Thursday's Thought

 

Don't Build the Same House

If a house is levelled, don't build the same house.

~Dr. Debi Silber, PBT Institute

If there is one fundamental misunderstanding by those who don't see the inside of our marriage (but who think they do, and yes, I'm talking about the other woman), it's that our marriage post-infidelity is pretty much the same as our marriage pre-infidelity. I've heard the wails: "He gets to go back to his wife and his marriage and I'm alone." As if we welcome them back with open arms. As if we aren't shattered by betrayal. As if...

But it's a mistake that, sometimes, gets made by those of us inside the marriage. We're so desperate to get past this, to have our marriage back, that we build the same house, as Dr. Debi Silber puts it. We recreate the same marriage with the same dynamics with the same guy and then expect everything to be different. Or at least one thing to be different: That he doesn't cheat again.

It's lunacy, isn't it? Even if we thought our marriage was great – even if he's telling us that our marriage was great, that his cheating had nothing to do with us, that he never stopped loving us – even with that, we still need to build a new house. Cause the old house is gone. The trauma of betrayal blew that baby to bits.

But the thing with trauma is that it can help us lay down an entirely new foundation. This is, in no way the same as saying that trauma is "good" because it helps us grow. (In some cases, it does exactly the opposite as Lisa Arends so beautifully described in a recent blog post on her site.) But trauma, when it hits us as adults, is lay bare all the cracks. In my case, the trauma of my husband's betrayal forced me to look at all the ways in which I'd been abandoning myself. I brought childhood trauma into my marriage. I was the capable one, the responsible one, the "fixer". Which left my husband the role of errant teenager, which fed into his family dynamic that, without an adult telling him what to do, he was likely to get it wrong. And so I seethed with resentment that I had to do everything. And my husband seethed with resentment that he was treated like a child. 

Enter the trauma of betrayal. I had the choice to either build the same damn house or build a new one. And though I still slip into that old house – my default as fixer shows up every single time I'm stressed – I nonetheless built a new one. One that required my husband to be a partner to me. One that required my husband to work through his own childhood stuff while I addressed mine. 

As Dr. Silber tells us, the problem isn't trauma, it's staying there. When you heal from it, you learn that even though it was done to you, it wasn't about you.

I had to learn that. And I don't know how else I would have learned that if I hadn't had my metaphorical house blown up. We betrayed wives tend to spend a lot of time playing "what if". What if he'd never cheated, would I be happier? What if he'd never cheated, would I feel more secure? 

It's a fool's game. He did cheat. And we are left to rebuild a new house with the same husband (or rather a husband who'd damn well better not stay the same), or to rebuild a life without him as our husband. Either choice is a perfectly reasonable one. But if you choose to stay, you cannot move back into that old house, no matter what the other woman thinks. That house is gone. 

Honoring an anniversary after infidelity

If trying to find a way when you don't even know you can get there isn't a small miracle; then I don't know what is.  ~Rachel Joyce, author

Today is my husband's and my anniversary. Twenty-four years ago we stood in front of family and friends and promised to be each other's one and only. We promised kindness and respect. To stick with each other through "good times and bad." 

There was a lot of bad.

I didn't know just how bad it was but it was bad. 

And when I discovered how bad it was, I reeled. I cried. I curled up in a ball on my bathroom floor many many nights and sobbed into my dog's neck. I could see nothing but the bad. I couldn't conceive of my marriage ever being anything but bad ever again.

And yet I stayed. I stayed because I was afraid to leave. Afraid to disrupt my young children's lives. Afraid of what my husband might do if I left. Besides, I was exhausted. I could barely get through a day let alone find the energy to kick him out, or leave myself. And so I waited. I waited until I felt strong enough to leave. I made my expectations clear – no cheating, no lying, full disclosure. If he stepped outside the line, even the slightest bit, I was gone. He knew that. He went to therapy. He attended 12-step meetings.

And I waited.

For strength. For a sign from the universe. For my kids to get older. For myself to get clearer.

It was never so much about if I'd leave but when, though I held out faint hope that my feelings for him might return. That I might love him again as I had that day twenty-four years ago. 

And here we are. 

It has not been easy. It has, in fact, been extremely hard. (I was going to write the "hardest thing I've ever done" but that would be untrue. Since that horrible time, I have had to commit my daughter to a psychiatric ward and that, my friends, is the hardest thing I've ever done. I have had to bury my mother, which was another very hard thing.)

But the thing with infidelity is that the pain eclipses every other thing. It blocks out the light. It leaves us squinting in the dark with no expectation of light ever again. This, we are certain, is our life. Not just for today but tomorrow. And forever.

That is a lie.

The pain is excruciating. I know. But it passes. Not today. Not even soon. But eventually. And though I wish I could tell you differently, the truth is that it takes a long time to pass. And that there are no shortcuts. I don't think it hurts less to leave. I don't think it hurts less to find someone else. I don't think it hurts less in a short marriage than a long one. It just hurts. And it hurts so so much.

And then, one day, I realized it hurt a little less. And then less still. And so on until I'm celebrating my 24th wedding anniversary and I realize it hasn't hurt at all for a long time. And that we are exactly where we want to be and with exactly who we want to be with. He has changed over the years and not just grayer hair and a wider waist. I have changed a lot too. WE know each other much more deeply than we did that day 24 years ago. I have seen him at his absolute worst. I have decided that he is more than that. We have been with each other to bury our mothers. We have been with each other to get our daughter the help she needed. We have grown together and through.

And here we are. Okay. More than okay. Beyond all expectations. Happy.

Can "I'm Sorry" Save Your Marriage After Infidelity?

