Betrayed Wives Club is Moving to Beehiiv!!

 Hey Betrayeds,

On Tuesday, September 29, 2009, I posted three blog entries, my first of what would become 1,178 posts, which would garner 5,694,079 views by readers, 32,630 comments, and 632 loyal followers who signed up to receive notifications of each new post. 

It was closing in on three years when I first created the site and during that three years, though I'd had a fabulous therapist and was starting to feel the earth beneath my feet solidify a bit more each day, I nonetheless felt profoundly lonely. And that's the thing with betrayal. Yes, it's excruciating and confusing and discombobulating ... but it's also isolating. We just don't talk about it, not even, sometimes, with our closest friends. And I was desperate to talk about it. I wanted to know how others were dealing with it: Was I the only one who experienced crazy sex with my husband after finding out about his affair? (Nope.) Was anyone else blinded and scared by just how angry they got? (Yep.) And so the conversation began. And it went on for about a decade and included a book and a three-day retreat where a dozen of us gathered in North Carolina to meet in person and lean into the relief of being with others who know exactly what we've gone through — what we continue to go through — and with whom we could be completely honest. 

And then, well, Covid hit. And I began working full-time for a media company after 25 years of freelancing. And Betrayed Wives Club languished. But every now and again, I would duck back in and see that people continued to come to the site. They continued to post their stories on the site. There's something about Betrayed Wives Club, the site I created to address my own isolation, that fed a hunger out there.

And so ... I've come to the decision to resurrect Betrayed Wives Club but as a newsletter on Beehiiv. It will give me a chance to deliver posts right into your inbox and to create a tiered system of subscriptions that will allow me to earn some income and step away from my full-time job to free up the time to give to BWC. (I will always ensure that BWC is free to those who need it to be.)

As I work with another Betrayed Wives Club member with whom I've become friends over the years to create this new version, I hope you'll consider signing up. It will be a few weeks until it's up and running.

In the meantime, please comment below with your thoughts and ideas of what worked for you with this site and what you'd like more of/less of.

I am eternally grateful to all of you with whom I've been on this terrible, brutiful, liberating ride. See you soon.

Love,

Elle

What does a genuine "I'm sorry" sound like?

There are a zillion ways to say "I'm sorry" but there are few ways to do it well. I've heard plenty of bad ways. There was the time my sister-in-law apologized for refusing to allow my baby to sleep in their (as-yet-unborn) child's crib by telling me that, yes, she was sorry but that I didn't pay as much attention to their (now born) child as I should so, really, it was a draw.
There was the "I'm sorry I slept with your boyfriend and betrayed our friendship but you were a horrible girlfriend to him and therefore sort of deserve this" apology from one of my closest friends that came in the form of a seven-page letter outlining the ways in which she was sorry but, really, not.
There was my husband's "I'm sorry but you're really making a big deal out of this" apology when his mother, at our wedding, began rearranging the seating for my guests in order to move her friends closer to the action. (And, incidentally, I never did get an apology from her.)
So yeah...lots of lousy apologies. Plenty of non apologies.
There was, however, also my mother's apology, after getting sober, which has pretty much set the bar for apologies in my life because it was heartfelt and did what an apology should do, according to Lux Alptraum, author of Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex—and the Truths They Reveal.
Alptraum suggests that an apology has three parts (she's referring in this case to the apology owed to us by tech companies that have violated public trust but hey, an apology is an apology, whether from Facebook or our mother-in-law). According to her, “A good apology says, number one, ‘This was bad, I recognize this was bad, and you are perfectly within your right to be hurt and angry and upset.’ Number two, a good apology says not just that harm was caused but that the harm was someone’s responsibility. And, ideally, number three, it shows growth and commitment to repair.”
My mother's apology (which she made more than once) generally went like this: "I am so sorry for the pain I caused you. If I could take back those days, I would. You should never have been put in that position. I'm doing everything I can to get better."
Accompanying her apology was also action. I saw how many AA meetings she was attending, I was privy to the reading she was doing to learn about addiction and sobriety. I knew that, as part of the 12-step philosophy, she wrote letters to others to "make amends".  
An apology can never undo the pain caused. And none of us are obliged to accept an apology. Sometimes an "I'm sorry" barely scratches the surface of the pain that's been caused. Consider a rapist or a murderer, a drunk driver or...an unfaithful husband.
But apologies can be a crucial first step.
And, done well, they can be a balm to our broken hearts.

With Friends Like These...

