Friday Funny

I promised you in December that each Friday I'd offer up something to, hopefully, give you a giggle. Unfortunately, "each" Friday seems to actually mean "Fridays when I remember..." 

So...here goes:

Stupid lines uttered by Cheating Husbands...really:

"You would really like her."

"If you would just meet her I think maybe you guys could be friends."

"You should understand that I feel torn!"

"I need to be selfish right now."

"She reminds me of you. Well... how you used to be when we first met."

"I think I just love you like a friend and not a husband."

"It's not what you think." (spoken by a cheating husband IN BED NAKED with another woman)

Any you'd like to share??

Don't Blame Facebook

I recently joined Facebook. I "tweet" frequently. I have a profile on LinkedIn. I resisted all of these things for a long time. All I knew about Facebook was that far too many marriages disintegrated after a spouse rediscovered an old flame online. Given my anti-betrayal bias, I gave Facebook the finger.
So what changed my mind?
For one thing, I wanted to join the Facebook group Canadian Against Proroguing Parliament. (If you're not Canadian all you need to know is that our prime minister, Stephen Harper, is a scary, scary man.) And, after a few years of healing from betrayal, I was better able to see that, after all, Facebook wasn't to blame. I do think social networking sites make it easier for all the reasons outlined in this great blog post here. But, ultimately, spouses are responsible for their own actions.
What's more, while Facebook et al might make it easier to cheat, they also make it easier to catch a cheat. I had never felt the need to constantly check my husband's computer history, e-mail bills, VISA statements... If I had, well, the proverbial s#@t might have hit the fan a whole lot earlier. If you do find yourself wanting to check up, I think you need to come clear on a few things: Is your gut trying to tell you something that your head and heart aren't quite ready to know? Is the memory of past betrayals making you unnecessarily suspicious? Are there trust issues throughout your relationship that need addressing?
While I don't think that a spouse's e-mail accounts, computers, etc are off-limits, I do think we all deserve a certain measure of privacy and respect of personal space. Until, that is, we don't deserve it anymore.
For months following D-Day, I felt the need to randomly check my husband's cell phone and computer history. After all, those had been his tools for betrayal (except, of course, for that other tool. Ahem...). After repeatedly discovering nothing, I began to relax my own need to check up.

Do you snoop into your spouse's e-mail accounts, Facebook and other social networking sites? What did you discover?

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

It's not the sex, it's the dishonesty, say many women who've been cheated on. Which is why even emotional affairs, in which there's no sex, can be as devastating a blow to a marriage as full-frontal betrayal.
It seems counterintuitive. When we have yet to be struck by betrayal, and we're hypothetically working out how we might respond, few of us, I would guess, say, "the sex is okay, but he'd better not lie to me about it!" We think that it's the sex outside the marriage that's the biggie. Then it happens. And a lot of us realize that it's the dishonesty – the steady buildup of outright lies, lies by omission, blurring of truth – that creates the biggest hurdle to get over.
When your reality turns out to be fiction, your whole world seems topsy-turvy. And betrayal becomes trauma. Nothing feels safe. No-one is to be trusted.
It's important to recognize that believing someone you love isn't stupidity. It isn't gullibility. It's generally loyalty. And trust.
But it's equally important to recognize if there was a voice, even a really quiet one, urging you to question. To investigate. To delve deeper into something that just didn't feel right.
That voice is your wiser self. The one we need to learn to listen to. The one too many of us have silenced over the years.
I've often heard betrayed wives, post-betrayal, note that they knew their husbands were lying because their mouths were moving.
Liars will lie. Once we know this, we act accordingly. And protect ourselves.
If your spouse, who's lied in the past, expects you to trust again, he needs to recognize it won't be easy.
It will require complete transparency on his part. He will have to answer any and all questions with absolute honesty and be prepared to prove that he's telling the truth, if you ask.
Your new code of conduct? Trust but verify. Need to check his cell phone messages? Go ahead. Want to see his Facebook messages. Right on.
Be careful you're not pain shopping (more on that in a later post – basically it refers to behaviour that prolongs the agony unnecessarily). But if you're genuinely feeling anxious and need proof that he's being honest, then he should be happy to give it to you. Each time you question and he proves himself moves both of you a bit farther along the path of healing.
If he's giving you a hard time about it, he clearly just doesn't get it. He lied. He betrayed. The onus is on him to support you in your healing.
Betrayal is a bitch.

