When healing hurts (which it always does)

And healing is rarely comfortable. It’s a good thing, healing — but it’s not a pure thing, a perfect thing. It’s stitches, it’s resetting of bone, it’s relearning how to walk, it’s a limb in a cast, it’s the itch of cells rejoining. It’s uncomfortable. It hurts. It feels strange. That, I suspect, is where we’re at right now. At the point just past trauma’s last mile marker, and onto the healing road. But healing takes time, and healing is painful.

~Chuck Wendig, author

We just want to feel better, don't we? We're so tired of being tired. So sick of feeling sick. So sad that all we can seem to feel is sadness. That's, of course, if we're feeling anything at all. I spent months (and months!) feeling...nothing much at all. Which, honestly, was a relief. It was a reprieve from feeling so so much. So much pain. So much confusion. So much grief. So much loss. Just. So. Much.

Healing often feels like a destination. "Aren't you over this yet?" he asks us and we resist the urge to either curl into a ball or punch him in the face. "This", of course, refers to the pain he's wrought. "This" is the destruction of the life we thought we had. The detonation of a bomb we never saw coming. "This" feels like the joke's on us. 

The truth, however, is that healing "is a good thing....but it's not a pure thing." It doesn't happen all at once. Abracadabra. You're healed. It doesn't happen in a therapist's office. Or the bedroom. Or the boardroom across from your lawyer and his. It happens while you're at the sink washing the dishes. It happens while you're tucking your kids into bed. It happens in your tears, it happens in your laughter, it happens even as you remain convinced it's not happening.

Wendig nails it when he reminds that healing is stitches, the resetting of bone, relearning how to walk.

We have been injured. Shattered. Healing is collecting those pieces and reassembling them. It can be a chance to curate your life. To examine each piece and make a conscious choice about whether to include it in this new life. Because it is a new life you're assembling. The old one is gone. And as much as we long to "be back to normal", we say, or to "just have things the way they were", the truth is that normal wasn't working out so great. The way things were was problematic. We just didn't yet know it. Not yet.

Healing can be an opportunity, if we take it. Will we keep this friend or let her go? Will we continue to show up for the boss who never supports us? Will we continue to prioritize everyone else over our own needs, our own health, our own joy? Or will be assemble a life with us at the center of it? A life that honors ourselves and models to those around us that they can build a life that honors themselves too. It won't be easy. It won't be a pure thing, a perfect thing. But, as Wendig says, we can pass trauma's last mile marker by doing the work. By looking that monster straight in the eye and saying, I'm not going to live my life running from you. I'm not going to let you keep me scared and small. Trauma has shaped who we are but we can learn to stand firm in the  knowledge that we are grown-ass adults. We have stocked our toolboxes so that we can restabilize whenever we're thrown off-balance by trauma. 

We are on the healing road. And we will need to be patient. "Healing takes time," we are reminded. "And healing is painful." But it will take us where we want to go.

Wednesday Word Hug

Wednesday Word Hug

Bending Towards the Sun: When Is It Time to Leave?

Kelly Diels, whose wonderful site Cleavage details the ups and downs of her creative and personal life, recently posted a blog entry about sticking with a tough relationship. Though she doesn't speak specifically to those who've been betrayed, she does note that, as a society, we tend toward the cut-and-run approach to long-term relationships rather than sticking it out.
I'm not entirely sure that's true. At least not in marriages. Sure the divorce rates hovers at about 50%, which doesn't exactly speak to stick-to-it-ness. On the other, close to three-quarters of relationships that have experienced infidelity will remain intact.
Of course, that doesn't tell us how healthy these remaining three-quarters of marriages are.
And it certainly doesn't offer us much help with the agonizing decision of whether to stick to it...or get the hell out.
I blame or credit (depending on my mood) emotional paralysis for the fact that I didn't walk out on D-Day. I had always been quite adamant that I would nevah, EVAH put up with a cheating spouse. But that, of course, was then...
So I stayed in large part because I didn't have anywhere to go. Didn't have the strength to pack my bags. Didn't have the emotional strength to tell my kids that I – or Daddy – was leaving. I was scared. Confused. Exhausted.
And I'd read, in one of the books I'd read on affairs, forgiveness, blah blah blah, that it makes sense to wait at least six months before making any big decisions. It takes that long, so the thinking goes, for all the initial anger and shock to wear off, to enable you to make a decision you can live with for the rest of your life, rather than a kneejerk response.
I was also confused. I figured clarity would eventually return and my course would suddenly light up like Vegas, making it clear which path I should follow.
I'm still waiting.
That's not to say I'm unhappy. It is to say that marriage is messy. Hell, LIFE is messy. And frankly, four years post D-Day #1, my marriage isn't much different in many ways than it was before (except for the rather crucial fact that my husband is no longer banging strangers). We have great times, we have tough times. We laugh, we argue. We cuddle, we retreat. In other words, our marriage is probably pretty normal.
Which brings me to the point of this post, which, as you'll note, I titled "Bending Towards the Sun."
Like anything alive, it's important to seek out that which helps us grow strong and healthy. Plants, to stick with my metaphor, bend toward the sun, in order to benefit most from the warmth and nourishment it provides.
When you're in the midst of the confusion and wonder if you can ever forgive and heal, or if you simply must get out, it really can boil down to a simple question:
"Does this relationship help me grow into my best self?" Or perhaps a more accurate question under the circumstances is, "Can I see a point where this relationship could help me grow into my best self?"
A big part of that equation, of course, comes down to your spouse's character. Was the betrayal evidence of a moral defect...or a poor choice? Is your spouse willing to examine how he came to make such a poor choice and do his best to ensure he never does again? Or is he casting blame and making excuses? Is he a good person who made a bad decision? Or someone you'd warn your daughter to stay away from if she was involved with a similar man?
Of course, there are life circumstances that can prevent leaving when you might want to – young children, economic issues, health concerns... Those likely won't alter your long-term course, but simply delay it.
In the end, you need to make a decision that enables you to bend toward the sun...wherever that may be.

