What Fear Has Betrayal Awakened in You?

I'm a highly capable person. At twelve, I was hosting my own birthday party, routinely cooking myself dinner, doing my own laundry and checking my own homework. By 15, I was cleaning up after my alcoholic parents, discussing my mother's treatment with the psychiatric doctors at the hospital where she was held, working a job, and still maintaining an honors average at school. At 23, I was living in Europe and travelling alone to many countries.
At 25, however, in love with an emotionally undependable guy, I became the slightest bit aware that I had issues about being left. That being left, even under quite average circumstances, made me feel abandoned on a much deeper level.
The morning after my boyfriend would stay at my apartment, I would get a knot in my stomach. I would wonder if he'd stay for breakfast, would we spend the morning together, perhaps the whole day? Inevitably, he would leave: He had a squash game. He had work. He had plans with other friends. This went on for close to seven years and I developed my own coping strategies. I would leave at the same time he did to go for a run. I would mentally prep myself for his departure. I would stay at his place instead so that I was the one leaving, not him.
Therapy helped me pay attention to this deep fear of being left. Therapy helped me leave him.
Fast forward 15 years and I'm married to someone else, someone who felt far safer than this one-foot-out-the-door ex-boyfriend.
And then D-Day hit with the full impact of a meteor into my world.
And that long-dormant terror of abandonment was awakened.
Despite my tough talk, demanding that my husband get his ass home "right now if you even think you want to save this marriage!" Despite my list of non-negotiables – counselling, a 12-step group, access to his phone/computer, no contact with OW – I was shaking inside. I was nine years old again and the person upon whom my survival depended was drowning in vodka.
That's the thing with a deep emotional wound like betrayal. It awakens old fears, it underscores old messages, it says "see, I told you you weren't _______ enough." Not young enough. Not pretty enough. Not nice enough. Not sexy enough. Not a good enough daughter/wife/mother/friend.
You're too demanding. You're too bitchy. You're too busy with the kids. You're too old.
You're. Not. Loveable.
That's the biggest fear of all, isn't it? That we are not loveable. That the reason he cheated boils down to that one thing: Not loveable.
Despite evidence to the contrary, we begin obsessing on anything that supports that lie. Our college boyfriend dumped us. We've been fired from a job. A close friend stopped including us. We have crow's feet. Stretch marks. It all adds up to a mountain of evidence that WE'RE NOT LOVABLE.
And if we're not lovable, well, then what did we expect?
Most of us don't realize, at least right away, that behind the fear of telling others about our husband's affair, behind our humiliation at his cheating, behind our shame, behind our fear of drawing clear non-negotiable boundaries to keep ourselves safe is that horrible, dangerous lie. After all, if we believed ourselves lovable, we'd have absolutely no choice but to accept unequivocally that his cheating is about his failings, not ours. 
Even now, years out from D-Day and with a whole lot of therapy under my belt, I can quickly be reduced to that one fear: the terror of abandonment. The realization that I cannot control what others around me do.
Even with my Escape Plan and my understanding of boundaries. Even with my intellectual understanding that, without my husband, I will be fine. Physically, emotionally, financially fine. Even with all that, how quickly I become that nine-year-old.
These days, though, I'm able to far more quickly reach to wherever that nine-year-old sits, paralyzed, and wrap my arms around her. I'm able to assure her that she is not alone. Because I, a fully capable and sane adult, am now the one in charge.

Heartbreak at Any Age

An old weathered heart can still break.

My 17-year-old is nursing a broken heart. After spending much of the summer with a certain young man, she asked him what, exactly, they were doing. In other words, was she his girlfriend? His responses – "I'm too busy for a relationship"; "It's not fair to you because I'm so busy"; "I like you but..." – has made it clear that her desire for more is not his desire. At least not right now.

