Thursday Thought

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.

Responding to the Other Woman: Elle Unleashed

Definitely not smiling!

A woman recently posted a comment on my blog post Open Letter to the Other Woman. Here it is:

Does anyone (like me) ever wondered why the other woman always gets the blame, and the husband gets welcomed back with open arms??

Does the Wife forget;
He tooks the Vows
Hes the one betraying his family
Hes the one telling the lies

In my case..He initiated the cheating and the chase. Lied about getting a divorce. 
And actually im educated..with a degree..; a single parent of two children.

I was the other women, and a month ago i decided to end it with him finally after two years. 
Only this week his Wife has been trying to call me on a witheld number and i refused to answer to her. Beacuse I know if i did answer..she would not like what i had to say.

As far as i see it. This is their issue, not mine. 

This also highlights to me, the major issue in cheating marriages. Why is the wife is calling the other woman?? Does she not trust her husband to tell her the truth??
Does she not trust him at all??
Do they have an issue with communication??

All he did in the two years was complain about her.
However I finally caught onto it, that things were never going to change. After asking him many times...if its so bad, why are you still there?? therefore something must be going right.

But Yeah i acknowledge my part. its My Bad. 

And as far as im concerned..the issues in the marriage are prevalent long before he has the affair/s. Im pretty sure, im not the first and wont be the last. 
You see...what he wants in the other woman, is what he doesnt have in his wife. The only reason he doesnt leave the wife, is either;

because of guilt
beacuse its easier to go back to the comfort of what you have
because he knows after confessing and worming his way back she is going to take him back eventually
because of kids (he had none)

but they do not stay for the right reasons. So the wife can blame the other woman all she wants. It still doesnt change who he is, and what he did.

Cheating husbands risk losing their marriage all the time. 
If they really honoured their committment, loved their wives,and family so much, do you really think they would take that risk??

Until the next time that is.

I felt compelled to respond:

Anonymous,
You're a brave woman wading into these waters. But you ask a number of questions so I'm going to assume you genuinely want answers. Let me enlighten you.
You're right about many things. Chances are there were issues in the marriage long before you came along. And clearly the husband in your case wasn't emotionally capable of dealing with them so chose to distract himself with you. Happens all the time, right?
And then the wife finds out, all hell breaks lose and you start getting phone calls begging for info.
Let me put you into the wife's shoes for a minute.
She's probably aware that something hasn't been right. That her husband isn't around so much. That when he is, he's distracted or uninterested. Short-tempered. Perhaps outright hostile. That's pretty standard for cheaters with a shred of conscience. They feel crappy about what they're doing but don't want to stop doing it. So they look for reasons why what they're doing is okay. They convince themselves that the wife "nags", she doesn't like sex, she doesn't "support" him, blah blah cliché blah.
Sometimes it's even true. As mom of two kids, you likely know that there are nights you're just too damn tired for sex. There are times when you need to talk to your husband about helping out around the house. You need to discuss bills. Home maintenance. Let's be honest, grown-up life is sometimes incredibly dull.
Nonetheless, the wife loves her husband. And, frequently, he loves her too. They've known each other for years. They've looked into their newborns' eyes and been rendered speechless. They've sat beside elderly parents taking their last breath. They've shared birthdays and anniversaries and held feverish kids who can't sleep.
So when she finds out that this person she's opened her heart to is cheating on her, she's thrown completely off her feet. She trusted this guy. With her future, her children. Who the hell is he, anyway? She begs him to tell her why he did this. Sometimes he'll blame her, sometimes he'll blame his life, his boss, his drinking, his weakness. Sometimes he'll accept blame for just making a whopping mistake. Sometimes he'll believe he's in love with the Other Woman and leave. Most of the time, though, he hasn't a god-damn clue why he did it. And now that he truly realizes what he stands to lose, he's even more clueless why he did it. There's generally one reason: it felt good. Not the sex, but the escape. The banality of life was temporarily suspended. It's the reason people gamble. Or shop. Or eat too much. Or drink. Or take drugs. Escape. It's intoxicating.
Out of fear, in an effort to minimize damage, these guys often offer what's called "trickle truth". They minimize what happened ("we just kissed" "it was just one night" "she means nothing") or they outright lie ("I swear nothing happened" "she's just a work colleague"). In the meantime, the wife is frantically trying to piece together her life ("was he with her when I took the kids to my mother's? were they together when I was beside my dying father in the hospital? were they together when I was up all night with our son's ear infection?") in order to shine a light on where things went off the rails, on how much of her life is fact and how much is fiction. I can't explain to you, unless you've been there, just how terrifying it is to believe your life has been a lie. You wonder if anything is true, if you can trust anyone.
So, out of desperation, you call the Other Woman. Not for any other reason than you've got some missing pieces and you're hoping she can help you complete the puzzle. You know it's a risk. You know this person has the potential to tell you things that can destroy any shred of self-esteem you might have left. That she could take your broken heart and piss on it. And sometimes she does. But sometimes she recognizes that this wife likely isn't the monster her husband pretended she was to ease his own guilt and get her into bed.
Sometimes the OW is able to see that this is a flawed guy who made a colossal mistake. Sometimes, let's be clear, the guy is just a total asshole who feels entitled to whatever and whomever he wants. But you're referring to the couples who stay together, assuming, as you say, that none do it "for the right reasons".
I'll tell you one thing. Going back to the "comfort of what you have" sounds NOTHING like what marriage is like after an affair. It is HELL ON EARTH. 
It is excruciating for any guy with a conscience to see the pain they've caused their wives and know that they did it. Some guys simply can't face it. They're the ones who blame their wives for "never getting over it" and take the first exit. Some wives don't want to give them the chance to do it again. Each of us walks her own path.
Those of us who let them "worm their way back"? The smart ones among us demand that they face what they did and work hard to figure out why they risked their marriage for what so many of them insist meant nothing. There's many reasons, which often had little to with the OW herself. A sense of failure in life, fear of aging, job loss, inability to handle life's stresses, addiction...the list goes on. Again, it generally boils down to escape. An affair is a distraction. Men (and women) fall in love with what they see in their affair partner's eyes – that they're sexy and interesting and fun. There are no mortgages, not built-up resentments, no rude teenage kids, no "headaches". That's why they take the risk. Because they want adoration without the hard work of creating that within their marriage, over years and years.
You're right that some of these guys will never learn. They will cheat again. And they're not worth a second chance. They probably weren't worth the first one.
But not all of them.
And not all women blame the OW. We know it was ultimately our husbands who violated their commitment to us. But we also know that, when we were hit on by married guys (and we were), there was a wife at home who didn't deserve this pain. We know that if a guy is worth it, he'll do the right thing, get out of his marriage, and find a woman he respects enough to not hide.
We know that so many of these OW want what we have and are willing to be complicit in our pain to get it.
So yeah...we're not too crazy about you. 
In my case, the OW sat in my house, ate at my table, played with my kids...while screwing my  husband. Absolutely that's indication that my husband was one fucked-up dude. But, clearly, so was she.
I'm sad that you're so cynical. Please know there are decent guys out there. They're the ones who hit on you and don't have a wife at home. Please be a woman who deserves them.

