After Betrayal: Facing Down Fear

I was recently interviewing someone for a story that had nothing to do with infidelity or betrayal when my interviewee said something that virtually made me gasp:
"Everything I want to do lies on the other side of fear."
She was referring to people who fear whitewater rapids or climbing shear rock faces or jumping out of planes.
But she was also, whether she knew it or not, talking about me.
Everything I want to do lies on the other side of fear.
How true is that for you?
Would you leave him if you weren't afraid of being alone? Afraid of the impact of divorce on your children? Afraid of the financial hit you'd take? Afraid of what people would say? Afraid you'd never find someone to love you again?
Would you stay and work it out if you weren't afraid he'd cheat again? Afraid that you'll never be able to forgive him? Afraid that if people knew he had cheated, they would think you're a doormat? Afraid that you'll never get past the pain?
Fear drives many of our choices in life. But are they truly "choices" if they come from a place of fear?
Is it a "choice" to stay in a miserable marriage or is it inertia?
Is it a "choice" to leave if we're afraid to deviate from a cultural script whereby women who are cheated on are expected to toss the bum out?
Fear is an impulse, a way to avoid judgement or anger or loneliness.
Fear is avoidance.

Most of us have become adept at pretending we don't have fears.
We can sometimes admit macro fears – losing our child or parent, getting a terminal diagnosis.
But can we also admit the micro fears? That we're afraid of opportunity because we might fail? That we're terrified of being alone? Of rejection? Can we face our deepest fear – that we're unloveable?

We rage at a partner's betrayal. But what is that rage really but a fear of abandonment? A deep fear of being found unworthy? We are social beings. Feeling rejected is tantamount to fearing for survival.
Betrayal triggers so many of these micro fears, this tiny voice that whispers our secret: that we're not good enough.
These fears are real. And we must examine them if we're to find what's on the other side.
Instead, we dismiss them. We rationalize them. We hide them.
We can't, however, eliminate them except by pulling them into the light and exploring them. Turning them over and discovering that what we most fear is what everyone fears. It's part of being human. And that by acknowledging that, fear loses its power over us. Our more rational brain can then make choices rooted in our values instead of acting on impulse. A dark impulse.

I mentioned in a recent post that my daughter is struggling with OCD. In the past few weeks, I've felt completely on edge. Furious. It's not like me to feel such free-floating anger. I decided our world was stupid and cruel (I mean, c'mon. ISIS? WTF?). I hated everyone who seemed to be blithely going on with their lives – shopping, driving to work, planning vacations.
I snapped at my kids. Barked at my dogs to shut up. I was an absolute bear.
And then, when my daughter was having an OCD episode (her first in seven days! Yay!), it hit me. Though I know realistically that we're handling this well, have great support and all indications are that she'll emerge from this wiser and stronger, I'm nonetheless terrified because I remember all too well my mother's stays in a locked psychiatric ward. My anger isn't really about ISIS and animal cruelty and idiots who cut me off in traffic (though...seriously? This world needs a makeover). My anger is the outward face of my abject terror that my daughter is slipping down a dark hole.
It's a long-held fear (based on childhood experience) that mental illness will take away someone I love.
It's not, however, a rational one.

What's on the other side of fear?
Hope is on the other side. Realistic hope that we're all learning from this. That it's making us more attuned to our daughter's struggles, and also to the struggles that so many people experience around mental health issues.
A better me is on the other side of fear. A me who recognizes that I can't control other's behaviours. That there are many things I can't change.
A life lived more consciously and gratefully is on the other side of my fear.
What's on the other side of yours?

Cheating...ugh: Here's what you need to know

This is another post by BWC member Steam. As usual...she's nailed it.

If...
by Steam

If you are here, it probably has happened to you, maybe you just found out.

Well..there are some things you might not believe, but you need to know.

You are going to be okay and this was not your fault.
Okay?

Your husband may come around or he may not but you are going to be okay.
Not today,  probably not tomorrow but one day you will be okay. No, even better than okay.

You don't have to believe it, how can you believe it?  I remember how you feel.  

You feel that you will never get over this, never get through this, never ever ever. How can you?

But if you work with the pain and not against the pain eventually, eventually the pain will give up, having nothing to resist. Maybe pain eventually gets bored and moves along and something else, something better, will take its place, for the most part.

