Riding out the storms

It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships
~Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

When I wrote my book, Encyclopedia for the Betrayed, I had to consider why I was doing it. I'd been picking away at a "survival guide" for years. But none of it was working. Organizing it chronologically didn't work because betrayal doesn't happen in a straight line for a whole lot of us. Dividing it into categories didn't work because there's a whole lot of overlap so it became repetitive. I'd get frustrated and put it aside. And I kept asking myself what my book would contribute to the conversation that wasn't already out there. 
When I hit upon the idea of writing it like an encyclopedia, inspired by one of my favorite books Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by the incredible Amy Krouse Rosenthal, everything fell into place. I had my "how". But more importantly, by then I was also clear about the "why".
I wanted my book to assure readers of two crucial things:
•You are not alone in your pain. 
•You will get through this.
Sure I wanted my readers to have the information to help them with specific concerns – how to avoid pain shopping, how to manage mind movies, what the hell to do about hysterical bonding. But more than anything else, I wanted people to read between every single line these two things: You are not alone. You will get through this.
Because neither of those things feel true when you're going through betrayal hell. You feel so incredibly alone. Surely nobody in the history of the world has felt as gutted as you do, as hopeless. 
And you, by no means, believe you'll get through this.
You believe you'll feel like this forever, don't you? Maybe not completely devastated but sad. You'll carry on but you're convinced that this taint, this sense of defeat will remain with you. 
I told my husband he had "ruined" me. That I was "broken". Which wasn't untrue at that moment. What was untrue, and what I wish I'd known then, was that my broken-ruined stated was temporary. Yes, I was sad. I was deeply wounded. But that too was temporary.
And what I also didn't know then and I even hesitate to write it here because it reeks of self-sacrifice is that out of the rubble that was my life on D-Day, I recreated myself. I recreated my marriage. I recreated my family. My life.
I can hear you already. "But my life was just fine!" you say. "I liked who I was!" you tell me. "I will never feel carefree again!" you insist.
I hear you. I really do. 
And I'm not saying those things aren't true (well, except your life wasn't "fine". Your husband was cheating). I'm glad you like yourself because it will help you remain clear with your boundaries as you're healing from this. So much easier than those whose self-esteem has long been in tatters. And I know how painful it is to realize that you likely will never again just trust that your partner would never hurt you. That's an excruciating truth to accept. It really does change us.
But Kay Redfield Jamison, who has struggled her whole life with bipolar disorder, is right in that it's the storms we weather that shape us. An easy life is never to be confused with a good one. The struggles we have don't only shape us negatively. We get to decide what we do with the bleakness. Consider the mothers who created MADD, the veterans who are demanding appropriate mental health support, Malala who continues to fight to get girls into classrooms. My own daughter, who lives with bipolar disorder, is using her experience to prepare to counsel others with the illness. My mother, who lived 25 years as a recovering alcoholic, never hesitated to get someone struggling with alcoholism to a meeting, long after she'd stopped attending them herself.
Betrayal is excruciating, I know. But without it, I wouldn't have met the incredible women at our retreat 10 days ago – women who dazzled me with their kindness, their humor, their brilliance. I wouldn't have my book, of which I'm enormously proud and grateful to be able to put out in the world. I wouldn't have healed deeper wounds I had around abandonment and self-worth. I wouldn't have this blog. And all of you who, every single day, amaze me when you show up for each other, even when your own hearts are breaking. 
Do I wish I'd never gone through it? It doesn't really matter, does it. I did go through it. My husband went through it and is a more humble, considerate and compassionate man. 
So. Here's what you need to know:
You are not alone.
You will get through this.
I promise. 

From the Vault: Five Ways We Hurt Ourselves After His Affair

[THIS OLDIE BUT GOODIE REMAINS THE MOST-READ POST ON THIS SITE BUT COMMENTS HAVE EXCEEDED MY COMPUTER'S ABILITY TO READ THEM. FOR THAT REASON, I'M RE-POSTING SO WE CAN START A NEW COMMENT THREAD.]

