion to ourselves. To stop expecting ourselves to deal with this easily and instead accept the grief that comes with betrayal. To feel our feelings. And to discover that we are stronger than we thought possible.

4. Trust yourself
It can feel impossible that you will ever trust yourself again. Look how wrong you were about this guy! And yet, so many of you look back and recognize that there were signs. Not that he was cheating, necessarily, but that something was wrong. Sometimes it's just a sense of unease. Often, it's that you weren't happy. 
But we get lost, don't we? We get lost in ensuring that those around us are happy. Our own happiness, or satisfaction, or sense that we matter, takes a backseat to children, to aging parents, to bosses, to the seemingly incessant demands on women that we look like a model, cook like Julia Childs, stay fit and well-read. The truth is that nobody has it all. Nobody. Somethings always gotta give and far too often we make it ourselves. 
That has got to change and there is not better time than now. 
And it begins with paying attention to ourselves. It begins with learning how to listen to that deep voice that knows what's best for us. Glennon Doyle calls it The Knowing. We all have it. I promise you it's there even if you've spent a lifetime thinking it's not. So many of us had that deep voice silence so long ago that we fear it's silent forever. It is not. It is waiting for us to wake it back up, to start paying attention to it. How to know if we're hearing it? It will sound like compassion. It will never ask you to do anything that's contrary to your value system. 
Doyle puts it this way:
HOW TO KNOW:
Moment of uncertainty arises
Breathe, turn inward, sink.
Feel around for the Knowing.
Do the next thing it nudges you toward.
Let is stand. (Don’t explain.)
Repeat forever.
(For the rest of your life: Continue to shorten the gap between the Knowing and the doing.)

You are so worth fighting for, my secret sisters. Your life is worth saving. No matter what pain you're in right now, it will pass. You will rise from this. 

Feeling It All

There is a story that Glennon Doyle tells in Untamed. She is at her first AA meeting and talking to a veteran 12-stepper, who says something that stuns her. "Feelings are for feeling," the sage says. "All of them. Even the hard ones."

It's an inflection point for Doyle who had, to that point, spent her life trying to be pleasing to others. To look right, to act right, to feel right. Happy was the goal, for herself and others. And yet...she felt all these other feelings too so what was she doing wrong?

Nothing, according to this woman. "Feelings are for feeling. All of them."

We are a culture that pursues happiness the way my cats pursue a beam of sunshine. Relentlessly. Only stopping for a moment when we've found it and then realizing we're about to lose it again.
We don't want those other feelings. They get in the way. We want happiness, all the time. 24/7. We'll settle for contentment, periodically. But mostly we want that pure bliss. And we're told we can achieve it, like it's something for sale in a store window if only we know where to look or who to ask.
It's a lie. The whole Industrial Happiness Complex is a total lie built by capitalism to make us constantly hungry for it, constantly striving for it. 
It's not that happiness isn't possible, of course. It is. It's just that a happy life isn't possible. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. And those hards ones will inevitably show up in anyone's life. No matter how hard we try to avoid them. No matter how high we've build the fortress against them.
And that's the thing that we don't hear about. How surviving those hard feelings makes happiness so much sweeter when we ultimately do get a taste.
My son and I are taking an online course right now. It's Yale University's most popular course and it's offered for free right now. It's about how to be happy. My son and I are only in Week Two but we've already learned that the things that we believe – that we've been told or rather sold – will make us happy not only don't make us happy, some actually make us less happy than we were. Among these things that don't make us happier are:
•money
•marriage
•weight loss
•plastic surgery
•stuff – clothes, jewellery, cars, houses, etc.
But most of us know that by now, don't we? We've learned that while that great purse might give us a momentary burst of happiness, it's pretty short-lived. By the time the VISA statement arrives and we have to pay for it, the purchase itself likely offers us no happiness at all anymore. 
But it's not all bad news. There are things we can do to contribute to our happiness. Not 24/7. But sometimes. The way happiness is meant to be experienced. It's a feeling, not a state of being.
And one of the main ways to generate more happiness in your life is:
•gratitude/savoring – science tells us that taking note of and thinking about the things we're grateful for contribute to a greater sense of happiness. As hokey as they sound, gratitude journals work. Sometimes you might only feel able to be grateful that you're still breathing. That you haven't murdered your spouse. That you stayed off the OW's social media. It still counts.
But remember that you'll feel all those other feelings too. Especially right now, when your world feels upside down. Especially, when things feel so uncertain. 
But you won't always feel so unhappy, just like nobody always feels happy.
Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones.