Little by little by little.

Pain does one thing better than anything else.
It breaks your heart wide open.

And there will be room for more and better and well-earned things. Rich beautiful things that belong in there, that might have been trying to get in there for a very long time but you thought your heart was full enough.

A heart can never be too full.

Good things can move into an open heart even if it is stomped on, bleeding and in pieces. Good and beautiful things help it piece back together. Stitch by stitch, second by second, tear by tear. 

It will heal.  

You will heal.

When you work out, your muscle tears a bit and it is rebuilt bigger and stronger, thanks to scar tissue. 

Your heart, I believe, metaphysically does something similar.

You don't feel it now, you only feel the burn but something is happening, something good.

Your fault? No. I don't care what you did. Unless you chose a woman, got her number, got an address, drove your husband over there, made him get an erection and then you inserted his penis somewhere in her body, you did NOT drive your husband to an affair.

Okay? Got that?

I don't care if you put on 50 pounds, let the house fall apart, ignored him, were a bitch, spent too much time at work, turned your attention to the kids, didn't shave your legs every day. Forgot to be his girlfriend and laugh at all his jokes.
You did not make him have an affair.
Maybe you thought you had the perfect relationship and you were both happy! 

Well that sure didn't make him have an affair!

What he should have done is talk to you. 

Sure, okay you should have been talking too.  

We all should have been talking, I am guilty as charged but we weren't talking, at least not about the right, important things.

You are in the same marriage as he is but you didn't cheat, right?

You are in the exact same marraige!
So your marriage did not drive anyone to an affair. 

You did not and I did not have the affair.
He did.
He chose it.
He should have talked to you but he chose not to.  

Nope. He took the easy way out to avoid talking.

Talking honestly is a LOT harder than pulling your pants down for a stranger.

Try it sometime, some time later – the honest talk part, not taking your pants off.

It's hard but you can do it because you are strong.

You had the strength and smarts to Google and find this place, to remember how to use a computer. You got off the floor. That was a good start.

You are so strong.

So, again, look at you!

You'll be ok and this was not your fault.

These are hard concepts, I know.  

And I don't know why it is so hard to get through our heads.  

But it's been said on this site before –  and in a million other places we did not know existed until right now in these terrible times of agony – we did not put a gun to our husband's head and force him to go have sex somewhere else.

The more you read, share discreetly and discover. The more you learn, the more you will see, and hopefully you will hear it from your husband...this was not your fault.

And no matter how you feel right now, my bet is, you don't feel good.

You don't have to believe it but try just a little

You will make it through and you will be okay.

And it was not your fault.

You had a heart big enough to love a flawed person.

So did he and hopefully he remembers that too.

And hopefully he tells you that when you get to talking honestly again or for the very first time.

I promise you. Work at it, work with it, and you will be okay.

Guest post: A Post-Betrayal Guide to Surviving the Holidays (or Just Surviving)

"Steam" often comments on posts and shares her hard-won wisdom with others on this site. She's got such compassion and common sense that I invited her to contribute more regularly. Here's her inaugural post:

There are many of us on this site who have been in this state of knowing what we know for many years; there are others, like me, approaching my first holiday season armed with a lot more sad knowledge than I had last Christmas. I am prepared in case I take a nosedive but I don't feel like I will.

It seems, though it might just be that I notice, that a lot of us find out about our spouse’s affair close to the holidays. Why, I don't know (there is a lot I don't know): new phones? New devices left unlocked? Too much holiday cheer leading to carelessness on the cheaters’ part or boldness on the part of the OW.

With a new year looming and, for many, without the “happy” to preface it, maybe it's time for a refresher course. Or for those just finding out…a how-to guide. Survival 101.

Not definitive, and your suggestions and thoughts are totally welcome.

You, in the moment of discovery, may stay focused in the moment, that moment your knees buckled and you ended up on the floor, or you opened your mouth but no sound came out and you quite literally could not breathe...or you may have immediately jumped to thoughts of your life alone, your first homicide (kidding) your 2^nd (kidding) and how you are going to make though it at all – so let’s just look at what you can do to get through right now, and then maybe one more day.

