The Safe Harbour of Your Own Heart

I noticed this one year ago, when one of our secret sisters posted these words on Valentine's Day: 

"Being in the time after he cheated makes me feel unsafe with my heart."

I felt those words in my own heart. I felt them when I read her words because I felt them then. I remember well feeling "unsafe." And of course I felt unsafe — I was unsafe. My husband had made clear to me that my heart wasn't safe with him, it hadn't been safe with him. The person I'd trusted most to keep my heart safe had betrayed that trust.

But ... maybe that's the problem. The person I'd trusted most. Those were the words I just wrote. The person I trusted most to keep my heart safe.

Why wasn't I the person I trusted most to keep my heart safe? Why had I outsourced the single most important job any of us have. To safeguard our own hearts. To keep them safe. And safe from what? Not from hurt. Hurt is simply part of the tangle of emotions we will all experience. 

No, our job is to not betray ourselves. To remember who we are. To never let someone else convince us to abandon our principles, what we know to be right, what we know to be true.

Betrayal catapults so many of us into confusion. Reality itself seems arbitrary. So I know what I'm suggesting isn't easy. I lost myself in the maelstrom after D-Day. But our goal must be to find our way back, to reorient ourselves.

We do that with support. As best you can, surround yourself with those who can help you reorient. A therapist, if you can afford one. A clergy person, if you have access to one that doesn't prioritize the institution of marriage over the people in it, that doesn't value men over women. A wise and trusted friend or sibling or parent. 

We sometimes find that support within the pages of a book — whether fiction or self-help. I took deep comfort (and a roadmap) from many books when I felt so lost. Indeed, I wrote a book to guide others to a healthy place beyond betrayal. 

It was the hardest work I've ever done — reorienting myself, finding that safety within my own heart. In part, the challenge came from having never completed that work before he cheated on me. Those of us who've struggled with trauma, dysfunctional families, betrayal by others have even more work to do because we have further to go toward healing. But it's worth it. I promise you, it's worth it. On the other side of all of this pain and work of healing is a heart — your own — that offers safety. 

Coming out of a pandemic is not unlike coming out of betrayal

Grief metastasizes when neglected. I have experienced it in the form of full body-wracking sobs when a song comes on the radio, and in dreams I wake up from with tears streaming down my face — but also in shitty behavior towards boyfriends and friends, in steaming, misdirected anger, in embarrassment and jealousy and shame. Processing loss entails acknowledging so much more than sadness.

~Anne Helen Peterson, Culture Study

"No, I'm not ready," says writer Anne Helen Peterson, about our imminent emergence from pandemic lockdown. 

As I read her newsletter about the jumble of emotions she's experienced this past unprecedented-in-our-lifetimes year of global grief, it reads like a survival guide to infidelity too. The confusion, the loss of something difficult to name, the fear, the suspicion, the occasional unexpected euphoria. She categorizes all of it under a block-letter heading: TRAUMA. And that's true for those of us emerging from betrayal too. It doesn't matter if our trauma feels small and insignificant – we didn't experience sexual assault, or war, for instance – it nonetheless registers in our psyche. As Peterson writes, "Processing loss entails acknowledging so much more than sadness."

We need a vocabulary for infidelity. It's part of why I organized Encyclopedia for the Betrayed as, well, an encyclopedia. An A to Z examination of infidelity because it's hard to process an experience for which we lack the words. Loss is so much more than sadness.

What's more, like our feelings around this past year of lockdown and mask wars and concern for people we often don't give a second thought (grocery store workers, for instance), it can feel so destabilizing. I often cried at the strangest times – the cereal aisle at the grocery store – and other times felt long stretches of nothing when crying would have convenient. This past year has felt similar. I ache at odd moments and feel numb at others. I snap at my children when I'm angry with the anti-maskers jeopardizing the health of my 91-year-old father. 

So much more than sadness.

It's a comment I read often on this site, a sort of confused, "I'm beginning to feel better but am terrified" plea for explanation. 

I felt it then, when I, too, was emerging from betrayal, when I was beginning to live again rather than simply survive each day – and I'm feeling it now with news of friends being vaccinated, with my father's first vaccination, with promises that I, too, have a vaccination in my not-too-distant future. On the one hand, hurray! On the other, terror. What will this new world look like when we venture back into it? So much has changed. Everything, in fact.

See what I mean? It's hard to discern whether I'm talking about emerging from betrayal or from the pandemic. 

For me, healing from betrayal is far behind so what looms ahead is emerging from the pandemic. And the approach I plan to take, outlined by Anne Helen Peterson, is one I urge you all to take as well, emerging as many of you are from twin traumas: betrayal and pandemic.

It's an approach I took instinctually way back when: To move forward at my own pace. To pay close attention to what I could manage and what I could not. To listen to my body. To honor my needs. To curate my life with an intentionality that was new to me. Yes, to this event. No, to that one. Yes, to keeping this friend in my life. No, to that one.