"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. 

Here's How We Set Ourselves Up. Let's Stop

Because I didn’t feel like I deserved love. Showing up and asking for love without having anything to offer in return was out of the question. I would have to be of service in order to earn love. I would have to be sexy and funny and larger than life. I would have to dance on tabletops. I would have to win and keep winning. I would not be able to rest.
~Dear Polly, The Cut

If there was one overwhelming belief I had about my husband's betrayal, it was this: I was not enough.
He cheated because I was not sexy enough.
He cheated because I was not thin enough.
He cheated because I was not beautiful enough.
Smart enough.
Fun enough.
Adventurous enough in bed.
Succesful enough.
I was, clearly, not enough.
There was plenty of evidence to the contrary but that didn't alter my belief. Not one bit.
Because my belief – that I was not enough – was something I had carried around with me since childhood. Though I was barely conscious of it, I had built my life around proving to others that I could be enough, if they would give me the chance to show them.
Every friendship felt like an audition.
Every relationship felt like probation. 
Though I tolerated no end of others' bad behaviour, I didn't allow myself a single mistake. I made mistakes, of course. We all do. And then I would sink into shame so deep, I could hardly breathe. That's the problem with perfection being the only acceptable bar. It's impossible. And when we brush up against that impossibility, it makes us so incredibly angry that we're ready to just burn it all down. The system is rigged. 
Yes, it is.
But we're the ones doing the rigging.
We're the ones demanding perfection of ourselves.
We're the ones choosing the wrong people. And then blaming ourselves when it all falls apart.
And so when my husband admitted that, yes, he was having an affair, somewhere deep down inside was a voice that said of course, he was. Because you are not enough.
We talk a lot about our deep knowing here, on this site. It can be hard to discern which is our deep knowing and which is the voice of the critic. But let me tell you this: Your deep knowing will never tell you you're not enough. Your deep knowing is a voice of love. It is a voice of acceptance. It is, if you're religious or spiritual, a voice of divine love. It is, if you're not religious or spiritual, a voice that speaks the truth of every person's value. 
Your deep knowing will never tell you you're not enough. 
Your critic most certainly will. 
We've all had critics in our lives and, far too often, their voices take root in our bodies and chastise us decades after the actual speaker is gone. It might have been a parent, a sibling, your fifth-grade teacher who laughed at your dream. It might have been a boss, a friend, a bully.
But you have thrown the door open to that critic to move in with you, to offer nothing but reminders that you are a profound disappointment.
Critics are absolutely not the voice of truth. They speak nothing but lies. 
My critic insisted for years that I was not enough. Not matter how fast I danced, it was never fast enough. No matter what I achieved, the critic would move the finish line further ahead. 
The system was rigged.
But it was us doing the rigging.
Let's unrig the system.
If there is a silver lining to my husband's infidelity, it was that, with a whole lot of work and some new truth-telling glasses, I could finally see the flaw in the system. I could see that I was setting myself up. 
What I wish for all of you is that same revelation. 
He didn't cheat because you are not enough.
He cheated for any number of reasons that – and this is the truth – have nothing to do with you.
He cheated because he believes he's not enough. He cheated because someone paid attention to him and it felt good. He cheated because it made him feel young. He cheated because his moral compass is broken. He cheated because it distracted him from money woes, an empty nest, a special needs child, a sick wife, a dying parent.
He cheated, as Esther Perel reminds us, because he was looking for another version of himself.
Your work, in the wake of his infidelity, is to unrig the system that you've rigged against yourself. To refuse the system that our culture has rigged against us. The one that says we're not allowed to age, to soften, to choose for ourselves.
The good news is that we have everything we need for the challenge ahead. We have ourselves. And that is enough.

He Cheated, I Stayed. Now What?

