The Quintessential Guide to Healing from His Affair

...posted by Chinook

#1 ANGER.

Girl. When the shock wore off (which took about 12 hours), I didn’t just have anger, I had violent rage. Violent. Rage. A spirit animal — a bird of fire — came and inhabited my body for three straight days. I packed a bag and walked out, leaving my husband with our two little children and with no indication of when or if I’d be back. My anger was so furious that separation was the safest thing for both of us. That’s when my husband realized just how catastrophic his choices were. That was his rock bottom.

#2 PAIN.
The pain was more intense than any pain I have ever felt. I gave birth without an epidural or any kind of pain control, and I swear, this was the same level of pain, but sustained for weeks.

#3 WHAT HURT(S) THE MOST.
The gaslighting. And the fact that he wanted to share special things with her; not with me and our children. Unlike so many women I’ve heard from, I knew — knew in my gut — that something was wrong as he was starting the affair. Our marriage was in bad shape despite the years of effort I’d been making but even at that, I felt something shift. I forced us into marriage counselling and it turns out that my instincts were bang on. He booked their first date, thus starting the affair, the same day as our first marriage counseling session. I even asked him point blank one night if he was having an affair. (That sense of just knowing that Elle describes? Girl. I had that too.) He denied it all of course and used our therapy sessions to make me think I was imagining things. But I never gaslit myself. I knew something was wrong. His affair “only” lasted two months and the physical component was “only” a week long and, so he claims, never quite made it to being sexual (and yes, I’m defining that terms in the broadest possible sense). But it wasn’t the fact that he made out with her multiple times or even that he came close to sleeping with her once. It’s the fact that he made diner reservations for her, not me. That he sent joking emails to her, not me. That he invited her to go hiking with him, not me. And all the while I was staying home with the two kids, unwittingly facilitating his affair. Girl, that is a punch in the gut, even now.

#4 WHO TO TELL.
I didn’t make it a secret that I was going through the experience of discovering I had been cheated on. That said, I didn’t advertise it either. The reason I didn’t make it a secret is because I knew I’d need people supporting me, and those people needed to know the truth. Also, this is apparently something that happens quite a lot in our society, and I really think that if we just TALKED about it more, a lot of the stigma would be reduced and also people who are tempted to think that cheating is something they can just do on the sly without hurting anyone would disabuse themselves of that bullshit. In the very very beginning, I reached out to two women I barely knew that I knew had been cheated on, seeking their advice. I wouldn’t have had those people to turn to if I didn’t know they had been cheated on. Now, maybe I can be that for someone else who is as desperate as I was.

#5. HOW MY COMMUNITY REACTED
My friends were and continue to be awesome, which really speaks to how amazing my chosen community is. I have surrounded myself with a network of women who are smart and strong, who understand and embrace the sticky messiness if life, and who will respect and support me whether I stay or go. Along with those women come the men and women who love them and are their life partners: people who value self-knowledge and are compassionate and kind. The big disappointment for me was my parents. When things fell apart, I literally couldn’t function. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work, and could not take care of my children. I was in crisis. I really, really, really needed someone to listen without judgement and to physically come in and take care of me and my kids for a while. My parents, who could have done it, chose not to. They wanted to preserve the comfort of their perception of reality and of their routine. So who did step up to take care of me when I was incapacitated? Here's where it gets weird. It was my husband, the man whose selfishness put me in that state. And looking back, that was what first made me consider the possibility of staying.

#6. WHY DID HE DO IT?

I’m lucky because right from the word go (because of work done by feminists and relationship experts like Elle and like Esther Perel), I knew this was 100% because of him and his issues and 0% because of anything that had to do with me. I’m an awesome catch in every way. But it took a while and lots of therapy with a very very good therapist before my husband finally figured out for himself why he essentially blew up his whole life (and mine and that of our kids). In our case, my husband had an affair because he wanted to escape the problems in our marriage, which existed because of a whole lot of crap from his horrible childhood that he had never had the courage to deal with in a healthy way. But instead of being brave and facing the crap and accepting that HE was the problem in our marriage, he instead chose to create a double-life in which he presented himself as a single dad to the (very) young woman who asked him out one day, taking the opportunity when it arose. I had been working diligently and patiently for years to try and make our marriage better but it turns out that the more effort I put in, the less he felt like he needed to try, and the more he felt entitled to take take take. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth? When I discovered his affair, my boundaries came roaring back into place and my healthy sense of entitlement came roaring back. I could literally hear the roaring in my ears as they came back from wherever I had shoved them down to over the years of self-sacrifice. They are all still firmly in place and will never budge again.