"For every woman still waiting for an apology," are among the first words you'll read when you open Eve Ensler's book The Apology. Ensler suffered abuse from her father for most of her childhood and youth. Her father died without ever uttering anything resembling an "I'm sorry". Ensler felt caged by the lack of apology and so she found the key to free herself. 
A whole lot of us find ourselves in a similar situation, with a spouse or an ex-spouse who either can't or won't take the necessary steps to apologize to us. I'm not talking about an apology spat out, or one that's really a plea for forgiveness. But a true apology, one that offers a full accounting of the harm done and a genuine reckoning. One that leaves the apologizer unwilling to ever do that to another person again because they cannot, they will not be that person. 
I'm often asked why I stayed with my husband after the harm he caused. Year after year of cheating, lie after lie. And when I look back at those early weeks and months after D-Day, there are a few moments that stand out. Including the day that he told me, whether I stayed with him or left, he was committed to getting emotionally healthy. He could not, he would not remain the same person who could betray someone he loved. 
A genuine apology is a rare thing. In part, as Ensler says, we are not taught to apologize when we are children. I cringe when I hear a parent admonish a child to "say you're sorry", followed by a sullen "I'm sorry" that carries not one iota of self-reflection or genuine remorse. 
And to apologize for breaking someone's trust, their heart? Where to even begin? And so the harm is minimized. It's part cowardice, part survival strategy. As one of our Twitter tribe, whose wife cheated on him, noted after his wife read this post, she felt like a "monster". But then, he added, the next day she wanted to read it again.
Because within that admission, that willingness to confess the monster's sins as your own, lies liberation. If we don't exorcise whatever is driving us to behave in ways that cause harm to those we love, then we will continue to be controlled by it. There are three stages through a genuine apology, Ensler tells us. The first is a willingness to look at what drove the behaviour, to "self-interrogate," she says. Not excuses but understanding. "What made you a person capable of [inflicting such harm]." The second is a "detailed accounting" of the harm. "Liberation only comes through the details," says Ensler. 
Though Ensler is speaking primarily to sexual assault survivors, her words hold true for those of us abused via betrayal. "Survivors," she says, "are often haunted by the why." What we need is not justification but explanation. I often urge women on this site to let go of the why, in part because the cheater so often is baffled himself. He doesn't know why he risked everything that mattered for someone who, ultimately didn't. His job, of course, is to find out. But know this: The 'why' is rarely what our culture tells us. It is rooted in the cheater's own dysfunction, his own wound. Hurt people hurt people.
And the third – a stage few reach – is liberation. An unshackling of the apologizer. A release for the apologized to. 
That's what I got in those moments that I can remember so clearly after D-Day. Those were the moments when my husband made clear that he was committed to becoming a man who could not, would not do that again. When he said to me that he never wanted to see such pain in my eyes again and know that he had created it. When he showed up at his 12-step groups, when he worked with therapists. It wasn't so much an "I'm sorry" in words (though there was that, as well) as an apology in action. I saw his "I'm sorry" more than heard it. 

But what if he won't apologize? 

What are you seeing? Are you seeing someone interrogate themselves (ideally with the help of a trained therapist)? Are you seeing someone willing to go through the shame and discomfort of examining why they hurt someone they claim to value?

If not, can I ask you gently why you're continuing to live on crumbs? If not, why do you have any expectation that things in the future will be different than the past?

If so, can you be satisfied with an "I'm sorry" in actions not words? If so, are you confident that the future will be different from the past because the future him will be different than the past him?
And if you find yourself left, without an apology, without a marriage, then what? Then you unshackle yourself. You can do what Ensler did and put yourself in your ex'es shoes and determine what made him incapable of healthy, generous love. You learn to pity him. Or you accept that you might never know and instead focus your energy on self-care, self-compassion, self-love. 

An apology can create space for compassion. Without it, you will have to create that space for yourself. You can learn to forgive yourself for not knowing, for not having seen it, for having trusted someone unworthy of your trust. And then, you can move forward, liberated. 

What (Single) Affair Partners Don't Get About Marriage

I just finished reading Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends, a book about a 21-year-old navigating friendships and an affair with a 33-year-old man married to an acquaintance. I'm long past the days of feeling triggered by reading about affairs and firmly in the days of shaking my head at just how poorly our culture, generally speaking, depicts infidelity. Conversations with Friends is an exception in that the protagonist, Frances, comes to (sorta kinda) realize that her partner's marriage is a whole lot more than she thought. After seeing a video of the couple on Facebook goofing around, Frances says:

Anyone could see from the video how much they loved each other. If I had seen them like this before, I thought, maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe I would have known.

What Frances might have "known" was that marriage holds multitudes, to steal from Walt Whitman. Those cheating with married men often think that marriage is about sex. If the sex is good, the man doesn't cheat. If it's not good, well, surely that's why he's in another's bed.
And so, they figure, if I offer good sex, he'll leave his wife. If I'm available to him, he'll leave his wife. 
And then, so so often, he doesn't leave his wife and they're utterly perplexed. Like Frances was until she had something of an epiphany. Until she came to understand that marriage, from the outside, is baffling to those not in it. That marriage is about so much more than sex. 
I was guilty of that simplification too, before I was married. I hadn't yet come to understand the day-in/day-out of marriage. That a marriage one year in will bear little resemblance to a marriage ten years in. Then twenty. The person I was when I said "I do" can sometimes feel like an entirely different person than I am now. My husband bears little resemblance to the guy he was then (thank god!). 
We are shaped by so many experiences that don't happen between the sheets. Together, my husband and I have buried two parents, we have lost friends to illness and geography, we have sat up late with sick children, we have worried together.
We have celebrated the large and the small. We have championed each other's dreams and comforted each other in disappointment.
And yes, we have navigated infidelity. We have found our way back to each other.
But even if we hadn't, even if we had opted to separate and divorce, that marriage we'd had, even with its undisclosed secrets, contained multitudes. 
My husband's fear at an alarming prenatal test was real, even though he was cheating on me at the time. 
My husband's happiness for me when my first book was published was real, even though he was cheating on me at the time.
And that's the thing that affair partners miss. They think a person remains whole during an affair. They imagine they are taking that whole person leaving what exactly?
When the truth is that the cheater becomes fractured. Which is why he can be at dinner, laughing with his children over something that happened that day. He can be present at a holiday, an event, in bed.
And then be present with his affair partner.
I once asked my husband what he thought about me when he was with her. "I didn't," he said. He didn't think about me. Thinking about me got in the way of what he was doing.
I was able, even then, to appreciate his honesty. It helped me understand that the affair was never about me. 
It sounds cold, doesn't it? And yet...it comforted me. It taught me something that I didn't understand before I was married. Something that Frances figured out. Marriages contain multitudes that those not in them can scarcely understand. It's why marriages can survive infidelity (with a whole lot of work). It's why people can love their spouse and still cheat. It's why our culture continues to poorly depict affairs because they assume that they're entirely about sex, when the sex is frequently a stand-in for escape, for something that felt lost, for an idea about ourselves that we seek. 
Which is also why relationships that begin as affairs have such a high failure rate. We can't outrun ourselves. We can't reinvent ourselves because, eventually, we have to decide who's going to clean the grout in the shower, who didn't pick up milk on the way home, who should be getting up with the baby. The escape becomes the mundane. And unless you've got a whole lot more than sex going for you, you've just given misery a new address. 

