Feeling Each Other's Pain

"It's when you can feel your opponent's pain that the path to reconciliation begins." ~Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi in an interview with Krista Tippet On Being

Being cheated on will never feel "fair". And "fair" is what so many of us are after. "But it's not fair!" I would wail, like a seven-year-old whose brother got a bigger slice of pie. I was right, of course. It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair that he got the sex and I got the empty bed. It wasn't fair that he got the attention and I got the loneliness. It wasn't fair that he got the ego strokes and the excitement of forbidden relationships while I got the day in-day out mundanity of life with three young children.
It wasn't fair that I was in excruciating pain. That I couldn't eat or sleep or work. It wasn't fair that my entire life was turned upside down because of his choices. It wasn't fair that I couldn't listen to the radio without being triggered. I couldn't see a certain model of car. I couldn't go to certain restaurants or see certain friends or experience certain kinds of weather without doubling over in pain.
It wasn't fair. None of it.
But life, as I so often remind my own children, isn't fair. And all the wishing in the world won't make it so.
Where does that leave us?
Well...it leaves us accepting that even if we cheat on him and dump his ass and successfully sue the OW for "alienation of affection" and he loses his job and his children hate him and he winds up, sockless and hatless, on a freezing winter day living in a refrigerator box and getting arrested for urinating in a public place, our hearts will still have been broken. It leaves us with a decision: To rave about the unfairness of it all or to move forward with a different understanding.
Because even if we think he somehow got away with something, what did he get away with, really? He got away with hurting the person he vowed to never hurt. He got away with being a lying scumbag. Do we really believe he isn't paying a price for those things?
Those who don't pay a price for betrayal are without a conscience. And if your husband lacks a conscience or is masterful at ignoring his conscience and plans to stay that way, then do yourself a huge favor and lawyer up.
If, however, your husband isn't a narcissist or too divorced from emotion to experience any genuine remorse for his actions, then your husband is paying. He might not be paying enough in your view (would a pound of flesh in the form of his private parts suffice, ladies?). But he's paying.
His self-respect is gone. His belief in himself as a "good guy" is gone. After all, he's that guy – the one who devastated his entire family just so he could screw someone who doesn't mean much to him in the cold light of day.
My husband paid for what he did every day for months when, as he said, he had to see the pain in my eyes and know that he was the one who caused it.
Understanding that our husbands didn't really get away with much goes a long way towards helping us feel their pain. Or at least knowing that it's there. There's plenty of pain to go around. And while the pain of the betrayed is different in that we did nothing to bring it on whereas he was the one making the choices, in the end, perhaps, pain is pain.
Betrayal hurts both partners. It's lose-lose.
Or...
Or maybe we win when we can feel each other's pain. Maybe, as Jonathan Sacks says, the path to reconciliation is created when we finally understand that we're each broken by betrayal. Reconciliation doesn't have to mean staying married. It can mean releasing each other to a different future. But regardless of what we want that future to look like, empathy for each other's pain frees us from needing "fairness" and instead offers us the imperfect grace to heal.

Five More Ways We Hurt Ourselves After Our Husband's Affair

C'mon...you're smarter than that!

A couple of years ago I wrote a post called Five Ways We Hurt Ourselves After Our Husband's Affair. That post became the most popular post on this site, with more than double the page views of Five Steps to Healing a Marriage After an Affair, Letter to a Cheating Husband, and Seven Lies We Believe After a Spouse's Affair.
What I find interesting and wonderful is that the most popular post on this site is about we women seeking to heal ourselves. It's about us taking responsibility for what we can control, which is ourselves. It's about self-empowerment. It's about taking this horrible experience and recognizing how we're hurting ourselves...then changing our story.
Sadly I still get many comments from betrayed wives visiting this site that detail the ways in which they continue to hurt themselves. So I've added to my previous list. I'm sure I've still missed a few so please share your thoughts in the comments. Even better, tell us how you stopped hurting yourself – and began to heal.

