When do we *know* our partner's cheating?

In hindsight, I knew my husband was cheating and I knew with whom before he admitted it to me. I knew before I knew. Of course, there was lots I didn't know. The years of sexual acting out with strangers, for instance. But though I didn't know the details, I felt the disconnection. I knew...something.

But because I didn't want to know the truth, I told myself stories to soothe. We were busy with the kids, I told myself. We had growing careers. If he would just deal with his family, things would be better, I told myself (and him). He's a good man, I told myself. He loves me, I told myself. 

We lived like that for a long time. Years. A decade. 

And then...the truth. 

The truth was that my husband was living a secret life. It took place beyond my view, outside of the lines I drew around our family. It existed with strangers. People whose names and faces I wouldn't know if I bumped into them on the street. 

The truth was a thousand-volt shock to my life. The truth was a million stings to my soul. The truth was a red-hot branding iron to my brain. 

The truth changed everything.

"When one person has said the truth, both people in the relationship are emancipated," poet David Whyte recently said to On Being's Krista Tippet. "Even if you look away, when you look back the truth will still be there. And then you can move into the next stage of your relationship."

Emancipation. It's not the first word that come to mind when we discover a partner's affair, is it? For me, I felt the opposite. Not liberated but imprisoned. Trapped in a marriage, with three young children and a man who felt like a stranger to me. Everywhere I looked, I saw a cage. None of my choices looked like freedom.

And yet.

"When one person has said the truth, both people in the relationship are emancipated," says David Whyte.

It has taken many years for me to see the truth of that. There was freedom in the truth for me. Freedom from the fables I was telling myself. Freedom from the self-blame, the confusion. Freedom to make a choice that was the right one for me, even if the right one was far from perfect. Freedom from perfect.

It took years to recognize that. I wish that wasn't the truth but it is. But with practice, with learning to acknowledge the truth of things – uncomfortable things, things I wish weren't true – the span between knowing and knowing is getting smaller. I'm better at recognizing that what I wish was true doesn't make it true. 

It's hard. And it's sad. But it is, yes, also liberating. Emancipation.

Because only when we see people for who they really are, only when we see our situation for what it really is, can we respond honestly. It is then, once the truth has been spoken that both parties can move onto the next stage of the relationship. That stage might, like my own, mean rebuilding a marriage. For others, it might mean separation. Or divorce. 

And I get it. The truth of your marriage, when it's not what you wanted to hear, stings. It wounds. It brings us to our knees. But once we're standing again, that truth informs what's next. Our next right step is rooted in what we know and know. And from that knowing, we can truly choose what's right for us. 

My Overly Defended Heart

I wrote the title of this blog post on my phone and then emailed it to myself. That's how I keep track of interesting phrases, or quotes, of tidbits of info I want to Google later when I have time and when I don't have to strain my aging eyes reading things on my phone.

I don't know where I saw the phrase "my overly defended heart". Maybe Brené Brown's new Atlas of the Human Heart, which my son gave me for Christmas. (If you're not watching her TV series based on the book, please do! It's wonderful.) I do know that when I saw it, when I still see it, it feels true. It is true. My heart. It is overly defended.

I wonder if yours is too. It would be reasonable, of course, when our heart has been shattered, to build a wall around it. To defend it. To guard it from any threat.

And yet, I believe – with my whole heart – that what Nick Cave says is true when he tells a young reader, fearful of heartbreak,

"to resist love and inoculate yourself against heartbreak is to reject life itself, for to love is your primary human function. It is your duty to love in whatever way you can, and to move boldly into that love — deeply, dangerously and recklessly — and restore the world with your awe and wonder. This world is in urgent need — desperate, crucial need — and is crying out for love, your love. It cannot survive without it."

Heady stuff, huh? To imagine that the world wants, indeed needs our love! Nobody could blame us if we say 'no' to that. If we decide to stay small, to refuse to expose our hearts to more pain, more injury.

