Thursday's Thought

 

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.

Inside the Mind of An Other Woman

Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) recently penned a piece for the Mental Health Issue of the New York Times Magazine confessing her "seduction addiction". 

In it, she lays bare her need to draw men's attention to her, away from their significant other. Unattached men, it seems, were less appealing than those for whom she had an adversary, a competitor. Seduction was sweeter, apparently, when it was harder won. 

She was rarely satisfied with her conquests. The incessant hunger for attention was not so easily tamed. She would grow tired and bored with someone whose gaze for her no longer burned as brightly and be attracted by the next shiny new man for whom she could do her crazy dance of "look at me! Love me!"

It's a candid look inside the mind of women who prey on attached men. I'm unsure why she wrote it, frankly. She had nothing really to gain and plenty to lose. But she's shown us something we rarely see so honestly: the truth about the Other Woman. Or at least some of them.

One of the points that particularly struck me was this: There was nothing special about the men she sought. It wasn't about love or soul-mates or star-crossed lovers. These men were merely different. 

And different can be intoxicating. Until it isn't anymore. Until it's revealed to simply narcissism dressed in sexy clothing.

It's true also for our unfaithful spouses. These women they cheat with aren't special. But they are different. And so our husbands construct a story based on what they imagine they see in that person's eyes. Interest. Desire. Escape. A parallel universe.

It's difficult for we betrayeds to understand, unless we too have been tempted by the allure of possibility. To us, these women are so obvious. They're manipulative. They're morally bankrupt. They're self-centered. They're crazy. They need a good therapist not a new boyfriend. 

And it can be tough for our spouses to realized they've been had. That they were nothing special themselves. That they were being used. They'll sometimes resist admitting that. It's humiliating, after all. 

Gilbert recognized the menace she'd become and created the conditions for change. For that, I applaud her. But I ache for the women who were devastated by her seduction campaign. We know their pain. 

Outgrowing your pain

So often, in the early days/months post-betrayal, we ask the unanswerable: When will I be over this? Sometimes it's our exasperated spouses (those, who, ahem, created this shitstorm) who ask us. Sometimes it's our bewildered friends. But mostly, it's us. Within that question is, of course, the fear that we won't ever be over this. That this is our new normal. That pain is the new black.
What we forget when we're in agony, however, is that what we're experiencing is a normal response to emotional trauma. We're having feelings...and feelings are not facts.
What I mean by that is that feelings are transient. And yet, while nobody expects to feel happy every day of their lives, we often accept that we might feel misery every day of our lives. We skew toward negative emotions, far more convinced of their truth that that of positive emotions.
I was convinced that, post D-Day, I would never again experience even a minute of joy. I imagined myself donning a mask for the rest of my life, one that hid my genuine and relentless distress. Joy? That was for people who'd never been cheated on.
And yet...here I am. Able to experience that wide range of emotions that make up the human experience, including joy. Including peace. Including hope.
What changed? Well...not much. And everything.
To paraphrase Carl Jung, the greatest problems in life are generally not solved, but outgrown.
Sure my husband and I have devoted a great deal of time and energy to rebuilding our relationship. Sure I've spent countless hours on this site, reading your stories and sharing your pain, commiserating with you and virtually holding your hand in shared agony. But despite all that work, I haven't really "solved" anything. And, with due respect to Jung, I haven't outgrown it so much as grown into it.
I've incorporated the excruciating experience of betrayal into my larger life. Where I once thought it was the defining experience of my life, I can now see that it's one of the defining experiences of my life. No more important than becoming a mother. No more important that burying my mother. No bigger a part of me than my role as wife, as daughter, as friend, as mother, aunt, sister, writer, blogger.
That day will come for all of you. You can hasten it by doing your work, which includes keeping your heart soft even as it wants to harden against future pain. You can beckon it by taking good and gentle care of yourself.
But, I promise, the day will come when you are not simply a "betrayed wife" but someone who has survived betrayal. Someone who has outgrown that pain and grown from it. Wiser, stronger, more compassionate. Better able to appreciate the joy, having wondered if you would ever feel it again. But knowing that joy, like misery, doesn't last forever.