This is how it happened for me: My H had gone to the store and I needed to download photos onto the laptop we were sharing (as I spent most of my time with a tablet.) As my photos were downloading, many many others were quickly drawn from the laptop into the photo program I was using. Due to the nature of my H's business, none of them really shocked me –they were going by me at a rapid blur. It was logging onto my OWN Facebook page to post when a dropdown menu appeared with a name I had never seen before, and a saved password. That led me to snoop for the first time ever, in 14 years, only to find an e-mail under the same name also with a saved password. Wow, was he screaming to get caught or what?

I demanded, within one hour of finding out (longest hour of my life waiting for him to get back) that my H write ONE last e-mail to the woman he cheated with. Telling her that I knew (she didn't even think he had a GIRLFRIEND) and that this was OVER, he was deleting the e-mail account (which he did) and that I would have passwords to all of his accounts online (which I did). Ha! I'm writing like I did this all very rationally. I am leaving out my complete and utter insanity, profanity, slaps, threats of destruction of the laptop held high over my head.

Do Not Expect to Think Rationally

 What do you do if your husband is not ON HIS KNEES begging forgiveness, crying, swearing he never meant to hurt you, telling you he wasn't thinking clearly? I don't know. That was not my experience, but let’s just say, by the time he got home, I all but had his bags packed, I was ready to kick him out without a doubt. I had made arrangements in my head already that I would without a doubt, have carried out that day. I also would have taken his phone, work laptop and Kindle. 

This was a deal-breaker for me. It might not be for you. But if I thought for one second that he was going to spend one more minute online with her as he had that last two months, he was not going to do it while he was under the same roof as me.

What do you do then – what do you do after that first fitful night when you sleep or you don't, and the sun rises and you know it was – sigh – not just a bad dream.

I wish there was a one-size-fits-all fix.

I guess much of your survival depends on your situation.

Excuse yourself

Do you have kids? Is there ANYWAY at all you can fake the flu, and give them to a relative for a day or two? I really don't know because I am not a mother. 

Maybe being mom can help you feel grounded and give you something to keep you out of your head and all of those horrible thoughts that you cannot control.

If you have those thoughts, BTW, you are completely normal. 

I don't have kids, but I faked the flu anyway. I looked like HELL frozen and then boiled over. My eyes were puffy, there was no way to hide the history of tears and sleepless nights. So I said I had the flu. Everyone bought it.

I canceled New Year’s plans. I could not be festive.

Breathe

While I was breathing via hyperventilating, I really did have to stop and really breathe – those big breaths everyone tells you about? Take them. 

Do your best to count to 10 before lashing out because chances are good you are going to lash out. I was lucky if I got to 3, but at least it got me somewhere.

You might think about next week or six months from now but it's really not the time. You will have emotions you did not know you had in you and just making it through the day, or the next hour should be your biggest concern.

Read

You might want to stay away from the “once a cheater always a cheater” websites. I was angry as HELL and I could not even tolerate them THEN. I had enough anger to last my own lifetime and I did not need more. 

Avoid most 'reformed cheaters' websites, although you might be surprised at what you learn – that cheaters have a LOT of shame and remorse, they even take responsibility and don't blame their spouse but you might also read accounts of how much a cheater misses their co-cheater, and that's about the last thing you want to hear. You have enough fuel in your fire already. And watch out if you Google celebrity cheater’s names in the comments sections – EVERYONE has an opinion on EVERYTHING and it was probably, in the end, Obama or Bush's fault anyway. :o)

Download or buy a copy of “After theAffair” and start reading NOW.

Come to websites like this and realize you are NOT alone. It's amazing the compassion you might feel for others. It's nice to know you can feel something other than anger.

Write

Take your anger and do something with it, even if it means just writing it down. Journal your broken heart out...put that unanswerable question on there – the WHY in big bold letters. Maybe when you get your emotions down on paper they will come to you, the questions you really want to ask.

 This next one is going to seem impossible... 

Be nice to someone

I don't know where it came from but suddenly I was connected to the great suffering of people around the world (I know – hard to believe there was suffering greater than mine) and realized that I never knew really what was going on with perfect strangers, acquaintances and even friends.