Don't stress over people in your past. There's a reason they didn't make it to your future.
~Anonymous

My hiking partner had been uncharacteristically quiet for a few hikes. She kept the conversation light. We talked birds and deer, engagement party plans for her niece, the weather.
And then she said she told me something that she had been avoiding talking about because she was so angry with herself. It involved a woman she thought was her friend. This "friend" had hired my friend's husband to renovate their bathroom. (This isn't going where you think it is but bear with me.) And then the problems began. This "friend" wasn't happy with the budget, she complained about fixtures, she insisted that the workers had damaged some belongings. The complaints mounted. A supplier told my friend's husband that he thought this woman was scamming him.
By the time the job was finished, my friend's husband hadn't made a dime and had suffered many stress headaches.
And my friend felt completely betrayed by this "friend". Who does that? she asked me. I sighed.  Well...
I used to be like my friend. A "friend" would pull something shitty – she'd gossip about me, or exclude me from something, or accuse me of something I didn't do.
And I'd wonder what I'd done wrong to be so misunderstood.
A decade ago, when my world was collapsing around me thanks to infidelity, a "friend" turned on me around the same time. We were organizing a fundraiser together, divvying up duties according to our strengths and available time. And then the weirdness began. I would open my computer in the morning to long protracted e-mails about how I was "sabotaging" the event, how I wasn't a "team player". I felt blindsided. I was doing this volunteer gig – which had been my idea – while finishing up a big paid assignment. I didn't yet know my marriage was imploding but the storm clouds were gathering. I hadn't the time, energy or inclination to deal with asinine accusations.
So I didn't. I put my head down and did my work. And then, when it was over, I told her I needed a break from our friendship.
It was long overdue.
And that's the thing with toxic "friends". There's usually evidence that they're trouble, evidence that we often overlook or excuse. And there are inevitably other people in these "friends'" lives with whom they also have trouble. Toxic people can often fool those around them for a period of time. Sometimes years. But, eventually, people wise up.
When my hiking partner looked more closely at her "friend", she found a past littered with people who'd been similarly screwed over.
When I look at the "friends" who've turned out not to be, they've always ALWAYS had problems with other people.
In other words, it's not me. It's her.
That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, of course. Being rejected, lied to, betrayed by, or accused of is painful, especially when it's by someone we let into our life. Someone we thought was our friend.
But resist the urge to take the blame. See if there's a pattern in this "friend's" life that makes you not so much an exception but another in a line of suckers.
Your future should hold only people who've made the cut. And make sure the bar is high.

Want to join your BWC friends for a "showing up" on the North Carolina shores (no "retreat" for us!)? Check out My Heartbreak, My Rules, My Healing, a weekend of sharing our stories, making space for our healing and showing up in our lives. Space is limited. 

Accepting Isn't the Same as Liking

I'm convinced we can't move forward from betrayal until we've accepted it. I can imagine you reading that line and having a visceral reaction. Accept it? your all likely shouting at your computer. I have to accept his lies? I have to accept his absences? I have to accept that this is okay?

No. That is not at all what I'm suggesting though I've little doubt that I would have heard it exactly that way back in my early days post-bomb-going-off-in-my-life.

I also know that I spent a whole lot of time cursing what had happened to me. I spent a whole lot of time rehearsing what I should have said or done differently to have created a different outcome. I spent a whole lot of time nursing my pain. Days. Weeks. Months. Maybe even a year or two.

And then, eventually, I realized that wasn't working. All the wishing that things were different, all the imagining that if I was different, if he was different, if we were different, if my parents were different – you get the idea – wasn't making a bit of difference in my life, except keeping me stuck in a state of wishful thinking. 

It wasn't helping me heal. 

What finally made a difference was accepting that there was no way, no how, that I was going to be able to undo my husband's cheating. This was my life and I'd darn well better figure out what I was going to do with it.

The whole nasty package had arrived at my door and it didn't matter that I didn't want to sign for it. 

It was mine.

But lord, it felt awful. Finally accepting that this was my life didn't feel good at all. It felt like defeat. It felt like failure. 

But that's what often gets in the way of acceptance. We think accepting what happened is the same as liking it. We hear those people who say "my husband's affair was the best thing that happened to me" and we think to ourselves, no way, no how. That's crazy talk. Best thing? You've got to be kidding me. It was hell. It knocked me on my ass. Nope. Not buying it. 

But acceptance isn't just "my husband's affair was the best thing that happened to me". Sometimes acceptance is a long deep sigh before signing up for a new class. It might be telling a close friend what's really going on in your marriage. It could include calling a lawyer and asking him to draw up a separation agreement. It might also be the resolve to finally stop looking at the Other Woman's social media accounts.

However acceptance looks in your life, I promise you it's a crucial step on your path to healing from betrayal. It might feel horrible. It might feel as though you're giving up, that you've abandoned any hope of having a better past. And to some extent, that's exactly what it is. It's about recognizing that there is nothing – nothing! – you can do or imagine or rehearse that will change what's happened to do. You might not want to sign for the package but it's there, at your door, and it's not going anywhere.