Peterson puts it this way: "We can start clearing trail for our paths away from this pandemic year. We just have to make them meandering, with ample stops for rest. We will be collectively discombobulated and bewildered, working through layers of bittersweetness, anxious and angry and thrilled. Our post-pandemic selves will continue multitudes, and I cannot wait to get reacquainted with myself, with all of you. But it’s okay that I’m not there, not quite yet.'

It's okay that you're not there, not quite yet. You must allow yourself to rest. To heal on your timeline, not anyone else's. You, too, are working through layers of bittersweetness, anxiety and anger. And, perhaps, you're also experiencing a certain euphoria too. You, like all of us, contain multitudes. You, too, are getting reacquainted with yourself. Don't rush it. You deserve all the time you need. 

Multiple Sex Partners: "I just don't understand"

I'm re-posting this recent comment from Breathe, over on the Share Your Story thread so that more of you can read it. I think "Breathe" speaks for a lot of us, who come to terms with one affair, only to realize that there's so much to the story. How, we wonder, can we heal from even more pain? I'm also including my response after Breathe's letter.

My D-Day was six month ago. He had an affair with a coworker.
The last months were more than tough, but we were doing so great, I was doing so great.

I just experienced a big milestone on my healing journey. I reached a point where I realized that I cannot fight the whole thing anymore. I understood that it was his choice. And I also understood that I need to accept that he did this because otherwise I keep myself from living in the presence and be happy again. It was time to be kind to myself again.

My husband's affair felt like there was a battle and I wasn't there to fight it. The battle was over. But I was still fighting it. It just felt so unfair that I did not get a chance to fight it. To stop him from going to see her, to be with her.

However, the moment I realized that I cannot fight a losing battle I was somehow free again. I was able to stop all those mind movies, to stop reliving things to the fullest, I stopped having all those fantasies about doing bad things to them, to her, you know what I mean. I could ease this excruciating pain that sometimes – frankly spoken – I would inflict on me on purpose.

Learning about the “loss cycle” from my therapist, I understood that I surrendered.
And with it came this wonderful peace of mind that I hadn't felt since ages. I felt so so good. My friends even said I look so relaxed and so young again.

But one week ago, something terrible happened. Out of the blue, there was D-Day 2.
We were about moving houses and while packing boxes I found an old bank statement showing that he withdrew a lot of money in a dodgy part of the city in December 2018. And suddenly there was this thought I wanted to deny but I couldn´t.

Long story short: He also betrayed me with prostitutes. He visited brothels and sensual massage places. Basically, since we are together. He has done it since 20 years.

Today I still feel numb. And I am so so confused! How can you live and love someone and not see that he is acting out like this. Even though, looking back, it now all makes sense. It´s like I finally found the missing puzzle piece.

After the revelation of the affair, he kept saying that he feels so relieved that everything is out and that I know everything now. I should have known better!

We both are committed to make our relationship all it can be.I see that he wants to become a better man. He still tries hard. Every day.

But now I wonder if we can? I understood the “why” of the affair. I did not approve but accepted that emotional betrayal. But can I accept all the other betrayals as well?

He says that he only did it for the excitement, for the thrill of doing something forbidden. Less for sexual satisfaction. He says that this part of his life belonged only to him. He also says that he did not like it, but he could not stop it.

I don't understand. I just don't understand.

Any first aid advice out there?

I didn't understand either when I learned, first, that my husband was having an affair and, then six months later, that he had had multiple sexual encounters. But there I was, trying to make sense of it all. And what I've learned is this: I will never understand how he was able to conduct this double life. But I can accept that he did. I can accept that his compulsion was powerful enough to override his own value system and his love of his family. I can accept that he believed the stories he told himself, that nobody was getting hurt, that he was just "different" than other people with a stronger sex drive. But I couldn't accept any of that until he sought help. In my case, he had reached out for help before I learned about the sex addiction. The exposure of his affair opened the door for him to admit he had a serious problem that threatened everything that mattered to him. It was up to him to discover what drove his behaviour. My job was only to accept it had happened and move on. It was my choice, also, whether to move on with him in my life or without. But the accepting was, for me, not optional. Because not accepting was a denial of reality. He had cheated on me with many many people. All the wishing in the world wasn't going to change that. And like you discovered, accepting offers us the chance for peace.  

This is the job in front of you now. To accept that his behaviour is his to understand. To recognize that hurt people hurt people. That they behave in ways that harm themselves as well as those they love. That they behave in ways that exploits others as well as exploiting their own values.

Oddly, I think understanding has come for me, if slightly. I understand that my husband had never learned how to manage deeply painful feelings from growing up in an oppressive, abusive home. Sex was an escape for him. It took him out of his day-to-day life into something of a trance – he was either seeking it, arranging it, or engaging in it. Immediately following, he was filled with shame and regret and would tell himself, 'not again'. Until the next time. It was addictive behaviour. And addictive behaviour rarely makes sense to those of us who aren't addicts. 