Elle

Fool Me Once...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Or so goes the old adage.
We were fooled once. We were fooled and lied to and deceived. It brought us to our knees. It damn near killed us. And there is no way in hell we're going to be fooled again.
So we put up our guard. We're on constant alert. Did he look me in the eye when he came home last night? Is he checking his phone more than usual? Is that a new cologne he's wearing?? Was he really working late?
We might check his computer, even if we haven't in years. We might sneak a look at his phone.
Even if we've let our guard down, even when we think we can finally relax into a marriage that has been rebuilt, made stronger by the storm it weathered, the slightest something-not-quite-right can send us spiralling back into our conviction that we must NEVER be fooled again.
I've been there. And, in fact, am there.
My husband thinks he's ready to kick his therapy. Over the past six years since D-Day, he's seen a sexual addiction specialist, done EMDR, attended work-benefit-supplied emergency counselling and, finally, a Jungian psychoanalyst. So yes, a lotta therapy. (Though, frankly, he was a lotta messy.)
In that same time, I've watched a man who frequently swung between childlike fear and superhero-like faux invincibility become balanced. I've heard him tell clients that he simply can't meet them in the evenings because that's his family time. I've seen him, finally, stand up to his mother. He pauses to take a breath before he responds to our child's requests. He find humor in what might have infuriated him. He's found space in his heart to learn to love himself with all his mistakes, which, of course, has allowed him to truly love me and our kids. He has wrestled his shame to the ground and though it sometimes resurfaces, he can recognize it and subdue it. In other words, he's a very different man than the one who confessed to me not only an affair but many.
Still...my own fear is awakening. Without that constant check-in with a therapist, I wonder if he'll lose his way. Without being guided along the path, I worry that he'll lose his way. In short, I worry that I'll be fooled again.
And that's the danger. Not that I will be fooled, necessarily, but that the possibility is always lurking in a shadow.
And the reason it's a danger is because it keeps us hostage to the fear. It doesn't, of course, alter the outcome. If we're gonna be fooled again, well it's not because we didn't check his e-mail often enough, or weren't vigilant enough. It's because the person who was broken enough to fool us the first time, is still broken. (And, perhaps, because we didn't set clear enough boundaries around our hearts the first time by insisting that he seek help in whatever form you felt he needed -- by kicking drugs, entering a 12-step program, seeking therapy, finding a new job...)
There are, I'm sad to say, no guarantees. No way to be certain that we'll never feel that heartbreak again – whether from the man who first fooled us, or from a new man. There is only our hard-won knowledge that IF we are to feel our hearts break again, we can trust our own strength to put them back together.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and you're really only fooling yourself.