Infidelity is excruciating. Never in my dreams did I imagine how excruciating. Like most women, I had talked about what I'd do if I found out my husband cheated. My friends and I, when we heard of someone having an affair, would inevitably say to each other, "Well, if my husband ever did that, I'd show him the door so fast..." We imagined we'd wipe our hands of the scumbag, throw his stuff on the front lawn and be done with it. At no point did I imagine years of therapy, anti-depressants, and a stack of books on my bedside table that covered everything from forgiveness to sex addiction.
Life has a way of messing with my plans.
I've learned, however, that though I clearly couldn't control what choices my husband had made (oh, if I could have!!) I could learn to control myself. I say learn to control myself because I'd never really thought of it that way before. I'd always operated from the "I am what I am" school of thought. That my responses to life were the result of some personality lottery, and I received a rather impetuous, emotional, mercurial one. So when I knocked a television off a table to indicate just how angry I was with my husband well...how could I control that? I was fiery.
Ummm....no.
Over the years following discovery of my husband's cheating, I began to recognize just what I could control (actions). And what I couldn't (feelings). By controlling actions I can so often better manage feelings. I can keep them from galloping away, and taking me with  them. The goal, of course, isn't to turn into some sort of automaton whose feelings are experienced with precision and control. It's to get to a place of healthy healing, where you can feel all your emotions – joy, pain, fear, excitement – without acting in ways that aren't consistent with your values.
Unfortunately when we're in such emotional pain we can lose sight of what we can and cannot control. The part of our brain that performs the so-called executive functions has been hijacked by the part of our brain that focuses on pure survival, our reptilian brain. And by survival, I'm not referring to scrapping it out with our five-year-old over the last piece of pizza because we're starving...but rather emotional survival, a craving to understand just exactly what the threat is that we're dealing with so that we can be prepared for it. It's a rational impulse. But our ways of achieving it can be irrational. Julie Gottman calls at least some of our behaviour PTSD and had this to say in a New York Times story about deception: "When secrets emerge ... the partner suffers profoundly. Post-traumatic stress disorder is the result — being battered by unwanted intrusive thoughts about the betrayal, nightmares, emotional numbing coupled with unpredictable explosions, sleep disturbances and hyper-vigilance as the partner or spouse searches for yet some other betrayal."
Consider these five ways we hurt ourselves in the name of "survival".

Pain shopping (or asking the same questions over and over and over and...): Most of us, when we finally get proof (or an admission) of cheating from our spouses are flooded with questions. How did this happen? When? Where did they meet? What did they do? Did he meet her friends? Did other people know? What does she look like? Where does she work? Does she wear high heels? Is she vegetarian? and on and on and on, until our poor brains simply can't absorb the volume of information and our spouses can't even keep track of the details.
The need to know is crucial and valid. For too long, we've been outside the door of the affair with no awareness of what's going on behind it. In order for a marriage to heal (or you to heal on your own), it really does help to open the door and have the chance to take a look around. But – and it's a big but – at a certain point you have all the information you really need. The rest is pain shopping.

Digging for "evidence" of an affair he's already admitted: My husband came clean fairly quickly about his affair. Within 24 hours I knew pretty much everything I needed to know. Did that stop me from rifling through his drawers, his phone records, his VISA statements and anything else I could get my hands on? Of course it didn't. I was like some sort of crazed forensics expert, pouring over everything as if it could doubly confirm what I already knew. Did I discover anything crucial? Nope. Not a thing. Sure I saw some receipts for dinners out with her. But given that I already knew they'd slept together on a number of occasions, what did it matter that he felt obliged to buy her a steak? I already knew at that point he was a liar and a cheater...everything else was a matter of degree. Do yourself a favor. Find out what you need to know to paint the big picture. Then stop. At this point you're distracting yourself from actually feeling the pain of what you now know. You can't dam up that flood of emotions no matter how long you spend looking at receipts. 

Staying in contact with the Other Woman: I sent the OW a Christmas card (my D-Day was December 11) in which I included a photo of my husband and our kids, along with a note about how I knew how much she'd "done" for our family. It was the type of card that, had she taken it to my husband's and her employer, would make her look insane because on the surface it was innocuous. Almost sweet. But she – and I – knew exactly what I was saying. But that was where the contact stopped. I know too many women who stay in touch with the OW, either via Facebook or mutual friends or even face-to-face, and I can't believe anything good can ever come of it, assuming the OW knew about you. Block her on FB, steer as far out of her way as possible, cut her out of your life. She's poison.

Numbing ourselves with drugs/alcohol/food/shopping/insert-compulsive-behavior-here: Oh...it's tempting. So tempting that I didn't take a drink for months after D-Day because, as the daughter of two alcoholics, I was pretty sure it would end badly. But forewarned is forearmed. Recognize that right now you are incredibly vulnerable. And for most of us the discomfort of feeling vulnerable is something we'll do almost anything to stop. Like eat a chocolate cake, buy four pairs of shoes, pop Zoloft like it's candy, even exercise to the point of injury. Whatever your compulsion of choice is, now's the time to put it under a microscope and determine just how much is healthy...and how much is harmful. You need you right now. Not some numbed out zombie with too many shoes.

Maintaining toxic friendships: Infidelity brings up a lot of issues for a lot of people. There are those who will suggest you "get over" this, those who dismiss your angst with impatience that you don't just kick him out, those who avoid you because your experience brings up uncomfortable feels about their own marriage. It's tempting to keep everyone close because you're feeling so alone. But toxic people simply make your pain and loneliness worse. You need compassion and understanding, not blame, frustration, impatience or unsolicited advice. If there's no-one in real life, please remember that we're here, we know your pain and will lovingly guide to toward healing.