He cheated on you. Maybe you found out via an errant text message. Maybe you got a phone call from his recently dumped OW. Maybe that nagging fear finally coaxed you to check his e-mails or his texts and – whoa! – guess what you found. Or maybe, like me, you asked. And he answered.

I was in a state of shock when I finally confronted my husband and got the answer I sorta kinda expected but was desperately hoping I wouldn't get. 

And in my state of shock was one looming question: Now what?

What was I supposed to do with the knowledge that my husband had cheated on me? What was I supposed to tell my children, if anything? Where was I supposed to go? 

There is no playbook for betrayed wives (though Encyclopedia for the Betrayed is my best attempt to give you 182 pages of playbook). On soap operas and in bad movies and in country songs, the cheated wife responds with fury. She dumps his belongings in to a pile onto which she pours gasoline and tosses a lit match. Or she slashes his tires. Or she confronts the Other Woman, leaving her with no question about who truly rules.

It all seems so satisfying. 

And then, we imagine, the betrayed wife walks into her future on kickass stiletto heels. Often there's a handsome new guy waiting for her. Insert eyeroll here, amirite? 

We're rarely offered the image of a woman shattered, in a ratty bathrobe and staring into space. Awake a 3 a.m., eyes red from crying, wondering, again, 'why?'. Desperate to leave but paralyzed. Desperate to stay but for what?

I couldn't sit still. I walked my house like a ghost, heavy with chains of dread. And through it all – the weeks of fury, the months of sadness – hung a question: Now what?
What did I want?
What did I need?
How could I be sure?
What if it happens again?
How did I miss it?
And, of course, that perennial Why? Why me? Why him? Why her? Why?
I can't answer your questions. Only you can. And, likely, only with time.
But I can tell you how I found my own answer to Now what?
It began when I finally quieted that voice in my head that screamed like my mother on a bender and rediscovered what Glennon Doyle calls "the Knowing". That deep voice that put me on solid ground, the one that said "you are not what happened to you", the one that promised me I had a well of strength to get through this. But perhaps the most important thing that deep voice told me was that "now what?" wasn't permanent. That it was okay to not know what was next, that I could take my time to process this pain before reacting to it. And, in fact, if I took that time, I wouldn't so much react as respond. I could plan. I could choose.
We forget that, don't we? That we have a choice. We're often so humiliated and crippled by betrayal that we feel stripped of any power we might have. But, as I was reminded on Twitter the other day, when our husbands are asking us for a second chance – whether explicitly or by assumption – we have the most power. Not to change them. That's always on them. But to insist upon what we want. That is not, of course, to say that we will get exactly what we want. They might choose the OW. They might choose to leave. But by treating ourselves with respect, by demanding to be treated by them with respect, we can't lose. We might lose them, sure. But is it really a loss to no longer have a cheater who doesn't respect you in your life? You might not see it now, but that sounds like a win to me. 
Doyle puts it this way: "I can't imagine a greater tragedy than remaining forever unknown to myself. That would be the ultimate self-abandonment. So I have become unafraid of my own feelings."
Your feelings are your guide. They are prophets, pointing the way forward. Sit with them. You will not drown. Pay attention to them. Learn to discern your deep-down voice from the noise of the critics. You know the ones – that tell you what you "should" do, how you "should" feel. There is no "should", there is only you and what you want in service of your self-respect. 
You have been betrayed by the person you must trusted. But perhaps that was our first mistake. The first person we should always trust is ourself. Don't betray her again. 

Slipping out of the cage of judgement

Judgement is just another cage we live in so we don't have to feel, know, and imagine. Judgement is self-abandonment. You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you. You are here to decide if you life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right – perhaps even the duty – to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.
~Glennon Doyle, Untamed