Looking Back on Crazy

I had to do a reverse number lookup today to ensure that I had written down a number correctly. And suddenly I was transported back to a few weeks past D-Day, when my days were spent feverishly looking for evidence of my husband's affair. In spite of the fact that he had admitted to it, I kept looking for more. I dug up his cell phone bills, his VISA statements. I scrounged through dresser drawers for incriminating receipts (which I promptly shredded! He was NOT going to benefit on his tax return for cheating on me with his assistant). In other words, for a brief while, I lost my mind. It's not that I didn't have other things to do. Things like work. Raising my kids. Making beds. Doing laundry. Walking dogs. Planning dinner. Exercising. Showering! All those things still needed doing. But I ignored them so I could relentlessly, masochistically undertake my detective work to find evidence of something my husband had already confessed, in fair detail, to doing.
What the hell was that all about, anyway.
It seems strange to me today. To imagine that person was me.
She seems like a stranger.
Yet I still remember her raw pain like it was yesterday. I still get a catch in my throat when I recall her ache. Her bewilderment. Her deep abiding pain that came in waves, washing over and over her until she could barely surface long enough to breathe.
Yep, that was me, all right.
I'm not sure what happened to me. I do know that betrayal makes lots of us a wee bit (or perhaps a WHOLE LOT) crazy. It made me do things that the pre-betrayal me would never have dreamed of doing. It turned black to white, night to day. And it left me panting and exhausted by the effort of trying to make sense out of nonsense.
I have little advice for those caught in that craziness. Except please try and find someone to talk to. Or post your thoughts here. We've been there. We know how strong those urges are to call the OW. Or post on her Facebook wall. Or dig through your husband's drawers, his pockets, his files in hopes (or fears!) of finding...what? Evidence that all of this is just a bad dream? Or that everything you suspected (or that he's admitted to) is true?
Crazy seems a standard phase for most of us. I envy the betrayed woman who skips right past it (unless she's in denial. Another common stage for many of us. "My husband? He wouldn't do that...").
When I think back to the time I wasted digging up little more than the knowledge that – yep – that was definitely her phone number he called on December 9, 2006, I recognize that I probably would have been better served by taking that long, overdue shower.