But here's where acceptance is a gift. It frees up all that energy that you've been using to try and rewrite your past for reimagining your future. It gives you the space and clarity you need to look at your life, right now, exactly the way it is, and take steps, your Next Right Step, toward a better future.  It reminds us that, as my friend says, all we can ever do is keep our side of the street clean. And that's all we ever need to do.

Acceptance doesn't at all mean that what happened to you was okay. It will never be okay. But it does mean that YOU will be okay. 

I recently heard Tim Storey on a podcast talking about how a comeback isn't the same as a go-back. A comeback, he explained, is the result of accepting where you are in life and developing a resilience, a way of moving forward. A go-back, conversely, is exactly what it sounds like: a backward look that keeps us mired in what happened.

We often need time to digest betrayal. Nobody needs to take immediate action. But when you realize that you've remained stuck, that you're living in some suspended state of wishfulness, then it's time to un-stuck yourself.

And acceptance just might be the solution. 

I'm certain about uncertainty

We have, says the brilliant Rebecca Solnit, “a desire to make certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable, to turn the flight across the sky into the roast upon the plate, to classify and contain.” 
She's referring to art and culture but her observation, of course, applies to life. 
Humans hate uncertainty.
And we betrayed wives especially hate uncertainty. It dogs us as we try to move through the pain.
"But what if I stay and he cheats again?" 
"What if I regret staying?" 
"What if I leave and then regret it?" 
"What if I leave and he ends up with her?"
Oh, for a crystal ball that will make our choice clear.

We're not alone, of course. My 18-year-old, finishing up her first year at university, is desperate for certainty. She wants to know that her major will lead to a good job. She wants to know that the guy she likes likes her back. She wants to know that she'll succeed at the summer job she's landed. She, like all of us, just wants to know. Certainty.
For her, of course, the stakes feel impossibly high. "This is the rest of my life!" she points out to me in frustration, in response to my "take it one step at a time" urging. 
Thing is, it's not the rest of her life. It's right now.
Five years from now, her life might look very different. One year from now, her like might look very different. Opportunities will have come her way that she can't imagine. Doors might have shut that seemed like sure things. Friends will have come and gone. Dreams will have been shaped.
And the same holds true for you.
Betrayal exposes something we had cleverly hidden from ourselves: Life is uncertain. People are unpredictable. Promises can be broken.
And while betrayal's impact extends far beyond garden-variety disappointment, it's an impact that many many of us experience. There are, literally, millions of us going through the same pain. 
There's comfort in that, whether we see it or not. The millions surviving this are proceeding to live despite the realization of how uncertain any of our futures are. 
For me, learning to proceed in the face of such uncertainty, meant getting comfortable with it. It meant understanding that I'd really been living with it all along. That this idea I had –that a marriage vow was intractable – was an illusion. Had always been. We can never ever be certain about anyone, even when that person is standing in front of us promising fidelity and honesty and 'til death do us part.' 
Sounds harsh, I know. But it's become a form of liberation for me. Understanding that being with my husband is a choice, every single day, makes me more grateful for his presence. Knowing that I could leave tomorrow, and so could he, makes our time more precious. 
And that understanding has held for so many of life's uncertainties. My 88-year-old father is on borrowed time, despite his health. But I have him today.
Journalism, my chosen career, is a shaky field at the moment. But I have work today. 
I only need to know where I want to be today. I only need to know what I want today. And then to set about living that choice. 
Nobody can promise you anything further because people are complicated. We're unpredictable. Life is complicated and unpredictable. And certainty is an illusion no matter how real we thought it was. 

Do you need to be "reasonable" after betrayal?

There was a conversation on this site in one of the threads about what's "reasonable" for us to expect of our partners after discovering his affair(s). It was phrased something along the lines of "what's reasonable for me to be able to ask him to do."
I responded with something like this: when someone is asking for your forgiveness, then you get to set the terms of that.
But what I think I should have written was:
"He's asking you to forgive a choice he made, in which you weren't consulted, and that was a direct threat to you, your marriage, your family and your health. It's "reasonable" to expect you not to kill him. Anything else is on the table."
Or, as Steam puts it,

"My heartbreak, my rules."

I sometimes think that all our discussion on this site (damn, we're mature!) around boundaries, around acknowledging his pain, around learning to listen to each other, being curious rather than judgemental can eclipse this basic rule of rebuilding a marriage after betrayal: You get to set the terms of reconciliation. He's asking you to forgive something that is a brutal violation of the promise you made to each other. Why shouldn't you get to decide what you need in order to do that.
Do you need to read every single text that comes in? Do you need him to let you know where he is throughout the day? Do you need a GPS on his phone that you can monitor? Do you need proof that he's established No Contact with the OW? This isn't about setting up a police state, it IS about creating an atmosphere in which you begin to feel safe and in which you begin to rebuild trust.
Let's say it again: He's asking you to forgive him for lying to you, for being deceptive, for jeopardizing everything that matters to you and for jeopardizing your health.
If the price he has to pay is to feel like an errant 8-year-old for a few months, strikes me that he's getting off pretty easy.
Infidelity remains one of the most misunderstood issues in our culture. Nobody thinks it will affect them as profoundly as it does. It kicks us hard and leaves us for dead. And while the world blithely goes on with "well, if my husband ever cheated on me blah blah blah" or "maybe they just have an open marriage" or "I think she's a real nag to him", the rest of us are dealing with the real-life consequences of discovering that the one person in the world you thought would always have your back was, in fact, stabbing you in it.
Reasonable? Let's say it again, it's reasonable to expect you not to kill him. Everything else is on the table.
Your heartbreak, your rules. 