When I left my house after two days, it was the night of New Year’s day and I saw a few acquaintances coming into a restaurant, each alone, where I had agreed to go out to dinner with my husband (after of course, spending New Year’s Eve NOT celebrating). I had the urge to go over and wish every one of them a happy new year as they came in. These were all acquaintances, not people I would normally hug. I still don't know what they thought about it or me, but I remember a huge sense of gratitude that I was able to give something when I felt that I had nothing at all to give.

Sleep

Again, it was a horrible way to spend the remainder of a vacation, but my D-Day was during a vacation, so I was able to sleep in and answer to no-one.

Grab sleep whenever you can.

I can't give medical advice of course but there are over-the-counter remedies that can help. I was fortunate enough to have the Big Guns due to a slight insomnia issue. They are not Ambien but I will add, do NOT try to stay awake on Ambien. You will most likely live to regret your actions, and you have enough going on. Please be careful how you use any medication as the temptation to overuse them was incredibly strong.

Be careful who you tell

I wanted to shout it from the rooftops! I wanted to tell his family! I wanted to tell my FRIENDS. Selfishly though, I worried that they might secretly wonder just what it was that I DID to “drive” him to this.

That ended up being a great self-defense mechanism because now, almost a year later, only two people know and that was one too many. Unless someone has been through this, his/her automatic reaction is to think your husband is scum and you might be teetering on the edge of foolishness to stay. You know, the way YOU might have reacted had the same been done to them prior to your own D-Day and they told you. You don't need to defend your actions to anyone and, one way or another, you will be asked to in blatant or subtle ways

It's good if you are able to lean on and cry on your friend’s shoulder. Friends can be a godsend, but they are sometimes going to give you advice and a bunch of platitudes and sometimes it feels like they are patting you on your poor little head. They cannot always know what to do...not only with your life in general but NOW.

By the way, what you will find out is if you choose to stay is that it is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength, compassion, forgiveness and even love. Not now – you don't need to feel compassion or forgiveness or love now – but love is probably the deeply hidden driving force that eventually leads to compassion and forgiveness.

Strength, you have always had, it just probably has never been tested like this. Women who get that surge of adrenalin to pick cars up that have rolled onto their kids? Yup, we're strong like that.

Don't make long-term plans right now.

 Everyone who has gone on this unplanned journey or studied the travelers on this well-beaten but rarely-spoken-of-rationally-in-public road says to wait. Wait six months to a year before making this big decision or any other big decisions.

Things will change. He will change, you will change. And the 3^rd entity in this – your relationship will change. The one you thought was going pretty well can thrive and MUST change so that you are not in this situation again.

I often say “if you're lucky” these things will happen, but it's not luck. It's work. You will eventually have to work (and so will he!)  but right now…

Recover

You have just received a terrible blow. You can rest a while. You need to. This was like a surgery to rip your soul out. Your doctor would tell you to rest after having a tooth removed. This is a lot more painful than that.

Find help for your recovery

I am sure there are people who can make it through without therapy. I don’t know any of those people. Nothing in your life, hopefully, has prepared you for this. What do you do with the anger, sadness, not to mention that shame that is NOT yours (so stop feeling ashamed)? How do you eventually learn to talk without screaming and crying? A good marital counselor will gently help you regain your balance and remind you that this was not your fault (I mean, come on, did he tell you he was doing this ahead of time? Or even considering it? Or perhaps mentioning he was a bit bored or restless? Give you a chance to 'fix' what needed fixing? No? There ya go, no wonder you felt like you were slapped upside the head.) Your spouse should go, of course your spouse should go, not that you asked me but that's a must in my book. If he won’t go, then YOU go. None of this “but he refuses and gets upset if I go”. To this I say “too effing bad.” Does he not realize if he doesn’t go that he's going to be talked ABOUT behind his back for an hour at a time? Come on – he's got to go. But if he doesn’t, you MUST. You might cry your way through the hour but you may be doing that anyway, and every counselor’s office has already paid for the big box of Kleenex. Take advantage of at least that. 

Time

You do not have to accept that time heals all wounds. That’s just something people say when they have no idea what else to say. The reality is that the more time between you and discovery, the less and less it hurts. I'm not saying there won’t be a scar, I'm saying that time will somehow work some magic, like it or not.