Where Did Kindness Find You?

In a panic, a few days after D-Day, I reached out to a friend for help indexing the book I was working on and that was due a couple of week's later. I gave her only the sketchiest of details of D-Day and asked if she'd help me. I could barely think, let alone index a 200-page non-fiction book. She stepped up without hesitation.
A few weeks after that, I was at a restaurant meeting a friend for a bite and a drink. I hadn't planned on telling her what I was going through but she kept insisting that something was wrong so I caved. Her eyes filled with tears. And then, with a voice steely with resolve, she told me that, since she worked in the same office as my husband and the OW, she would be my eyes and ears. "I've got your back," she promised.
There were plenty of moments like those. When the people around me stepped up to help me when I needed it most. We sometimes miss them, focussed instead on the wrong done to us, the petty annoyances on top of our pain that make us wonder if the world is conspiring against us.
My eldest, who has an anxiety disorder, attended her orientation a few months ago as a transfer student. New to the school, she was determined to get out and make friends. But despite a big smile and a "hey, I'm S", student after student looked pained and turned away.
She sat down on a bench and fought tears. And then another student, this one part of the school's orientation team, sat down with her and introduced himself. "Why don't you join us?" he said. 
My daughter told me this story last night, two months later. The moment has stayed with her.
And that's what unexpected kindness does. 
I think so often of the secret sister on this site who provided her therapist with a gift card to a running store to be given to a betrayed wife who might benefit from running through her pain. I'm delighted at the upcoming plan of our own huge-hearted LilyLove, to create a support group for betrayed wives in her town, based on the kindness she sees here on this site. 
I smile frequently at the support I see daily on Twitter, where #SickNotWeak followers shore each other up. I make it a habit to "like" the post by the stranger who reminds her followers at the end of each day that it was another 24 hours of sobriety for her. 
Kindness is in the dingy church basement where I work on language skills with newcomers who fled war and oppression and who brought food last week (so much food!) to celebrate the successful surgery of one of our ESL teachers. 
It's there, even in the midst of your darkness.
Look for kindness. Extend kindness. Notice kindness.

I leave you with this excerpt from her poem Kindness by poet Naomi Shihab Nye:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

...

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

...

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

"If This Isn't Nice...": How to be happy again

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

After months, often years, of longing to feel happy again, we notice that we're laughing a bit more. That our chest doesn't feel quite so tight. That we can go hours, sometimes half a day without remembering the betrayal, without a trigger, without that ache.
What is this? we wonder. How can I possibly be happy right now. My husband cheated on me. In fact, he might still be cheating on me. Where is he right now? I better check his e-mail account. 
And our pulse quickens and our heart pounds and we're right back in that dark storm of fear and anxiety.
Which confirms for us that we'll never feel happy again.
And which is simply not true.
In the wake of betrayal, we speak in absolutes. I will never be happy again. I will always hurt. I will never trust him again. People always let me down. I will never be the same. 
It's important, of course, to parse out the truth in those statements. So let's examine them more closely:
I will never be the same: On its surface, that's true. You never will be the same but who among remains the same person? But I know the fear hidden in that statement: That you're fundamentally changed in ways that you don't want to be. You don't laugh so much. You're anxious a lot. You don't feel as safe in your marriage as you did.
I felt all that. And I was convinced that I was somehow destined to remain this shell of my former self, this damaged person. 
I was wrong.
With time and whole lot of healing, I have changed. My eyes are a bit more open to others' treatment of me. I no longer shake off bad behaviour instead calling people on it. My boundaries are so much more clear and strong than they ever were. 
I treat myself better. I try and catch myself when I shift into martyr mode – when I tell myself that my family would shrivel up and die without me there to cook, to clean, to organize, to comfort. Stoking my resentment is unhealthy for all of us. Far better to teach them to cook, to clean, to organize, to comfort. 
I will always hurt: My dear wounded sisters, this hurts like a sonofabitch. I know that. It hurts in a way that you can't ever imagine it not hurting again. And it will continue to hurt for a while. Months. Maybe a year or two. The dull ache will last even longer.
But...
You will not always hurt. Not if you do the work of healing yourself from not only his infidelity but all that old stuff that the infidelity dredges from the muck of your soul. The critical mother's words. The schoolyard bully's words. The nasty sister's words. The belief, somehow lodged in your psyche that you just don't quite measure up. Pull all that stuff up, along with the bullshit beliefs around why he cheated and spread it out, metaphorically, in front of you. And then examine each belief. Challenge it. Is it true? Probably not. Is it helpful? Doubt it. Keep examining the belief behind that default message that plays in your head ("Elle isn't available right now because she's lazy/ugly/stupid/unlucky/pathetic/whatever"). Challenge it each time. Where's the evidence that this is true? REAL evidence. Not your out-of-whack beliefs. Actual empirical evidence. If change is necessary, then change what you want to change. But notice too all the ways in which you're pretty great. Remind yourself of those qualities often. 
What will happen is that hurt will slowly heal. Whether or not your marriage survives, YOU will. And you will grow stronger because you're nurturing yourself. You will grow healthier because you're treating yourself like you matter. We bloom under a benevolent sun not a storm cloud.
I will never trust him again: H'mmm. Probably not if by trust you mean this absolute conviction that he would never EVER cheat on your. That genie is out of the bottle. We know what he's capable of doing so we can't ever convince ourselves that he's not capable of it. 
Even when HE thinks he's no longer capable of it. He is. 
But we're all capable of it. And those of us who think we're not are kinda lying to ourselves. 
This is where his work comes in. When he can honestly look at the various lines he crossed to cheat and recognize what they look like and what he was telling himself, then he's far less likely to do it again.
I knew my husband was worthy of a second chance the day he told me that, whether I stayed or left, he was focussed on becoming a better man. He did not want to be "that guy" again. Twelve years later, he remembers well the profound disappointment he had in himself. I have no guarantees that he won't cheat again. But neither do any of us, whether our husbands have cheated or not. Husbands are completely trustworthy. Until they're not.
Trusting him again really comes down to trusting yourself to be in your marriage in a way that's rooted in self-respect. 
People always let me down: This was my go-to conviction. I had a long list of people who had let me down. My parents. My grandmother. Friends. Boyfriends. Thing is, once I really pulled this bullshit belief into the light of day, I was faced with a deeper truth. I had let myself down. I had let myself down by staying in friendships that were one-sided. I had let myself down by going back to a boyfriend who was careless with my heart. I had let myself down by not expecting more of myself when I knew what I was capable of. 
The difference is though I can't control  how others treat me, I can absolutely control what I allow. And that's all the difference that matters. 
Once I stopped letting myself down, it mattered far less whether others did. It still stings, of course, when someone I considered a friend does something unkind. But once you value yourself, you're far more likely to tell them how their actions hurt. To expect accountability. To not take responsibility for others' bad behaviour but also to take full responsibility for your own. 
I will never be happy again: I promise you that you will. But it requires, as my beloved Kurt Vonnegut reminds us, to notice those moments. Tiny slivers at first. A smile at your child's antics. A beautiful harvest moon. A moment of grace from a friend. A doctor's appointment that delivers good news. A gorgeous pair of shoes, or just the right shade of lipstick. A mighty tree in the woods that has withstood a century or more of Mother Nature's blows. Pay attention, my secret sisters. Pay attention. Happiness returns to those who create a home for it. "And if that isn't nice..."