I wish you peace, again. I think you'll find it. 

Thursday's Thought

Our lives are not just "befores" and "afters"

"Through her therapy she was learning that though it was agony remembering, it was a much better quality of agony than not remembering."
From The Guardian, "The tsunami survivor who lost her whole family"

I wanted a lobotomy. I wanted someone to cut out the part of my brain where the painful knowledge sat. Or give me amnesia, like a soap opera character, that erased the worst memories, the ones that pinned me to my bed like a still-living corpse. 
The woman in the story, Sonali Deraniyagala, lot her family in, literally, one wave. Remembering for her is undoubtedly worse than it ever was for me. But, as I've written before, there isn't a painlympics. My pain counts. Yours too. (And yes, even his.) And so we learn from each other, including from a woman who, having lost every person she loved most in the world in one horrific tragedy, how to pick ourselves up and move forward.
For Sonali, and for me, healing came with remembering. 
Not right away. At first, it was too painful to remember the births of my children, the holidays together, the laughter. Those memories felt like they belonged to someone else, to another life. To a life that I was wondering if I'd imagined. 
But slowly, with time, I could let them in. The wedding album I'd relegated to the basement found its way upstairs again, ostensibly so my children could look at it but also because I could look at it too, without my stomach clenching. Or not clenching too much.
The photos I'd put in drawers, the jewellery I'd stopped wearing, the clothes that held memories, also made their way back into regular rotation. Not all of them. The chain of a diamond necklace remains, literally, in pieces somewhere at the back of my drawer. Certain clothes were bagged and dropped at a charity box. 
And I brought my memories here.
As I shared my story, over months and years, I exorcised those memories of "before" and knit them seamlessly with "after". I had never imagined that my life would ever again feel like it flowed. Always, always I figured that "the news" as Glennon Doyle refers to it, would remain an interruption, a dividing line between "before" and "after". And I suppose, to some extent it does. But not nearly the way it did. It has become something akin to the "before" we had kids, the "before" we moved to our house. A marker of time rather than a marker of trauma.
I've often said that I have two wishes for this site. The first is to create community around the experience of betrayal so that nobody feels as though they're going through this alone. And the second is to assure everyone, whether you're hours from D-Day or years, that you will get through this. 
Both are the absolute truth.
But the second requires a bit of heavy lifting on our part. It requires us to look square at our life and, with time, remember. To remember the good stuff and, yes, to remember the awful. To sit with the pain of remember that phone call, that text, that sudden knowing. To rest in the memory of your own strength through this. You're still here, right? That's courage and guts that you maybe didn't know you had. It's there. I promise.
Sonali Deraniyagala wrote her story and on those pages, she found healing. I too wrote my story, on this site and in my book. I've long advocated for the power of owning our stories, of reclaiming our memories and our truth. Betrayal challenges our perception of what's real and what's not. When we reclaim that – when we refuse to let others write our stories, when we insist on telling them with ourselves at the center – then our hearts again become whole.

Wednesday Word Hug

From the Vault: When You Feel Powerless

I'm finishing up my BWC survival guide (stay tuned!) and am completely tapped for time these days. With that in mind, I'm be re-posting some of my more popular posts. 


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"Arrange whatever pieces come your way."
~Virginia Woolf