D-Day or "Birth" Day

I just received a birthday card. An e-card from a site that I read frequently and sometimes comment on. However, I comment as "Elle", my pseudonym that I also use on this site. I guess at some point, in order to log in, this site asked for my birthday. So I typed "December 10". Which is not my real birthday at all.
It is,  however, the anniversary of D-Day #1, the day I confronted my husband and the truth came spilling out, changing...well...everything. Why did I put that down as my birthday? Haven't a clue. But now, four years later, I'm wondering if birthday is exactly what December 10 is.
December 10 certainly caused the death of the former me. The me that believed absolutely in my husband's loyalty. The me that thought I lived a charmed life in which things like cheating simply didn't happen. Accidents I could imagine happening. A deliberate act of betrayal? Inconceivable.
Or so the former me believed.
A new me was born on December 10, 2006. Like any birth, there was a fair bit of pain. I was pretty messy for awhile. I wondered what the hell the point of life was and my survival was my no means secure.
But I fought my way through. Kept on getting stronger, using any means possible. There were days when I didn't feel quite "alive" but I knew I wasn't dead. I thought I was just existing.
However, I can look back and see that, even when it looked like there was no growth, I was in fact, getting stronger. Stronger in the broken places. My heart was shattered but still beating.
And though, outwardly, I look the same (perhaps a few more wrinkles, a bit saggier around the middle), inside I'm, quite simply, not the same person that I was.
Though there were inevitable losses, there were incredible gains, too.
I don't take happiness for granted. I no longer think it's my birthright but rather something I work hard and steadily to maintain. In fact, I measure happiness differently – in moments rather than chapters or lifetimes. I find joy in odd places. Like time spent with our beloved dog, who recently lost his leg to bone cancer. He reminds me that I could focus on what's gone. Or, like him, I could choose instead to focus on what's gained...or at least preserved. The pleasure in a new snowfall. The delight in a warm bed. The love of family and friends who accept us, even with our missing pieces.
And so, I think I'll start looking at my D-Day anti-versary as a "birth" day. The day I started my new life.
Perhaps your D-Day signalled the start of your new life, even if you didn't truly emerge from the wreckage until long after.
Perhaps it's signalled a new single you – who, going forward, knows how to take care of her heart and keep it safe.
Perhaps it's brought forth a new marriage. One that withstood the storms or has been rebuilt, using pieces of the old, but a whole lot of new, better materials, too.
Whatever D-Day means to you, at least consider that it might have created some positive change in your life. It might take Herculean effort, but there's likely something that was born that day that's worth celebrating.
And, if so, share it with us here.
Happy "birth" day, indeed.

Tribute to Elizabeth Edwards: Betrayed Wife

I never knew Elizabeth Edwards personally though many of us who've known betrayal feel as if we did. We certainly knew much of her pain.
And so many of us couldn't imagine how her pain was compounded. She'd already buried a son. Was battling cancer. And then to be so publicly betrayed. It all seemed far more than I could handle.
But she did handle it. Whatever her private battles, publicly she displayed grace and dignity. And by so doing, showed all of us what we, too, might be capable of.
If I had met her, I would have loved to have told her – on behalf of myself and so many betrayed wives who have abandoned hope – "thank-you."
Her last words were about hope and resilience. In a Facebook posting on December 6, 2010, she wrote:

I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces, my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.... These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined. The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered...

There is little doubt that is her legacy to those who knew her intimately. And those of us who only felt as if we did.

Rest in peace, Elizabeth Edwards.

Is HE Worth Suffering For?

In a great blog post about betrayal and suffering, Kelly Diels repeats Bob Marley's infamous line: Truth is everyone is going to hurt you; the trick is to find the ones worth suffering for.

Which got me to thinking. How do we know who's worth suffering for? Especially before we've actually suffered, which is ideally when we'd like to have that information. And does the fact that someone has betrayed us automatically render them ineligible to be worth suffering for? To hear the world tell it...hell yes! Once a cheater, always a cheater. He's shown you you can't trust him. And so on.
But what exactly is the point of suffering? Is it to escort us to the door where we bid betrayers an angry adieu and walk out into a world of people worth suffering for, but whom will never actually make us suffer? Or is it to shake us into a new way of seeing?
It's like the chicken and egg conundrum. Before I learned of my husband's...ummm...extracurriculars, I thought he was (almost!) the perfect man. Sure he worked too hard and helped around the house too little. Sure his mother was a dragon. But those weren't him, I was sure. He was wonderful. It was life that complicated things.
And then, well, it turned out it was actually HE who complicated things.
But now that I know all about him – those deep, dirty secrets that made him feel ashamed and disgusting and worthless, if he allowed himself to feel anything at all, well now I actually love him more deeply. Not as purely, perhaps. Definitely not as blindly. But more deeply. We've seen each others scars, even –especially – the ones we caused. And we don't turn away from their ugliness. Dare I say it, I've learned he's worth suffering for. The old him would have never cheated on me, or so I thought. The new him, I'm all too aware, is capable of cheating on me. He's done it, for gawd's sake. But this new him is also far more likely to talk to me about his feelings rather than deny them. He's far more likely to seek help when he's feeling like he might be going down the wrong path. And he's definitely more aware of the damage his choices can cause me. So though I know he's capable of cheating, strangely I feel...safer. It took me four LONG years to get to this point. But now that I'm here, I like the view. It's a view that sees all of him, not just the pretty parts. And it's a view that allows me choices based on knowledge, not on projection.
And, it's a view that sees him as worth suffering for. After all, what is suffering for but to make us rage and slay the demons that stand in our way.