What does an affair feel like?

What does an affair feel like?
I know most of us on the betrayed side of the affair think it must have been passionate. It must have been exciting. The sex must have been mind-blowing. It must have been so incredible that it was worth betraying us.
Unless we've had an affair ourselves, we'll never really know what it feels like.
We might, however, notice in hindsight that our husband was pretty jumpy. Or that he seemed stressed. Maybe he seemed agitated, impatient with us.
Here's how Wendy Plump in her book Vow: A Memoir of Marriage (and Other Affairs) describes an affair:
"An affair is not fun. It is like a bad habit. It is like addiction. You do it all on the sly, and you steal from your own cupboards to cover the cost.... You act on reckless impulse and hope to unscramble the consequences later on."
When her husband "forgives" her ("forgive" being a euphemism for sweeps it under the rug), without really expecting anything more of her than she stop, this happens:
"I looked back and saw that nothing all that terrible had come of it. Our marriage was intact. Bill seemed to have forgiven me...And so I concluded that nothing all that terrible was going to come of my having another."
Plump's book is painful to read and not just because she seems to lack her own moral compass. To say that Plump is immature seems obvious. She also has a lack of empathy for her husband's pain that's staggering. She twists words and metaphors to somehow pull us into complicity with her adultery, making me want to shower after each early chapter.
But then she discovers that her husband has not only been having an affair, he's been living an entirely separate life with another woman and child. Shockingly, she's shocked at his duplicity. She's brought to her knees. Nothing about her own betrayals of him has in any way prepared her for the agony of being betrayed herself.
Whether to be the betrayed or the betrayer? Here's what she says:
"I spent a lot of time examining the differences between having an affair and having one foisted on me. If one was better than the other. In the end, this was not true for me. The conduct of an affair was only marginally less miserable.... I do not know that deceit and happiness can co-exist."
Whether any of this sounds familiar to you, it certainly did to me. So many husbands, it seems, feel almost relief at being found out. Finally, the charade is over. But that's the thing with affairs. They're entered recklessly. People are seduced by the fantasy of escape. Fascinated by the image of themselves in another's adoring eyes. Like Narcissus who can't tear himself away from his reflection, drowning in his own vanity.
All of which is to say that affairs are highly misrepresented in our culture. Instead of steamy and alluring, affairs are messy. Exhausting.
There are many cautionary tales to take from Plump's published one:
•Nobody wins when somebody's lying.
•"Forgiving" an affair without doing the hard work of figuring why it happened in the first place is dangerous and simply postpones further pain.
•It's possible to spend years in therapy and learn pretty much nothing.
•Affairs aren't nearly as fun as they seem on TV.

I Cannot Walk Your Path

"The maps and travelogues left behind by others are great blessings, full of useful information and inspiration, but they cannot take the journey for us."~Author unknown

Many of us knew exactly what we would do if our husbands cheated on us. And then it happened. Suddenly we not only weren't doing what we always said we'd do (almost without fail, throw him out), we were behaving in ways that were confusing to us. That made us wonder if we'd lost our minds. And within that confusion lay such judgement of ourselves. So many of us were ashamed of ourselves for not sticking with what we said we'd do.
Thing is, none of us really knows what we'll do until we're in the situation. And once we're in that situation, the best we can do is treat ourselves with compassion for the challenge we're facing.
And, of course, none of us knows what another woman should do because we're not in her situation.
I bring this up because a BWC member commented a while back that she had taken my "advice" and stuck with her husband only to find out that his affair had never really ended. There she was, another year or so invested in her marriage, and only deeper in pain.
She was leaving him then and only wished I had encouraged her to do so earlier.
I told her I was very sorry for her pain. Sorrier still that her husband wasn't able to accept the deep gift of her desire to rebuild their marriage.
But, I pointed out, I never told her to stay or leave and I felt badly that she had interpreted my response to her as such. I, frankly, haven't a clue whether any of you should stay or leave. Actually that's not true. If there's abuse of any kind, get out. Now. (Though even with that, I know that some women simply can't leave for any number of reasons that I might not understand.)
But beyond that, there's isn't a right way to respond to this. 
Life is messy. Marriages that look hopeless somehow get stitched together to everyone's benefit. Others just don't make it despite valiant attempts. Some survive betrayal only to fall apart down the road for other reasons. 
I wish I had a crystal ball and could therefore predict which marriages were worth fighting for and which should be hastily exited. Of course, I don't. I don't pretend to.
What I do offer here is hard-won wisdom from walking my own path. Though each of us is unique we face similar challenges. Our husbands behave in bizarrely similar ways. We can benefit from each other's experience as long as we recognize that we don't all walk the same path to healing. As long as we understand that what worked for her mightn't work for me and vice versa. 
There are times when I will use such words as "here's what you should do" and then outline the steps a BW can take to, for example, get back on her feet, get some sleep, or regain her self-respect. But I don't have all the answers. I haven't even faced all the questions. I have my own experience and an understanding of what so many of you have faced as you've trusted me with your stories. That's all.
Each of our stories is our own. Each of us walks her own path to healing. I cannot walk yours and you cannot walk mine. But we can hold each other up along the way.