My therapist once told me how resilient I was. She pointed to the all the ways in which people had harmed me, from when I was young. Look at you, she said to me, urging me to see myself as strong. I pushed back. Surviving isn't strength, I insisted. I was tired of being resilient. Sick to death of forcing myself back onto my feet when what I wanted – what I thought I'd earned – was rest, solitude, to be left the fuck alone. Never again, I vowed. I would stay married because I couldn't imagine telling my children that their parents were divorcing. That wasn't strength, as far as I was concerned. That was exhaustion. I would build fences – walls! – around my heart.

It hasn't exactly turned out that way. For one thing, my default setting is a soft heart. It didn't seem to matter whether there was barbed wire around it, my heart wouldn't harden enough to make me invulnerable to pain.

My guess is yours won't either. But the good news is, you don't want it to.

Because an overly defended heart isn't one that doesn't feel pain, it's one that can't feel love. I know, I know. The two feel inextricably linked right now. Lovepainlovepain, all wrapped up in a ball of confusion.

But, as best you can, let yourself heal from this in a way that keeps your heart unguarded enough to enjoy the good stuff, too. As my therapist also explained to me once, by refusing to feel the bad stuff, you also numb yourself to the good stuff. Your heart can't be selective. It's either all felt, or none of its felt. 

Besides, Cave makes a compelling case. "To love the world is a participatory and reciprocal action — for what you give to the world, the world returns to you, many fold, and you will live days of love that will make your head spin, that you will treasure for all time." Love, he tells us, means we're alive. He concedes that heartbreak often comes with love, something he hardly needs to tell any of us, right? 

We are not given guarantees. Surely we know that by now. And yet, we act as if we can stop pain. We act as if we can insulate ourselves from bad things.

What we must do, the only option really available to us, is accept all that life brings our way. This is not the same as saying it's okay to treat us badly. It is never okay. We get to choose who gains entry to our day-to-day lives. But it is to refuse to let pain, our wounds, harden us against life's joys, because joy exists too. It is an act of self-preservation to stop and notice. Joy might be easily overlooked right now but it's there. The first spring flower. A brilliant blue sky. A puppy. A child climbing into your lap. A really good cup of coffee.

It's all there for our hearts to take in. But only if we haven't defended our hearts so thoroughly that we miss it all. 

Nothing, of course, happens fast enough

Nothing, of course, happens fast enough and we just want to be returned to that uncomplicated life we once had – we want stability restored – but it is not to be. Now we have a new life; unchartered, uncertain, beyond our control, and that we are on some level undertaking alone, even within the company of the ones we love. Our worlds are still raw and new. They hum with suffering, but there is immense power there too.

~Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files

Nothing, of course, happens fast enough...

On the one hand, our days blur into nights blur into days and it feels as the world should have stopped entirely and yet it's not, it is turning turning turning.

On the other hand, time crawls. It is 4 a.m. and we wonder how we are going to survive the remaining darkness until morning gives us some reason to at least try and stand, to find some way to make ourselves useful, to try, at least, to feel part of the world.

We just want to be returned to the uncomplicated life we once had. Nick Cave is, for those familiar with him and his work, talking about the death of his son. And I know it's so tempting for us to gasp and hold ourselves back from relating because, after all, we didn't lose a child, nobody has died. How dare we think our grief compares?

But Cave himself, and anyone who has truly felt their grief and the way in which it connects them to all suffering, everywhere, doesn't monitor the door the grief club – letting in only some and not others. Rather, they – we – learn that grief is grief is grief. That it is, as Cave says, tidal. Washing over us, threatening to pull us out where we can't possibly survive and then depositing us again and again, a bit stronger each time, back on the shore. 

It has been many many years since I felt that grief as it related to my marriage, to my husband's betrayal. It has been months since I've written here. I have used the years to heal myself and my marriage, to rebuild a relationship with the man who has spent his time earning back my trust. I consider myself lucky to be with him still. He remains my best friend, one of the kindest people.