Your "Story of Us": Don't Censor It

"So how did you two meet?" a new friend asked me recently, about my husband and me.
My stomach clenched.
Of course I have my "Story of Us". Most of us do. It's the one we tell new friends. The one our kids love to hear, at least until they become teenagers at which point they'd prefer us not to speak at all. It's our time-worn, agreed-upon version of how two strangers came together...
Until one steps outside the marriage...and that story suddenly seems more like fiction. How can all that be true? we wonder. And this betrayal be true also? One truth seems to cancel the other out. In our versions of "us", most of us never considered a chapter where one partner violated trust in the worst possible way.
So, when asked, it can be tempting to leave out the painful bits. To give the world the Hollywood version, where even complications are simple and everyone pretty much lives happily ever after, the lighting is never bad and even women who've had three kids have abdomens you could bounce a quarter off.
And, frankly, that's pretty much the version I offer up...though it's clear to anyone looking at me that the abdomen bit is pure fantasy.
But there's a real danger is censoring the story we tell ourselves. In editing out the grief and shame and fear and agony because it just doesn't fit with the version we want.
We just want to get on with it, for goodness' sake. We don't want to keep tripping over the mess and it's so much easier to shove it aside.
Yet it's that mess that often is the soul of our lives.
Honesty can be a balm and a blessing. It can also be painful as hell. But the price we pay for not being honest with ourselves is a sort of half-life. A publicly acceptable life that belies a private hell.
Tell friends and strangers whatever you want and whatever feels safe and right.
But make sure you tell yourself the whole story. Your "Story of Us", especially if "Us" survives intact, just got a whole lot richer and grittier...and real.

Three to Five Years: There Are No Shortcuts...

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going," said Beverly Sills.
And ain't THAT the truth.
Still, we think we should get there faster. Whether "there" is getting over our husband's betrayal. Or, perhaps, "there" is no longer caring that he's with the other woman because you're separated. Perhaps "there" is feeling ready to date again. Or maybe "there" is no longer beating yourself up for something that was never your fault in the first place.
But wherever "there" is for you...you're likely not reaching it nearly as quickly as you think you should.
And, I believe, you won't.
It's gonna take a whole lot longer than you expect.
But that's okay. Because, if you take your time... if you really do the hard work necessary to peel back the layers of pain and really turn them all over in your mind and heart, when you do get there, you won't need to keep looking over your shoulder to make sure heartbreak isn't gaining on you.
Three to five years, say the experts. Three to five years!
Yep, I know it sounds like an eternity. I'm with you. For gawd's sake, I could have conceived and given birth to an entire basketball team in that time.
But – and I speak from experience here – I'm finally starting to feel as if I'm wearing my own skin again. And it has been – get ready for it! – two months shy of FOUR YEARS.
When I first heard the three- to five-year timeline – about one month after D-Day – I didn't believe it. Didn't want to. Figured that maybe it takes OTHER people that long. But I'll just fast-track this healing stuff and be back on my feet in a few months.
Uhhh...sure.
That was around the time I was face down on my bathroom floor, sobbing into my dog's neck (who, incidentally, was just diagnosed with bone cancer. Honestly, can't I catch a break?? Please??).
It was around the time I had lost 15 pounds without even trying (I'll be honest – the highlight of my day was stepping on the scales...then I'd go back to feeling miserable) and I didn't bother applying any makeup because it was just going to slide down my face by 9:15 a.m.
Still, THREE TO FIVE YEARS??
Yep.
You could probably reduce that time-frame if, unlike me, you manage to skip the whole self-loathing suicidal period, which lasted close to a year and forced me to face all sorts of childhood abandonment issues I thought I'd successfully drowned in copious amounts of wine when I was 15.
But though it seems like a long time (and it is!), the place you'll end up is really amazing.
Having to reassemble my heart took time and courage, but it also allowed me to step into myself fully – something I'd never done. It offered me a glimpse into how much of my heart was going into relationships (not just my marriage, but with friends, colleagues, hangers-on...) that drained me. I'm far better able to recognize these emotional vampires, and to protect myself. As a result, I'm less blurry around the edges. I know exactly where I end and someone else begins.
So, yeah, three to five years.
Sorry.
But you just might find, as I did, it's worth the trip.