Mind Movies: Stop the Endless Sex Tapes

Master Mu is a stone Zen cat that sits on my desk. He's kitschy...but I love what he represents: Stillness. Serenity. Awakening. A way out of suffering. (And, perhaps, too much disposable income?)
But especially that one about a way out of suffering. Master Mu comes complete with a little booklet that offers up a whole lotta common sense in its teensy pages. Master Mu tells the story of a girl who didn't finish her homework. She tosses in bed, worried and anxious about what will happen in school the next morning when her teacher finds out. Her mother will get mad if she gets out of bed so she thinks her only choice is to stress about it. Until! Until it dawns on her that, right now, she's not in trouble. Right now, she's in her cosy bed. Tomorrow, she will suffer when her teacher finds out. But that's tomorrow. Why suffer dozens of times over when we can only suffer once, suggests Master Mu.

What does this have to do with the endless loop of mind movies we betrayed wives all too often subject ourselves to? You know the ones! The ones that serve absolutely no purpose and likely have no basis in reality because nobody, not even porn stars, can have the type of passionate, agile, continuous sex that we imagine our spouses engaged in.

So please, stop doing this to yourself. And you are doing this to yourself. Your spouse may have hurt you with his betrayal...but you're now hurting yourself over and over and over.

Try these ideas:
Imagine a huge red stop sign every time your mind starts to go down the path that ends with your husband having sex with someone else. Or whispering I love yous. Or whatever particularly fetid fantasy you have. If you can, give yourself a stern out-loud "Stop!" It might take a few times (or a few dozen times) but eventually the stopping will become automatic and you'll be able to head-off your thought process before it takes you somewhere dark.

Or consider wearing an elastic band around your wrist and giving it a good snap whenever you start to think things that damage your psyche.

You can replace the mind movies in which you play voyeur to your spouse's affair with something that feels empowering. Remember that constantly focusing on the "other" – spouse, other woman, whatever – disempowers you. One thing that worked for me was replacing my mental sex tapes with mind movies of me behind the wheel of my car chasing the OW naked down the road. I imagined the fear on her face. I imagined her flabby butt jiggling. I knew, of course, that I would never do such a thing. But imagining it always ended up making me giggle. Which was a helluva improvement over the tears that the other mind movies elicited.
If you're a better person than I and can't fathom imagining inflicting pain and/or humiliation on the OW, try a mind movie of you doing something that makes you feel good: winning an award, running a marathon, hanging with your kids. Anything that replaces painful images with positive ones.

Have you been able to successfully control mind movies? Share your success story...or your hopefully-soon-success story with us. 

I Know Why Buddha's Laughing: Lessons I've Learned Through Betrayal

"It's not what you call me...but what I answer to."~African Proverb

It's amazing the wisdom that comes out of Africa. Perhaps because it is an old country...with many generations of lessons. Or perhaps it's from having to endure such hardship over the centuries. As Buddha said, "Out of suffering comes great lessons."
Sometimes, though, I'd like to give Buddha a kick in his serene ass. We no doubt wish we could attain wisdom in ways a little less painful. Cause betrayal hurts like hell. The challenge, though, is in not letting it kill your soul.
It almost killed mine.
Though I'd gone through, I thought, my share of life's hurdles, all the wisdom I'd gained seemed to vanish in the face of betrayal. I can now see that I viewed my husband as more than he could be. Because I so desperately wanted to believe I was safe, that marriage would protect me from so much of the hurt I'd experienced in life, I had given up my own strength. Or at the very least neglected it.
Then came the day when it crashed. And I, always so calm in a crisis, was calm. And remained that way for about a week. Then the shock wore off.
And the lessons were forgotten: the ones about looking within for wholeness, about allowing others to be who they are without taking responsibility for it, about compassion for self. Poof. Gone. In its place were recriminations. I was either blaming him for letting me down...or myself for believing in him. Neither stance was very productive.
It was, though, necessary.
Our learning doesn't come to use in clear, easy-to-follow lessons. I learned that I was more disappointed in myself for not listening to my instincts than I was in my husband for his betrayal. Betrayal of self is the least forgivable.
But it is forgivable.
And now that I've pulled myself out of the shadows of betrayal, the lessons are clear.
Trust myself. Wishing people were different doesn't make them so. And that it's my choice whether to be my friend...or betray myself. I choose friend.

