Perel spent considerable time encouraging the partner who'd experienced childhood abuse to mine his past, to really explore its connection to his difficulty accepting comfort from his new husband.
The husband, who longed to offer comfort to his traumatized partner, noted the other's "drama" and prided himself on being low-maintenance. "I don't need much," he said.
Which is when Perel said the words that, literally, made me stop the tape and take big gulps of oxygen.
Where did you learn to live on crumbs?
I've made no secret of my own childhood dysfunction. I've often shared how my mother's alcoholism created much shame in me and how my father's reliance on me turned me into a parent for him and led me to all variety of boy-men who lacked both the maturity and the emotional bandwidth for healthy relationships. They brought drama. I brought low maintenance.
But never had I heard what I learned from my childhood, and what I continued to allow, referred to as clearly and succinctly as "crumbs".
I'm asking you: Where did you learn to live on crumbs?
So many of us did, didn't we? So many of us, even putting aside the infidelity (that most of us didn't know about...until we did), overlooked his long hours at the office (he's working hard for his family), his TV watching (he deserves to relax after a long day/week), his hanging with the guys (he needs his friends), while we took on the bulk of the housework, the childcare, the care of parents, the day-in/day-out details that keep a house running. And I'm not saying that men don't work hard, deserve to relax, need friends with whom to have fun. But how often did we allow those things to our husbands while denying them to ourselves?
And how often did we accept behaviour in our husbands that wasn't ultimately healthy for us or for our family?
I barely noticed that I was accepting crumbs. I knew I felt angry a lot. I knew that when my husband would come up behind me to wrap his arms around me while I was at the sink doing dishes, I had to stop myself from jamming my elbow in his ribs. I didn't need a hug, I needed help with the god-damn dishes. Did I say that? Of course not. I chastised myself for not being more satisfied with what I had.
StillStanding1 did a great job with her recent post about the rage so many of us feel post-betrayal. But I want to extend that backward. How many of us felt it, on some level, before we learned about our partner's betrayal? How many of us are doubly (triply? quadruply?) angry about the betrayal because not only did he cheat on us but he cheated on us while we were at home doing everything. While we were sacrificing ourselves for the good of our family and barely being noticed for it?
That's a betrayal too, isn't it?
Of course it is. But maybe not in the way you think.
That was a betrayal of ourselves.
That was our acceptance of crumbs.
Where did you learn to live on crumbs?
Maybe it was from parents who expected you to swallow strong feelings and not rock the boat. Maybe it was from teachers who expected girls to be kind and nurturing and take turns and be polite and demure. Maybe it was from a culture that still recoils from angry women, no matter that we have plenty to be angry about.
Wherever it was, it's time for a new lesson.
It's time to reconsider what we've been willing to settle for and set out new terms for ourselves. No more crumbs. Let's ask for exactly what we want. If we've decided to stay in our marriage and rebuild, then there's no better time to make it abundantly clear to our spouse that the only way we can continue is if our needs and wants are acknowledged and respected. It's time to make some demands of our own – beginning with what every betrayed wife should demand (total transparency, access to his accounts/computers/etc), but including everything that we need to make our marriage more equitable and, ultimately, healthier for both.
Maybe you need him home more often, maybe you need him to deal with his toxic family instead of you doing that job. Maybe you need him to talk to you rather than turning on Netflix. Maybe you need help with childcare on weekends rather than him teeing off for 18 holes. Whatever it is, we need to ask for it. Settling for crumbs starves us emotionally.