I have more recently spent months working on a new project, a magazine focused on climate solutions. And that is where I am becoming reacquainted with grief. I had taken a break from much of my writing on environmental and social justice issues because it sometimes felt as if I was bashing my heart against a rock. 

But the focus this time is different and, bear with me, not unlike my approach to healing from betrayal. This time, I am focused on solutions. I am no longer interested in trying to convince the unconvinceable about the climate crisis. (Just as I long ago abandoned the idea that I had to defend my choice to stay in my marriage.) Instead, I write about the incredible ways people are addressing climate, the ways in which they are using their bruised hearts to heal the earth, to connect with others.

But still...Ukraine. Trans youth. Book bans. The list, of course, goes on.

And with it, grief.

Know this, all of you whose grief around betrayal eclipses all: You are down but you are not beaten. You are stronger than you know. Grief is a normal human response to pain, to injustice, to inhumanity. It is a normal response to betrayal. Let yourself feel it. Trust that it will not strand you. You will find yourself, as I do now, years down the road, having survived. Having rebuilt a life that may or may not look like the one that feels annihilated right now. There is suffering indeed, says Cave. But there is immense power there too. 

I'm alive and fine! And missing you!!

I have many many half-written posts that I plan to complete "when I have time". And I so appreciate everyone's well wishes and concern but I am fine! Far too busy but fine. I have taken on an actual job where they expect me to be at my (at-home) desk for a certain number of hours every week after more than two decades of freelancing and pretty much having control over my days and it's been...a lot, ya know? Good and exciting and interesting but...a lot.

So I'm trying to figure out what to do with this site, that has given me so much over the years. And that, so many of you tell me, has given you two much comfort and community.

Until I figure it out, please know I'm here and I'm fine and I'm just too f#%king busy and I really need to figure out what this life balance thing is that people keep talking about. 

I'm also something of a empty nester. All three kids are doing great and doing their thing and finding their ways in the world, which is so great as so many of you know there have been mental health struggles. But they are absolutely killing it and I am so proud.

I know there are still many of you struggling with the pain of betrayal – finding out, wondering what to do, feeling frightening and alone and confused. You will continue to find a lot of wisdom and compassion on this site. Read the comments! The women here are so smart and so incredible. And they are proof that you will survive this and move on yourselves. It doesn't matter if a post and comments are ten yours old or ten months old. The feelings are the same.

So...welcome to those of you who are new here. And thank-you to you long-haulers who've been with me over the months and years. I'm still figuring out what this next stage of Betrayed Wives Club will look like (maybe it will look just the same!) but you will all be the first to know. 

Love,  Elle 

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Your Quiet Courage

You've got to tell the world how to treat you [because] if the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.

~James Baldwin

There is one question that hangs over so many of us in the days following discovery of our partner's infidelity: Will my marriage survive? Of course, it's a question that only dogs those of us who think we want our marriage to survive. Plenty of others cut and run, convinced that infidelity sounds the death knell of any marriage. I used to envy them their certainty. 

But those of us who stay tend to agonize over it: Will my marriage survive?

Mine has. I'm coming up on the 15th anti-versary of D-Day and here I am. Ring still on finger (engagement ring, anyway. Wedding band remains tucked away in a drawer), husband beside me.

But it is with the hindsight of 15 years that I recommend a far more important question to those of you in the early days of discovering betrayal. Who will I become?

We all become something after earth-shattering events like betrayal. There is simply no going back. Our world has changed. And, like it or not, we are changing with it.

But those who emerge from betrayal with a strong sense of their self and their worth are those who refuse to be defined by it. Or, as a good friend put it, they don't ask "why did this happen to me?" but rather "why did this happen?" The betrayal, they realize, isn't really about them at all. They are collateral damage. Or, as we often put it on this site, he didn't cheat because there's something wrong with you, he cheated because there's something wrong with him.

Chinook, who wrote the quintessential blog post on how to survive betrayal, urges us all to recognize that who we are is worth revering:

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.

