Pain: Learning to shut the hell up

...Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.
~Randall Jarell, from 90 North

It can feel an affront, in the wake of discovering a spouse's betrayal, to be offered up platitudes. "We aren't given more than we can handle," we are told by well-meaning friends. "There's a reason for everything," we hear, knowing full well that the reason that particular armchair philosopher has in mind isn't that our husband is a morally-challenged idiot. Or, perhaps you're told, that within all this pain is wisdom. Um...gulp...that one might have been from me.
Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran "Pastrix" who has this to say about platitudes:

"...when I've experienced loss and felt so much pain that it feels like nothing else ever existed, the last thing I need is a well-meaning but vapid person saying that when God closes a door he opens a window. It makes me want to ask where exactly the window is so I can push him the fuck out of it."

Feel familiar?
Bolz-Weber goes on to explain, however, what she's figured out from working as a hospital chaplain, and being with people when they're in the worst pain of their lives – losing a child, a parent, a spouse:

 "...when...someone says something senselessly optimistic to you, it's about them. Either they want to feel like they can say something helpful, or they simply cannot allow themselves to entertain...pain, so instead they turn it into a Precious Moments greeting card.... As a chaplain, I felt that people really just needed me to mostly shut the hell up and deal with the reality of how painful it all is."

It's something so few of us understand about pain until we've experienced it ourselves. The cancer diagnosis. The death. The betrayal. And even then, some of us never learn. The continue to try and soothe us with well-meaning advice. Or quote-of-the-day wisdom.
Help, as my counsellor loved to remind me, is the sunny side of control. And control, many of us haven't quite yet learned, is what anxious people cling to because the alternative – that we're all just hanging on for dear life – is just too much to bear.
Those of us experiencing it right now? We don't expect others to fix it. We know they can't. But so much of the pain of betrayal is feeling as though we need to hide it.
Which is why those friends – in real life and in the virtual world – who can simply be with us in our pain are so valuable. They see us. Our pain is visible to them. And they respond not necessarily with advice (unless requested) but with compassion. They remind us gently that we won't always feel this way. They nudge us toward the tiniest bit of light.
As for me, I'll continue to write my experience. Some of what I've learned will sound like bullshit to you. Feel free to skip past it. As always on this site, take what works for you and leave the rest. There is no right or wrong way toward healing. There is only the way that takes each of us out of pain. If you want to share your own path, we're all ears.
Now I'll "shut the hell up" and listen.

My High School Reunion: Facing a Friend Who Betrayed Me

I recently attended my 30th high school reunion. I was nervous. So nervous, in fact, that I had decided not to go. High school wasn't a laugh-riot for me though I wasn't bullied. My marks were good. I had friends. 
Sadly though, one of those friends betrayed me. After two years of being with the first boy I'd said I loved, the first boy I had sex with, we broke up when I went to school in another city. Days after we broke up and just days before I left, I went to a party. There, on a couch sitting on my now-ex's lap, was my friend.
You could say that what she did was fine -- after all, he and I had broken up. We weren't technically going out. That's essentially what she said.
But I know better.
Friends don't do that to other friends. There are enough guys in the world that, unless you're convinced this one is your soulmate and you're willing to sacrifice your friendship for that, you can obey the law of the sisterhood. She and he broke up a month or two later when she started dating another guy. 
It took me years to get over my anger. Her name made my blood boil. The thought of her having any measure of happiness in life seemed like a bad karmic joke. Eventually I got past it, though I've nursed a simmering resentment for the decades since.
So when she was one of the first to RSVP to the reunion, I decided to just stay home.
At the last minute, however, I changed my mind. 
I'd had a mind-shift. I remembered back to what I knew of her before she dated my ex. She craved attention from men. She was self-absorbed. Almost childish at times. With what I know now, it's easy for me to recognize that she desperately needed validation from others (men!) that she was worthy. She's now on husband #3 so apparently she's still looking.
But I was able to recognize that her dating my ex wasn't about trying to hurt me. It wasn't about me at all. Surely she knew that my still-aching heart would be a casualty of her choice. But obviously I didn't matter more than her need to have someone pick her.
I decided that I would attend the reunion and that I would let go of 30 years of bitterness. That I would note the fact that all of us had undoubtedly changed in three decades, including me. 
So I did. 