Brick by Brick: Rebuilding a Marriage

"A marriage or any relationship between partners is meant to be created and then re-created. It is an edifice a couple builds until the day the edifice can no longer hold them and they must bring it down and start again from scratch. And without any of the old assumptions... all good marriages are re-marriages."

So says Sue Monk Kidd in her book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. And so it has been with my own marriage. I had felt dissatisfaction for years, a struggle to find my place in my marriage. Long before I learned of the infidelity, I felt constricted by my marriage, by my commitment to a relationship that kept changing shape.
After seven years and three children, I had come to terms with the fact that it would never be what I had dreamed – that he wasn't perfect, nor was I.
And I had determined that a good marriage did change shape, depending on so many things. Career. Children. Aging parents. But I also believed, absolutely, that a commitment meant sticking it out, even if sometimes I had fingers crossed behind my back that we could pull it off.
Sure, as Kidd says, marriages need to be created and re-created. But infidelity doesn't simply bring down the walls of the edifice, it blows them to smithereens. The walls not only needs to be re-built, but the very foundation.
It's something some betrayed wives often lament. That the foundation upon which we'd built our future turned out to be made of sand. Not all betrayed wives feel this. Some of the luckier ones (lucky being a relative term!) are able to find comfort in the strong foundation of their marriage, making it easier (not to be confused with easy...but easier) to get past the betrayal.
But those of us whose spouses' affairs were long, or long past, or involved extensive cover-up often find ourselves looking at the foundation we thought we had...and realize that it never was what we believed it to be.
We thought it was rock. Solid enough to stake a future on.
And it wasn't.
So we set about rebuilding our marriage. Or, in some cases, acknowledging that there just aren't enough building materials there to create something sustainable.
Starting with the foundation...built on trust and transparency and honesty.
Without those, the walls of a marriage edifice don't keep the partners safe within, but create a barrier between them.

Have you been able to rebuild a marriage? If so, how? Was the foundation strong? Share your story here.

When Smiling Hurts

I often remark that I not only survived betrayal, but have ultimately thrived. Well. Some days...not so much.
Take today, for example. I'm completely off ADs (yay me and my formerly mutinous endorphins!). It's mid-February, which isn't exactly my favorite time of year. My house is undergoing renos so it's a bit chaotic. My career is in the pooper. I could go on... But the point is, life is not exactly coming up roses.
And, to compound all those pesky little problems, my marriage is, ummm, fragile.
And that's the thing with betrayal. You can patch the marriage back together. It can look almost as good as new.
But it's not.
The cracks are there. Making it more likely to shatter again at the slightest tremor.
Like, for example, having a pre-teen who's got more attitude than Lindsay Lohan. Like having financial issues. Like dealing with renos.
All the day-to-day stressors seem somehow bigger when they're against the backdrop of betrayal.
Suddenly, I find myself doubting my husband's announcement that he has an early meeting tomorrow (early a.m. was one of his favored adultery hours). "Meeting my ass," goes that nasty little voice in my head.
I find myself feeling unappreciated (which, frankly, I am at the moment). Feeling overwhelmed (which I also am at the moment). And feeling incredibly furious at all those I'm-sure-wonderful women boasting about their wonderful husbands and all the wonderful ways they feel loved and appreciated.
So...thriving might be a bit of an overstatement at the moment. Surviving is even a bit generous in description.
You might say I'm hanging on by my fingernails over a chasm that could easily swallow me whole with nary a burp.

Your Marriage Can Survive an Affair...Say the Stats

A great article posted here offers up three couples who are doing the hard work of piecing their marriage together after betrayal. The emotions are so raw that it's hard to read...their pain is palpable. Still, it offers up some good resources (with the notable exception of Betrayed Wives Club) and depicts the devastation wrought by affairs.
What are your thoughts? Can a marriage be better after betrayal? Or will it always bear the scars?