However you choose to respond to what's happening to you, know this: You get to decide who you are. You get to decide what your marriage becomes. "My heartbreak, my rules," right? You get to decide, as Chinook put it, if the person you are becoming wants to build a marriage with the person he is becoming. Because if we let anyone tell us how they're going to treat us, then we are in trouble. 

Thursday's Thought

 

Grief and growth and my promise to you

I sometimes wonder what I have to contribute to this conversation around infidelity when I am so far past it. Sure, I still remember those awful days when I felt both pinned beneath my pain but simultaneously cut loose from the physical world. I would drift between wishing I could just go to sleep and not wake up and wishing I didn't have to go to bed because there would be nothing, at 3 a.m., to distract me from my terror.

But while I remember those days, I no longer feel them. In some ways, it's like it happened to someone else. And I suppose it did. Me but a different me. 

Still, I will come across a comment or a story or an image (like the one above) and think, yes, yes, that's what it was like. That's what happened to me, too.

I'm occasionally asked how I got over (through, I tell them, through, not over) my husband's infidelity. And I have my answer: therapy, my mother (until she died six months post D-Day), running, crying, my pets, a couple of good friends. But there is also this answer: time. It is not magic but it can feel like alchemy. Time alone will not disappear pain but time + therapy + feeling your feelings = healing.

I'm posting this image (credit for this, too) because it so perfectly depicts what really happens. My pain, my grief around what I lost when I learned of my husband's betrayals, didn't shrink. Not at all. But my life grew. My world expanded. I was able to keep space for my grief but not let it eclipse everything else. At first, that seemed impossible. I was certain that I would never ever feel joy again. My pain, my grief, consumed me and cast a shadow over everything else. Even when I felt a tinge of happiness, it was quickly swallowed by sadness. And so I resigned myself to a half-life. One lived without joy.

But I had a moment when I could see that something was shifting. It might not have been the first moment but it was the first that I really took notice. I was walking my dog. It was winter and it had snowed. The sun was out and the snow sparkled, as if sprinkled with fairy dust. It felt like magic and I smiled to myself. I could see the beauty. I could feel that something different was possible. And that's where change happens right? When we can imagine it. When we can open ourselves to believing that what we feel right now isn't the end of the story.

It can feel complicated to talk about grief in regards to infidelity. After all, our husband didn't die. We haven't lost a child. Rather, infidelity grief is complicated grief. But it is, nonetheless, grief.

And so I can tell you this: Your life will grow around it. Your grief will not disappear though you will, as I did, come to place where it isn't raw like a fresh wound but rather leathery, like a scar. 

And I can also make this promise: You are bigger than this pain. Your life is bigger than this pain. You, too, will get through this. Not over but through. And though your grief won't necessarily shrink, your life will grow around it until your grief is not a boulder but a pebble that reminds you of your strength and your courage and your refusal to give up on yourself. 

How to Apologize for Breaking Your Wife's Heart: A Guide for Cheaters

I am away so I'm reposting some of my most popular posts. This was originally published August 2017.

 Often I hear something like, “I told you I was sorry about the affair ten times so let’s drop it already.”  That won’t cut it. High-stakes situations calls for an apology that’s a long distance run—where we open our heart and listen to the feelings of the hurt party on more than one occasion. There’s no greater gift, or one more difficult to offer, than the gift of wholehearted listening to that kind of anger and pain when we are being accused of causing it.

~Harriet Lerner, author of The Dance of Anger and Why Won't You Apologize: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts

Okay cheaters, this one's for you.
Most of you likely didn't respond to your wife's pain around your betrayal the way renowned relationship expert Harriet Lerner suggests, above. If you're like most guys, you said you were sorry, promised it would never happen again, it meant nothing for chrissakes, can we drop it already? And then you really really hoped that she would forgive you, you'd have makeup sex and then move forward into the rest of your lives. She might even be a little bit more appreciative of you now that she knew you had other options, right?
If you were a bit more realistic than that, you figured you'd go to a marriage counsellor a half-dozen times, let her cry, bow your head with genuine remorse and even endure the insults she'd throw at you. And then, thank god, move forward into the rest of your lives.
It likely hasn't worked out like that. 
But here's the thing: It hasn't worked out like we hoped it would either. Never did we imagine how excruciating betrayal was. Never did we think we'd come as unhinged as we did. We figured we'd be mad. We might execute some funny but biting revenge, like in the movies. We might meet our girlfriends and sob into a martini. But we didn't imagine there would be days we couldn't get out of bed. We didn't anticipate the confusion, the mental fog, the dull dread that took root in our stomachs or the stabbing pain in which, we swear, we could feel our hearts actually breaking. 
We didn't think that, even months later, a song on the radio could reduce us to a sobbing ball on the floor. Or that a chance encounter with your affair partner could unleash in us a fury that threatened to swallow us (and you!) whole. 
I've been there. So has my (still) husband. Ten years later, we know a thing or two about getting through this.
You? My guess is you're in uncharted water. Well, so is your wife. So, in the interest in helping you help her through these treacherous days, weeks, months, here's your guide to apologizing for breaking her heart:
1. Apologize. Sounds simple, right? It's not. Do everything you can to imagine her pain. Look directly into her eyes and don't look away. See just how deep that agony goes. And then tell her how sorry you are that you weren't the husband you should have been. That she did nothing to deserve this betrayal. Repeat, as often as necessary.
2. Be transparent. Here's the thing about asking us to "trust me again because I've learned my lesson": Ain't gonna happen. She's sad, not stupid. You've shown her you aren't to be trusted. That's the problem with lying and cheating. It's easy to squander trust. It's really hard to earn it back. And that's what you're doing now. Earning it back. Bit by bit. By showing her, not telling her but showing her, that you are where you say you are, that you're with who you say you're with. I know you feel like a child. I know it's humiliating to have no privacy. Do this right and you won't live like this forever. But for now, you need to prove that you're worth taking another gamble on. And you prove that by being willing to sacrifice your privacy. If she's not worth it to you, then do yourselves a favor and leave. 
3. Work really hard to understand why you did what you did. Face your demons. You wouldn't have done such harm if you weren't struggling with your own self-worth. Go to a therapist. Doesn't matter if you don't "believe" in therapy. There's a reason you risked everything that mattered to you for someone who didn't. Figure out what it is with someone who's been trained to help you. You're no good to us until you've worked out your own shame around what you've done. Until then, you're going to try and deflect, you're going to minimize, you're going to defend. None of which moves us toward healing. All of which compounds our own pain and isolation. Fix yourself first. Oh, and by the way, don't ever cheat on her again. Ever. 
4. When she tells you what she needs, give it to her. If she wants you to read a certain book, then read it. If she wants you to call home if you're going to be late, do it. If she needs space, give it to her. If she needs closeness, give it to her. Understand that you're asking her to do the hardest thing she's ever had to do: Forgive her best friend for lying to her, for jeopardizing her physical and mental health, for subjecting her to humiliation and gossip, for betrayed the promise you made to her. What is she asking you to do? Bring her flowers. Make a bit more effort to select a Mother's Day card. Compliment her. Make yourself uncomfortable by talking about your shame. Doesn't seem like too much after all, does it?
5. Help her carry the pain. You do this by understanding it. You do this by really listening to her, over and over and over. Yes, it gets exhausting (it is for us, too). It doesn't mean you have to endure abuse, emotional or physical. Its just means that, by listening to us, by answering our questions even if we've asked the same ones repeatedly (you'd be amazed at how fuzzy our brains are), you're helping us process our pain. You're shouldering a bit of the burden for us. You're showing us that our hearts can be safe with you again. We're grateful for that, though it might be a few months before we can show it. 
6. Be patient. Healing takes a long time. Three to five years, by many experts' calculus. That doesn't mean you'll both be miserable for that long. But it does mean that there will be setbacks. There will be triggers, large and small, that reduce her to a sobbing mess, that feel as though you're back where you started. You aren't. It's a setback. And it can even be a chance for you two to remember you're on the same team, that you're working together to rebuild your marriage. Double down on the genuine remorse for creating this pain. Remind her again that you're working hard to make sure she never goes through that pain. And then, for good measure, tell her that you're the luckiest guy in the world and that you're going to spend the rest of your life earning the second chance she gave you. And that she'll never have to give you a third.