Where do I begin? Ever since I began reading Untamed last week, I've been desperate for people to talk about it with. I've shared with my husband, my girls, my boy, my six-feet-apart running partner. And I will undoubtedly be sharing with you because it seems that on every single page there is something that wakes me up, that nudges my heart, that whispers in my ear, or, sometimes, makes me uncomfortable.
Doyle and I have something in common. Like me, she discovered well into her marriage and three kids later, that her husband had been unfaithful. He was a sex addict. Her book, Love Warrior, which I did not love (only later, after she announced that she left her first marriage and married a woman, could I see that the book's second half felt inauthentic to me because it was), details her discovery, her healing, her lessons.
But Doyle is a teacher and I, a good student. She points to the things that I have learned far too well to pretend isn't there.
Take her thoughts about judgement (quote above), which I know so many of us struggle with here (and, if you're like me, continue to struggle with). 
What I wish for all of us is to learn the lesson that Doyle has learned (and continues to – she's honest about her work-in-progress status, though aren't we all works-in-progress?). That other people's judgement of us says more about their fears than about us. And, perhaps more importantly, that our judgement of others is really a chance to reflect back on ourselves. 
On its surface, it seems self-explanatory. But I sat with this thought. I took stock of the ways in which I continue to want other people to like me, to admire me (her daughter's admission that a classmate doesn't like prompts Doyle to respond, "that's a fact, not a problem", which I aim to make my new mantra). And within that desire to be liked and admired is still me outsourcing my value.
I don't want that for myself any more and I don't want it for you either. Betrayal lays it all bare, doesn't it? Our knee-jerk reaction is often what's most revealing. Not just the shock and sadness and anger but the belief beneath that: I'm not enough. 
That belief underscored everything I did. Maybe not consciously but it was always there. I was the dutiful wife, the heavily-invested mother, the volunteer, the writer, the exerciser, the pet-owner, the responsible daughter, the always-there friend. God forbid I let anyone down because that would openly reveal what I secretly believed about myself. I was not enough. My husband had cheated because there was something wrong with me. I was selfish, self-absorbed, vain. 
I still struggle. Those messages, delivered to me via our culture and straight into my ear from my alcoholic mother's mouth, my alcoholic grandmother's mouth, were more true to me than any of the conflicting messages I got. But Doyle urges us to go deeper, to what she calls our "Knowing". My Knowing was so buried beneath these messages that I could barely hear my own deep voice.
And though I'm loathe to acknowledge that any good can come of infidelity, it did crack me open enough that I began to listen for that deep voice of my own. I peeled away others' judgement of me (or did my best to render it irrelevant) and listened.
I am, of course, a work-in-progress. I still struggle with those words. Selfish. Self-centred. Those were my mother's weapons of choice. Used against me any time I wanted something that she didn't think I deserved. Any time I sought for myself...something.
But she was only parroting what our culture tells women in particular. As Doyle points out, "selfless" is the highest compliment we can give a woman. An erasing of the self. A vanishing. To make ourselves so small and insignificant that our very self is sacrificed.
Well, screw that, I say. My grown-up self works hard to push back on that. It isn't others' judgement that hurts so much, it's what we internalize. Or, as my former therapist used to tell me, it isn't what others say to us but what we say to ourselves that hurts. If we didn't somehow believe what others were saying, it wouldn't hurt. 
Behind judgement – our own and others – is fear. That we're doing this wrong. That we're wrong. 
Let's break the bars of that particular cage, or at least stretch them wide enough that we can slip between them. Let's pay attention to when we're judging others and ourselves. Let's remember that behind that judgement is fear, that it is getting in the way of feeling, of knowing, of imagining. And then, let's do our best to squeeze out of that cage and into something better. 