She sought me out. Not to apologize – I doubt that even dawned on her – but simply to catch up. In the course of our conversation she made note of another event, when she'd suddenly quit a job that I'd got for her. A good job. I had thought it was because I'd been promoted and she was jealous. Turns out she quit because when she asked for an upcoming night off to attend a school dance the supervisor said she could have it off...if she gave him a blow job.

I was stunned. I'd had no idea.

I realized how often we make assumptions about others' actions based on a piece of information, not the whole story. I asked why she'd never told me what happened. "Because I thought I'd done something wrong," she said. Instead, without the maturity or perspective that comes with age and confidence, she quit.

What my friend did to me still sucks. It's still something that I hope my daughter never does to a friend. But the bitterness has, for the most part, evaporated. I feel sorry for her. For her unquenchable need to be adored. For her own inability to admit her shortcomings. For her continued quest to fill from the outside what can only be filled from within.

She recently had a health scare and she told me that when her third husband came into the hospital where she'd been taken that the look on his face – total panic – made her finally realize how much she mattered to him. In that instant, she said, she realized that this was truly the man for her. Her marriage, she said, changed. It became a priority. 

I was glad to hear. Finally. 

What to Do With The Wedding Ring...

I posted awhile back on my wedding ring. I took mine off shortly after learning of my husband's infidelity...and it remains in my jewellery box.
Another blogger, the fabulous Tabatha, linked to my post and blogged about her own conflicted feelings regarding her ring. Her words were so heartfelt and she so beautifully summed up the feelings of so many betrayed wives that, with her permission, I've copied them here:

But that ring ... it's like it burns when I put it on. It's almost as if it belongs to someone else, like I'm borrowing it to play dress-up, or more that I found it and no one's laying claim to it so I might as well keep it. It's the ring of a girl who had everything she wanted, who got her fairytale romance and wedding and family is now living in a modest castle somewhere in HappilyEverAfterVille, just north ofNeverNeverLand. It's the ring of a girl who believed in a lot of things, however naively, and just knew in her heart that this was the way things were supposed to be. It's a ring of hope and promise and trust and vindication and love and respect and ...

And a lot of things my marriage didn't end up being or containing.


I hope Tabatha is able to come to terms with her feelings about her ring and make a decision that feels right for her. Please...let me know how you felt about your wedding ring in the wake of D-Day. Symbol of love? Or reminder of pain...

Pushing through paralysis: When the pain of betrayal seems insurmountable

Emotional pain can be crippling, especially when we're blindsided by it. It takes us out at the knees, rendering us baffled and bewildered, wondering whom we can trust and what we should do.
The short answer to the latter question is...nothing. At least not right now.
Conventional wisdom has it that betrayed wives shouldn't make any quick decisions, in large part because the part of our brains capable of sensible decisions is AWOL. We're likely to make a decision out of exhaustion. Or anger. Or thoughts of revenge. More often than not, it won't be a decision borne of clarity of mind and pureness of heart.

But what about when the thought of taking any action seems like too much?
When we experience betrayal, our minds process it as trauma. It took me long time to acknowledge this. It seemed too dramatic. Or too self-pitying. And I was determined that this was something I could handle.
Except that I couldn't.
I was having panic attacks. I felt utterly without value. I couldn't stop crying. Or couldn't feel anything. Even with my children, I felt oddly detached. As if I was watching life from the other side of a glass wall – I could see, but not participate.
A friend who worked with survivors of sex abuse suggested that my situation sounded a lot like the post-trauma response she saw in SA survivors. And once she said that, my response became clear. And with that acknowledgement came the ability to give myself a break. To stop expecting myself to bounce back from this. To give up my belief that I could just "get over it".
Most of us won't get over this without a lot of work on our parts – counselling, self-discovery and life changes.
To get us started, visit this blog post aimed at writers...but with advice that works for any of us stuck in a bad place.
It won't be easy. But it will become easier.
And the time will come when you'll be able to make a decision based on rational thought and a clear view of how you want your future to look. For now, your future is the next five minutes...or ten.