And so...her heart breaks.
My daughter is kind. She's beautiful. Smart. Funny. She's also achingly open-hearted. Loyal. Guileless. Though there have been a few boys interested in her, none held her attention as anything more than friends. Until this one.
She's had trusted friends suddenly turn on her – some teenage girls can be merciless. Excluded from groups. She was stung by their cruelty. And sad.
But this is different. Perhaps not for her – she seems to be dealing with her heartbreak in healthy ways, seeking out fun with other friends, throwing her energy into school work and extracurriculars.
Nope, this time it's different for me.
Since my daughter confided her heartbreak to me a few days ago, I've felt sick. Food tastes bland. I can't sleep. I have a rock in my stomach that won't budge. I'm having a hard time concentrating on work. My heart aches. There's a weight on my chest. It feels, for all the world, like D-Day all over again.
So I'm putting into practice all the advice I'm forever offering to each of you: I've laced up my sneakers and am trying to walk my way to clarity. I'm trying to eat something – soup, smoothie, anything healthy that goes down easy. I'm meditating to make space for the feelings rather than pushing them away. I'm trusting that these feelings won't sweep me away into an abyss. That they will abate.
Clearly this is triggering in me deep feelings of loss and grief that have nothing to do with this particular boy (who, incidentally, I would like to throttle). I would give anything to spare my daughter this particular pain, one that cuts into our sense of who we are, that challenges our belief in our worth.
I remind her, gently, that she will likely go through this a few more times at least – heartbroken at being rejected or heartbroken at rejecting another. Rejection. It's a cruel word. One that speaks to our sense of feeling alone. Cast aside. Unvalued.
But we can withstand rejection when we don't reject ourselves. I'm reminding my daughter that this boy's inability to place value on her right now is a reflection of him, not her. A diamond unrecognized is still a diamond. 
And I assure her that, no matter what life dishes up, I will, as long as I'm alive, provide her a soft place to fall. But that I hope she'll continue to create such a space for herself. To be gentle with herself. To keep her heart open to all life has to offer, including the really really tough bits.
I'm heartened to see she's instinctively encouraging her own healing. She's spending time with a friend who's going through his own heartbreak – the two are shoring each other up and making each other laugh. She's launched herself into a running campaign with plans to tackle a 5K race in a few weeks. Yesterday, during lunchtime, she sought out the practice room at her school and played piano, texting me that she just thought she "needed to be alone."
In the meantime, my D-Day Revisited continues. So I try, really really try, to follow her lead.

Tell-the-Truth Tuesday: What Was Your Lowest "Pick-Me" Moment?

What have I done with my dignity?

There was some discussion recently here on BWC about just how pathetic our "pick-me" dance moves can get. Lynn Pain talked about gardening topless, which, frankly doesn't seem so much pathetic as badass and daring. To her, however, it felt humiliating.
So let's transform those feelings of humiliation into shared hilarity. Share your lowest "pick-me" moment.
The prize? Freeing yourself from shame. And having some giggles with us girls who know your pain.

Reinventing Yourself After Betrayal

If you are staring down the barrel of a major life shift and the inevitable re-invention that must come from it, why not have your re-invention reflect your deepest truth, and your biggest dreams? 
~Laura Munson, author of This Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness

I risk your wrath when I suggest that betrayal can be the catalyst for positive change in your life. And I don't blame you if you would like to wrap your hands around my neck and squeeze. After all, in the early days following betrayal, it's all most of us can do to remain upright, to not smother our idiot husbands with a pillow while they sleep and we remain restless and ruined, to stop obsessing over the harlot that tread on our otherwise pleasant life.
And yet...the benefit of perspective, of being almost eight years out, is that I can see so clearly how that plot point in my life where I was cut open and gutted ushered in a reinvention of myself that has left me far better off than I was.
It's a radical thought, isn't it? To think that such pain can not only dissipate, it can transform? And I still have my moments of sadness. When I see a young couple full of hope and promise. When I wonder what my marriage would be like if it wasn't forever altered by the knowledge that we have not been each other's only since the day we said our vows.
Those pangs can still send me reeling but they inevitably reveal something else about myself that I'm ignoring: A dialogue of self-criticism in my head that begins with "you're old and washed up" and ends with "even your own husband couldn't stay faithful". In other words, my husband's long-done behaviour becomes the tool with which I beat myself despite knowing – absolutely knowing – that his behaviour was about him and not me. 
On most days, however, when I'm not looking for evidence that I and my life are a total waste; on days when I'm feeling grateful for the body I'm in, delighted by the mind I've been given, and overwhelmed by the grace I've been shown in my life, I can acknowledge how the abyss into which I fell gave me – finally – the opportunity to heal some long-held wounds that preceded my husband by years and obfuscated who I was.
Betrayal strips us bare and reveals what matters. Love, fidelity, honesty, belonging. But it also forces us to decide who we are. In what other ways was our marriage failing us? In what ways were we failing ourselves? Are we being completely honest about our lives and the roles we play? Are we our best selves?
Betrayal obliterates any belief we might have held that we can control others' behaviour or feelings. Which, once we get over the terror that produces, is actually quite liberating. No more trying to pull other people's strings to love us, to remain faithful, to not abandon us. Clearly that never works the way we think it will. We can only ever control ourself. We can only chart our own course. 
There are parameters, of course, Children might get in the way of our plan to chuck it all and travel around the world. Ailing parents who need our care might thwart our desire to move three states away. But dreams shelved aren't dreams dashed. As long as you're remaining open to discovering what's deepest in your heart, you're prepping for the reinvention.
Reinvention doesn't need to be dramatic. In my case, it simply underscored values I'd held all along. Honesty was paramount so no longer did I tolerate lack of it in any of my relationships. A friend lied about why she cancelled plans? Not okay with me. No more pretending I wasn't hurt when I was.
My reinvention helped me redraw my boundaries in permanent marker instead of the shaky pencil lines I'd always relied on and which had failed me repeatedly. I know where I'll compromise and when I won't. And I'm prepared to lose some things – including my marriage – to ensure I never lose my self-respect. 
Yes, reinvention can be scary. Especially in the wake of a shattering life event such as betrayal. Take your time to regain your balance. Reinvention is taking place within even when you're struggling to simply get out of bed. 
When you do find the space to take stock of how you've changed through this, I suspect you'll see – as I did – that your reinvention has not only ensured your feet are firmly planted on the ground, it has given you wings. 