Why you should stop asking "why"...and instead ask "why bother"

"Men don't cheat because of who she is, they cheat because of who they're not."
~Charles J. Orlando, author of "The Problem with Women...Is Men"

We often talk on this site about the question of "why". It's generally the first word that forms in our brain when we learn of a spouse's affair. But sadly, we often answer that question with a catalogue of our own perceived failings: I've been preoccupied with the kids; I've been busy with work; I've been stressed with moving my parents into a nursing home; I'm aging; I'm fat; and blahdy blah self-flagellating blah.
It's all, of course, bullshit. So is all the stuff we tell ourselves about what she has that we don't. As my husband's therapist once said to me, "what she's got, you don't want."
No matter what your spouse tells you or what you tell yourself, he cheated because opportunity met moral failing and wound up in bed together. That's not to say that your list of "why"s aren't necessarily true. Maybe your marriage was under strain. Maybe you could have spent a bit more time at the gym. Maybe you did take your stress out on your husband. All of which are absolutely valid reasons for your husband to suggest counselling, or anger management, or even a separation. They're not valid reasons for cheating. I'm not sure there is a valid reason for cheating. 
The time will come when the two of you, should you choose to rebuild your marriage, to pore over your marriage like a couple of forensic detectives, looking for just where it went off the rails. Ideally you'll do this within the context of "where can we improve our communication so neither of us feels so alone again" rather than "this is the long list of ways in which you're a complete asshole". But sometimes that compassion and willingness to be open to your cheating husband's pain takes time.
It also takes strength, which doesn't come from beating yourself up about the myriad ways in which you somehow brought your spouse's cheating on.
Your task, post-betrayal, is to keep yourself strong. No easy task. It means extreme self-care – avoiding anyone who isn't loyal to you; it means avoiding any commitment that makes you feel more vulnerable; it means eating and sleeping; it means avoiding excess (or any!) alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping or other means of numbing your feelings. And it means stopping, at least for now, asking "why".
Your husband likely can't tell you. Not really. People who cheat aren't generally the most self-aware. They can learn self-awareness and the fallout from cheating often spurs them in that direction. Decent people who cheat are often so disgusted with themselves that they want to know how they were able to do such a thing in order to ensure they'll never do it again. But there are plenty of guys equally disgusted with themselves who simply can't admit that – it's far easier to blame something outside of themselves (your work schedule; their boss) than own up to their moral failing.
The first group generally make rebuilding a marriage as easy as it can be (which, frankly, still isn't easy); the second make it a whole lot harder and should prompt you to ask whether or not it's worth trying. Without a clear understanding of how people can use other people to avoid feeling pain or shame or loneliness or stress, there's little to prevent them from doing it again.
As Charles J. Orlando points out in the quote above, men cheat because of what's missing in them, because of who they're not. Who they're not is a guy who recognizes when he's seeking escape in an unhealthy way. Who they're not is a guy who recognizes the damage created by cheating before he does it.
Instead of asking why he cheated, the question you should be asking is why – and if – he deserves the chance to rebuild your marriage. It's the question he should be asking himself too.

"Aren't you over that yet?": How to deal with those who think betrayal should be healed with a pedicure and a night on the town

There comes a time in most betrayed wives' lives when someone gently or not-so asks "aren't you over that yet?"
Which is about the time many of us compound our emotional maelstrom by adding shame for not healing faster. 
Sometimes these others don't put it quite so forthrightly. Instead, they might say, "are you still having trouble with that?" Or "don't you think it's time to put that behind you?" Or, in the case of our spouses, that perennial fave, "We can't move forward if you keep bringing up the past."
However it's phrased, the point is the same: Get over it, already. You're making me uncomfortable.
And that, of course, is the thing. You need to heal on your own timeline, which is likely a whole lot longer than anyone, including us, ever imagined it would be. But healing isn't a straight upward trajectory from total collapse to bright-eyed recovery. Sometimes you gallop along, sometimes you slide backward, sometimes you just sit and stew in your own pain.
But it's all valuable and part of the process. (Well, unless the stewing is becoming some sort of self-serving masochism. How can you tell? Time...that old healer. And the help of a good therapist/counsellor/friend.)
But it will make others uncomfortable. For some, it's the discomfort of seeing a friend in distress and not being able to "fix" things.
For others, it brings up uncomfortable feelings about their own relationship. If you're clearly dealing with the fallout of infidelity, it might conjure up anxiety about their own spouse. Or even guilt if they've committed adultery themselves. I had a friend, who'd left an unfaithful spouse, dismiss my healing because I chose to stay. If I wasn't going to take her advice and leave, went her thinking, well then I deserved what I got.
And, of course, for our spouses – or ex-spouses, as the case may be – it's a lot more complicated. Seeing in you the consequences of their actions can make even the scummiest adulterer feel at least pangs of guilt. And these guys hate to feel guilty. Quickest solution? Tell you to buck up and get over it, already.
Your challenge and it's a tough one given how fragile we are in the wake of betrayal is to stand up for yourself and your healing. You didn't invite this into your life. You're having a normal reaction to an extreme trust violation. And you will heal at your own pace.
It's not fun feeling like crap. You're not doing it to make a point (and if you are, stop!). You'd love, as much as anyone else, to just "get over it." But grieving doesn't work that way. The only way out of this misery is through it. And these others could help you a whole lot more by letting you process your pain surrounded by love and support. The quickest way out of pain is through it. Cramming it down simply makes it seep out of the cracks in your heart, which is a whole lot slower.
So next time someone asks "aren't you over that yet?", look them in the eye and tell them No. You're not.
But someday you will be and you'll be a whole lot more careful about who you let into your heart.

It's Not Enough to Profess Love...It Must Be Practised

Brené Brown, a shame researcher, expert and author of The Gifts of Imperfection, has this to about infidelity:

I don't know if you can love someone and betray them or be cruel to them, but I do know that when you betray someone...you are not practicing love.

I once worked with a woman whose husband seemed like a dream mate. Her desk was constantly crowded with fresh flowers that he had delivered with notes professing his love. She told us stories of arriving home from work, tired and cranky, only to have him pour her a warm bath and massage her feet. I, unmarried at the time, thought her marriage sounded like heaven.
Turns out it was hell.
I found out years later, after she'd left this seeming wunderhusband, that he beat her. The flowers were apologies...and from the blooms on her desk, he clearly had a LOT of apologizing to do.
He told her constantly that he loved her.
But, reeling from his latest blow, what the hell difference did that make?
I'm still pondering Rabbi Gorman's recent post about betrayal as abuse.
It might not leave bruises on our cheek but who among us can say it didn't bruise our souls?
And yet, betrayal so often occurs in "loving" marriages.
My  husband often told me he loved me. He still insists that he did, even when he was lining up his next encounter.
And what I can't seem to get him to understand is that professing love isn't enough. Even feeling it makes absolutely no difference. Practicing it, however, now that's something that counts.
Brené Brown is right. You can't practice love for a partner while you're with someone else. It simply doesn't compute – emotionally or intellectually. If loving someone includes a promise to be sexually and emotionally monogamous – to share intimacy only with that partner – then becoming intimate with another is a denial, or at the very least a neglect, of that love.
So while it's possible to love another and engage in extramarital affairs, it isn't possible to act loving within that context.
And I've spent far too many years accepting professions of love instead of insisting on practice.
How about you?