#7. WHY HER?

Again, I am soooo lucky that I had very strong resilience going into this. (Which reminds me: read “Resilient” by Rick Hanson. Amazing.) I knew from the beginning that my husband’s affair wasn’t because I lacked something. In fact, when I started to learn about the other woman, it became clear to me that she was inferior to me in every way (except age, if you adhere to our society’s view that youth is superior, and fitness level, where I’m still pretty fit but not compared to someone 13 years younger with no kids who can go to the gym whenever she likes without having to arrange child care). And that was the whole point for my husband. He WANTED someone inferior to me — less confident, less powerful, less accomplished, less educated, less worldly, less well travelled, with lower earning power — because he liked how it made him feel better about himself. Was I making him feel bad about himself in our marriage? Hell, no. I thought he was awesome and sexy and a fantastic dad and told him so all the time. The voice that made him feel inferior wasn’t coming from me, it was coming from inside himself; but he didn’t want to admit that to himself. So what did she, the other woman, have? As Elle wisely says: nothing I want. She is damaged and lacking in confidence and willing to not ask too many questions about why the guy she’s dating kinda still seems to be living with his wife and kids despite his claims that they were separating. Do I want to be like her? Hell, no. The other thing that made him choose her is convenience. She flirted with him. She was available. And would I ever want a man to choose me primarily because I’m available? Duh. No.

#8. PITYING VS. HATING THE OTHER WOMAN.

Some people say you shouldn’t hate the other woman but rather pity her. I say do both! She was instrumental in nearly effing up my children’s lives by wrecking their family. Of course I hate that bitch. That pathetic, pitiable bitch.

#9. DOESN’T SHE CARE THAT SHE RUINED MY FAMILY?

Nope. Because if she did care, she wouldn’t have done it. You’ll never be able to understand how she can live with herself so don’t even try. The answer is that she is completely messed up. Take solace in the fact that you aren’t. You are in pain, but you are not messed up.

#10. STAYING FOR THE KIDS.

I'm not sure if your kids factor into this at all, but they did for me. I’m actually pretty surprised at how rarely I read that kids factor into people’s decisions to give a cheating spouse a second chance or not. Personally, if I didn’t have kids, I would have dumped him immediately. Our marriage was in a terrible state before and I was the one doing all the work to make it stronger. The fact that we had two very young children is the ONLY reason I even contemplated not divorcing him; I was very happy, independent and accomplished before we met and, without kids, and would immediately have gone back to that life. When I discovered his affair I was willing to fight for our family but not for our marriage; he had to fight for that.

#11. MAKING THE HARD HEALTHY CHOICES.

It sounds like you're already doing this, Anonymous. After the first few weeks of shock and body-shaking sobbing and furious anger, I decided that I would have to actively rewire my brain so that the unhealthy stuff didn’t have a chance to create entrenched neural pathways. I knew the anger would poison me. I knew that trolling the OW’s social media would make me hurt more. I knew that drinking a bottle of wine every night was just making things worse. So, I forced myself to make them. And Girl: it sucked. But I did it. When the angry thoughts came in, I actively stopped them and forced my brain to think of my awesome children. When self-pity squeezed me, I forced myself to feel gratitude. When I wanted to check the OW’s Instagram, I forced myself to read a gripping fiction novel instead. Forced myself. Forced. It was an act of will. And Girl, as I did it, it felt like it wasn’t helping at all. I was still so angry. I was still so consumed by the injustice of it all. I still obsessed over her. But I kept on doing it. And thank god I did, because within about 2-3 months, all that stuff just got much, much quieter.

#12. SURVIVING MINUTE TO MINUTE.