Be Curious: Part 2 of "How to have a tough conversation"

Curiosity might kill the cat. But it won't kill you. 

My husband and I often walk our dogs at night, after the dinner dishes have been cleared away and kids are busy with homework. Sometimes we talk about our day. My eyes glaze over as he talks about the economic indicators in China or some such. I suspect his do the same as I express my outrage with 45's latest attack on climate science or women's reproductive rights or basic human decency.
Other times we broach tougher topics and then he says something...stupid. Wrong. Woefully uninformed. Or at least that's my assessment of it. My heart beats faster. My voice goes up a pitch. I wonder, briefly, what I'm doing with this idiot.
It might have been about how to manage our daughter's struggles at school. It might have been about a bathroom renovation we're planning. It might have been about something on this site that I mentioned in order to get his input.
Whatever it was, he gave me a stupid answer.
Or was it?
When others present me with information that differs from my own views of things, I become curious instead of angry. In fact, I make my living as a journalist and I'm often confronted with people who hold different opinions than I. I don't immediately write them off as losers. Instead, I ask questions. "Why do you think that?" I might ask. "How did you reach that conclusion?" I might ask. "Where do you get your information?" I might probe. "That's interesting," I might say. "Tell me more."
I began to wonder if that approach might work with my husband. I wanted to be able to talk with him about things – all things – without the immediate impulse to call a divorce lawyer.
It was hard at first. I had to bite my tongue. Hard.
But the more I learned about his thinking, the more I realized that those "stupid" opinions he had weren't so stupid because I understood how he'd reached them. His "dumb" response to problems wasn't so dumb when I discovered that he was struggling too, that he didn't have all the answers and he was just searching in the dark like the rest of us.
And when I was able to just be curious with him, I gave him the freedom to not have all the answers, which has always been his own issue. He has trouble saying "I don't know" so he rarely does. With my probing, he sometimes had to own up to the truth that he didn't know. That he couldn't know because he didn't have all the information he needed. We began to collaborate more on solutions. I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he said something "stupid" and gave him the opportunity to explain his point of view.
And...whattaya know? Turns out he's a decent, smart, open-minded guy with some great ideas, something I had sometimes forgotten about him.
Whether you're staying together or moving on separately after betrayal, chances are there are going to be some tough conversations in your future. It can feel like a minefield. You lay your heart on the line and he says something "stupid". You share your pain and he shuts you down. Our knee jerk response is to withdraw. Or to lash out. Or to put a divorce lawyer on speed dial.
But what if you tried curiosity? Do your best to detach and not take it so personally (I know, I know. It takes a lot of practice!)  "Why do you say that?" you might say. "What makes you think that?" you might say. "Why is it hard for you to hear that?" you might ask. "What is you need from me right now?" Even "can we set a time to talk about this later? I think it's important."
He might not have the answers. But you've opened the door to them.
And if his responses reveal a decent guy who's confused, then that's good to know. Even if they reveal a not-so-decent guy who isn't the least bit interested in learning more, that's good information to have. Get the lawyer on speed dial.
But no matter how it turns out, you'll have more information than you started with. And you can use that information to help you navigate your path through this pain.

How to have a tough conversation

Our trip had not started off well. My husband was overworked and grumpy. I was overtired and resentful. I had a laundry list of things that had been building up that I wanted to talk to him about but hadn't found the time.
Neither of us had been doing any self-care and our attitudes showed it.
We snarked at each other in the airport. He snapped at the kids. I chastised him for snapping at the kids.
We might have been heading to a tropical paradise but none of us seemed very happy about it.
Two days in, we finally found ourselves alone on the beach. It would have been easy to tell myself that now wasn't the time. That I should just enjoy the breeze and the sunshine.
I swallowed hard. "I need you to listen to me," I said.

