When We Share Our Pain, Here's What We Gain

 "...when you risk sharing what hurts the most in the presence of someone who will not invade you or abandon you, you can learn not to invade or abandon yourself."

From Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation

Something powerful happens when we arrive here and discover a community of those who are describing our own specific pain. It invites us in, it pulls us close. We no longer feel alone.

It isn't magic, necessarily. It's just as Richard Rohr says. When we open ourselves to others, when that opening is welcomed without shaming or shunning, it reminds us of our inherent value, our belonging. We learn "not to invade or abandon" ourselves.

It's easier said than done. Betrayal itself is an invasion. Someone uninvited (by us!) has come into that most private relationship. Betrayal is an abandonment. Whether or not our partner has physically left us, they have shut us out emotionally. And no number of "I never planned to leave you" or "it meant nothing" or "I never stopped loving you" changes the fact that we were alone in the marriage. We just didn't know it yet.

Sadly, betrayal carries such shame in our culture. Shame in being left. Shame in being abandoned. As if we are defective. Discarded. It's why we find such comfort in "sharing what hurts the most". Because others who know our pain can give us the space to feel it while also reminding us not to invite more pain by believing those lies about our worth, by accepting the shame when it belongs to those who caused pain.

I know the stomach-churning fear that comes with writing our your pain and clicking "publish". My entire body flooded when I first posted on the Surviving Infidelity site. I felt exposed. My heart laid bare. I was sure someone would figure out who I was and my shame (that I didn't yet realize did not belong to me) would be made clear to all who knew me. 

But please know that you will not be shamed here. You will not be shunned. Your pain is our pain. We know it. We felt it. By learning how to not invade or abandon ourselves, we are able to help you not invade or abandon yourselves. It is my absolute favorite thing about this little space we're created here on the giant web: That we show up for each other. That we hold each other up. The kindness. The compassion. 

Thank-you to all who provide this here, now and over the many years past. Thank-you to those of you brave enough to share your stories. Thank-you to those who are still silent in the shadows, waiting. You are brave too. And we are ready when you are.

Transforming pain? Or transmitting it?

I have elevated "do as I say, not as I do" to an art form. I preach Dalai Lama but I practice Taylor Swift. Which is all a way of saying that although I want to float above the fray, to go high when others go low, sometimes I find myself in the mud, slinging away with the others.
"Those who don't transform their pain transmit it," says Father Richard Rohr, a Jesuit priest, speaking words that transcend any religious doctrine.
And when I'm in pain is, of course, when I go low.
When I'm scared is when I go low.
When I'm angry is when I go low.
For instance, I recently read about a well-known misogynist who's suffering health issues. My first thought, "wow. He's in real trouble." My second? I'm ashamed to say it was to mentally give karma a high-five.
I catch myself. I don't want to be a horrible person. I want to be serene and generous of spirit and empathetic, even to awful people who make life harder for other people. And I often succeed. Or, at least I succeed when I can connect with that awful person's vulnerability. When I can see that awful person's pain.
I was finally able to release myself from the festering hatred of the OW when I could recognize her pain. The second I was able to extend even the tiniest bit of empathy toward her, a miracle occurred. She no longer occupied my thoughts. She no longer poisoned my soul.
But what about those times when I just can't? When their pain isn't visible, when I can't conjure up empathy? When their cruelty seems so gleeful, when they seem to be benefiting from it? Well, then, I generally offer up a hearty "fuck you". Maybe not overtly. But my heart has a helluva middle finger.
The math goes like this:

My pain + the ability to see another's pain = compassion/transformation.
My pain + inability to see another person's pain = transmission