Getting Unstuck: Ask Your Body For Answers

In many ways I envied the women who, upon learning of their spouse's infidelity, simply walked out the door with a breezy buh-bye over their shoulder. But even more than I envied what I believed to be the shiny new life they were walking into was their certainty.
I sometimes blame the fact that I'm a Gemini (on the one hand..., but on the other...) for my inability to simply, uncategorically make choices without second-guessing, regrets or what-ifs. But whether it's the stars or my parents or my second-grade teacher who's to blame for my wavering, I seem stuck with it. I can barely decide whether to buy the generic toilet paper or pay extra for the name-brand, let alone whether to stick with my unfaithful spouse and keep my family intact, or make for the hills.
Which is why I found the following (thanks to Martha Beck's Finding Your Own North Star) so interesting:

Your social self lives by what psychiatrist Alice Miller sees as the cardinal rule of all repressive social systems: "Thou shalt not be aware."... Don't know what you know, and don't feel what you feel.

Once you've learned to obey this rule, you can easily lose access to your own experience of joy and desire, loathing and revulsion... Since the only way to find lost feelings is to feel for them, the search for your own heart is always a blind one. Instead of any clear impulse, you register only flat nothingness, a hollow, yearning ache that doesn't lead you clearly in any direction at all.

Wow. Sounds a whole lot like me. And, likely, a lot like you if one of the ways you coped with your spouse's betrayal was to stop feeling.
Cutting yourself off from feeling can work in the short-term. It can get your kids to soccer practice. It can get you to your desk. It can get dinner on the table.
What it can't do is get you to your next step. At least not decisively.
It's taken me a few years of putting in time to realize this. Of not feeling and simply moving along in my life and marriage. Not so much deciding what I want in my life as letting life decide for me. Which isn't a bad thing for a period of time. It can make sense to simply bide your time until choices become clear. But they won't – can't – become clear if you're so divorced from your own feelings that you don't even feel them anymore.
What Beck suggests sounds rather odd. She maintains that the answers rest in your body. Literally. That by taking an inventory of your body parts and soliciting their opinions (I'm not kidding here!), you'll find your answer. She takes her view on this from Asian philosophy which, as she points out, insists that it's our bodies that hold the answers, not our minds, which bend and change to all sorts of untrustworthy beliefs.
It's an interesting exercise and one that I recommend, if only because it can't hurt and doesn't cost a thing.
How?
Get as relaxed as you can without the benefit of drugs/alcohol. Try and still the mind, which, if yours is as annoyingly toddler-like as mine, is no easy task. Then start paying attention to your body, starting with each toe. (Settle in, this is going to take awhile.) Ask yourself what it's feeling, Beck suggests. Hot, cold, itchy... "Don't think," she admonishes, "just describe." Again, if you're like me, you'll likely start to notice, if you don't on a regular basis, that certain parts of your body are...tense or tight. Beck advises us that there's likely a lot of information being stored in those parts.
Think of these tense parts as frozen. Try and breathe warmth into them and let them thaw.
This is where the exercise can get uncomfortable emotionally. Locking feelings up keeps us safe from them. And letting them out releases the capacity to once again feel pain. And as we all know far too well, pain sucks. A lot.
The thing is, NOT feeling pain doesn't serve us either. It keeps us alive...but not living.
The time will come when you have to let it out. Sadness, anger, hatred, fear. You have to allow the feelings to breathe...and within them to find your answers.
You'll also be surprised to discover that, rather than paralyzing you with pain (though it can be excruciating to feel them) these feelings will actually make things a whole lot clearer. You might not miraculously know what the rest of your life will look like, but you'll be far clearer about what you want it to look like. And therefore, what you should do to create it.
It's not magic. And it takes a certain conviction, not to mention suspension of judgement to undertake such an exercise.
But if you stick with it (even making it a daily practice, as Beck does), you just might find your answers aren't in the stars at all...but in your kidney.

Creating the door to your future

Women will draw doors where there are none, and open them and pass through into new ways and new lives.(Clarissa Pinkola Estes)


I've been coming across a lot of quotes lately from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.
Most of them resonate with my situation – not just that of betrayal, but reaching middle age, having a career crisis and dealing with kids whose hormones are raging at least as much as my own. Her quotes reveal a quiet wisdom, an understanding that my life must be about finding contentment and wholeness within myself if I'm ever to completely heal from betrayal...and cope with everything else that comes my way.
I love the above quote because it reminds us that sometimes, when we feel that there is no way out of our pain or our situation, we need to draw doors "where there are none." We need to use our creativity to imagine a way out.
It can seem to require more than, especially at this point, we are capable.
But it's often when we feel least equipped that we find a hidden reservoir of strength.
When I look back on what I coped with -- learning of my husband's betrayal with one week before a book deadline and two chapters left to write, my mother dying suddenly three weeks after D-Day, the day-to-day mothering required by three young children – I'm astounded. At the time, I was unaware of my strength. I could barely drag myself out of bed to brush my teeth...and yet I can look back now and see that somehow I found it within myself to "draw a door where there was none."
To find support. To seek out hope. To create a new life. Not the one I thought I was moving toward, but one that -- though it remains a work in progress – shows promise of things I couldn't have imagined for myself.
What can you imagine for your self? What will your new life look like? And where is your door? 