So often on this site, I read your stories of being triggered. You suddenly find yourself in a situation that takes you right back to a terrible moment. You hear a song. You spot a certain make of car. You pass a restaurant or a motel or a massage parlour. And it feels like a kick in the gut. You have trouble breathing. Your throat constricts. Your heart, literally, aches.
There's not much we can do about triggers but wait them out. But what we can do is have those tough conversations with our partners about them.
It's tempting to not bring them up. Our partners, especially if they're still new to this "tough conversation" stuff, will almost inevitably disappoint us with their response. They'll get defensive. They'll try and shut us down. They'll ask us if we're ever going to "get over this". They'll get silent. They might get angry.
All of those are countermoves and are the response of someone feeling deep shame. Someone who just wants this to go away.
We know that doesn't work.
Have the tough conversation anyway.
Even if you're the only one talking, have the tough conversation.
"I need you to listen to me."
"I want you to know something."
"It matters to me that you know this because I need support."
"I'm hurting and I need to share that with you."
However you phrase it, give words to your pain.
Not to make him feel bad (though that might be an inevitable part of this) but because he's your partner and you're going through this together.
Not to cast blame but to seek support and compassion.
It takes practice. If he responds in a way that's disappointing or hurtful, talk about it. Tell him you don't want to hear excuses. That you don't want to be talked out of your feelings. Tell him he doesn't even need to say a thing. Tell him that this was tough for you and that you need a friend right now. That's it. A friend. Not a therapist and certainly not a defence attorney.
It's fraught, of course. The person you most want to help you through is the person responsible for the pain you're in.
But that's the reality of it. And you can both use these tough conversations to pull closer to each other. Or you can avoid them and leave the wall up between your hearts.
But you cannot rebuild a healthy marriage without, eventually, learning how to have these tough conversations. Without learning to really hear each other's pain.

Fighting back tears, I proceeded to tell my husband how his attitude sometimes hurts me and the kids. I stuck to "me" statements. "I feel hurt when..." "The kids feel frustrated when..."
I pointed out that he seemed so annoyed with me. That I feel small and stupid.
He listened. He simply didn't realize how his stress came out as annoyance with me. That wasn't at all how he felt.
He shared some of his own frustrations with work, with our kids, with me. I listened to him.
By the time he got up to get us a couple of margaritas a half-hour later, I felt 20 pounds lighter.
Pain is heavy.
It doesn't always work out quickly easily. Sometimes we need to take a break and walk away and come back to the conversation a day or two later. Sometimes it takes each of us some time to really digest what the other is saying. Old habits die hard and we get defensive. Simple truth is we don't want to hear about the other's pain, especially when it triggers our own shame in creating it.

But...marriage is tough. Marriage after betrayal is especially tough. And having these tough conversations can create a foundation beneath you that will hold you both up as you move forward. Being able to listen and say little more than "I'm so sorry you had to go through that" or "If I could go back in time and un-do this, I would" or "Thank you for sharing that with me. What do you need from me?" goes a long way toward shoring up that foundation.
It takes courage on your part to start that tough conversation. You will feel unbearably vulnerable. You will feel naked. Your heart will be exposed.
But the alternative is a cop out that only disguises your pain but does nothing to validate it.

You'll never get over this. And that's a good thing.

I was never going to get over the pain of betrayal. Not because I didn't want to. But because I couldn't fathom a day when the constant gnawing pain of what my husband did wouldn't be part of me. I imagined it would lessen, sure. But like a long-ago injury, I figured it would remain at the very least a dull ache. Worse on some days than others. But never ever gone.
It's a common fear. That the pain we feel in the wake of betrayal will be something we carry with us forever. And, I suppose, in some ways it is. It does stay with us. But not in the way we imagine.
It stays with us each time we hear about a woman discovering a partner's affair. In that moment, we know her pain in a way that we wouldn't have understood before it happened to us. In that moment, we can reach out to her and take her hand in a way we wouldn't have been able to before. To assure her that she's going to be okay. That she did nothing to deserve this betrayal. That, no matter what happens to her marriage, she is worth fighting for.
It stays with us in the way we remember to never take things for granted. In the way we're able to appreciate the joy in our lives because we never expected to feel that way again. Not ever. So it's sweeter for being unexpected. Sweeter for knowing it won't last. We now know that no feeling lasts forever. Not hurt. Not joy.
It stays with us at weddings when we see wide-eyed couples blithely promise each other that they will forsake all others. We remember that we said those things too. We probably even meant them, if we'd really thought them through. But we know now that promises get broken. That marriage isn't about what was promised that day but the promises we make to each other every day that follows. Promises backed up by hard choices.
It stays with us at funerals when we see, more clearly than at almost any other time, that it's our relationships with those who love us that matters more than anything else. Nobody's sports car shows up at the funeral. Nobody's bank account shows up, or the credentials at the end of their name. What shows up are the people to whom you mattered. The people whose lives will be emptier for the loss of you.
The pain of betrayal shows up when life knocks us down. When we don't get the job. When we're ignored or rejected. When we put on weight. When we get the diagnosis. When we feel stupid for trying. For a moment, we give in to those old beliefs: We're unlovable. We're not enough. Good things are for other people. But then we're reminded of us what betrayal taught us as we healed from its devastation. That we're so much stronger than we ever knew. That we have always been worthy, always been enough, have always deserved good things. That another's inability to see our value is their failure, not ours.
I'm "over this" in that I don't awake with a knot in my stomach and a dread of the day ahead. I'm "over it" in that I don't fantasize about my husband's death or the brutal murder of the OW. I'm "over it" in that I don't often think about the betrayal itself. But what the betrayal taught me is with me always. I carry those lessons in my heart and they are as much as part of me as what I've learned from being a parent or a daughter or a friend.
I will never stop being a betrayed wife. It's not the whole of who I am but healing from that pain cannot be separated from who I am. There is no part of me where the pain stopped and the old unbetrayed me remained.
I laugh again in a way I never thought I could. I have fun and feel good and celebrate my life in a way I never thought I could.
But I also remember in a way that I always will. I remember that people I love can profoundly disappoint me. I remember that I can only ever control myself and that's all I've ever been able to control, despite my beliefs to the contrary. I remember that I have a deep reservoir of strength that will get me through and that, when it's almost depleted, there is an army of women who will hold me up until I can fight for myself again.
I will never get over that because it was so unexpected – this anonymous support from some women I hardly knew and others I've never met. And it's one of the great lessons of my life.