#1: Letting him dictate the terms of reconciliation
He wants to determine whether or not you get couples counselling? He wants you to respect his "privacy"? He wants to continue to work with the OW? Uh...no. No way. Not a chance.
We sometimes get so blindsided and crippled by a spouse's affair that we forget to respect ourselves. We forget that we can't control whether he continues to cheat. We forget that we can't stop him from leaving us by simply being total doormats and letting him trod all over us. We forget that we matter.
This isn't about saving a marriage, this is about saving YOU. Marriages can survive all sorts of abuse and disrespect. But that's not what we want. We want, ultimately, a marriage that is stronger for the storms it has weathered, not simply hanging together through co-dependence, willful blindness, and fear.
This new paradigm begins when it is made clear that you, as the injured party, get to dictate the terms of reconciliation. You' get to set boundaries and ensure an atmosphere of emotional safety in order to reconcile. (He gets to call you out if you're unleashing your inner Kim Jong Un.)
•This begins with No Contact with the OW.
•No Contact might also include friends who were complicit in the affair.
•Total access to any and all electronics, social media accounts, passwords.
•Total accountability. Your new MO is "trust...but verify." He needs to be transparent about where he is and who he's with at all times.
•Counselling. Any guy who offers up the "but I don't need to go to a head-doctor" defence definitely needs to go to a head-doctor.

#2: Blaming ourselves
You are NOT the reason he cheated. Repeat that to yourself to absorb the full truth of that.
You are in no way to blame for his choice to cheat. That is 100% on him. If your marriage kinda sucked when he cheated, then absolutely take ownership for your part in that. But he had the choice to talk to you about it like a grown-up or run away from it and cheat, thereby making any problems in your marriage about a bajillion times worse.
As for blaming ourselves for any one of the "sins" our culture tells us leads our husbands to cheat – we were too focussed on the kids, we gained weight, we experienced depression, we got old – that is bullshit too.
Your husband cheated because he sought escape over reality. He sought avoidance over confrontation. He chose to betray you over saying 'no' to himself.

#3: Competing with the OW
How many of us suddenly feel cast into this competition with the Other Woman (or Women)? We desperately need to know whether she was prettier than we are. Younger? More successful? Better in bed? Skinnier? And on and on, while we keep a mental tally of whether she's ahead or whether we are.
Thing is, as I point out above, we're not to blame for his cheating. If all it takes is a younger, prettier woman, then we're all doomed. But that's not what affairs are generally about.
What the OW offers is nothing we want. It's sex without intimacy, it's a relationship played out in the shadows. The OW offers convenience. She offers fantasy. She is like a fun-house mirror, reflecting back everything our cheating spouse wants to see about  himself: He's sexy! Charming! Smart! It's the reason why so many OW are thrown completely under the bus the minute the affair comes to light and the offending spouse has to face up to what he's done.
This isn't a contest and making it one will only lead to misery, even if you think you're "winning".

#4: Ignoring our own needs
We feel on thin ice post-betrayal. Our spouse feels like a stranger. We don't trust ourselves, let alone anybody else. And yet somehow, within that, we need to acknowledge and respect our own needs. It can feel impossible, in part because we feel impossibly needy. We might need to be held while we sob for hours. We might need as much space as possible while we weep in solitude. We might need friends around us, we might need them to leave us alone. We might need extra help with housework, childcare, getting out of bed.
Honor those needs. Buy honoring your needs, you're honoring yourself. You're telling yourself that you matter. That you have value. That you are not defined by the worst thing that has happened to you. You are infinitely deeper than that.

#5: Letting our culture of "once a cheater..." determine our next step
Ah yes...my particular bête noire. I have taken some heat from another betrayed wife (who shall remain nameless and linkless) for selling fantasy in the form of reconciliation. An yet, statistically most couples dealing with infidelity remain married. That, in itself, is not cause for celebration because there will undoubtedly be those in that group who choose the rug-sweeping method of reconciliation. What IS cause for celebration is that, with a truly remorseful spouse willing to learn from his excruciating choice and a betrayed wife willing to extend compassion and respect to the person who hurt her (as well as herself), a re-created marriage is not only possible, it's probable.
Sadly too many betrayed wives follow the script handed to them by pop culture and cynics: the "once a cheater..." script, the "kick him to the curb" cynicism.
I'm no Pollyanna. Rebuilding a marriage after betrayal is a long, hard road. But so is divorce. You get to make the choice about what path to take based on what's right for YOU. Nobody else has to do the work. Nobody else reaps the benefits (or regrets). You decide. To hell with what everybody else thinks.