You're Getting Warmer...or Not

Martha Beck advises those of us struggling to make tough decisions (like perhaps, whether to forgive a cheating spouse? whether to stay in the marriage? whether to tell people what's happening?) to treat life like a game of "you're getting hotter, you're getting colder..."
My seven-year-old daughter LOVES that game. Ya know the one where one of you think of something or hides something and, as you try and figure out what it is, the other player helps you along by advising you whether or not you're getting close (hotter) or further away (colder).
Beck's approach is a good one for those of us whose minds are so muddled by the shock and trauma of discovering that our lives aren't what we thought they were that we can barely decide what to make for dinner. If we can find someway and somewhere to get still, most of us can identify a physical response to various questions – a sort of internal "you're getting warmer..." reaction.
It will likely take practice. Once dealt the blow of betrayal, your internal radar can often malfunction. Post-trauma, you might find yourself reacting in extreme ways to benign circumstances. The dog barks suddenly, for example, and you respond with a heart-pumping, car-lifting adrenaline surge. Again, that's where you need to be still and get back in touch with your gut/intuition/wisdom/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. It's there. It might need dusting off from years of neglect. You might need to apologize to it for ignoring its sage guidance. But if you take the time to refamiliarize yourself, it will be more than happy to play the game with you.
Do I want to leave? How does that feel in your gut? Terrifying? Liberating? Terrifyingly liberating? If you picture yourself on your own, how does that feel?
Can I forgive him? Getting warmer? Colder? Can you picture a marriage (forget for the moment how you're going to achieve it) in which the two of you are happy and fulfilled? Or is your gut freezing up at the possibility?
Get the idea? Give it a try...and let us know what you find by posting here.

Dear Elle: A Letter to My Shattered Self on D-Day

Dear Elle,
I. Am. So. Sorry. You've dealt with a lot of pain in your life...but nothing like this. You thought you'd found your safe place in the world. And I ache for you that you believe it's lost. 
It's not. But your world has changed. You're right about that part. Years from now you still won't believe absolutely that you can trust another person. But I've got good news for you. You will learn through this how to trust yourself. And that's a gift that I'm not sure you could have received any other way.
The thing is you've spent your entire marriage trying to make him happy. To create a home that he wants to return to. To create a family that nourishes me. To be pretty. To be smart. To be fun and interesting and a perfect hostess and wife and friend and mother. And... And... And.
And it didn't work, did it? All that work, all those compromises you were making even though he didn't know you were making them. All the words you swallowed. All the dreams you put aside. None of it made a bit of difference, did it? And do you want to know why? Cause you were fine all along without having to try so damn hard. You were enough. You still are. He didn't cheat because you haven't lost that last 10 pounds of baby weight. He didn't cheat because you aren't a gourmet cook. He didn't cheat because you prefer to read over watching his favorite shows. Or because you prefer jeans over tailored suits. He cheated because he was looking for something in himself that's been missing for a long time. And you couldn't give it to him. And she couldn't give it to him. And the other "she" couldn't either. And that's because none of us have it to give to him. It's something only he can give to himself. And it's approval. And it only ever really fills that hole when it comes from within. 
And that's the same lesson you need to learn. You don't need his approval. You never did. And even if he'd given it to you unequivocally (impossible for him because he couldn't even give it to himself), it wouldn't have mattered. Because you've never believed you were enough. Not pretty enough. Not skinny enough. Not smart enough, or interesting enough, or anything enough. Just. Not. Enough. 
And so he sought that feeling in other women. And you sought it in him and in work and in toxic friendships and, too often, in alcohol. 
So while this betrayal by him might seem like yet another kick when you've had so many. It might feel as though your heart is shattered beyond repair. 
But when you begin to re-piece your life, you'll understand that this time it's truly going to be your life. On your terms. A life that's full with or without him in it. A life that's full because you're full. You. Alone. Are enough.
Perhaps there are easier ways to learn that lesson. But this is the lesson you've been given. You are your own safe place in the world. Learn it well and you'll never have to learn it again. 
Enough.

Guest Spouse: Infidelity is Abuse. Period.

       [Rabbi Sean Gorman and I met on this site here, where he commented to a betrayed wife that all cheating is abuse. I disagreed and our conversation began. Though I maintain that, in my case, the infidelity was not a form of abuse (though I can see aspects of it as such), I nonetheless appreciate the expertise and compassion that Rabbi Gorman brings to the issue and invited him to post here. I'm sure many of you will recognize your situation in what he describes...and I hope you'll find his views help clarify and strengthen your understanding. In any case, as always, I invite you to share your story and your thoughts.]

As a married man who has never gone astray and whose spouse has never gone astray, I feel a little out of place writing for betrayed wives.  Elle, the owner of this blog, invited me to write here after we disagreed on another blog.  The invitation is most flattering.

            The disagreement that led to this article has to do with whether or not adultery is spousal abuse, specifically emotional abuse.  I maintain that it is, in all cases.  For now, we can certainly agree that flagrant adultery is.

            What led to this conclusion?  A friend had a husband who was a philanderer.  He made no effort to hide the indiscretion.  Cell phone records and e-mails stayed visible.  Some of those phone calls took place during dinner.  The lightning flash was when I realized it was abusive.  After he physically attacked her, it became easier to point out the adultery as part of a picture of abuse.

            What is abusive about adultery?  Let us take a look at some of the blatant lies adultery attempts to present as truth:

            1.  The other one is better in bed.

            2.  What you give only to me, I can get anywhere.

            3.  You bore me.

            4.  You do not “put out” enough.

            5.  I will come to our bed when I am good and ready.

            6.  Being in someone else’s bed is more important and more meaningful than being in our own.

            The constancy of those statements demoralizes and humiliates the target.  The sneakiness of the tawdry behaviour leaves the betrayed spouse wondering if the perceived reality is correct.  Such demoralization, such humiliation, and such wondering about reality are all constants in abusive situations.