Why Your Thoughts Are Lies

If you're anything like me (and since you're reading this blog, I suspect you are), you've spent hours (days, weeks, etc.) of your life trying to make sense of heartbreak. From the first boy who broke your heart to the last,  you've likely hashed over every spat, shared intimate details with girlfriends, written pages of diary entries, moaned, wailed, gnashed your teeth...
And my guess is that most of what you thought, said, wrote and wailed was a bunch of crap.
Why do I guess that? Because our thoughts lie to us.
They say things like: He cheated because you've gained weight. They tell us he cheated because we nag. They suggest he cheated because she was prettier. Richer. Smarter.
Or they tell us he cheated because she's sexier.
Or, the stake in our heart, he cheated because we're unlovable.
And then, those thoughts insist, the best years of my life are over. I will never be happy again.
Utter and total crap.
And yet, how much time do we spend with these thoughts? We let them into our heads and, if we don't shoo them away, they snake their way into our souls where they slowly poison us with their lies until we don't even recognize ourselves anymore.
Consider this: You don't have to believe these thoughts. In fact, I'm strongly recommending you don't. I'm recommending that you kick these thoughts to the curb and ask yourself a simple question if even one of these thoughts tries to ring your doorbell and convince you to let it in: Do I know this to be true?
Of course you don't. None of us ever knows why another person does anything. Most of the time, particularly with cheaters, they don't even know. It takes heaps of therapy and baring of the soul to get to the bottom of such dishonesty and devastating behaviour.
What you do know, and what you can trust is that, if you're reading this right now, you're okay. You're alive. Good. You're functional, even marginally. Good. And you are okay.
And that's all you need to know right now. All the rest – why, how, what for? – can wait for another day. Or forever.
Right now, just be okay for this moment. then the next. And the next... Until okay becomes good and good becomes better and you realize that all that drama – all that self-torture – was your lying thoughts.

Betrayed Wife: Not the Whole of Who We Are

A strange thing can happen in the weeks and months following the discovery of a spouse's betrayal. And I'm not referring to the magical weight loss (oh, if I could bottle that, I'd be rich, rich, rich) or the fact that you can barely get out of bed in the morning, yet dread the idea of going back to bed at night.
Nope, I'm talking about the stage when pain becomes as comfy as an old sweater, so we keep putting it on, even when the weather has warmed and perhaps the sun is filtering through the clouds. 
It's not uncommon. Though we would swear we're desperate for the day when happiness returns, as if we expect it to arrive via post with a big bow around it, we often unconsciously keep the doors locked against it. We become so preoccupied with our worries, our doubts, our conflicts – indeed they seem to give our lives meaning. We define ourselves by them – and any glimpse of joy can seem startling and discomforting.
It's a struggle I've had to consider carefully. Creating a site devoted to betrayed wives meant that I was identifying myself by that single aspect of my life. And though it has unquestionably altered my life in ways I'm still grasping, it isn't the whole of who I am.
It can feel that way in the short term. But staying there doesn't serve any of us well.
Ask yourself if your pain has become something of a security blanket. If you balk at the question or feel uncomfortable, it can indicate that maybe, just maybe, it's time to open yourself up to the possibility that life can offer up joy, too.
It'll come slowly, tippy toeing into your life. Perhaps in the form of a lovely spring day when, for a few minutes (seconds?) you aren't obsessing. Perhaps in the form of a good book or a beautiful garden.
Whatever form joy takes, let it in. It doesn't mean your pain isn't valid. Or that you're letting yourself down.
On the contrary, you're giving yourself permission to be all of who you are.