Fool Me Once...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Or so goes the old adage.
We were fooled once. We were fooled and lied to and deceived. It brought us to our knees. It damn near killed us. And there is no way in hell we're going to be fooled again.
So we put up our guard. We're on constant alert. Did he look me in the eye when he came home last night? Is he checking his phone more than usual? Is that a new cologne he's wearing?? Was he really working late?
We might check his computer, even if we haven't in years. We might sneak a look at his phone.
Even if we've let our guard down, even when we think we can finally relax into a marriage that has been rebuilt, made stronger by the storm it weathered, the slightest something-not-quite-right can send us spiralling back into our conviction that we must NEVER be fooled again.
I've been there. And, in fact, am there.
My husband thinks he's ready to kick his therapy. Over the past six years since D-Day, he's seen a sexual addiction specialist, done EMDR, attended work-benefit-supplied emergency counselling and, finally, a Jungian psychoanalyst. So yes, a lotta therapy. (Though, frankly, he was a lotta messy.)
In that same time, I've watched a man who frequently swung between childlike fear and superhero-like faux invincibility become balanced. I've heard him tell clients that he simply can't meet them in the evenings because that's his family time. I've seen him, finally, stand up to his mother. He pauses to take a breath before he responds to our child's requests. He find humor in what might have infuriated him. He's found space in his heart to learn to love himself with all his mistakes, which, of course, has allowed him to truly love me and our kids. He has wrestled his shame to the ground and though it sometimes resurfaces, he can recognize it and subdue it. In other words, he's a very different man than the one who confessed to me not only an affair but many.
Still...my own fear is awakening. Without that constant check-in with a therapist, I wonder if he'll lose his way. Without being guided along the path, I worry that he'll lose his way. In short, I worry that I'll be fooled again.
And that's the danger. Not that I will be fooled, necessarily, but that the possibility is always lurking in a shadow.
And the reason it's a danger is because it keeps us hostage to the fear. It doesn't, of course, alter the outcome. If we're gonna be fooled again, well it's not because we didn't check his e-mail often enough, or weren't vigilant enough. It's because the person who was broken enough to fool us the first time, is still broken. (And, perhaps, because we didn't set clear enough boundaries around our hearts the first time by insisting that he seek help in whatever form you felt he needed -- by kicking drugs, entering a 12-step program, seeking therapy, finding a new job...)
There are, I'm sad to say, no guarantees. No way to be certain that we'll never feel that heartbreak again – whether from the man who first fooled us, or from a new man. There is only our hard-won knowledge that IF we are to feel our hearts break again, we can trust our own strength to put them back together.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and you're really only fooling yourself.

