Justice for the pain? Or witness to the wound...

One of the most difficult things about healing from being hurt by others is how to put wounds to rest when those who have hurt us will not give air to the wound, will not admit to their part in causing the pain. I have struggled with this deeply. Time and again, I find myself confusing the want for justice with the need for a witness of the wound.

~Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

One of the more common laments I hear on this site is how the OW isn't "paying" for what she did. If she was single, well, she just moves on. If she's married, we imagine that her husband either doesn't know (and most don't want to tell him) or that he's chosen to move past it. So really, what we're saying when we want the OW to pay for our pain is that we want to see her pay. We want it to be public. Oprah once said that the downside of the karma bus was that we rarely got to see it run over those who did us wrong.

And I get it. Justice. We just want justice, right? Except that focusing on justice – the price we think she should pay (and our husband should pay, for that matter) – often keeps us focused outwardly. Away from the pain. Away from the wound.

But what I've learned through healing from betrayal is that focussing outward keeps us a step removed from our wound but connected to the person who helped create it. It's like being in the middle of the road with a broken leg and trying to chase down the person who ran us over. What we need to do is fix the break first. 

But a broken bone is one thing. It shows up on x-rays. A broken heart is another thing entirely. We don't know how to effectively treat a broken heart. And so we tell ourselves that we're being pathetic. We chastise ourselves for our tears. Why aren't we over this? What's wrong with us? We need a witness for our wound, as Mark Nepo says, and yet we can't even do that for ourselves. Far easier, it seems, to stalk her Facebook or Instagram for signs of her misery. Far easier to drive by her house and see the curtains pulled tight. 

None of this is easy, my friends. Healing from infidelity just might be the hardest thing you'll ever do. But it starts with acknowledging your pain. Acknowledging just how deep the wound goes. And summoning other witnesses to it, who can assure us that they know it's there too.

It might not erase our desire for justice, our need to see those who hurt us somehow pay for the damage they caused. But it also might. By the time I began to feel healed from my own broken heart, I no longer cared about the OW. I knew by then she had remarried and had a baby. And I hoped, for the baby's sake, that she had done some healing of her own. I hoped for the sake of other women that she never wanted to cause such damage in another's marriage again. But that was nothing I could control. And so I let go.

Kicking Fear Out of the Driver's Seat

For a species that does a whole lot of talking, we seem to have a terrible time actually communicating with each other. 
Case in point: One of my Twitter tribe tweeted that, after almost two years of reconciliation, her husband thought it was best that he leave despite both wanting to rebuild their marriage. Why? Well, according to him, "I can't seem to  stop hurting you so it's best that I leave and then you can be happy." 
I confess I heard that a few times from my own husband in the wake of D-Day. I recall having suggested it more than once.
But unspoken was this: "I am so scared. I don't know how to do this. I have made such a mess of things and I hate being reminded of it every single day. When you cry. When you have that faraway look in your eyes and I can't reach you. If I wasn't here, you wouldn't be reminded of what a shit I am. And I wouldn't be reminded of what a shit I am."
My code-breaking is due, in large part, to my own pre-married life. I didn't know how to have a healthy relationship. All I'd seen was unhealthy ones. I knew screaming and sulking. I knew the bad kind of silence.
It wasn't until my mom got sober in church basements and began incorporating those 12 steps into her life and into her relationship with me that the code was cracked.
She was scared and so she drank.
I was scared and so I ran away.
Fear drives so many of our actions, whether we're conscious of it or not.
You're scrolling through the OW's social media again? It's not because you desperately want to see her vacation pics, it's because you're scared. And knowing what she's doing gives you the illusion that you have more control than you actually do.
Avoiding that pre-holiday conversation with your dad about his drinking? Of course, you are. You're scared. That he'll gaslight you. That he'll tell you to stay home. That he'll blame you or shame you or otherwise make this your problem, not his.
The thing is that we're all scared. Pretty much all the time. We're scared our kids will take drugs. We're scared our husbands will cheat again. We're scared our friends would pity us or shun us if they knew the truth of our marriage. We're scared our parents will get sick. We're scared we'll outlive our children. We're scared we'll outlive our money. We're scared we'll outlive our planet's resources (well, at least I am).
The list, sadly, goes on.
But the thing about fear is that, as Mark Nepo puts it, "Fear gets its power from our not looking, at either the fear or what we're afraid of."
Facing it strips it of its power. Not immediately, of course. But with time. With practice.
Facing our fear, really noticing when our actions are rooted in it, helps us live our life, the one we want. Not just the one that happens when we're running away.
My daughter woke up sick the other day. She had a shift at work and yet could hardly stand. But her manager tries to control her staff through a twisted mix of passive-aggression, gaslighting and silence. My daughter, a people-pleaser (she's working on it!!), was terrified to call in sick. "She'll get mad at me," she wailed. "She won't believe me," she moaned. "She'll take me off the schedule and I won't get any shifts," she cried.
To which I responded, "you can either call in legitimately sick and treat yourself with respect or you can let someone else's emotional toxicity control you."
Your choice. Your call.
With shaking hands, she made the call. 
The sky didn't fall. The world didn't tilt off its axis. Instead, my daughter prioritized self-respect and honesty over letting fear dictate her actions. 
I've learned the hard way that letting fear drive the car will take you over the cliff. Or at least close enough to the edge that you're constantly anxious.
The only way to live the life you want is to wrestle back the wheel. Fear will still be there. It will sit in the passenger seat and bark orders and sulk and catalogue all the ways in which you need to listen to it or hellfire will rain down on you. 
It's wrong. Mostly.
Sometimes bad things will happen. But they will happen anyway because that's how life works. Anticipating bad things just robs today of sunshine because tomorrow it might rain.
Next time you find yourself looking for the exit door, ask yourself if you're running from fear. Fear isn't the enemy. It can tell us important information. "You're not safe in this relationship." Or, "you have some work to do around your relationship with your mother." Or, "day drinking just might not be a good long-term solution to your pain." Or "keep your gas tank full in case of an alien invasion."
But if you're willing to face it down, to examine the information it's offering in the cold light of day to determine what's legit and what's not, it can become just one of the tools in our belt rather than the only one.
And living a life not governed by fear is authentically yours.