The problem with transmitting our pain is that it isn't like something I can pass to someone else, leaving me pain-free. Rather, it's like a virus. I still have my pain but I've also infected another through cruelty or just a lack of compassion.
Anne Lamott puts it this way: "Some days the only thing that can cheer me up is something bad happening to someone I hate."
Yep. Exactly.
Except the times in my life when I've spewed that bile, when I've wished horrible things on horrible people, when I've celebrated another's misfortune, I've been the one who feels horrible. My pain, transmitted, re-infects me.
When what I want is transformation.
What I want is mercy. We all do. Or, as Lamott says, "I am starving to death for it, and my world is, too.
I've been on the receiving end of mercy and it's transformative. I've been given the benefit of the doubt when I probably didn't deserve it. I've been given a second chance when I messed up the first one.
Which is why I want so badly to extend that mercy in a way that transforms. To rid myself of the desire to see others hurt, even if they really really deserve it.
Cause that's another tricky thing about mercy. Most of us don't deserve it.
Our husbands don't deserve it.
They messed up their first chance and probably their second.
Feeling empathy for them isn't exonerating them. It doesn't mean that what they did to us was okay. It isn't about giving them permission to do it again.
Rather, it's about refusing to infect another with our pain and refusing to allow them to infect us with theirs.
Not easy. Especially when we're festering in our hatred. When our pain feels radioactive.
But the alternative to mercy – to instead keep transmitting our pain – does little for our own healing.
Only when we can take responsibility for the only thing that truly IS our responsibility – our own actions – can we begin to feel free of our pain. And of theirs.
As Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it: "Option 1 feels like poison. And Option 2 feels like freedom."
And doesn't freedom sound lovely?

After the Cheating Comes Reconstruction

I screamed horrible things at my mother after my husband's betrayal. Despite the fact that she was the first person I called, despite the fact that she was my absolute rock, I nonetheless said horrible things. The latent pain that my husband's betrayal awakened was there because of my mother's addiction when I was a kid. 
I couldn't separate the pain of my husband's betrayal with the old pain of my mother's. Both betrayals told me that I wasn't lovable, that I didn't matter, that I wasn't worth fighting for, that I was expendable. 
And so I screamed at my mother that she was the reason I married someone who would do this, that I never felt worth being loyal to, that she had taught me to settle for crumbs.
She listened to it all. And then, as she had so many times before, she held me while I cried and reminded me how sorry she was, how desperately she wished she could go back and do those days over, do them differently.
It's hard for me to disentangle the pain of my husband's infidelity with the earlier pain of my mother's addiction. Complicating things further, my mother died six months after my first D-Day and weeks after my second. Her loss left me bereft. Long sober, she was the person I spoke with daily, who knew my story. She was my cheerleader, my champion. She was fierce in her love for me but equally fierce in her belief in forgiveness, in the human capacity for change, in earning redemption. She had lived it herself.
And so I've taken particular interest in Richard Rohr's recent look at addiction and sobriety. Rohr is a priest of the Franciscan order and though I'm not Catholic, his progressive views about life (not just religion) give me lots to consider. 
Such as this, from Alcoholics Anonymous:

There is a long period of reconstruction ahead. We must take the lead. A remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won’t fit the bill at all. We ought to sit down with the family and frankly analyze the past as we now see it, being very careful not to criticize them. Their defects may be glaring, but the chances are that our own actions are partly responsible. So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Higher Power show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love.
The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to finally live it.

This is what so many cheaters resist, even those who genuinely want to move past this, who swear they'll never cheat again. They resist the period of reconstruction. They imagine they can put this behind them without really doing the work of reparations. They want us to "stop living in the past", to "focus on the future". But without the work, without the reconstruction, the past is our present, and will be our future. Because we're still living it. Every single day.
Imagine the difference if a remorseful cheater sat down with us and listened to our experience without getting defensive. Just listened and tried to understand what it feels like to discover that our reality wasn't reality at all. How crazy-making that is. How terrifying that is. How humiliating that feels. 
Imagine if a repentant cheater was willing to do more than mumble "I'm sorry", if he was truly willing to "clean house", to take an inventory of the ways in which he's harmed other people, to take steps to make amends, where appropriate.
Thanks to my mother's sobriety via 12-step meetings, I've long believed it's a powerful way of living, whether or not addiction plays a role. It centres personal responsibility, accountability. It includes plenty of mercy. But ultimately, it's about showing up in our vulnerability, heart and eyes wide open.
While healing from my husband's betrayal, I was able to also heal a lot of old wounds from my mother's betrayal. And those 12-steps, at which I'd rolled my eyes when my mom was newly sober, were a valuable guide. 
Both my mom and my husband were able to make reparations, to listen to my pain and take full accountability for their role in causing it. It's impossible to overstate how healing that is. To feel heard. To feel seen. To feel valued. 
Those unwilling to do that get in the way of our healing. Telling us to "stop living in the past" is not only useless, it's harmful. 
Instead, we need to enter a period of reconstruction, which includes a sober look at what got us here.