Wednesday Word Hug

Wednesday Word Hug

This was sent to me by my 18-year-old who recognized its truth. 

You are worthy. You are lovable. You are enough.

What is to be done?

"So what is to be done? It was the question at the core of al the questions I had been asking. Life is suffering. There is no way around it. The human condition – the knowledge of this – drives many of us to drink, to drugs, to denial, to running as fast as we can away from the truth of life's fragility. We think we can shore ourselves up. If only we work hard enough, make lots of money, are good and kind enough, pray hard enough, we will somehow be exempt. Then we discover that no one is exempt. What is to be done?"
~Dani Shapiro, Devotion: A Memoir

What is to be done? I roamed my house, wringing my hands and muttering "what do I do?" over and over and over.
The notion of simply being was, at that point, utterly foreign to me. I was a doer. I was a survivor. I was a roll-up-your-sleeves and get to work-er. 
But the pain of betrayal? What is to be done?
Well...perhaps nothing. Not at first. While it might be worth showing the door to an unrepentant cheater, one who responds by blaming you, threatening you, or for whom the betrayal of you was just one more incident in a long list of abuse. Clearing your home of such a toxic person is good first step.
But for the many others of us, for whom the cheating blindsides us because, "my husband would never do that to me", we're on shifting ground. We feel we should be doing something but...what?
Kicking him out feels like self-sacrifice. After all, we meant our vows. We love this idiot man.
Letting him stay feels like surrender. How can we ever get past this?
But surely, we think, we should do something.
I don't think so.
I think giving ourselves permission to just be with our pain, to take the time to fully absorb this shock can be incredibly powerful. And liberating. Freeing ourselves to do something only when that something feels more clear strikes me as far wiser than reacting simply because we feel we must. Our society dismisses those who ponder and weigh and values the quick-responders. The doers. We need to get past that bias.
There are many things you'll have the chance to do, once you figure out your next right step. And that's all you need to know in the short term. Your next right step. Which might look like a bathrobe and cup of tea. It might look like a visit to a divorce lawyer. It might look like a walk in the woods. 
What is to be done? Self-care. Compassion for yourself. Kindness. Gentleness. A chance to forgive yourself for any missteps along the way. A chance to love yourself fully, to finally realize that you are enough and have always been enough. To learn that another's inability to see your true value is about his blindness. To recognize that we can't protect ourselves from all suffering but we can refuse to blame ourselves for it. 
And then, when you're ready, you can roll up your sleeves and embrace a life without him, or you can get into the trenches and begin rebuilding a marriage all the stronger for the storms it has weathered. 
That is what is to be done. 

Healing 101: Awesome advice about continued contact with the OW

I just read this post by Fragments of Hope on the Feeling Stuck forum and was struck by how straightforward and wise it was. I'm re-posting here so that many more will read it and benefit. Thanks, FOH, for this. I say it often but I'll say it again: The compassion and support I see every single day on this site, as you rush to tend to each other's pain, is incredible. I'm grateful for each one of you who makes this place such a powerful, healing place to be.

FOH here...