Most of us live in a sort of delusion that we have far more control over our lives than we do. It's an easy delusion. There's often not so much evidence that we're wrong. At least until the lump turns out to be malignant. Or our "good" kid starts stealing money to buy drugs. Or a fender bender leaves us with chronic pain that no amount of physio can fix.
Or until our spouse, the person we counted on to predictably keep the vows he took five, 10, 20 years earlier turns out to have been lying to us for five months, 10 months, 10 years.
Our delusion of control becomes clear. And it's terrifying.
But here's what we know: We haven't changed. And what we could always control – ourselves – is still what we can control. And what we couldn't ever control – everybody else – is still what we can't ever control.
And that, my dear soul-warriors, is good news.
It might not feel like that at first. At first, it might feel like horrible news. The worst news. How the hell are we supposed to move forward in a world where anybody can do anything at any time? Who knows what chaos will ensue? Who knows if he'll stop seeing her? Who knows if she'll respect "no contact"? Who knows if this will happen again?
Nobody. That's who knows. Nobody.
And nobody ever did know.
We were deluding ourselves.
Life, for the most part, is a game of weighing the odds. Do I think this person is trustworthy? Does this person have a track record of keeping promises? Of being fair? Of being reasonable? The emotionally healthy among us weigh this carefully. The less healthy among us (ahem, myself included) were taught to ignore those calculations. To give second and third and fourth chances. To pay attention to the apologies and ignore the original injury. To see the smile, not the lie.
A lot of us responded to a chaotic childhood with what the psychologists call "magical thinking", which is to say that we believed we had far more power than we did. We thought we could control things that we couldn't.
But even those with idyllic childhoods suffer the delusion of control. It's a way of surviving in a chaotic world where, frankly, anything can happen at any time. A bus can come careening around the corner and flatten us. Our child can develop debilitating mental health issues.
To put it in the vernacular, shit happens.
But.
But...we can always control our response to what life throws our way.
And, let me say it again, this is good news.
We have power though it might feel as though we don't.
We have the power to decide what it is that we will tolerate in our marriage after betrayal. We have power to carefully consider the consequences of a partner's deception, or continuing deception after we've agreed to give them a second chance.
We can make calculations, perhaps with the help of a therapist who's more clear-eyed than we are. We can determine what we want the rest of our life to look like if our partner cannot or will not become someone who deserves a second chance. And we get to decide what that looks like. We get to determine what our second chance consists of. Do we insist they get therapy? Do we insist that they attend a 12-step group? Do we insist upon treatment for their depression/addiction/anxiety/ADHD/impulse control/whatever? Do we insist that they steer clear of "friends" who enabled the cheating? As Steam puts it so perfectly, "My heartbreak, my rules."
It won't be easy. The right decision isn't always the easy one, though a lot of us also buy into the delusion that if it's the right decision, it will "feel" right. Nope. Not if we're accustomed to a lifetime (or even a few years) of not paying attention to our instincts. It takes practice to trust ourselves. It's a muscle that needs developing.
But that, my fierce soul-warriors, is where your power rests. In the knowledge that you have what it takes to keep yourself safe. In the recognition that you control you and nobody else.
And, one more time, that is good news. 

The Light Inside You

"Thank-you for seeing the light inside of me," said a teenager to the woman had welcomed her to the family dinner table.
It's what we all want, isn't it? For the world to recognize and value the light inside us? The one that burns with our fiercest dreams, our deepest love, our most creative impulses.
Over the years, that light can grow dim. Under the burden of caring for everyone else, we can forget to feed that fire.
And then, hit by betrayal, it's easy for that light to get extinguished altogether. For everything to go dark, including our heart.
But healing from betrayal can do something too. It can breathe on those dying embers and bring them back to a flame. It can reignite that fire inside, the one that had been ignored for so long.
It can remind us that we are not just a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, an employee. It can, if we give it the chance, bring us back to life.
I would have told you I was happy back before D-Day. And, if I put aside a simmering resentment about everything I did that I felt unappreciated for, I was happy. Or happy-ish. Or rather, I thought I should be happy. After all, I had three healthy kids, a beautiful home, work that I enjoyed. I had friends. I even loved my husband, with a side of resentment. To not be happy felt ungrateful. Like tempting fate. There were people, I knew, who envied my life.
Looking back, however, I was performing. Trying so hard to be the perfect...everything...that I had nothing left for me. Rather than try new things, I stuck with what felt safe. I didn't venture out of my comfort zone because, well, what if I failed? What if that long-held but barely acknowledged fear I had – that I wasn't good enough – turned out to be true? What if all the smoke and mirrors I had created to fool everyone into thinking I was more than I was, fell away and I was left, naked and exposed? A fraud. I could almost imagine the gasps. And the laughter.
And so I played it safe. And in the process, my inner light grew dim.
You know what happened next. What I thought was "safe" was anything but. My marriage became a minefield. Turned out, my husband's role of dedicated husband was a total fraud.
And I came face to face with some uncomfortable truths. If I was going to carry on with my life, I was going to do things differently. I've written elsewhere about going into something of a cocoon. Much of that was pure survival but it also led to a transformation. Having stripped away so much of what didn't matter in my life, or what had become toxic, I was left to figure out what did matter. How was I going to shape my life – far more consciously this time – into one that fed my inner light?
And that, ultimately, is the question facing all of us. Betrayal just shakes us out of our complacency sometimes. It forces some of us to realize that our inner light was almost dead.
How are you going to shape your marriage into one that nourishes your soul? How are you going to shape your work into something that fuels your inner light? What about your friendships? Your caregiving? Your hobbies?
If we approach life with that single goal – how do we tend our inner light? – no matter how external circumstances change, we will be living an authentic, rich life.
Thank you all for seeing the light inside of me. This site has helped me fuel it, to get back in touch with what delights me.
And thank-you for sharing your light with all of us. Even those of you just embarking on this tough tough road to healing have something to share with us. You might not yet see it. But we do. And we're grateful for it.

The most simple advice for healing: How do I want to live today?