The Ashley Madison Hack: How to keep cynicism at bay

Even this won't protect you from heartbreak.

Hello to all you wonderful wounded warriors. I'm back! Exhausted. Italy is many fabulous things but "relaxing" isn't one of them. And with the Ashley Madison hack continuing to dominate headlines (Shocking News: AM founder Noel Biderman cheated on his wife, a co-founder of the site!!), I had plenty to think about while touring ancient Roman ruins and deciding whether Chianti or Valpolicella went better with infidelity. 
It's tough enough dealing with your own betrayal without adding in such a deluge of news about infidelity and so many opinions about the ubiquity of cheating. And it can feel near impossible to believe that your relationship won't simply offer up more pain when every Web site, newspaper and radio show is discussing who's cheating, where they're cheating and with whom. What's more, the glee with which the topic is tackled – the giggles and the nudge-wink – seems incredibly insensitive when others' gossip is our reality. Cheating isn't a punchline. It's painful.
So it can be easy to feel defeated by all of this. To believe all the chatter. Having seen first-hand how our own husbands – guys we believed incapable of such deceit – betrayed us, we can easily begin to believe that fidelity is an impossible dream, a sort of mirage that shimmers seductively but that turns out, upon closer inspection, to be nothing more than wishful thinking. 

It's a dangerous way of thinking however. Cynicism isn't the same as being realistic. Being realistic is understanding that some marriages will experience infidelity – the stats vary from 40% to 75%, depending on who's conducting the survey. And yeah, that's a lot of cheating. Cynicism, however, is believing that cheating is everywhere. That all men are scum. That all mistresses are whores. That marriage is a sham. That all betrayed wives should just get with the program.
Cynicism wears the face of resigned truth but is really a mask for fear. Cynicism masquerades as sophistication, as blasé acceptance of our more baser instincts. Behind it, however, is the fear of once again being caught off guard. If we accept that cheating is the norm, then we're less likely to be disappointed when it happens again, whether with our existing partner or a new one. It's a twisted logic but makes sense in the wake of our betrayal when so much of our pain seems tied in with our conviction that our marriage was somehow safe from infidelity. If we hadn't placed so much faith in our vows, we believe, we wouldn't have been so trusting. And if we hadn't been so trusting, we wouldn't be so devastated. 
It can be hard to fight off cynicism. Shortly after my own D-Day, a friend announced her wedding. It took every ounce of self-control I had to resist sharing my derision and suggesting she just save us all the hassle of pretending they were any different from the millions of others who find themselves in our club. 
In fact, it took me years to move past cynicism. I wore it like armour, protection against sentimentality, against disappointment.
I paid a high price for this mock protection, though. It left me one step removed from any genuine emotion. When you're cloaked in cynicism, you can't give yourself over to your feelings, whether joy or pain. In fact, you can't feel much of anything.
There's no un-knowing what I've learned about betrayal. I see the world through different eyes now. But I've managed to shift my gaze from one of routine suspicion of everyone and everything to something closer to peaceful acceptance. I no longer scoff at anyone's earnest desire to commit to another but instead recognize that the path will likely be harder than she expects but that doesn't make it worse. Or more to the point, that doesn't make it unworthy of undertaking in the first place. The same, of course, holds true for me, too. Life offers me no guarantees.
Too often, our culture responds with a cynical glee to something like the Ashley Madison hack, or news of another celebrity's affair. Monogamy is a myth, crows the headline. Everyone's a cheater, claim the cynics.
Cheating is far more commonplace than most of us ever knew. Statistically at least, it's not that surprising that we're here. But cheating isn't inevitable. "Once a cheater, always a cheater" is the lie of the cynic. Divorce is not the only acceptable response to betrayal.
We have the choice when faced with betrayal to decide how we'll respond. Even when our partner leaves us, we get to choose how we'll move forward.
Will we develop a hard shell of cynicism with the false sense that it will somehow protect us from future pain? Or will we allow the breaks in our heart to let in the wisdom and self-compassion that can take root? 