            We would not accept such statements in any other room of the house.  We would not accept constant statements about our cooking or our driving.  No matter what the subject, that type of statement is humiliating and demoralizing.  Nothing has changed just because we are talking about sex.  In fact, the statements are more insidious for being of that subject.  No other piece of our marriages cuts as much to the very essence of who we are. 

            Furthermore, it is a violation of the one room of the house we share with no one else.  We can have guests in the kitchen.  People can sit in the living room.  The marital bedroom has a lock on the door.  No one else is allowed in.  When one member of a couple unlocks that door, it states that the one part of our lives that is not for open consideration means nothing to the one who opened the door.  Sacred intimacies (and more) are thus bared to the world.

            When Elle asked me to write for this blog, she suggested that I write about how people recover.  The first step to any recovery is to label the problem.  Labeling adultery as abuse yields the immediate response.  In a relationship that is physically abusive, the first step is to ascertain safety – stop the immediate abuse.  The second step is accountability – appropriate apologies that mean something.  The third step is taking actions that build trust and prevent future abuse. 

            It applies here.  Stop the adultery.  Make sure that the offending spouse admits guilt and understands the impact of what happened.  Put rules – yes, marriage has rules – put rules in place that prevent it from happening again.  Verify that those rules are being followed and that they are accomplishing what they need to accomplish.

            A wise pastor once taught me that we should not confuse forgiveness with reconciliation.  These are two separate steps.  Forgiving a philandering spouse does not mean that all is better immediately.  As betrayed wives, you should not feel pressured to reset the clock and clean the slate.  That will take time.  Trust is hard to build.  It is even harder to rebuild.  For your husbands to expect that everything will immediately go back to the way it was is naïve, as well as a continuation of the abuse.  It is often difficult for an adulterer to understand that a shower and a couple of counseling sessions cannot wash away the scars of such an injury. 

            In any case of abuse, we do not blame the recipient.  An abused spouse did not fail at various parts of the marital role, thus leading to the next outburst.  Accepting blame for the actions of others is not appropriate here.  Do not fall into the trap of accepting blame for actions you did not commit.

Rabbi Sean Gorman is the spiritual leader of Congregation Pride of Israel in Toronto.  He is also a US Navy Chaplain attached to 218 MEFREL.

           

           

Who defines cheating? And should we care?

There was much debate, the wake of Anthony Weiner's resignation, regarding whether what he did was, technically, cheating.
And it's a point that has, occasionally, raged here and in our own lives.
Many of us pre-D-Day, would have said that we were comfortable with our husbands having female friends but that any sex outside of our marriage, even a one-night-stand, was "a deal-breaker." Post D-Day, we've often reversed that view, discovering that it's not the sex that's so troublesome but the lying and the intimacy shared with another. Many of us discover that our husband's emotional affair – sharing dreams, hopes and, often, dissatisfaction with his marriage – is excruciating and hard to handle. Making it harder is sometimes the notion of others that "he didn't have sex", therefore he didn't technically break his marriage vows.
But there's nothing technical about healing from an affair. It's complicated and painful and doesn't follow prescribed rules. Most of us muddle through, hair unwashed and heart broken, until the day we feel a sliver of light shine through the dark and we realize that we just might survive this marital apocalypse.
And then comes the process of sifting through the rubble and trying to make sense of what happened...in the hope that if we understand it, we can protect ourselves from it happening to us again.
But I'm not sure, unless we've been tempted ourselves or are capable to truly putting ourselves in our spouse's shoes, we'll ever really understand it. So often I hear the familiar Nancy Reaganesque refrain of the betrayed – "He could have just said 'No'."
Sure he could have. But whether he didn't say "no" to actual sex or didn't say "no" to cyber sex or didn't say "no" to sharing intimate details of his life, all the analysis in the world isn't going to change that. And, oddly, it stops really mattering at some point whether he had actual sex, cyber sex or emotional intimacy. The point is he shared something private – that was supposed to be between you and him – with someone else. And that hurts like hell.
The only people who get caught up in the semantic gymnastics of what cheating really is are those looking for a loophole out of their own guilt...or those who've never had it done to them.

Say It Out Loud

I have a framed print beside my bed with the infamous Emile Zola quote:

If you ask me what I came into this world to do

I will tell you:

I am here to live out loud.

It has always resonated with me. I tend toward the apologetic. The people-pleasing. The swallowing of true thoughts. And yet, I desire to live out loud.

Two days ago, I heard a radio documentary about domestic violence. It followed a young man who had been sentenced to community service and counselling following an incident in which he punched his wife. He was telling his story. And when he got to the part where he told the reporter his wife had called the police, he said that the reason was because he punched her. He exhaled audibly. "Wow," he said. "I just said that out loud."
He noted how, for years as their relationship got increasingly abusive, he allowed himself to believe that was how couples dealt with frustration and anger. His parents had. And his wife frequently let him off the hook, by apologizing for making him angry. By agreeing with him that she, too, lost her temper.
And yet, when he spoke the words out loud, all that changed. There was no more hiding the truth in the shadows.

It got me thinking about betrayal. And how frequently we don't speak the words out loud that we're thinking because we fear them being true.
When our friends note that our husbands seem to be working "a lot" and we defend their work ethic, though we feel a kick in our gut. When our parents point out that our husbands seem disengaged with the kids and we defend them, though we frequently feel alone in our parenting.
Not, of course, that workaholism and absent parenting means cheating. My point is simply that we frequently have a narrative in our heads that simply isn't the truth. And by not saying the truth out loud – by hiding it in the shadows of excuses – we lie not only to the world but more importantly to ourselves.

We see it all the time. The parent who refuses to acknowledge that her child's behaviour indicates a serious problem, dismissing it at a "phase". The woman who ignores the lump because she's sure it's "nothing." And the wife who defends her husband's emotional absence instead of saying – out loud – that he's checked out of the marriage.

I don't know what would have been different if I'd been able to say out loud what I feared. I tried. I said I didn't like the late dinners with his assistant. I pointed out that, if she was truly a loyal and valuable employee, she would want him home with his wife and kids. But I didn't say out loud what I truly feared because I also feared looking crazy, or jealous, or hysterical.