Healing From Betrayal: Why We Must Tell Our Story

Penelope Trunk, who was in the World Trade Center when the towers fell, knows a thing or two about trauma. 
We women, who've been betrayed by exactly the people we trusted with our hearts and bodies, also know a thing or two about trauma. 
[Before there's a pile-on about how being cheated on doesn't even rate on the same scale as 9/11, let me say that this isn't a pain race. Pain and loss is pain and loss. And all pain and loss deserves to be acknowledged and grieved.]

Here's what Trunk has to (brilliantly) say about trauma:
The way to deal with post-traumatic stress is to tell your story over and over again. The theory is that when you are in the moment of trauma, you have to turn off all your emotions to get yourself through it. After the fact, in order to stop having nightmares and panic attacks, you have to experience the emotions you missed.
And this is the step that cheaters, including reformed cheaters, just can't get.
We need to talk about what happened to us. We are desperate to talk about it.
It doesn't prolong our pain. It does exactly the opposite. It doesn't deepen our pain. It does just the opposite. 
By talking about our trauma, we are processing all those emotions that were stifled when we were going through the experience. 
How many of you describe your response to D-Day as "shock"? Or say, "I felt numb"?
I know that I somehow got myself dressed, out of the house and managed to make chit-chat with the other moms while picking up my kids. It was like some weird out-of-body experience. I could watch myself making small talk and smiling at the teachers and pretending with my kids that everything was A-okay. 
That, my friends, is a trauma response. That is survival instinct kicking in. And it's helpful. It's helpful to ensure that children get picked up from school, that dinner gets put on the table, that jobs get done, that life goes on. But, over the long term, it's not helpful, it's harmful. 
It produces post-trauma. It might show up as a numbness that simply doesn't go away even when it becomes safe to process feelings. It might show up as depression, or self-loathing (which is anger turned inward). It might be nightmares. It might be anxiety. It might be an out-of-proportion response to something seemingly benign. Like completely panicking when your husband is five minutes late coming home from work. 
I once went berserk when I couldn't reach my husband on the phone and he was at the grocery store. I went ballistic on him. To him, what was the big deal? To me, not being able to reach him was EXACTLY what had happened the morning I found out. This wasn't about him being unreachable at the grocery store. This was about me being totally transported back to that awful, horrible morning when my world fell apart. To that consistent 33-second wait while I listened to his phone ring until it went to voice mail. 33 seconds. I watched the clock. Over and over as my brain caught up to what my body had known for weeks.
This was about post-trauma.
And, as Trunk points out, the way to turn post-trauma into PAST trauma is to talk about it.
The key here is talk. This isn't about raging and screaming and dredging up every last unkind thing your spouse has ever done. In fact, that won't get you anywhere. It's about telling your story. It's about someone bearing witness to your fear and your confusion. It's about someone confirming that this happened. And it was horrible. It's about reminding yourself over and over again, that this happened...but it's not happening now. 
You survived. 
You survived to tell your story.
It can be really tough, however, to convince your husband of this.
You tell your story and he hears, over and over again, I'm a total asshole who did this. I'm a cheating, lying scumbag. No matter that you're not exactly saying that (though you might be thinking it), that's what he hears. And he doesn't WANT to hear that. He doesn't WANT to be reminded of what he did. Who would?
Though a therapist or good friend can also listen to your story, it's often those who created our trauma who we want to listen to our story. We want our husbands to listen to our pain and reassure us that we will never have to go through that again. That it's over. That they are doing everything they can to make sure they never walk down that same path. That they never want to hurt us like that again.
That's it. Most of us don't want our husbands to beat themselves up. We don't want the focus to be on them at all. This is about us. 
And the opportunity to tell our story, or part of it, each time we're triggered moves us forward. It helps us heal. And each time our husband is able to be with us in that pain, to listen without defending himself, or minimizing our experience, or telling us why we shouldn't feel that way, our marriage is strengthened. We're on the same team, trying to beat back trauma. 
But each time we're silenced, told we're "living in the past", told we're hurting ourselves, that we need to "let it go" and "move on", our trauma goes deeper underground and our marriage fractures a bit more. We're on opposing teams, each trying to nurse his/her own wound at the expense of the other.
The story of our betrayal is a key part of who we are, whether our husbands or we like it or not (and most of us...not so much). But sharing that story carries with it the power to heal, not only ourselves but our marriages.