You mentioned being in the eye of the storm and struggling badly. To paraphrase Mira Kirshenbaum from her book “I love you but I don’t trust you” (which I found good but inadequate — it’s better for “smaller” betrayals), if you’re asking yourself “how do I survive this pain?” the answer is that you already are surviving it. You are doing it. My advice, if you find a wave of grief crashing down on you, is to enter the texture of the moment, and breathe. Notice the smell of the room. The texture of what you’re sitting on. The saturation of the colours. The many sounds. Stay in the moment. Breathe. The pain will eventually release you. Then, at the end of every day, make a point of being grateful. In your mind, actively relive all the things you experienced during the day that you are grateful for.

#13. WHAT COURAGE LOOKS LIKE.

Make no mistake about it, You are being brave. As a society, by and large, we only value loud courage: the action hero kind of courage. Punching. Shouting. Kicking him out. Calling a lawyer. Going it alone. (We don’t appreciate the phenomenal difficulty that single mothers face every single day, but we do applaud the woman who kicks the bum out.) We don’t value (or even recognize) the silent kinds of courage. The courage to find compassion for yourself and others. The courage to really feel the pain. The courage to stay with someone who has hurt you but is trying like crazy to make amends. The courage to shield our children. The courage of grace. We appreciate things that look physically courageous. We mostly don’t know how to even recognize emotional and spiritual courage. Does it take courage to leave? Yes. Does it take courage to stay? Yes.

#14. YOU GET TO CHOOSE THE WORDS.

As a writer, words are extremely important to me. The words “taking him back” make me feel really uncomfortable. They just don’t reflect my experience. Because “him” – the man who cheated on me – is more or less gone at this point. Instead, over the past year of rocket-fuel-pain-powered growth, my husband has become someone amazingly different. That’s why I prefer these words instead: I’m seeing if I the person I have become might want to have a new marriage with the person he has become. Wordier, yes. But accurate.

All we have is what we are and what we give

We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.

Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

You may have noticed that my blog posts have been less frequent. The past months have been busy. I'm working with a new startup and it is absorbing not just my time but my energy so that even when I find myself with an hour or two, I must try to refuel. Which usually means a hike in the woods. 

I have, however, been trying at least to keep up with the comments, which can often take an hour or two to read, moderate, and respond to. I don't respond to every comment but I try so hard not to miss anyone who is seeking a response, who is clearly in need of someone to say, if nothing more, I see your pain and I know it too. It will pass.

Which is why I'm so grateful when I return here, time-pressed and tired, to see that someone else has stepped in for me. To read someone else's words of comfort to a fellow traveler to these rocky shores. To see the compassion and wisdom extended. In short, you all – my secret sisters – amaze me.

I remain convinced that, while betrayal is excruciating, it is made worse by the loneliness so many of us feel as we suffer it. As one woman put it on this site last week, her shame has kept her silent. And her silence has kept her lonely.

I was lonely. And yes, there was definitely shame that kept me silent though I have since come to understand that the shame was never mine, that betrayal doesn't mean there's something wrong with me but rather that there's something wrong with him. Still...silence. And silence isolated me. Desperate for those who might also know my pain and eager to create a space where we could gather, I created this blog, which has long outgrown the rudimentary technology it was built on. I have become frustrated at my inability to create the opportunity to connect you to each other in a way that doesn't involve me moderating comments – to create a safe way for you to come together in whatever way works for you. To meet in person, or via text, or Messenger, or WhatsApp. I have tried to think through options but none of them make me comfortable as the liaison. 

If there are techies among you who have a potential solution, please share it. I continue to mull over how best to grow this community, to expand my reach, to share what I think this site does so well: Remind others going through the agony of betrayal that they are not alone, that others know and see their pain, that no matter what path they choose, they will be okay. Betrayal isn't the final line of the story. 

And until I am not so busy, please know how grateful I am to those of you who step in to offer comfort, to offer welcome. To those who arrive here with only a broken heart and a story, you are among friends. 

Want your marriage to change? You go first...

As human beings, our greatness lies 

not so much in being able to remake the world...

as in being able to remake ourselves.

