~Glennon Doyle
There is becoming pain and there is self betrayal pain. And you have to know the difference
~Brené Brown
I didn't see it at first. My husband's betrayal eclipsed all else in my life. So devastated by it, I couldn't see anything beyond what he did to me.
I completely missed what I had done to myself.
But over the following months and years, it became impossible to ignore. Yes, my husband had betrayed me, profoundly. But the deeper betrayal was how I had betrayed myself.
It had happened slowly. In hindsight, there wasn't one moment I could point to and say "there, yes. That's when I abandoned myself."
Rather it was many smaller moments, where I chose him over me, where I prioritized his comfort over my own, where I silenced my voice so that his was all either of us heard. Let me be clear. This was not abuse. My husband isn't cruel or domineering. Rather, I had learned in childhood to keep the peace, to not rock the boat. And so, when marriage got sticky, I let him define the narrative: I was "too sensitive", I was "looking for problems". And when I pushed back, which I still had the guts to do, I was "crazy". Want to know what "crazy" looked like in my house? Let me tell you. Crazy was me pointing out when his mother was judgemental and cruel (my son was a "momma's boy" because I comforted him when he cried, for instance). Crazy was me insisting that our sex life seemed off. Crazy was me stating my truth.
Our culture has a long history of silencing women with "crazy". And it worked. Mostly. I silenced myself. Why bother pointing out that his mother was unkind to me? Why bother asking for more help with the kids? Why bother bringing up that my work was important too?
Why bother?
Far more important to find workarounds, to call on other people for support, to not rock the boat. Marriages are about compromise, right? All marriages have rough spots, rights? And when you've never seen a healthy marriage, you believe that yours is probably better than most. Certainly better than any you've seen modelled.
And in those words – 'why bother?' – lay my own betrayal self.
Why bother? Because I was frustrated by how low on the priority list my own career fell? Why bother? Because his mother's unkindness hurt me. No matter that he'd lived with it his entire life. No matter that she "old and unlikely to change." It hurt me. That should have mattered.
Why bother? Because we matter. Because our wants and needs matter. Because what we identify as impediments to us living a full, rich life matter.
And when we pretend they don't, or when we convince ourselves that we can work around them rather than ask those invested in keeping them in place to help us dismantle them (and yes, I'm not just talking about my marriage here but a patriarchal, misogynistic culture), we betray ourselves.
I operated under the mistaken belief that I needed my husband to agree with me in order to create the change I wanted. If I couldn't convince him, then maybe the barriers I identified didn't exist. Maybe my wants and needs were the problem. Maybe, like we women are told so often, we want too much. We are too hungry. We are too much.
But now... Now we know that was never the case, don't we? With our blinders off, having been brought fully to our knees by another's betrayal, it's crystal clear, isn't it? The way we betrayed ourselves first. The way the system works against us.
Everything I had identified was revealed as truth. My husband, who formerly defended his mother and dismissed me as "crazy", revealed years of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her and his father. Our sex life? No wonder it felt like something was wrong. It was. My husband was a sex addict. The household labour imbalance felt wrong because it was. I had taken on the lion's share because I bought into the idea that the person making the most money should have the most power, completely, of course, misunderstanding the value of all the unpaid labor I did.
Every single time I questioned what I knew to be true, I betrayed myself.
No longer.
There is the pain of becoming, says Brené Brown, and then there is the pain of self-betrayal. I know both. And I resolve to always, always choose the former over the latter. I hope you will too.
I didn't see it at first. My husband's betrayal eclipsed all else in my life. So devastated by it, I couldn't see anything beyond what he did to me.
I completely missed what I had done to myself.
But over the following months and years, it became impossible to ignore. Yes, my husband had betrayed me, profoundly. But the deeper betrayal was how I had betrayed myself.
It had happened slowly. In hindsight, there wasn't one moment I could point to and say "there, yes. That's when I abandoned myself."
Rather it was many smaller moments, where I chose him over me, where I prioritized his comfort over my own, where I silenced my voice so that his was all either of us heard. Let me be clear. This was not abuse. My husband isn't cruel or domineering. Rather, I had learned in childhood to keep the peace, to not rock the boat. And so, when marriage got sticky, I let him define the narrative: I was "too sensitive", I was "looking for problems". And when I pushed back, which I still had the guts to do, I was "crazy". Want to know what "crazy" looked like in my house? Let me tell you. Crazy was me pointing out when his mother was judgemental and cruel (my son was a "momma's boy" because I comforted him when he cried, for instance). Crazy was me insisting that our sex life seemed off. Crazy was me stating my truth.
Our culture has a long history of silencing women with "crazy". And it worked. Mostly. I silenced myself. Why bother pointing out that his mother was unkind to me? Why bother asking for more help with the kids? Why bother bringing up that my work was important too?
Why bother?
Far more important to find workarounds, to call on other people for support, to not rock the boat. Marriages are about compromise, right? All marriages have rough spots, rights? And when you've never seen a healthy marriage, you believe that yours is probably better than most. Certainly better than any you've seen modelled.
And in those words – 'why bother?' – lay my own betrayal self.
Why bother? Because I was frustrated by how low on the priority list my own career fell? Why bother? Because his mother's unkindness hurt me. No matter that he'd lived with it his entire life. No matter that she "old and unlikely to change." It hurt me. That should have mattered.
Why bother? Because we matter. Because our wants and needs matter. Because what we identify as impediments to us living a full, rich life matter.
And when we pretend they don't, or when we convince ourselves that we can work around them rather than ask those invested in keeping them in place to help us dismantle them (and yes, I'm not just talking about my marriage here but a patriarchal, misogynistic culture), we betray ourselves.
I operated under the mistaken belief that I needed my husband to agree with me in order to create the change I wanted. If I couldn't convince him, then maybe the barriers I identified didn't exist. Maybe my wants and needs were the problem. Maybe, like we women are told so often, we want too much. We are too hungry. We are too much.
But now... Now we know that was never the case, don't we? With our blinders off, having been brought fully to our knees by another's betrayal, it's crystal clear, isn't it? The way we betrayed ourselves first. The way the system works against us.
Everything I had identified was revealed as truth. My husband, who formerly defended his mother and dismissed me as "crazy", revealed years of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her and his father. Our sex life? No wonder it felt like something was wrong. It was. My husband was a sex addict. The household labour imbalance felt wrong because it was. I had taken on the lion's share because I bought into the idea that the person making the most money should have the most power, completely, of course, misunderstanding the value of all the unpaid labor I did.
Every single time I questioned what I knew to be true, I betrayed myself.
No longer.
There is the pain of becoming, says Brené Brown, and then there is the pain of self-betrayal. I know both. And I resolve to always, always choose the former over the latter. I hope you will too.
