If I had to point to one moment when I understood that my husband truly "got it" – really understood the pain he'd caused and felt genuine remorse about causing it – it was the day I told him that I would leave him and then, I practically spat the words, "you don't have to bother with therapy and 12-step groups." I knew he didn't like either the therapy or the 12-step groups. But what I didn't understand was that, even more than he detested those, he detested what he'd done. And so he responded to me that, whether or not I remained in the marriage, he nonetheless would continue to work on himself. "I don't want to be that guy anymore," he said.
Good news, of course, because I didn't want him to be "that guy anymore" either. I hated that guy. I wanted a new guy. One who also hated "that guy".
So, I guess, that makes me kinda lucky.
Because I know a whole lot of you struggle with a husband who maybe hates what he did but who has a really hard time admitting that. Or who maybe hates what he did but still kinda also blames you for what he did. Or at least doesn't fully blame himself.
And that makes the choice of whether to stay and rebuild your marriage or cut your losses and leave even harder.
But maybe Liz Gilbert puts it as clearly as we need to hear it: Your husband shows himself worthy of a second chance when he's as sick as you are of his own bullshit.
That's not to say he doesn't have legitimate grievances. A marriage involves two people, of course, and one of those people might be justifiably frustrated or hurt. By bullshit, I mean cheating. By bullshit, I mean deception and gaslighting and rewriting history. By bullshit, I mean making excuses, silencing us our in our pain, refusing to do the hard work of becoming a better man.
It's become cliché but it remains true. We're each responsible for how we show up in our marriage. But it is the cheater who is solely responsible for that choice.
And that choice, if he even wants us to consider giving him a second chance, must be acknowledged to be bullshit. And he must be sick of it.
I built my ego on never needing help. I fed on others' praise for being so "together". Asking for help felt akin to walking out my door completely naked. Exposed. If I didn't have it all together, why would anyone want to be my friend?
Dysfunctional families teach us that the world exists on a binary. We are either good or bad. Right or wrong. Valuable or worthless. We are either doing great or falling apart. We matter only or we don't matter at all.
Enter betrayal and the ridiculous binary that our culture imposes onto it – women who get cheated on are nags, frigid, homely; men who cheat are dogs, players, cads.
If we tell anyone, we face judgement: "You're not going to stay with him, are you? or "Think about what leaving will do to your children." Or, as a friend who'd been betrayed herself said to me, "Well, I certainly wouldn't stay."
And what that judgement does – whether experienced outright or perceived – is stir up the rot of our old stuff. My old stuff included a conviction that staying with a husband who cheated was what pathetic women did. It included a sense of non-surprise. Of course, he cheated on me. After all, I was all those things that I'd heard for years that I was: too sensitive, too demanding, too selfish, spoken in my mother's drunken slur.
I'd suited myself up in armour over the years. I'd made sure that I was fit (two marathons!), a good mother (plenty of fresh air and no processed sugar for MY children!), successful (ten books written while my children napped). That I thought that armour of faux perfection could protect me is laughable in hindsight. At the time, however, it offered the only protection I had.
Then D-Day, the metaphorical bomb that blows up our worlds.
And suddenly my armour was revealed to be as useless as it always had been. Being "perfect" hadn't saved me from heartbreak. It had only lent the illusion of protection. As Liz Gilbert puts it, "perfect is just fear in good shoes."
And my rot was stirred.
Those old messages might as well have been written on my bathroom mirror. I couldn't see past them to the woman standing there.
"You're not sexy enough."
"You're too demanding."
"You don't make enough money."
"You don't dress up enough."
And on. And on.
It felt akin to walking out the door completely naked. Even with very few people knowing about my husband's betrayal, I felt utterly exposed as a fraud. One of saddest, most vivid memories I have about that time is my sense that everyone was laughing at me, delighting in my humiliation.
Who the hell had I thought I was?
Which is the question that has underscored every other lesson I've learned through this.
Who the hell did I think I was?
It's the shackle that binds so many of us who grow up in dysfunction. Hell, it's a shackle that binds pretty much any woman who expects to be seen, to be treated fairly. Any time we think we've transcended the shame of our childhoods, or shed the low expectations, it's there. Just who the hell do we think we are?
Who do we think we are to imagine someone could love us?
Who do we think we are to believe ourselves worthy of a good education?
Who do we think we are to apply for that job, that promotion, that opportunity? To be allowed in the room?
Who do we think we are to deserve fidelity? To be able to age? To go grey? To grow soft?
Who do we think we are?
Who I think I am is someone who is human. Who is worthy of love and belonging, despite – even because of – my shortcomings. Who deserves a seat at the table.
Just who the hell do you think you are? That's a question for you to answer based on the truth of you, not the old stories you've been told.
But here's a start: You are someone who did not deserve to be cheated on. After all, just who the hell does he think he is?