 (Like many here, I discovered my husband was in contact again a few months later and you asked how I dealt with it. Firstly I just want to say how sorry I am you are going through this, it is horrendous, changes us and takes a long time to get through. It is a betrayal that goes to the very core of us. Keep reading the blog posts and the advice from everyone here and let us help you through it. In answer to your question, the second betrayal (though he was just in touch as friends, not romantically) almost finished us off in more ways than one. If he had come clean that she had contacted him and that he responded and kept in touch (though he was telling her nothing would happen) it would have actually helped us hugely. Instead it felt to me that even though he had seen how hurt I was I didn't give a damn, that he had learned nothing about lying and so on. From his perspective (and so many betraying spouses) he had not fully worked through what she had been for him (and in many cases it's an ego boost or escape from depression and life pressures). There is a huge addictive factor with these affairs, they press the serotonin button and make people feel good and they want to keep pressing the button. Add to that the guilt they feel when they finally wake up to your pain and they are in real danger of turning to something to assuage their guilt and numb the pain (and quite often they go back to their happy place - the OW. It's like the fix they can't get away from, like drugs or alcohol. Affairs are (mostly) not about love, they are about feeling good and, sadly, for the OW, it's all about the feeling, not about the person. My husband was thinking of starting a new life with the OW but when I asked him he couldn't tell me anything about HER he really admired. Anyhow, you are at the early stages, what you need to know now is that your husband needs counselling to see what function the OW had for him, you need clear boundaries, transparency - where he is, devices and so on. It's like keeping an eye on an alcoholic. Your husband needs to do a hell of a lot of work on himself to find appropriate ways of filling any gaps such as gaps in self-esteem, loneliness, sense of (career or life) failure. He needs to give 300 percent to you to make you believe that you are important to him. If he hesitates at any of this, remind him that this is for both of you, to help you stay together, for a good marriage, for your girls, to help him be a man of honour and good values. It is not to punish him or make him feel guilty. He needs to commit himself to reparation - making good what has been destroyed. In the first few months I was flailing around and was not aware of what might happen. You have this place as a sounding board and your husband would benefit from being aware of the real mechanics of an affair and the work he can do. I wish you well with it.

Healing from Betrayal: How Feeling Sad Can Bring Back Happy

As a child, sad was my default mood. I was sad about orphans. I was sad about hurt animals. I was sad about dirty rivers and smoggy skies. And I was especially sad that my beloved mom had been swallowed by my addicted mom. 
So when I grew up, moved away and began to create my own world  – which included volunteer work to mix some sweat with my sadness and consequently make the world and my mood a little bit better – I was able to shake off that sadness like a coat that no longer fit.
Enter D-Day...and the sadness was back. Well, okay it was preceded by the rage – both expressed outwardly and inwardly – but eventually sadness settled over me like a cloud. I gave up thinking I could ever be happy and chastised myself for thinking I even deserved to be. 
That first year post D-Day was...sad. I felt trapped in a marriage I didn't want to be in because I felt neither physically nor emotionally strong enough to leave. I convinced myself that my happiness came second to my children's. The martyr role had always been one I sought out and I played it to the hilt, telling my husband that I was sacrificing my own future for the chance to give my children the stable childhood I had been denied. You could almost hear the violins playing the background.
Not to downplay my very real pain. We all know how deep the wound of betrayal goes. And how slow the healing.
Eventually I determined that I was going to rebuild our marriage. That first year had given me a good look at my husband as a man dedicated to making amends. He attended 12-step groups, he spent hours in counselling, he supported me in whatever I needed. 
But though I felt myself loving him, I still felt...sad. That was, if I was feeling anything at all. I'd become so adept at numbing myself to the agony I'd felt that, much of the time, I felt very little at all. I could pretend I was normal. Laugh at the right moments, sigh at the right moments, feign engagement with the wider world. But inside, I was getting scared. I wondered if emotions could die. I wondered if my heart was no longer capable of feeling the highs and lows of life. But mostly I wondered if I was destined to experience life through the lens of a pale gray sadness forever.
My husband urged me to try EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It seems a bit like hocus pocus. A trained therapist talks you through traumatic experiences while either guiding your eyes in a repetitive back-and-forth or rhythmically tapping on your hands or legs. Some use a buzzer. 
It's a therapy based on awareness that animals in the wild seem to recover quickly from trauma. To put it in the most simple terms, a zebra, for instance, that is chased by a predator, watches another zebra get eaten, relatively quickly is restored to a regular heartbeat and behaviour. Scientists theorized that the bilateral stimulation of walking played a role. Further research led to EMDR. 
The idea, my therapist explained, is to access memory stored as trauma and, essentially, refile it in a part of the brain that feels a greater control over the experience.  The website describes it as removing a block that's in the way of emotional healing.
However it's described, I couldn't quite believe it worked. And not only did it work on my trauma around my husband's betrayal, it worked on memories I'd buried so well, I hardly thought about them though they were no doubt festering deep down, like a forgotten splinter. What came bubbling to the surface was much of my childhood pain around losing my mother to addiction even while she was alive. I remembered a sexual assault I'd experienced in my early 20s, one that I'd held myself accountable for (what kind of idiot believes a guy when he says all your friends are joining him back at his place for a party...only to find out you were the only one invited! An "idiot" who takes people at their word, which is to say, not an "idiot" at all), and one I'd never breathed to a soul. I worked through the pain of my best friend betraying me at 24. 
I felt lighter than I'd felt in years. Free of so much sadness. Liberated from so much self-blame.
Better than that, I was able to access all those other emotions I'd forgotten felt so great. As my therapist explained, when we put the lid on pain in order to avoid feeling it, we also bottle up everything else, like joy and contentment and satisfaction. We don't get to be selective in what we bury and what we don't. By going back in and wrestling with the pain, I opened the way for all that good stuff too.
I still, of course, feel sadness. But I also feel joy. I feel contentment. I feel anger and satisfaction and desire and envy and pride. I feel the full range of human emotions. 
Including a deep love for that little girl who found the world unbearably sad. 
Count me among the supporters of EMDR. If you feel stuck, consider giving it a try. If you can't afford it (and it can be expensive), get out and walk every day. There's much evidence that the bilateral stimulation of walking can also excavate those buried feelings, letting them bubble to the surface where you can process them, reminding yourself that you're safe now, that you are strong enough to handle pain. And knowing that, behind that pain, lays a world of rich color and emotion that's worth fighting for. 