Quick story: My yoga instructor has lost two children to suicide. I hesitated to take classes with her because I thought I'd spend my "me" yoga time feeling horrible for her. I simply couldn't imagine how anyone could move on with life after such pain. And yet...she's warm and lovely and incredibly grounded. She speaks occasionally about her grief but always in the context of meeting grief with grace.
Over the years that I've been downward dogging and head-standing, my admiration for her strength has grown. And I've wondered how she does it. The answer is deceptively simple. She's made a choice: To live today.
And it's a choice each of us has to make every single morning.
How do I want to live today?
I can already hear the resistance. But what about the fact that he lied to me last night about a text on his phone? What about him being 10 minutes late? What about him refusing to tell her to stop driving by our house?
Valid questions, every single one. And questions that can be addressed by establishing clear boundaries and then enforcing them.
We get in trouble when we try to control other people. We get in trouble when we lose sight of the only question we need to pay attention to: How do I want to live today?
Lots of you have shared how you found your way to this question. One of our betrayed warrior wives told us that she imagines looking back from the future and seeing a picture of herself. How does she want to look in that picture? Another noted the wise counsel of her therapist who urged her to ask herself each day how she wants to live – and then behaving accordingly.
None of this means brushing aside dishonesty or disrespect from a partner. There's nothing about asking yourself how you want to live today that is about ignoring your pain or pretending that things are fine when they are anything but fine. It's about paying attention. Honoring your feelings. It might mean making some really hard decisions. And today might include plenty of moments where you are decidedly not living exactly as you would like. But the goal is to work toward a life in which you are exactly where you want to be and surrounding yourself with people who value you.
With 2017 just looming over the horizon, what if your only goal is to approach life from that question: How do I want to live today?
It would usher in a zillion smaller shifts that can't help but make your life more full – more full of joy, more full of people who deserve you, more full of opportunity.
Happy new year, my wonderful betrayed warrior wives. I can't wait to watch you all heal and share all of your wisdom and strength and compassion. It's there. I promise.
How do you want to live today?

You were born worthy

I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:
I’m not screwing around. It’s time. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go.

Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy of love and belonging, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever.

Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through you. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen. ~ Brené Brown

I hike most mornings with a friend whose marriage is on shaky ground. No affairs. Just a husband who has long avoided childhood issues (sexual abuse, the refusal of his parents to acknowledge it) and who has made his wife the lightning rod for everything that's wrong in his life. The good news is she and her husband have both – finally – found a therapist they each like. The bad news, I told her, is that it's likely to get a lot worse before it gets better. Why? she asked. Well, I explained. It's like when you have a nagging headache but you're distracted by other things and not really paying attention. But when you finally acknowledge that your head is throbbing, suddenly you can think of nothing BUT your headache. It's excruciating. It's pounding. Why won't it go away.
Yep, that's what the beginning of therapy can feel like. You're finally acknowledging the pain. The emptiness. The throb of loneliness. And you can hardly think of anything else.
Like most of us, she wants to do something. She wants things better. Now. She wants him to stop being cruel to her. She wants him to realize how lucky he is to have her. She's afraid that he's going to fool this therapist into believing he's the good guy and she's the problem.
So I gave her something to do. Take care of yourself, I told her. Be kind to yourself. Be gentle.
She's a cancer survivor. Someone who still deals with issues around her medications, someone who looked death square in the eye and said 'not today, buddy'.
She's strong. And loyal. And kind.
It goes against her nature to stop trying to make things better. It goes against her nature to put herself first. It feels...wrong.
But it's not. There isn't a more right thing to do than to take care of ourselves. To be kind to ourselves. To be gentle. Because from that well of self-love and self-care, we find what we need to be our best selves out in the world.
It will feel awful, I told her. You will fail many times. But if you manage to focus on self-care just one in ten times, instead of trying to fix someone else, instead of trying to change other people, then that's one time more than usual. 
And, with practice, it will get easier. It will begin to feel...good. You will notice that the world feels more manageable. When we stop trying to control everything around us, it frees us to control the only thing we've ever been able to control. Us. 
When we stop, as Brené Brown says, worrying about what others think of us, we realize something we knew all along: That we are worthy of love and belonging. We always have been. There's nothing about a partner's betrayal that changes that. It never will.
Start where it matters: Within your own heart.
Get ready to be seen in your full glory.
Because, my dear betrayed warrior sisters, adventures await.

Color Our World

My 18-year-old daughter, who's two hours away at university, called me on the weekend. She needed to talk, she said. There's this guy, she said. She likes him.
But? I said.
She's afraid, she said. Every time she likes someone, it ends in heartbreak. Even when she's breaking the other's heart, it hurts too much, she said.
Better, she told me, to just not take the chance.