When Rah-Rah Isn't Reality

A woman responded to a post today with words that made my heart ache. She'd been reading all the stories of healing and moving past and rah-rah cheer and even though she was doing everything she could to try and grab on to a piece of that positivity for herself, she just couldn't. It just wasn't her reality.
Not right now.
And that's okay.
If there's anything worse than feeling like you're in the darkest place of your life, it's feeling like you're in the darkest place of your life and you should be able to fix it.
And yet, you haven't a clue what you can do. And even if you had a clue, you aren't sure you even want to fix it. 
You're tired.
You're defeated.
You're paralyzed.
So...
What do you do when none of the so-called solutions fit right now?
What do you do when others' stories don't match yours? When your husband isn't following the script? When you're exhausted from sleepless nights? When none of his promises mean anything? When none of this feels like it could ever turn out to be even remotely okay? When none of your so-called choices are good ones? When you're left with bad and worse? 
What do you do?
Nothing.
Doing nothing can feel radical. It can feel dangerous. We're a culture that rewards action. That rewards badasses who scream like hell about injustice, who take no prisoners.
Where's the glory in pulling the sheets over your head? Where's the power in curling up on the floor with the dog and sobbing into his neck?
But, even though it might feel counter-intuitive, even though it might feel scary, like if you loosen your grip for even a second any forward momentum you might have achieved will vanish like smoke, even though...
Nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing.
Doing nothing is doing something. It's letting yourself rest. It's letting your poor overworked brain stop trying to brainstorm your way out of this. It's trusting that you can loosen your grip and regain some strength. 
Glennon Doyle puts it this way: First the pain. Then the waiting. Then the rising. 
Waiting can feel like hell. But it's a crucial part of this. 
So, my dear wounded sister, everything in your response tells me that you're in the waiting period. The fallow period. When seeds are being planted but you don't yet see what's growing because it's deep in the ground.
Trust that you are healing. And that when the time is ready, you will feel stronger and clearer. None of this is easy. Hard news but the truth. But when it feels impossible, that's your cue to...rest. To wait.
And then, when you're ready, to rise again. 

What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do

If I had a nickel for every time I said, aloud or to myself, "I can't do this any more", I'd be eyeball deep in nickels. It was my phrase of surrender. Of defeat. It was about exhaustion. And fear. Yeah, mostly about fear. Cause the weeks and months and, yes, years after D-Day often felt like holding on by my fingernails while I dangled over a canyon. My two options seemed to be to keep holding on or letting my body split apart on rocks. It felt inconceivable that there was a third option: To heal. To restore myself and my marriage. To reclaim my life.
So many of you seem to know that intuitively. You know that, yes this is a horrible painful experience but it will not determine the rest of your life. And I envy you that ability to understand your own strength. 
Like most lessons in my life, I've had to learn the hard way that I am stronger than I realize, that I'm more resilient. And yes, there are many of you here also that are like me. 
The ones who "can't do this any more."

1. Rest
I know that fear. That if you stop treading water for even one second that you'll certainly drown. That if you stop fighting for more information, that if you stop watching his every move, that if you just...stop, that it will all come crashing down. It's not true, of course. But it feels true. 
But here's what's really true. You cannot stop him if he's going to continue to cheat. You cannot force him to answer questions he doesn't want to ask. You cannot save your marriage if he isn't interested in saving it too. But you can save yourself. And that starts with feeling the incredible pain you're in and sitting with it. Rest.  

2. Accept the unknowingness
Ugh. I hate that this is part of it. Unknowingness is jet-black terror for me. Not knowing why he did this. Not knowing if he's still doing it. Not knowing if he will do it again. Not knowing if my marriage will survive. It all felt so unfair. Just yesterday, I knew. I knew my husband would never do this to me. I knew I'd married the right guy. But...see my point? What I thought I knew was wrong. Cause here's the thing: There are some things we can know and there are many many more things we can't. That we never will. And the better able we become at accepting that, the happier we will be. I'm not suggesting you become a fatalist about your marriage, that you accept that he just might cheat at any moment. But I am suggesting that there are things that we will never know about another person. And here's something else – there are things we may never know about ourselves, unless we're faced with certain situations. Unless we know ourselves deeply, though few of us ever do.
So...we face the unknowingness. We determine what we can and cannot know and we determine what we need to know and what we can release. 

3. Stay small...and keep your world small. 
Remove anything that isn't absolutely necessary. Build that "no" muscle. Cull the toxic people from your life. Get rid of social media if it's making you miserable. Turn off TV shows if they're triggering. The day will come for expansion again. But it's not now.

4. Gather your tribe
There is no shame in seeking help, in telling your story, in gathering those who can hold you while you weep. In fact, one of the surprising gifts in this horrible thing that happened is the incredible people I've come to know. Many I know only from their pseudonym on this site, or their Twitter handle. But you are friends. You are my tribe. I watch you gather around others' pain, even when you're feeling it yourself. And it affirms what any of this – life, to sound grand – is about. Loving each other through the storms. 