Wednesday Word Hug

There's good anger and bad anger. Here's how to tell them apart

"[Anger] diverts one’s thoughts from the real problem to something in the past that cannot be changed. It makes one think that progress will have been made if the betrayer suffers, when, in reality, this does nothing to solve the real problem. It eats up the personality..., it impedes useful introspection. It becomes its own project.... Far from being required in order to shore up one’s own self-respect, anger actually impedes the assertion of self-respect in worthwhile actions and a meaningful life.~Martha Nussbaum, philosopher 

Anger. To those of us following the news, it seems the world is fuelled by it. And why not? There's plenty to be angry about. An economy that, even with figures that show it improving, has left many behind. A rapidly shifting world that requires us to shift with it or wither. A news cycle that churns out many dozens of stories daily, each capable of inspiring outrage, from garden-variety mud-slinging among politicians to a recognition that the world holds little hope for so many displaced or forgotten or just unlucky people who, let's be honest, aren't so different from us. 

I've watched with helpless horror as anger has burned hotter in recent months. And I saw it again on another infidelity site that occasionally takes pot-shots at this one. And as I read comment after comment that gleefully detailed cheaters' various flaws and the lunacy of those of us willing to consider reconciliation (or, as I prefer, rebuilding, which is far more indicative of the hard work involved) as a viable post-infidelity path, I wondered, briefly, if I was the crazy one. Anger, after all, is so easy. There's righteousness in anger, beautifully articulated in that anthem of the betrayed, Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats". It would be a whole helluva lot of fun to kick the shit out of someone's "pretty little souped up four-wheel drive". It can feel good to unleash on the idiot who cheated on us, to catalogue the myriad ways in which he's a no-good loser that we unwittingly chose for, well, why exactly? No matter. We wipe our hands of him. Onward!

Anger can feel like power. And I've written before that it can be empowering. If anger is channelled to give you the strength to create boundaries for yourself, to refuse to be disrespected, to wake you up just how deeply you've lost yourself in a desire to be loved or secure, then that's a good thing.

Just don't confuse it with moving on.

As Nussbaum warns us, anger can become its own project. It can feel so intoxicating that we stoke it constantly. We tell our story, gathering fuel from others' outrage, over and over and over. I entirely support the desire and the need to tell our stories – it's how we process trauma and is crucial to our healing. It's just...at a certain point the hero of our story – us – needs to stop cataloguing the wrongs done to us, stop relishing the myriad ways in which karma is going to kick the wrongdoers' butts, and move into our own transformation. What happened to us is not the whole story. It can't be the whole story if we are to create a life in which we are not simply a victim. The thing with those who traffic in anger – the Trump-like authoritarians who need us to stay angry because their power is built on it – is that victimhood IS the story. There is no transformation. There is only me vs. him. Introspection? That's for idiots, the ones who think that reconciliation is possible. Far better to stay focussed on the crime. The easier to maintain our anger.

And yet, as Nussbaum says in characteristic understatement, introspection can be "useful". I would take it further and say that introspection is necessary. Not introspection as self-blame but introspection as in "what role did I play in keeping myself stuck?" Or "were there ways in which I betrayed myself?" Or "how do I create the life I want either with or without my partner?" You might find yourself angry with yourself because you can see the times you let yourself down, disrespected your own boundaries (or lacked them altogether), didn't keep yourself safe, ignored your intuition. That sort of anger can fuel a transformation in yourself. It can inspire you to fight for yourself more than for your marriage. It can lead to a declaration of self-respect and self-love even while working to acknowledge and address our own flaws. 

Its probably not nearly as fun as focussing your fury (and your baseball bat) on a cheater's truck. 

But far more likely to take us where we want to go.