~Ghandi

I would have spit on anyone who'd said such a thing to me in the wake of D-Day. At that point, I didn't much care if my marriage survived. I spent sleepless nights fantasizing about smothering my husband with a pillow. I spent restless days imagining my husband dying of a heart attack. Oh, to be free of him. To not have that perennial question hanging over my head – stay or go. To be able to show up at his funeral, the tragic widow. To release myself of having to figure out whether he was worth giving a second chance. To...release myself.
Because, make no mistake, I felt trapped. There were no good options. Only bad and worse. I could stay with a man who had been lying to me, in one form or another, our entire relationship. That seemed a wholly stupid thing to do.
Or to leave and hold myself responsible for fracturing my children's home, even though, in hindsight, the fracture had been his decision, made entirely without my knowledge or consent.
Or to remain in the space between both of those options – neither here nor there. Holding my breath. Waiting for...what exactly? A push? A pull?
It felt like walking a tightrope. It felt like dancing on the head of a pin. One wrong move and something awful would happen. I hadn't a clue what "awful" was but I was terrified of it.
I remained in that state of suspended fear for more than a year. Maybe two.
But – thank god for amazing therapists – my therapist kept working on me. Gently. Slowly. Reminding me that I could not control him. That, yes, he might cheat again. But insisting, again and again, that there was something I could control. Myself.
At first, that truth offered little comfort. So what if I could control myself. That didn't help me feel safe in a marriage with someone who seemed unable to control HIM self. Or unwilling.
But she wouldn't relent. Any belief that we can change others is an illusion, she would tell me. Any belief that we could control others was a fantasy. It had always been. Always.
Gulp.
I hadn't been able to control my mother's addiction. I hadn't been able to control my father's response to her addiction and his own reliance on booze. I hadn't been able to control my brother's anger, his drug use, his violence.
That hadn't stopped me from trying. That hadn't prevented me from showing up, over and over. I was certain that, without me there, my family would descend into chaos, into madness. The idea of not showing up filled me with terror.
But, re-examining that old script, I realized that showing up hadn't stopped the chaos. It had only made me a witness to it. Made me a victim of it. It had traumatized me.
What if, I began to consider, I did it differently this time? What if I accepted that I couldn't change my husband. Even if I couldn't quite accept that was true (old habits die hard), what if I behaved as if it was. What if, instead of focusing on him and what he was doing, I shifted focus to me.
What if I lifted myself off the floor, off the head of that pin, and remade myself?
It felt perilous but it also felt, almost immediately, liberating? To be able to think about me was a luxury I had rarely given myself. To be able to live my life free of expectations felt glorious. Mostly. It also felt highly uncomfortable. I had to consistently remind myself (again, with my therapist's help) that I could live with the discomfort. That I was learning something new. There was still a sense that, at any moment, the other shoe would drop. I still had the words of my alcoholic mother ringing in my ear: "You are selfish. You are self-centred. You think of nobody but yourself."
Those words were intended to keep me small. To keep me quiet. To keep me from asking for anything from anybody.
And they worked. I lived a lifetime of not asking for things. Of waiting for people to notice me. Of denying my needs.
And that's what I was doing in the wake of D-Day. For those two years, I was waiting for my husband to change while refusing to do so myself.
My change wasn't about making myself more worthy of his love and loyalty, it was about making myself more worthy of my own. It was about carving out a life of honesty and integrity. Of asking for what I wanted instead of hoping he'd notice. Of treating myself with respect and refusing to accept disrespect. Of valuing myself and my time and my energy and refusing to waste it on anyone or anything that didn't make my life more meaningful.
I know hearing that you can "change" yourself feels fraught in the wake of D-Day. It can sound like you're being blamed for his cheating. You are not. At least, not by me. As I say again and again, he didn't cheat because there's something wrong with you, he cheated because there's something wrong with him.
Change isn't about making yourself more desirable, or more lovable, or more anything. You are enough.
Rather, change is about taking stock of where you in your life, including your marriage, and realizing that you hold the power to remake the life you want. It may not look the way you thought it would. It may not have certain people in it who have shown themselves unworthy of your love.
But if you can let go of this imagined future in which everyone behaves the way you think they should, you can shape a present in which their behaviour is their business and you determine whether it's part of your life. Once you remake yourself, others will respond to this changed you. They will show you who they are. It might be painful. I lost friends. I released others.
Those that remained are there because they have shown me I am safe with them.
Including my husband. I wasn't the one who changed him. He did that himself when he realized that was the price of admission to my life.
He might not have. He might have chosen to remain unchanged. And all the wishing and waiting and hoping wouldn't have changed that.
And within that realization was change itself.