Resurrecting Ourselves: Telling Our Story

Forgive the Easter allusion, though rebuilding ourselves after betrayal can sometimes feel as insurmountable and potentially miraculous as a resurrection. It can seem too incredible that we'll actually heal from this...and go on to a better life. Yet it can happen. Not without plumbing the depths of our souls...but it can happen.
Part of it, I believe, comes from telling our story. As any trauma specialist with tell you, most people who've experienced trauma feel the need to go over the details again and again and again. It seems counterintuitive. That reliving it would cause more pain. Yet in fact, it's the opposite. By telling our story, it loses its power over us. It becomes part of our history, simply another part, like the story of our first day of school, or getting our driver's licence. Well, maybe not exactly like that. Of course, the story of our betrayal tends to be a bit...ummm...emotionally loaded.
I was reminded of the healing power of telling our story recently. My husband, who has his own therapist to work on finding better ways of dealing with negative feelings than having sex with people who aren't his wife, was discussing this blog with said therapist. He told me she suggested that it might be unhealthy for me to continually be talking about the betrayal, thinking about it, writing about it, yada yada yada. I was stunned. How, I wondered, could he not see the change in me since I started this blog?
Sure, I still have dark days...but they're fewer and further between. I've gone off anti-depressants. I'm feeling stronger, more focussed, just...better.
I credit much of this to being able to tell my story. I felt fraudulent before. Like I was pretending to be someone I wasn't: A happily married wife to a man who would never cheat. This blog offered up a place to be the me who had survived betrayal. Who could speak (write?) candidly. Share stories. Commiserate with others. Have a giggle or two about stupid lines cheating men offer their beleaguered wives. To allow other betrayed wives the chance to blog about their own experiences. It felt wonderful. Liberating. Healing. Dare I say, I felt resurrected.
It's a familiar refrain from men who've cheated who, frankly, don't want to be reminded of what they did and would love nothing more than to sweep the whole affair (pun intended) under the rug. You're dwelling on it, they say. You need to move on, they urge. It's not good for us; we need to focus on the future.
Well, the past has a way of biting us in the ass if we don't process it firmly enough. So tell your story. Share with anyone you can trust. Tell it over and over and over until it loses its power over you and you can add the ending. And then she lived happily ever after. Or more accurately, she lived wisely ever after.

The Dead Zone: A Nice Place to Visit...But You Don't Want to Live There

After awhile, the sharp pain of betrayal gives way to a sort of heaviness. You sigh a lot. You feel cynical. Life seems...grey. Some call it the Plain of Lethal Flatness. Others call it emotionally numb. I sometimes called myself "dead".
On the one hand, you feel grateful for the reprieve from the wild highs and devastating lows. But on the other, you wonder if this is where you'll live out your days. This sort of empty wilderness, devoid of pain...but devoid of beauty and life, too.
There is a danger in that. Get too comfortable in this dead zone and you just might never leave. Having experienced the agony of betrayal, it can be tempting to feel nothing.
But don't give in. Yes there's risk in the real world. In loving someone else. In trusting them, especially when that trust has been betrayed so completely. Whether you're choosing to stay with the person who betrayed you or you're free to find someone else, your heart can feel under wraps, like something fragile wrapped in gauze to ensure its safety.
Accept that this zone is your chance to catch your breath. To emotionally ready yourself for the next stage, which is to move into your new reality with your heart battered but whole.
If you've done the hard work of healing yourself, you're undoubtedly wiser. If you've done the self-care required, you know how to protect yourself better than before. It's no guarantee that you won't be hurt again, but it's insurance that if you are, you have what you need to move yourself quickly to a place of power.
Just don't settle in and decide to stay. Accept the break. Look around because you just might cycle back around again so if it looks familiar...it is. But the day will come when you're ready to life live in full-color again.

The Bounce-Back Book

I came across this breezy little slide show on Oprah.com, offering up pithy wisdom on how to bounce back from pain. While I'm not convinced that sleeping while facing North would have made much difference to my D-Day recovery (I was having enough trouble sleeping at all!!), most of the tips can create a deeper change than you'd expect.
The thing is, when we're drowning in pain, someone suggesting we take a vacation, or "turn over a new belief" or "think like a lion" strikes us as a crack-smoking simpleton.
Yet it's these small choices we make, barely perceptible to those around us, that move us from our quick-sand existence onto solid ground.
Check it out! You might be surprised.