None of this is easy. But it is worth it. If rebuilding your marriage is what you want, I guarantee that following these steps will get you a whole lot closer to that goal. I can't guarantee that your wife will be able to move past the pain. I can't promise that she will forgive you. I have no idea whether she'll respond with a revenge affair, or file for divorce anyway, or just make your life miserable for eternity. But I do know that you will have done what you could to begin to make reparations for the damage you caused. And I also know that, no matter what happens, you will have begun to live your life with integrity. Which means that, whatever happens next, you're going to be a better man for it. 

Honoring an Anniversary After Infidelity

I am away from my desk so I'm republishing some of my most popular posts. This originally ran in August 2020

If trying to find a way when you don't even know you can get there isn't a small miracle; then I don't know what is.  ~Rachel Joyce, author

Today is my husband's and my anniversary. Twenty-four years ago we stood in front of family and friends and promised to be each other's one and only. We promised kindness and respect. To stick with each other through "good times and bad." 

There was a lot of bad.

I didn't know just how bad it was but it was bad. 

And when I discovered how bad it was, I reeled. I cried. I curled up in a ball on my bathroom floor many many nights and sobbed into my dog's neck. I could see nothing but the bad. I couldn't conceive of my marriage ever being anything but bad ever again.

And yet I stayed. I stayed because I was afraid to leave. Afraid to disrupt my young children's lives. Afraid of what my husband might do if I left. Besides, I was exhausted. I could barely get through a day let alone find the energy to kick him out, or leave myself. And so I waited. I waited until I felt strong enough to leave. I made my expectations clear – no cheating, no lying, full disclosure. If he stepped outside the line, even the slightest bit, I was gone. He knew that. He went to therapy. He attended 12-step meetings.

And I waited.

For strength. For a sign from the universe. For my kids to get older. For myself to get clearer.

It was never so much about if I'd leave but when, though I held out faint hope that my feelings for him might return. That I might love him again as I had that day twenty-four years ago. 

And here we are. 

It has not been easy. It has, in fact, been extremely hard. (I was going to write the "hardest thing I've ever done" but that would be untrue. Since that horrible time, I have had to commit my daughter to a psychiatric ward and that, my friends, is the hardest thing I've ever done. I have had to bury my mother, which was another very hard thing.)

But the thing with infidelity is that the pain eclipses every other thing. It blocks out the light. It leaves us squinting in the dark with no expectation of light ever again. This, we are certain, is our life. Not just for today but tomorrow. And forever.

That is a lie.

The pain is excruciating. I know. But it passes. Not today. Not even soon. But eventually. And though I wish I could tell you differently, the truth is that it takes a long time to pass. And that there are no shortcuts. I don't think it hurts less to leave. I don't think it hurts less to find someone else. I don't think it hurts less in a short marriage than a long one. It just hurts. And it hurts so so much.

And then, one day, I realized it hurt a little less. And then less still. And so on until I'm celebrating my 24th wedding anniversary and I realize it hasn't hurt at all for a long time. And that we are exactly where we want to be and with exactly who we want to be with. He has changed over the years and not just grayer hair and a wider waist. I have changed a lot too. WE know each other much more deeply than we did that day 24 years ago. I have seen him at his absolute worst. I have decided that he is more than that. We have been with each other to bury our mothers. We have been with each other to get our daughter the help she needed. We have grown together and through.

And here we are. Okay. More than okay. Beyond all expectations. Happy.