Forget Forgiveness...Reach for Reconciliation

Forgiveness, says marriage counsellor and the author of 10 Conversations You Must Have Before You Get Married, is a stupid notion.
Dr. Guy Grenier is referring to our culture's preoccupation with the "forgive and forget" mentality. With betrayal, in particular he says, that's impossible.
What he recommends instead is reconciliation. Accepting what happened as in the past...and determining how you can positively affect your present and work toward a better future.
While I sometimes think it comes down to semantics – personally I've never believed that forgiveness was about saying what happened was "okay" – I nonetheless think he has a good point. And perhaps it's the word "forgiveness" and all that it implies – releasing someone from responsibility, forgetting, suggesting that what they did was okay – is exactly what stops so many of us from being able to do it.
Perhaps if we use a different word – like Dr. Grenier's "reconciliation", for example – it frees us to be able to consider the benefits behind it and apply it to our own lives.
I'm always a bit skeptical of those who, in the early weeks following D-Day, are able to announce that they've "forgiven" their errant spouse. At that point, the betrayed partner has barely absorbed the betrayal...and it's impossible to forgive what hasn't been fully experienced. It reeks, to me, of Christian stoicism – forgiveness because it's the right thing to do. Not the healthiest or the wisest...but the prescribed response to hurt. And, if it isn't truly felt, it will feel like yet another betrayal...of yourself.
I read many books and articles in my search to understand and recover from my husband's betrayal that suggested a lack of forgiveness stood in the way of moving forward in my life. Forgiveness, I read often, was freedom for myself. It was, many suggested, not about saying that what happened was okay but accepting that it had happened – giving up hope of a better past.
Those of us betrayed wives who view it that way are likely able to come to a point of forgiveness. The problem, I've discovered, is often how our partners (ex or otherwise) perceive it.
Forgiveness to them can mean a get-out-of-jail-free card. They can interpret it as being off the hook, freed from purgatory, out of the doghouse.
And that is something we, the betrayed, don't necessarily intend.
Though we may not want our (ex) spouses to feel perpetually chagrined for what they did, we also don't want them, at any point, to think that we're "over it". Or that it's "okay" now. It's not. And it never will be.
And so...reconciliation.
Reconciliation in its most extreme form was played out in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, where an entire country needed to heal.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Africa allowed that. It allowed both sides to voice their pain. To take responsibility where appropriate. And to accept that there was no turning back the clock. There was only the present and the future...and the chance to do their best to ensure what happened in the past never happened again.
And that is where true reconciliation (and forgiveness) lies. In the now.

Finding the Courage to Reconcile

Optimism is the foundation of courage. ~Nicholas Murray Butler

I'm an unapologetic optimist. In spite of overwhelming evidence that it's going to rain, I leave the umbrella at home and pack sunglasses. I tend to operate as if what I want to happen...has already happened. And then, of course, I'm surprised when it doesn't.
Which doesn't exactly set me up as the best person to offer advice to women whose husbands have betrayed them. Clearly, I'm either an optimist...or a moron, depending on your point of view.
Frankly, I like Butler's point of view. Butler was no fool, even winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and his notion that optimism often spurs us on when we're scared is a valuable one, I think, to those of us whose future looks frightening.
Once betrayed, we're also susceptible to degrees of post-trauma, navigating a world in which suddenly everything seems topsy-turvy and terrifying. Accepting a wayward husband's attempts at apology and promises of future fidelity can seem like the height of foolishness. "Once a cheater, always a cheater," being a popular saying.
But is it true?
Not necessarily. While stats on repeat offenders seem hard to come by, anecdotally I know of quite a few husbands who kept their promises of fidelity after betrayal. The pain, the resultant fragility of their marriage, the reality of an affair is enough to keep them from ever making that mistake again.
Of course, none of us can really know what the future will deliver. Whether our wayward spouses will keep their new promises...or betray us yet again.
Still, I've cast my vote for optimism. And courage. Life may not always serve up sunshine. But when it does...I'll have my shades.

After the affair: Should you stay or go?

As if discovering your husband's affair(s) isn't enough, now you feel you're expected to do something about it. At a time when brushing your teeth seems like a Herculean task, determining whether to fight for your marriage or show him the door is a decision that might be best left for now.

Pre-adultery, when we're still thinking of infidelity in the theoretical sense, most of us consider it a "deal-breaker". Yet, in the cold light of day following the discovery, the situation doesn't always seem so black and white. Karen was willing to give her husband a chance...until he kept saying he "couldn't make up his mind" between the two women and Karen decided her dignity was worth more than her wishy-washy husband. Ericka, a successful lawyer, had the resources to leave, but knew that she wanted to at least try and salvage her marriage. Others – like me, for example – spend months vascillating between the two choices.

What some of us can forgive or at least work at forgiving, others can't. Elizabeth Edwards reportedly believes that serial cheating is worse than a long-term affair.

The thing about betrayal is that, suddenly everything we think we know, we don't.