5. Search your heart...

• What do I want? A therapist can help you with this. It's a big question. Most of us want this to have not happened. But since time-travel isn't an option, what does your future look like? What do you have control over and what must you accept that you don't?
• Have I had enough? You have not "wasted" time if you tried to reconcile and changed your mind. You have not "wasted" time if your marriage is over. Letting go can be a brave act of self-love. 
• Are my actions moving me toward what I want? I know the pain is intense. And the temptation to numb that pain is huge. To pour a third glass of wine, to buy another outfit that only briefly distracts us, to flirt with that new guy at work. But if healing is our goal, then consider that our actions need to move us toward it. Self-care. Radical kindness. Healthy habits. And yeah, probably therapy. 

6. Rise
It might seem inconceivable that you'll arrive at a point where the thought of his infidelity isn't a stab to your heart. But rising is about having learned to trust yourself, having learned to love yourself, having learned just how strong and incredible you are. Rising is your destiny. 

Guest Post: Put down the telescope

by Chinook

I had never known such desperation as I felt after I discovered that my husband had been having an affair. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t control my emotions even the slightest bit. My body and mind were in a state of such extreme anxiety that a single errant thought (about her, about the two of them together, about what this meant for our children) could provoke a full-blown panic attack. 

Between fits of racking sobs, I launched into doing the three things that I always do when I feel powerless:

(1) Research

(2) Figure out the story of what was happening

(3) Play out future scenarios in my head 

I did these things for every moment of every day.

Every.

Single.

Moment.

It was exhausting, and in the end only one of these coping mechanisms was useful. 

I’m surprised to report that even at the frantic pace at which I did it, research helped. My trusted inner community, in whom I confided right from the start, responded with great resources. On the advice of a friend, I was reading Mira Kirshenbaum’s book “I love you but I don’t trust you” within a day of finding out about the affair. 
On the advice of another, I started journaling. A third recommended that I exhaust myself with high-intensity exercise. “Sleeping pills,” said a fourth. In spite of my internet searching, it took a long time before I found the Betrayed Wives Club. (I think I eventually made my way here by typing something like “when will the devastating pain of infidelity ever end?” into Google.) But within a few weeks, I had an effective therapist, an informational session lined up with a divorce lawyer, other betrayed women to talk to, and a dozen great books to read.

The second coping technique — trying to figure out the story of what was happening — drove me and everyone around me crazy. My mind was racing, trying to compute WHY my husband had done this. (Was he a psychopath? Was he a compulsive liar? Was he a closeted misogynist? Did he have an attachment disorder? Had he even wanted kids? Had he even wanted to get married?) Talking is part of my figuring-out process, and I talked about it incessantly. At one point my father finally declared: “I don’t give a HOOT what he wants! What does CHINOOK want?”

This coping technique failed spectacularly. I was trying to control the situation by understanding it. But I had neither the information nor the hindsight necessary to understand it. Even if I could, understanding it wouldn’t make the pain any less excruciating. Also, to my father’s point, I was putting my attention in the wrong place: I was making my husband the center of the story when the real focus needed to be on me. 

The least useful of all my coping techniques by far was the last: trying to predict the future.

A very good, very wise friend of mine calls the practice “telescoping”, and if you’re doing it, I urge you to stop.

The danger of using a telescope to try and see the future (which is impossible) is that we miss out on observing what is happening right here, right now. And what’s happening now is key. The only thing any of us can do when devastated by a trauma is to pick the next right step, as Glennon Doyle says. (It’s a variation of the “one day at a time” motto of Alcoholics Anonymous.) And in order to choose that next right step, we need accurate information on exactly where we are right now. 

This very wise friend of mine also reminded me that I didn’t need to make any big decisions right now or for some time to come. The only thing I needed to do was gather information. Information on what my husband had actually done. Information from HIM (not from me trying to figure it out for him) about why he had done it. Information on what he was going to do next. Information on my legal options (and, if I hadn’t already had it, our financial situation). 

And, most importantly, information about how this all made me feel and what it revealed to me about what I want.

So, if you have just had your entire world upended, if your mind and heart are racing with the shock of it all, if you are trying to telescope your way into a future that feels safer than your present, please stop.

Put down the telescope.

You can’t see the future. None of us can. 

All you have is now.

Take the next right step. 

Then the next right one after that. 

Then the next right one after that. 

When you walk a path of next right steps, you can’t go wrong.