I remember teen heartbreak. I remember being so shattered by a longtime boyfriend who took up with my best (ha!) friend. I remember realizing that heart+break was the perfect description, so sure was I that I had felt my heart literally shatter. The pain was physical as much as emotional. It hurt to breathe.
And it hurt for a long time.
Even years later, my stomach would twist at mention of either of their names, at a chance encounter with either though they had long since broken up.
And though I fell in love with another, my not-quite-healed heart left me vulnerable to choosing someone else who wasn't, in hindsight, the best choice. Relying on another to heal my broken heart was a mistake, I've learned. Heart healing is an inside job.
It's also part of life, I said to my daughter.
Sure she could simply avoid making herself vulnerable in any way and, therefore, avoid heartbreak, I said.
But at what cost? It's possible this boy isn't interested in her. But, after the sting of rejection fades, she'll be fine as long as she reminds herself that another's assessment of our worth is inherently untrustworthy. Like asking a coal miner to gauge the value of a diamond.
Of course, they might fall madly in love. They might experience that incredible feeling when someone you think is just awesome thinks the exact same thing about you. And together you experience that mad rush of new love that makes the world seem so beautiful that your heart can't contain it all.
And it might end, leaving them with shattered hearts.
But, I reminded her, she's been hurt before. And she survived it. People she felt deeply wounded by inspire little more than a "meh, whatever" from her now.
Hearts are resilient, I told her. Especially hearts as huge as hers is, hearts that make room for so much and so many. 
And the risk is so worth it.
But it starts with stripping ourselves of armour, of fear that we'll be hurt, of that deep shame that tells us we're unlovable. It starts with recognizing, as Brené Brown says, that being alive means being vulnerable. 
And it starts with understanding that the very thing we think makes us vulnerable, emotional exposure, is also what fuels a beautiful life. Being willing to stand exposed, to be seen with all our flaws and trust that we are lovable, is the whole point. 
Yes, it's scary but that's what courage is. Being scared and doing it anyway.
Yes, it's hard when we know the pain of heartbreak but that's what resilience is. Remembering the pain but being willing to try again. Trusting in our rusty old tool box, the one filled with self-compassion, with kindness, with self-respect, to tend to a heart that gets bruised or battered again.
And yes, it's worth it. Even this formerly shattered wife who, at one point, imagined death as preferable to another moment of the pain of betrayal, would risk it all again. Is risking it all again. There are no guarantees, save one: Closing ourselves off from connection ensures a smaller greyer life.

The story of your pain

"Blessed are they who just aren't ready to be 'over it yet'," Nadia Bolz-Weber spoke from the pulpit. The stand-up comic-turned-pastor and author was offering up her list of blessings, which also included "blessed is the teenage girl who wonders how, again, she's going to cover the new cuts on her arms" and "blessed are the addicts", from the front of a dazzling Episcopal church in Michigan.
Her blessing stopped me.
"Blessed are they who just aren't ready to be 'over it yet'."
Wow.
Blessed.
What a difference, huh?
What a difference from our usual response. The exasperation. The eye-rolling. The gritted teeth, fist-clenched frustration with those – including, especially, ourselves – who just 'aren't over it yet'.
Pain makes us horribly uncomfortable. So we try to make it go away by finding the right words. Reading the right book. Hitting on the right response. Discovering the magical solution that makes the pain dissolve.
And so we read. And we run. And we downward dog. And we write. And we treat ourselves to pedicures and new shoes. And we pour ourselves another glass of wine.
And it works.
And then it doesn't.
The pain is still there.
We're not 'over it yet'.
So we chastise ourselves. Or we believe others when they chastise us. "It's been six months," we/they say. "It's been three years."
Aren't you over it yet? 
What's wrong with you?
"Blessed are they who just aren't ready to be 'over it yet'."
Nothing. There is nothing 'wrong' with you.
You're not 'over it yet' because you're not over it yet.
Bolz-Weber isn't speaking about an unwillingness to be 'over it.' She's speaking to an unreadiness. The wound is deep. Healing will happen in layers. Layers over layers over layers of mercy. 
Your pain isn't a tumour to be removed. It is a message written on our hearts. It tells a story. And right now, that story is still unfolding. Right now, you're not 'over it yet'.
I'm not 'over it yet'. I don't ever anticipate being 'over it'.
I am past it. The worst of it, anyway.
But the story of my pain is still visible on my heart. It's visible when I learn about another one of us cast into this club we never wanted to be a part of. It's audible when I speak the words "me too" into another ear. It's visceral when I pull someone into a hug, when I look into her eyes and see the story of pain on her heart.
It's different now, my pain. The story on my heart is still written there but the edges aren't so sharp. It reads more like poetry now.
And it tells about a woman who was shattered by betrayal. A woman who, guided and supported by other women, found the strength to get back on her feet. A woman who refused to 'get over it' on anyone's schedule but her own. Who trusted her own heart, over time, to lead the way.
It's a story of you too. And it's not over.

