The Lies We Believe About Marriage Can Hold Us Back from Healing

...dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of love—which is to transform us. For our relationships to flourish, we need to see them in a new way—as a series of opportunities for developing greater awareness, discovering deeper truth, and becoming more fully human.
~John Welwood, Buddhist psychologist, (1943–2019)

I thought I was "safe". I thought that after saying "I do" in front of so many family and friends under the blue skies of a beautiful August day, I could relax. Sure my parents had sat both of us down and talked obliquely about "challenges" and "working hard at marriage" but what did they know? We were in love. We understood each other. What could go wrong?
It didn't take long for "what could go wrong" to begin to go wrong. We fought on our honeymoon. We argued about whose turn it was to clean the grout in the bathroom. I fumed over his refusal to walk our dogs – the dogs he had insisted on. 
It was, in hindsight, two strong-willed people fighting over power in the relationship. It was two damaged people fighting over intimacy. It was two frightened people demanding autonomy. 
What I didn't know at the time was that my husband was a sex addict who was already acting out and had been our entire relationship. I knew something was wrong...but I could never quite understand what it was. And so I did was so many women in relationships do: I took responsibility for fixing it.
And behind that willingness to take responsibility for it was the lie that a whole lot of us are sold: "...that love will save us, solve our problems...and provide a steady state of bliss or security." 
Holding onto that lie kept me stuck for a long time. If there was something that wasn't working in my marriage, well then, I just wasn't trying hard enough. And so I walked the dogs, and I nursed babies, and I cooked healthy meals, and I kept myself fit, and I brought in an income. I visited my parents, and nurtured friendships, and supported my husband in his career. ("Don't worry about staying late. I'm okay. I'll put the kids to bed...")
I abandoned myself in so many ways. I betrayed myself in so many ways.
And then, I discovered, he had been betraying me too.
If there's a silver lining to my husband's infidelity, it's this: Faced with the evidence that all my effort still hadn't kept me "safe", I accepted that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't the problem. And, with more candid conversations with other friends whose marriages were fragile for different reasons, I concluded that it was distinctly possible that we'd been sold a lie. A lie that marriage would protect us. That the "right" person would never hurt us. A lie that we can outsource love. Turns out, nope. It's an inside job.
And with the growing understanding that I didn't cause my husband's infidelity, that loving myself was an inside job, and that our culture had gaslit me into holding myself accountable for the actions of another adult human, I could begin to live differently.
I could begin to spend as much time getting to know myself as I did getting to know my husband and my friends and my children. I could begin to forgive myself for any number of sins – aging, being too tired to exercise, heating up dinner in the microwave, going to bed early, preferring a book to a party, saying something thoughtless or ignorant.
I could revisit so much earlier trauma and let myself off the hook for that too. I didn't invite the sexual assault that occurred in my 20s just because I drank too much. My mother's addiction and suicide attempts weren't because I was a horrible daughter, despite what my grandmother told me. I wasn't selfish. I wasn't self-centred. I gave this earlier trauma the time and attention it required to close that wound. 
I was doing the best that I could then.
I was doing the best that I could when I discovered my husband's betrayal.
I was doing the best that I could when I could barely get out of bed on the heels of D-Day #1. And then #2.
And I'm doing the best that I can now.
My guess is you are too. My guess is, from the heartbreaking comments I read on this site, from the stories I hear from others, is that you are doing the absolute best you can and that you're still beating yourself up that it's isn't enough. Because love was supposed to save you from all this. Marriage was supposed to protect you. So if you're in pain it's because you did something wrong: married the wrong guy, gained the wrong weight, paid attention to the wrong family members, introduced him to the wrong person.
A recent arrival on the shore that is Betrayed Wives Club is refusing to believe those of us insisting that she didn't do anything wrong to land herself where she is.
The belief behind this conviction is often about control. If the mistake is ours, then we can fix it.
The mistake, my friends, is theirs. And while recognizing that can liberate us from self-flagellation, it also removes any notion that we can "fix" our marriage or our spouse. 
Gulp. 
But on the other side of that recognition is another understanding. All we can ever do is show up and bring our best selves – a product of self-care and radical self-kindness – to our marriage. And then...
Well, then we do exactly what my parents told me we'd have to do. Face the challenges and work hard at it. Cause marriage might not promise safety but two people committed to holding each other through the tough times is, well, not perfect. Not bliss. But pretty darn good.