Thursday's Thought

Thanks to @infidelityscars for posting this yesterday. It was exactly what I needed to hear. Maybe it's what you need to hear right now too. And FYI, the mountain isn't necessarily the betrayal, or your idiot husband, or the horrible other woman. Maybe it's your fear. Maybe it's your grief. Whatever it is, it will recede but you will be stronger for having climbed it.

Thursday's Thought

 "Every time you're given the choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappointed that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself."

~Glennon Doyle, Untamed

Thursday's Thought

 "Wholeness does not mean perfection: 
it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness – 
mine, yours, ours – need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life."
~Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

The Door is Not Locked

Glennon Doyle, author of Love Warrior, survivor of marital infidelity/sex addiction, and host of We Can Do Hard Things podcast was talking about why she moved from one state to another. She was surrounded by people, she says, who not only didn't "get" her, they were actively hostile. And she was reminded of something she told herself when her marriage felt untenable: "The door is not locked."

It's something that applies, metaphorically, to so many things in our lives that feel un-leave-able. The toxic boss we think we have to continue to please because "it's a tough job market out there". The cruel friend we continue to tolerate because her cruelty is couched in assurances that she just wants us to be happy. The parent who demands our loyalty because "look at all I've done for you".

And yes, the marriage. The marriage that now bears the mark of infidelity.

The door is not locked.

Believing it is locked keeps us trapped. It keeps us tolerating the intolerable. It keeps us responsible for everyone else's happiness. I told myself that my children needed stability, which isn't untrue. But it held me in place. It kept me from even testing the door to see it gave, even an inch.

I don't regret staying. But it was only when I realized that I wasn't trapped, that staying was a choice I could make did I develop the self-respect to begin making demands. If I'm going to stay in this marriage, I need total honesty. If I'm going to stay in this marriage, here are my rules. 

Maybe you need reminding that the door is not locked. You have choices and they run the spectrum – from leaving entirely, to a trial separation, to rebuilding together. And you have so many other choices too. To quit that job that makes you feel useless and unvalued. To join a group of people who share your interests. To find a good therapist. To leave a lousy one. To lay down boundaries with friends, parents, children that give you the space you need to love both you and them simultaneously. 

A locked door is a story we told ourselves. The door is not locked, my secret sisters. It never was. 

Using a "Turnover" Event – Like Betrayal – to Rebuild Your Life

Times like this — not just a terrorist attack or a worldwide pandemic but also other big moments in life like childbirth, divorce, death — you have a feeling about what's right for you, just like people in my 9/11 support group did. It was very clear to each of us who felt passionate about going back to work and who felt going back to work was insane given the world's events. I remember the psychologists in the room saying there is no right answer — there is only the right answer for you.  ~Penelope Trunk, blogger

They're called "turnover" events, according to the psychologists – events in which circumstances change everything. They can be happy, such as the birth of a child. Or they can be catastrophic. A car accident, a pandemic. Or, yes, betrayal.

Betrayal might be invisible to those around us but it shifts the earth beneath our own feet. It changes everything. It's different than marital breakdown because that often happens slowly. Betrayal blindsides us. Even if we knew something felt off, we never quite imagined this. 

And so we face a new reality.

In the early days, of course, it's enough to get through a day. It's enough to brush our teeth, get dressed, manage to somehow care for kids or do a reasonable facsimile of our job.

But with time, we face different choices. If we have chosen to remain in our marriage, what is that going to look like? What do we need in order to stay? If we have chosen to leave, well, what does that look like? What I'm suggesting – what Penelope Trunk, a trauma survivor, and the psychologists she quotes are suggesting – is that these events hold an opportunity for us, if we're willing to consider it: To choose a different way of living in this world. 

These choices don't have to be huge to the outside world. For instance, after discovering my husband's infidelity, I became completely intolerant of dishonesty. I had known that he tended to lie. About stupid stuff. I would hear him on the phone with his mother explaining that he wasn't coming to visit her because he was "swamped with work" or the "kids have so much going on". I knew that if he wanted to visit her, we could have easily made that work. But the truth was he didn't want to visit her. He hated visiting her. But that truth remained hidden even from him. And so he lied. And I let him. 