Thursday Thought

Thursday Thought

Thursday's Thought

Letting the Fire Reshape Our Lives: What Will You Create?

The difference between a good life and a bad life
is how well you walk through the fire.
~Carl Jung

I know how many of you are unhappy. The pain still weighs heavy. The days cast a shadow. Joy feels slippery. 
And though the flames might no longer encircle you, you can still feel their heat. You're not out of the fire yet.
Fire is nothing to be trifled with. It decimates centuries of old-growth trees, it razes entire cities, it kills.
But it also shapes. Fire, of course, forges steel. And so it's possible to use this time of walking through the fire to reshape our lives. 
I know. It's hard enough to get to work, keep the fridge full, and ensure you don't run out of tear-proof mascara. But stay with me for a minute. Cause the people I know who've come out of this fire with lives they love are those who've used it to create necessary but sometimes long-resisted change.
Cause when it's all burned to the ground, it's time for new growth. And that includes you.
Not all at once, of course. No need to tell off your boss, quit your job, sell your house, and finally give your mother-in-law a piece of your mind all in one day.
Instead, as the old adage about eating an elephant goes, you do it one bite at a time. Forget, for the moment, that your marriage feels like it's hanging by a thread: How's the rest of your life going for you? Even before D-Day, did you spring out of bed, excited about the day ahead? Or did life feel like a slog? Did days end with a sigh or relief or ease? 
Ask yourself: Whether or not my marriage survives, what do I want my life to look like? Who do I want to be? How do I want to live? We know you can't control him, right? But you can control you. And that, as we discover through this, is enough.
One friend of mine, whose husband left her for the OW, carved out a new career. She sounds like a warrior, doesn't she? She is. But she's also someone who sat on a park bench, not long after D-Day, considering how best to kill herself. She believed, in that darkness, that everyone would be better off without her. The fire was too much. Except that it wasn't. Not for her. Not for someone willing to walk through it. 
She began to wonder what her reshaped life would look like after surveying the ruins of her marriage – the one she thought would keep her safe, the one that she had trusted to support her as she raised their special-needs child – and realizing that nobody was coming to rescue her. She sent out loads of applications, told everyone she knew that she was looking for a new career, and now loves her job, her family is thriving, and her ex? Well, who cares how he's doing? 
Not all of the reshaping looks so dramatic. Sometimes it's about taking stock of your life and realizing your friends really suck. They make you feel bad about yourself, they gossip about others, and they are nowhere to be seen when you're hurting. Maybe the fire is about reshaping your friendships – spending less time with those people so there's more time for people who make you feel good.
Often (as in almost always), it's about learning how to set and enforce clear boundaries in our lives. No longer agreeing to host in-laws who routinely disrespect you. Refusing to reconcile with a guy who won't go to therapy. 
Sometimes the reshaping is literal. Realizing you've put your health on the back burner while you took care off everyone else. Maybe the fire is about reminding you to prioritize yourself. Three-times-a-week gym visits, a running partner, daily hikes. 
Maybe it's about breathing life into an old dream. Remember how you used to love sewing clothes for your dolls? Or making earrings from polished stones? Or doodling in notebooks? Or writing song lyrics? Or sailing? Or gardening? Or... Or... Or...? What happened to that girl? Oh right. She became so busy making sure everybody else was chasing their dreams that she forgot she had any. 
What if the fire helped shape those dreams? I'm not saying you have to create your own Etsy store (though, why not?). I'm just asking you to make space in your life for what you love too. No asking for permission. No I'll-do-it-when-the-kids-are-grown. Step at a time. 
My point is this: Betrayal surrounds us fire whether we choose it or not. And, as Jung points out, the difference between a good life and a bad one is what we do with that fire. It can consume us or it can burn down the old to inspire new growth. 
What will you create in its wake?