That's the short list. Are there things you do that you recognize are only hurting yourself? Share your story here. Others will no doubt recognize themselves. Together we'll heal.

Pain Shopping: How to Stop Seeking Out More Hurt

I've written on this blog before about The Dead Zone, or what some call the "plain of lethal flatness", that stage of numbness where you don't really feel much of anything.
It can be a nice place to stay for awhile, to catch your breath after the wild ride of D-Day. But feeling nothing is no way to live.
But nor is feeling nothing but pain. And that stage also carries with it the danger of sucking you in and keeping you there.
It seems counter-intuitive. Who would deliberately seek out pain? Well...someone who has been so traumatized by the betrayal that they simply can't stop obsessing over it for fear that it will blindside them again.
I confess I did a bit of pain shopping myself in the weeks following D-Day. My husband would no sooner be out the door than I'd be rooting through his drawers, his suit pockets, his files -- looking for something, anything, to confirm what I already knew.
And that's the rub. I already knew. What difference did it make if I found yet another restaurant bill? Or another phone bill detailing the length of the zillion phone calls?
So why was I doing it? I could plead insanity quite convincingly. But, in some weird way, I felt afraid of getting past the betrayal. Not that I was even close -- I still had a long way to go. But as I inched closer, a small part of me worried that if I put this behind us, it could sneak up on me again and knock me down. And I wasn't so sure I could survive it again.
And so, on some level, it made sense to me to keep it in front of me. To be so focussed on the betrayal that it couldn't be behind me. As long as I was raking my husband over the coals for his affairs, he couldn't possibly think that it wasn't such a big deal. Or that I had handled it fine. There could, quite simply, be absolutely NO mistake that this was NOT okay with me. And would never be okay with me.
The thing is he already knew that. He watched me crumble and it devastated him. He told me once that my eyes looked dead and he knew that he had done that to me.
What the pain shopping was doing was keeping my eyes dead. It was preventing even a glimmer of light from re-entering because the long shadow of the betrayal was still there, casting a darkness over everything: my joy in my kids, my delight in my pets, my love of my work. I still had all that. But not as long as I only focussed on what had caused me pain.
So I issue this caveat: When you're rooting around for bills, or a cell phone, or checking his Web history, ask yourself: Are you looking for necessary evidence to confirm what you suspect? Or what he's denying? Or to get answers to questions he refuses?
Or are you, like I did, pain shopping? Focussing on the pain to ensure that it can't blindside you again...

He wants to save the marriage? Show him the new rule book

So he's admitted his affair. And is assuring you it's over. And that, he's telling you, is all you need to know. Doesn't matter that you're asking for more information. Doesn't matter that he's clearly lied to you in the past. That's all behind him now. And it's for your own good, he insists. It'll hurt you to know more, he says.
Problem is, the rules have changed. And he needs to know that. He's no longer the one determining what will hurt you, or what you need to know. I clearly recall my then-5-year-old daughter telling her little brother, "I'm the one in charge here." And guess what! You're now the one in charge here.

You decide what affair details you need
Not to suggest you be dictatorial...well, actually, that's exactly what I'm suggesting. We trusted our spouses and they let us down. Blind trust is gone, never to be seen again in these parts. Mature trust – trust that is earned through your spouse repeatedly doing and saying what he honestly did and said – can bloom. But not until you get the answers you need and he starts giving them to you.
The thing is, cheaters feel lousy. Unless they're psychopaths, they know what they did was hurtful and selfish. And by giving you the details of that, they're forced to acknowledge that not only to you (who kinda already knows) but to themselves. It's a lot easier to stay mum, and pretend it's because they don't want to hurt you. They already have! But to face that hurt in your eyes again and again feels crappy.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any couples who have successfully put their marriage back together without this brutally painful step. As one wise soul said, during her husband's affair, the door was shut to her. She didn't know about it, couldn't ask about it. Now's the time, she said, to open the windows to her and shut the door to the affair partner.

Don't go "pain shopping"
I'll add in a caveat, however. There is such a thing as too much information. Some call it "pain shopping" and it's a compulsive need for more and more detail. I was certainly guilty of it in the early days following disclosure.
The danger is you can't "un-know" something, no matter how painful. After a while (I'm a slow learner!), I came up with my 24-hour rule. If I wanted to ask my husband something about his infidelity, I made myself wait 24 hours (give or take...). If I STILL wanted to know a day later, or could even remember what the question was, I proceeded and he answered honestly.
Most times, the question had faded from my mind...indicating to me that it wasn't something I needed to know but rather "pain shopping."
To my husband's credit (I do give him some, now and again :) ), he recognized that I deserved to decide what information I wanted.

The new rules?
You decide what information you want.
You demand total transparency going forward. (More to come on this in an upcoming post.)
His job is to support you as much as possible in your healing. And, believe me, it's not a job for the faint of heart.