After D-Day. Nope. But not only was I intolerant of dishonesty in him and others but in myself. I noticed that I, too, often chose dishonesty over discomfort. So much easier to tell a friend that I wasn't feeling well than say that I didn't want to attend her Pampered Chef party. So much easier to tell an editor that a source hadn't called me back than tell her that I forgot to send the email. I became as disgusted with my own dishonesty as anyone else's. And though that might not seem like a transformative change, don't be fooled. It absolutely is. Being honest with myself and others has utterly changed my relationships. Resentment has a much harder time taking root when we're honest with ourselves and others. 

Of course, there are the far more obvious changes we make. The job we leave, the job we seek, the friends we edit into or out our lives. And while I am not, will not, even look at infidelity as a good thing, I can recognize that it offers us something, if only the freedom to make different choices. When it feels as though we're living in ruins, why not see what we can construct?

Thursday's Thought

 

What does your Betrayal Impact Statement say?

A friend of mine recently discovered that her husband was cheating. Again. It's our nightmare scenario, isn't it? That he learned nothing. That he changed nothing, except, perhaps, to become more adept at lying, more discreet. 

My friend's husband is a sex addict. And those of us who've dealt with addicts know that it can be a long road to recovery. That they are likely to "slip" as the recovery community refers to it, which hardly reflects just how excruciating it is. "Slip" sounds like a "whoops" when the truth is it's a banana-peel wipeout with massive head trauma. 

One of the things my friend is participating in, as she and her husband try and recover from this latest "slip" is impact statements. He, the offender, has to offer up a full accounting of everything he did, when/where/with whom. And after she has digested this (and perhaps cried an ocean of tears) she presents what's called an Impact Statement, not at all unlike what crime victims submit to courts in order to influence sentencing and have an acknowledgement of their pain.

It got me thinking that, whether or not we're dealing with an addict, we might all consider writing an Impact Statement. It would serve two purposes: 1) Make clear how deep and broad the pain of his betrayal and 2) Force us to acknowledge all the ways in which we've been affected. Far too often, I think, we fail on both accounts – to make him face what he's done, or face it ourselves.

It could be that it's too much. That was the case for me when my husband's sex addiction counsellor wanted him to do a "full disclosure" session. By then, I'd been grilling my husband for weeks and I knew what I wanted to know. I chose not to hear more. It stopped mattering to me whether he'd had sex with 12 people or 40, whether he'd done it in a car or a living room couch. He had betrayed my trust, my body, our vows. That was the case whether he'd one it one time or many. The details became immaterial. What mattered to me at that point was his own willingness to face what he'd done, his own willingness to prepare the disclosure because, whether I saw it or not, he had to see it. 

So if that's the case for you – if the idea of compiling a full impact statement is too much right now – then pay attention to that. You don't need to do anything that feels like it's harmful. But you might want to pick away at it. Writing down the impacts as they occur to you. "I can no longer go to my favorite restaurant because you went there with her." "I gained 30 pounds from stress eating." "I felt alienated from my closest friends because I couldn't bring myself to tell them." Those are the impacts we often minimize or overlook or that get lost. And the idea isn't to keep stoking that rage, it's to honor our experience. It's to help you understand that everything you're going through – the confusion, the memory fog, the hyper-vigilance, the instability – is because of something. It's not you overreacting. It's not you being dramatic. It's you absorbing a massive trauma. 

And then, when you're ready, read it to him. Insist that he sit down and listen. Perhaps better that he not respond immediately, if that response is to make excuses or defend himself or dismiss your pain. There is only one acceptable response: To acknowledge how deep your pain and to take full responsibility for it.

Because this is potentially fraught, because it often triggers the same shame/anger/immaturity that led to the cheating, it's wise to do this with a trained counsellor.

But it's an exercise worth doing if only to bear witness to our own experience. You matter. Your pain matters. It's real.