On backsliding, emotional labor, resistance and pie. Plus the two questions you need to ask

M'mmmm...pie. That somebody else made.  It's holiday season, the unofficial time when our secret sisters run themselves ragged trying to model perfection while inside the conversation goes something like this: I thought I was further along than this. I've completely slid backward. I am so triggered and so mad at myself because I need to get nine pies baked. (Seriously. Nine pies. That's a LOT of pie.) Am I never going to get over this? What's wrong with me? Why can't I handle this better? Let me tell you something. It's a full-time job just wading through the devastation wrought by infidelity. And yet, I don't know a single person who was able to just focus on working through the pain. Instead, we're also raising children (which, I might add, is also a full-time job), tending to elderly parents, working our paid jobs, volunteering at the goddamn bake sale to fundraise for Cub scouts, grocery shopping to ensure our family doesn't starve... And baking nine freaking pies for Thanksgiving dinner.  What the hell is wrong with us that we think that's not enough? What is so toxic about our culture that no matter how many balls we have in the air, we're beating ourselves up for not being able to juggle more? Where did we learn that if we're not able to keep everything running smoothly while looking great and simultaneously dealing with the most devastating betrayal in our lives that we're failing? Oh wait...I know where we learned it. In a culture that tells us our worth is directly related to our pants size and our ability to hold onto a man. In a culture in which women's emotional labor is invisible. In a culture in which our visible pain is not to be shown in polite circles. The only correct answer to "how are you?" is "Great!" though "So busy!" is also acceptable as long as it's said with a smile.  But here's the thing, my secret sisters. We don't have to buy into this toxic and insidious bullshit.  Nobody can simultaneously heal from the pain of betrayal while keeping her life running smoothly without sacrificing something crucial: Yourself. How does this sacrifice take place? Piece by excruciating piece. Why can't I be more like her? Why aren't I further along in my healing? Why do I get triggered so easily? Why can't I get over this? Why am I so angry at everyone? Why do I keep screwing up? Why am I so tired? I'll tell you why. Cause this is exhausting difficult painful work.  Want to know the real question you should be asking yourself when you notice that you're tired and frustrated and agitated and angry and sad and numb? What do I need right now? And the next question: How can I give that to myself? Cause there's nothing wrong with you that you're tired and frustrated and angry and agitated and sad and numb. Nothing wrong at all. That is the appropriate response to betrayal. It is the appropriate response to the recognition that your emotional labor – not just healing yourself but taking care of everyone else and making it look easy – is a rigged system. Of course, you're angry. Of course, you're agitated. Of course, you're frustrated and sad and numb. The system is rigged against you. But you don't have to play along. What do I need right now? How do I give that to myself? That isn't letting others down, it's showing them that you recognize your own worth. Which also communicates to them something amazing. That they're worthy too and that they get to value themselves. It gives them the space to ask the same questions: What do I need right now? How do I give that to myself? There's nothing wrong with you that you're still being triggered two years out, five years out, seven years out. There's nothing wrong with you that the holidays are really really hard. There's nothing wrong with you that you're freaking exhausted at even the thought of baking NINE pies. Or one pie, for that matter. Pies are a lot of work! There's nothing wrong with you. Full stop. Nothing. What do I need right now? How can I give it to myself? Two questions. And the answers are so often simple.  Harder is silencing the resistance to those answers. I need a nap. (Oh, but resistance says you don't have time to nap. You need to tidy up, set the table, buy presents.) I need to cry. (Oh, but resistance says crying is pathetic. Besides, you should be over this by now.) I need a few days alone. (Oh, but resistance says how selfish of you to take time away when there are kids who need feeding, dishes that need washing. That Christmas tree isn't going to put itself up, you know.) It's so hard to fight back against that resistance. But that's our work. To value ourselves. To value others enough to take care of ourselves so that we can show up for them as our best selves. To understand that we're not doing anyone any favours by dragging resentment along with us. I'll say it again for those in the back. There is nothing wrong with you. Healing will take longer than you think. Even with healing, you will have triggers. There will be times when you think you're backsliding. There will be times when you think you've made the wrong choice, no matter what that choice was. There will be days (weeks!) when you wonder if you've made a horrible mistake.  What do I need right now? How do I give it myself? Life has a way of sorting itself out if we just keep showing up as best we can. With our armour put away because we don't need it. Trusting ourselves to keep ourselves safe. With our hearts open. Not necessarily with nine pies. Or even one.  Unless baking pie is what you need right now. For the rest of us, that's what bakeries are for.