Therapy isn't always from a therapist

My friend Jamie found rebirth in the water. As her marriage fell apart in the wake of her husband's affair, she swam. And in the pool, with rhythmic strokes, she found herself again, along with the strength to walk away.
Scabs, who hosts the Love Rice podcasts, found it playing with her dogs. Tossing a ball, watching them leap and run, tails wagging, tongues hanging, she tapped into a dormant joy that gave her the strength to keep fighting for herself.
Others of you have written of running, of yoga, of shooting hoops, of writing and knitting. Of healing by rediscovering something that we love, that nourishes us, that reminds us that we are not what he did.
Longtime BWC sisters know that I'm a huge fan of therapy. I can't imagine how I would have walked out of the darkness without my therapist helping me navigate my way. But therapy isn't always what happens inside of office walls. And sometimes, walking away from a therapist who isn't helping us, who seems to have his or her own agenda, is the wisest choice we can make.
We know what's best for ourselves. Even when we think we don't. It's there, sometimes so deeply buried that we'll have to dig.
But it's there. And sometimes we can access it in the swimming pool. Or on the running path. Or with the click, click, click of knitting needles as background music.

Fall forward

Wow. What a summer. Details to come and not all of them are pretty.

As I noted in an addendum to an earlier post, I wished I'd been more available on the site. There were so many newcomers and I wanted to be able to welcome each one of you with open arms and the promise that you'd found a safe place to heal. Instead, I was lucky if I could snatch a half-hour here and there to moderate the comments (to save you all from promises of spell casters and hackers) and ensure that comments and stories were visible to the rest of you. I felt like Lucille Ball in the chocolate factory.
Thank-you again to every single one of you who stepped up to open your arms and hearts to the newcomers and old-timers and all of us travellers of this path to healing.

I've been giving some thought to this site. September always feels like the new year for me so it seems a good time for new beginnings. Nothing major but I do plan to post more but comment less. It was clear to me that the rest of you are amazing at sharing your wisdom and your support. I'll focus on what I think I do best: sparking conversation about the many ways in which we heal from betrayal.

As always, I appreciate your support of this site. To those of you who donate, please know how privileged I feel to have your trust in what I'm doing here. It's a trust I work hard to earn. To those who, day after day, contribute to making this a safe place women can bring their broken hearts, I thank you too. As Brené Brown reminds us, "me too" are two of the most powerful words in the language.

Our "club" attracts roughly 2,000 visits a day. That's a lot of broken hearts. Let us continue to offer up the healing we each sought for our own hearts and the "me too" compassion that heals us all.

Wednesday Word Hug

Hearts break in so many ways

So much heartbreak. So much violence. So much divisiveness. So much judgement. So much talking. So little listening.
While I make my home north of the 49th parallel (where we have far fewer guns and in a crazy coincidence far fewer gun deaths), my heart breaks for every life lost in the mass shootings, the police shootings, the police killings, the terrorist attacks. It has been one hell of a summer so far.
And us, with our broken hearts. Shattered from a partner's betrayal but no doubt aching further from all the pain around us. It can feel hopeless.
But while hearts break in so many ways, there is one glue that never ever fails to make them whole again: compassion. When we practice compassion, our hearts get soft. When we practice compassion, the pieces can be melded together. When we practice compassion we have room to acknowledge other pain, not just our own. Compassion reminds us that we're not so different. It reminds us that hurt people hurt people. It tells us that the very least we can do is remain open to another's experience in the world. To not think that our experience is the only one that matters. That ours is the only truth. To know that there are so many ways in which we're shaped, for better or worse.
Does your view of the world have room for others that don't look like you or worship like you or talk like you or love like you? If not, ask yourself what you're afraid of. Nobody hates unless they're also very afraid. And then face down that fear in yourself. Ask yourself what's behind it. And what's behind that.
It's hard work, feeling compassion for people who we think are the opposite of us. For people who vote differently. Think differently. Live differently. For people who screw our husbands. For ourselves.
But I know that it's the only way out of this mess. The one in the larger world and the one in our individual worlds. Compassion can heal us all.