It Ain't Over 'Til...Well...It Ain't Over

I ran into a friend today. Once upon a time we were close friends. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding; I was MC at hers. Now we're "it's-great-to-see-you-how're-the-kids" kinda friends.
She married a guy I can only barely stand. He's a small "m" misogynist. He works for a company that builds army machinery. I'm a feminist and a pacifist. We tend to disagree. A lot.
Yet there was my friend. Still happily married, or so it appears. And there stood I. Pieced back together after betrayal and though the cracks might not be as apparent as they once were, I suspect anyone who looked closely could see them.
And I was so jealous I was almost choking on it.
Not that I would wish betrayal on anyone. But why, when my husband was such a good guy, did it happen to me? It wasn't supposed to happen to me. I chose so carefully – someone who treated people, especially me, well. Who seemed so principled. Who shared my pacifist and feminist leanings.
And my jealousy and subsequent short-lived fury at my husband made me realize – yet again – that betrayal changes everything. I will never be the carefree wife who laughed at the mere notion that my husband could cheat. He just...wouldn't. Or so I thought.
That person is gone. And she bears little resemblance to me, who still struggles to trust that anyone can be true to their word.
Sure, I have my good days. When I can appreciate the silver lining of being dragged behind the betrayal truck until I'm raw and broken. The silver lining that reminds me that I'm stronger. And that my marriage has more honesty (not sure it could have less...). And that my husband is a better and happier man who's faced his demons and is evicting them one by one.
But I also have those days when I hate that this happened. When I seethe with jealousy at women whose lives haven't been gutted by their spouse's secret. Who can still look at their husband and believe. What I wouldn't give to still be one of them...

I Know Why Buddha's Laughing: Lessons I've Learned Through Betrayal

"It's not what you call me...but what I answer to."~African Proverb

It's amazing the wisdom that comes out of Africa. Perhaps because it is an old country...with many generations of lessons. Or perhaps it's from having to endure such hardship over the centuries. As Buddha said, "Out of suffering comes great lessons."
Sometimes, though, I'd like to give Buddha a kick in his serene ass. We no doubt wish we could attain wisdom in ways a little less painful. Cause betrayal hurts like hell. The challenge, though, is in not letting it kill your soul.
It almost killed mine.
Though I'd gone through, I thought, my share of life's hurdles, all the wisdom I'd gained seemed to vanish in the face of betrayal. I can now see that I viewed my husband as more than he could be. Because I so desperately wanted to believe I was safe, that marriage would protect me from so much of the hurt I'd experienced in life, I had given up my own strength. Or at the very least neglected it.
Then came the day when it crashed. And I, always so calm in a crisis, was calm. And remained that way for about a week. Then the shock wore off.
And the lessons were forgotten: the ones about looking within for wholeness, about allowing others to be who they are without taking responsibility for it, about compassion for self. Poof. Gone. In its place were recriminations. I was either blaming him for letting me down...or myself for believing in him. Neither stance was very productive.
It was, though, necessary.
Our learning doesn't come to use in clear, easy-to-follow lessons. I learned that I was more disappointed in myself for not listening to my instincts than I was in my husband for his betrayal. Betrayal of self is the least forgivable.
But it is forgivable.
And now that I've pulled myself out of the shadows of betrayal, the lessons are clear.
Trust myself. Wishing people were different doesn't make them so. And that it's my choice whether to be my friend...or betray myself. I choose friend.

Is Time the Great Healer...or Are You?

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.~Andy Warhol

I was often reassured by the books I read during my great D-Day read-and-ye-shall-find-wisdom marathon that time would ease the pain of betrayal.

And, at first, I scoffed. I would never, EVER stop feeling such agony, I was sure. Things would never, EVER be the same again. And though I do have a flair for the dramatic, I was right about things never being the same. I was wrong, however, about time. My hurt did, in fact, lessen with time.

But did time work its magic...or did I?

Within many of my posts on this site, you'll find my reassurance that betrayed wives will feel better with time. But Warhol's quote has me questioning that promise. Is it time that heals? Or are we our own healers?

I know a woman who still weeps for love lost more than a decade ago. Is it that time isn't working for her? Or is she not doing the work?

It boils down to a choice: you can (A) wallow in your own misery, blaming everyone around you and cultivating bitterness (A is a darn attractive option in the early days!). Or (B) you can accept that life isn't fair...but neither is it fair for others (ask the people of Haiti about that) and that bitterness and spite aren't the most attractive traits.

Assuming you choose B (c'mon, you were going to choose B, right?), how can you give time a hand?
By doing what you need to do: getting yourself a therapist; exercising; pursuing hobbies and interests you might have pushed aside to be wife/mother; volunteering... In other words, anything you can do to create a more fulfilling life can't help but move you further along the healing path.
And betrayal attacks us in such a profound way, often making us question our worth or our purpose. Finding that center again, that place where we can feel whole regardless of the choices of those around us, can't help but be good for us.
So, by all means, trust time to take away some of the sting of betrayal. But do some of the hard lifting yourself.