Is Time the Great Healer...or Are You?

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.~Andy Warhol

I was often reassured by the books I read during my great D-Day read-and-ye-shall-find-wisdom marathon that time would ease the pain of betrayal.

And, at first, I scoffed. I would never, EVER stop feeling such agony, I was sure. Things would never, EVER be the same again. And though I do have a flair for the dramatic, I was right about things never being the same. I was wrong, however, about time. My hurt did, in fact, lessen with time.

But did time work its magic...or did I?

Within many of my posts on this site, you'll find my reassurance that betrayed wives will feel better with time. But Warhol's quote has me questioning that promise. Is it time that heals? Or are we our own healers?

I know a woman who still weeps for love lost more than a decade ago. Is it that time isn't working for her? Or is she not doing the work?

It boils down to a choice: you can (A) wallow in your own misery, blaming everyone around you and cultivating bitterness (A is a darn attractive option in the early days!). Or (B) you can accept that life isn't fair...but neither is it fair for others (ask the people of Haiti about that) and that bitterness and spite aren't the most attractive traits.

Assuming you choose B (c'mon, you were going to choose B, right?), how can you give time a hand?
By doing what you need to do: getting yourself a therapist; exercising; pursuing hobbies and interests you might have pushed aside to be wife/mother; volunteering... In other words, anything you can do to create a more fulfilling life can't help but move you further along the healing path.
And betrayal attacks us in such a profound way, often making us question our worth or our purpose. Finding that center again, that place where we can feel whole regardless of the choices of those around us, can't help but be good for us.
So, by all means, trust time to take away some of the sting of betrayal. But do some of the hard lifting yourself.

Past Imperfect

I recently spotted a contest in a magazine. All I had to do was tell the story of when I knew my husband loved me...and I could win a trip to the Cayman Islands. It's January. In Canada. Cold. Grey. I could really use a trip to the Cayman Islands.
Problem is...I can't quite come up with a story of when I knew my husband loved me. I always thought he did...but in the cold light of betrayal, it's really, really hard to believe it. Harder still to expect others to believe it.
Reconciling our past, with our present and future is tricky after betrayal. While it may have been a one-night-stand or a long protracted affair complete with I-Love-Yous, we can never quite recall our history the same way.
For someone like me – who always saw the world in black and white – the tendency to rewrite my past, with my husband as villain and me as unsuspecting martyr, was strong. But did little to propel me forward toward healing.
The truth was always somewhere in the middle. Though my husband did love me, he was also resentful of me – and responded in pretty crappy ways. Which – no surprise! – is why I'm here.
For awhile, I couldn't even look at any photos taken before D-Day. They represented a fiction. Driving past the church where we were married was unthinkable. It only reminded me of pain, not promise.
And you won't find me looking through my wedding album. As far as I'm concerned, those photos belong to someone else. My wedding ring remains in a drawer and won't grace my ring finger again.
But I accept that was my past, as imperfect as it turned out to be. And I try hard to ensure it doesn't color my present. Today I'm building a future with my husband based on honesty. Today I'm mom to my three awesome kids who wouldn't exist if not for my imperfect past. Today I'm still not sure enough about "the moment" I knew my husband loved me enough to win a contest. What I am sure is that love is made up of many, many moments...
And that I won't be vacationing in the Cayman Islands anytime soon.