These days, I'm living life out loud. Which means talking about a whole lot of things that make me uncomfortable –  from discussing STDs with my newly-teen daughter to talking stuff over with my husband.
But the alternative, hiding truth in darkness and silencing myself, is no longer an option.

How "It Could Be Worse" Keeps You Stuck

I'm the queen of "it could be worse."
No matter  how much my life sucks, I can always (and easily) come up with myriad ways in which it could be worse.
It's a long-held personal tradition.
My mom's in the psych hospital after attempting to kill her self? Well, it could be worse. She could have succeeded.
My dad's passed out most nights? Could be worse. He could be a drug addict. Or simply gone.
Best friend steals boyfriend? Could be worse. I could be dying of cancer.
And so on.
It was a great survival skill. I was like a Weeble who got knocked down but always ALWAYS popped back up, ready for another round.
And it's a skill I use still.
Kids driving me crazy? At least they're healthy enough to drive me crazy. They could be hooked up to machines in a hospital.
Dog poops on new Persian rug? At least I can afford a Persian rug.
Roof leaking? At least I have a roof over my head.
Husband cheats? At least my kids aren't dead (I trotted that one out a LOT. By all means, I told the universe, give me betrayal. But please don't take my children...as if I was bartering with Satan.)
Not that "it could be worse" is necessarily a bad thing. I'm the eternal optimist – always looking on the bright side of life.
The thing is, I'm learning – thanks to all the it-could-be-worse scenarios I've invented in the past few years, that it can also keep me stuck.
It's easy to stay in muck up to your knees when you tell yourself you're lucky it's not up to your neck.
And it's a great way to avoid getting out of the muck altogether.
And, I've decided, I want a muck-free life.
I'm learning (slowly...thanks to those survival skills which served me well as a kid...but now stand in the way) that it's absolutely my prerogative to say, "sure things could be worse...but they could be BETTER, too." Better might mean a husband who not only doesn't cheat on me, but also helps around the house and shares my values. Better might be a fixed roof. It might be a kids who behave more respectfully (let's remind ourselves...no-one will treat us respectfully until we treat ourselves respectfully). It might be a whole heap of things that could be worse...but that I don't want to tolerate any more.
I don't want the pendulum to swing totally the other way (those people are called pessimists/in-laws...and I avoid them the same way I avoid Tea Partiers and the Kardashians). I like seeing the glass as half-full. I'm just going to remind myself with a bit more regularity that, with some self-respect and determination and firm boundaries, the glass can be completely full...ideally with a nice Shiraz.

Wanting what's best...

The Redbook article that I cited here continues to weigh on my mind. Though I've known about AshleyMadison.com and have written about it here and here and here, and though I've gained considerable insight into the psyche of cheaters, I nonetheless consoled myself with the belief that these guys were the exception, not the rule.
Now...I'm not so sure.

I've spent a lot of time trying to find the best in myself. When you're raised in a dysfunctional home (alcoholism was the dysfunction of choice in my family....but it, of course, spawns all sorts of others: neglect, abandonment, intimacy issues, for starters), you often feel "bad". As a child you believe that if you were good, then you would be treated well. There's such shame around dysfunction that you grow up convinced that you, too, are shameful.
I tried to get better. I spent years in therapy, struggling to understand what it was about me that made me put up with all manner of neglect, abuse, betrayal.
And then I met my husband. And, for the first time, I felt safe.
And we all know how that turned out for me.

The thing is, we all deserve to feel – indeed to be – safe. When we choose to commit to someone else in this life – whether that commitment looks like marriage or parenthood or friendship – we owe it to that person to provide a basis for their happiness. Not that it's our job to make them happy. But it is our job to want their happiness. And to not stand in the way of that.

Which is why the Redbook story has me feeling so sad. The men featured are themselves sad. And by that I don't mean pathetic, though they're a bit that, too. They feel cheated by life. Their wives aren't who they ultimately feel connected to (though, perhaps, that's because they're trolling sites to hook up with other women rather than actually listening to their wives thoughts and dreams). Their lives haven't measured up to their dreams. So they dip a toe into this fantasy world, where they're sexy and desirable and life is good and exciting.

But where they're so lost is not that they're putting their own happiness before their wives. Indeed, I think we owe it to ourselves to strive for our own happiness. But where they're lost is that they're actively standing in the way of their wives' happiness. How? By not giving their wives the truth about themselves.

We all deserve that truth. We deserve to know who it is we're married to because we deserve to make the choice about whether or not we want to be married to that person. I don't dispute another's right to have sex with whomever will have sex with them. What I object to is the lying and betrayal. If my husband loves me but feels he can't connect intellectually with me and therefore would like to forge a relationship with another woman, fair enough. But let me decide if that's okay with me.

A truly enlightened relationship operates on that level of honesty. I'm not sure I would consider "open marriages" in this category...but perhaps at least some of them are.

As for me, I want a relationship in which my husband wants the best for me. And respects me enough to be honest – which allows me to decide what that "best" is.

What My Dog Has Taught Me About Trust

My dog has a bit of an attitude problem. At least, that's the human assessment. He doesn't think he has a problem at all. There are just some dogs he doesn't like. And some people. But just the jerks.
How does he know they're jerks? He relies on instinct, something we humans long ago stopped trusting in favor of our heads and hearts (and Lord knows how they've got us in trouble!).
And it dawned on me the other day that I could learn a lot about healing from betrayal from my dog. He had been betrayed. By the people who first owned him. He was rescued by the sheriff after someone squealed about his living conditions. He was removed from the barn where he was found, malnourished and full of parasites. He had clearly suffered neglect...likely abuse.
And yet, he loves me unconditionally. He was willing to give people another chance. Not all people...but me.
And so...I offer up the lessons he's taught:
1. Give second chances. But not third. Or fourth.
2. Be fiercely loyal to those who deserve it.
3. Trust your instincts more than your training.
4. You're capable of great love. Don't be afraid to show it.
5. Don't be deceived by looks or words or even treats (though don't turn them down. Just don't let them change your mind about someone you don't like).
6. Be willing to treat each day like a new adventure, neither defined by the day before, nor a dress rehearsal for what might happen tomorrow.
7. When you're happy, wag that tail with all you've got.
8. When you're angry, don't be afraid to let them know you've got teeth...and you're not afraid to use them.
9. Protect what's yours ferociously.
10. Understand that looking someone else trying to make you look foolish (for example, putting reindeer antlers on your head for a Christmas card photo...) doesn't make you a fool. Trust in your own dignity.