Healing from Betrayal: It's the situation that's crazy, not you

How often, in the days following discovery or disclosure of a partner's affair, do we feel like we're going crazy. Literally crazy. As in we question what's real. We feel conspired against. We're hyper-vigilant. Terrified one minute, giddy with hysterical bonding the next.
The crazy thing is...your response, under the circumstances, is perfectly normal. Sane. It's not you that's crazy, it's the situation.
It's a situation in which you're often being asked to trust someone who has proven himself untrustworthy. You're sometimes being asked to present a fake front to the world when inside your world has collapsed. You're frequently responding physically to trauma, which is exactly what betrayal is: trouble sleeping, easily triggered, racing heart, chronic anxiety.
We find ourselves badgering our partners with questions even though we dread the answers. One minute we're terrified they'll walk out the door, the next we're ready to literally kick them out the door ourselves.
And far far too often, we accept that we're the crazy ones. Far too often we're told we're the crazy ones. But we're not. We're often the only sane ones in a crazy situation.
It can be hard to believe that. After all, we're the ones shrieking until we grow hoarse. We're the ones throwing things. We're the ones accusing our partners of all sorts of apparently crazy things: hiding phones, faking trips, double lives.
But, like Shakespeare's fools, we're so often the ones who speak the truth, who point out the lies and the hypocrisy, who call out the crazy, even as we're the ones considered foolish.
If you're feeling crazy, by all means find a counsellor who can help you find your way back to solid ground. Especially if your behaviour is crossing a line into abuse or stalking or self-harm, then please seek help immediately. A partner's betrayal is excruciating but it isn't a licence to harm others or yourself.
What feeling crazy can remind us is that we are deeply wounded and we need gentle care. Ever tried to approach an injured animal? They hiss and spit. Their fear comes out as aggression. Betrayal takes us back to that primal state. The best thing we can do is focus on what we can control, which is ourselves. We can find support. We can nurture ourselves. We can tend to our broken heart.
And within that space where we're focussed on our sane, normal response to a crazy situation, we can recognize how toxic our partner (or our parent, or our friend, or our boss....) is. We can finally acknowledge that we are not crazy. We can place the blame squarely where it belongs: on a partner (or parent or friend or boss...) who has lied to us, manipulated us, betrayed us.
We can fight for ourselves. We can love ourselves. We'd be crazy not to.

Wednesday Word Hug

Love yourself like a mother

I've watched my Facebook page fill with photos of smiling mothers, heartfelt posts by children who love their mothers, and wistful posts by those who miss their mothers or miss their children.
What comes through is the fierceness of that love.
And that, my warrior sisters in this club none of us wanted to join, is what I wish for you. That you take that fierce mother love that you feel for your children, that you felt from your mother or what you SHOULD have felt from your mother, and wrap yourself in it. Arm yourself with it.
You are enough.
That your partner or parent or sister or boss or whomever can't see your value doesn't make you worth less. A diamond unrecognized is still a diamond.
Love yourselves like a mother. Ferociously. Fiercely. Forever.

The Certainty of Change

"My heart pounded in my ears. My chest and stomach felt tight. I couldn't breathe all the way in. Maybe I was having a heart attack. It wasn't unheard of, after all. I resisted the urge to look symptoms of heart attack or stroke on the Internet. No good was going to come of that. I imagined the ambulance racing up our drive, lights flashing in the country darkness. How had I gotten here — again? All the...searching, seeking, reading... All the goddamn thinking, and there was still this: the waiting out the night. Face-to-face with my aloneness. With the certainty of change."~Dani Shapiro, "Devotion"

Waiting out the night. Were truer words ever written that describe the experience of betrayal? If I could sum up the years following the discovery of my husband's betrayal, those four words are it. Waiting out the night.
It's excruciating, isn't it? After the initial gut-punch of discovery, after the falling to our knees, we just want the agony to be over. We want the pain to stop. To let us catch our breath. To point us in some direction that makes sense. To promise us...something. That we're safe. That we're making the right choice. That we're going to be okay.
Instead, we wait out the night. What choice do we have, really?
There's the horrible, do-not-do-this choice of swallowing a bottle of pills and denying ourselves a happily ever after. There's the numbing ourselves through booze, or drugs, or shopping, or gambling, or endless TV watching. There's the plain of lethal flatness, a nice place to visit but you don't want to stay there. There's the pain shopping – hours of scrolling through the OW's Facebook feed, or driving past her house, or gossiping about her with uncomfortable looking friends.
Or, there's the (ugh) waiting out the night.
Shapiro goes on to call it "the anguish of the unknown" and that's really what the night is, isn't it. It's the fear that morning won't come. That the darkness won't give way to light. My 3 a.m. worries that hover, huge and unbidden, seem ridiculous in the morning. And yet, in that thick, wooly darkness, my thoughts seem necessary. Important. True.
Part those heavy curtains though and daylight brings a clarity. A lifting of the heart, a revival of new possibilities.
Optimism. Hope.
Until then, we wait out the night.
Not passively. Waiting isn't about resignation so much as realization that this is part of the process. That, beneath the waiting, a plan is taking shape. Our future is taking shape.
It's a future informed by having survived the trauma and accepting the anguish that life sometimes delivers. It's a future shaped by recognizing our worth and our strength.
It's a future that doesn't promise no more pain but does promise what we need to respond to whatever comes next.
Whether your night comes as you move into a new life without him, or whether it comes as you await enough clarity to make your choice of whether to stay or go, or whether it comes as you begin to rebuild your marriage, we all must...wait. Betrayal demands it of us. It delivers the darkness until we can see the blurry, distant light of dawn over the horizon.
Know that the darkness will gave way. As long as we don't wait passively but continue to do the work of loving ourselves, being kind to ourselves, challenging the stories that endlessly loop in our brain and make us crazy. As long as, within the darkness, we sit with the awareness that we deserve love and respect. Knowing that, we can trust the light will come.