In the Ashes: Finding Grace Against All Odds

"Grace cannot prevail until...finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed."~Robert Farrar Capon

I was the queen of scorekeepers. I never entered a room that I didn't subconsciously compare myself to everyone there. Was someone prettier? Was someone smarter? Was someone more gracious? More fun? More popular? Only be feeling in some way superior could I feel good enough. Which left me feeling almost consistently diminished.
I also kept score with my husband. Who did the dishes? Who spent more time with the kids? Who ensured that a good meal was on the table each day? Who made sure our children ate from all of the food groups? For each of these things, I gave myself a mental checkmark – a subconscious assurance that I was the superior mate.
I sound insufferable, don't I?
I wasn't. At least not constantly. Much of the time I was open-hearted and loving. Much of the time, I was appreciate of his contributions to our family. But I cannot deny that there were periods of time – sometimes long periods of time, especially when my three kids were young – that my score-keeping fed a hunger for superiority that bred resentment and disappointment. Hardly the hallmarks of a healthy partnership.
And then! Then, when I discovered my husband's affair (followed by his confession of an entire double life), I was left with little choice but to declare myself morally superior. I was practically a saint. I would never EVER do what he had done.
Right?

It was only when I began to really unpack the psychology of affairs, to dig deep into the whys of affairs in general and my husband's cheating in particular, that I began to challenge my own conviction that my moral compass was somehow less subject to movement. I began to wonder if, raised by the same cold judgemental mother that my husband was, raised in the same guilt-and-shame-infused home, I might have made the same choices he did. Might I have sought escape as he did? Might I have developed the same unhealthy addiction to emotionless sex?
I was willing to admit it was possible.
And within that admission, grace took root. Grace, says Ann Lamott, "meets you right where it finds you, but it does not leave you where it found you. It moves you toward breath; moves you towards things being a little bit better: wow. Grace WD-40. Grace is water wings. Grace makes you shake your head with wonder, and laugh and cry."
Grace allowed me to unclench my jaw. To unhitch my shoulders from my ears. To smile.
But mostly grace allowed me to see my husband, not as some inferior creature, lucky that I was magnanimous, but as someone on the same journey as I but filled with pain and confusion that he barely recognized let alone knew how to handle. Grace allowed me to see him with compassion. Which – and this is the incredible part – allowed me to see myself with compassion. 
I'm far better at silencing that critic in my head that compares myself with everyone else and mentally ticks off the score. I'm no better or worse. Just different. And lucky me! I get to live my life according to my value system, not anybody else's. Lucky you because you get to do the same.
And within that value system, there's room for mistakes. My own, my husband's, my children's. We learn from them. We do better next time. We shake our heads – often – with wonder, and laugh, and cry.

(I'm leaving the country for a few weeks for a vacation with my family. We're heading to Italy to play, explore and EAT. I will have only sporadic access to Internet so please be patient if your comments take a few days or more to be posted. I'll be back in September. In the meantime, hang tough my warriors.)

We Must Forgive Ourselves First

"The more I could forgive myself, though, the more I could forgive other people, many of whom I had placed on pedestals from which they were destined to fall. I had to get everything back into perspective: I’m not the greatest, or the worst. Where is my place in the middle?"~Sarah Hepola, Author of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

It's an odd thing to suggest, isn't it? That those of us who've been betrayed – those of us who haven't lied to and deceived our partners – begin by forgiving ourselves. What do we need forgiveness for? We behaved ourselves. We held ourselves to higher standards.
And yet...
What do we need forgiveness for?
In my case...everything.
Behind my polished veneer, my look-how-fast-I-can-dance performance of the perfect wife and mother and writer, was terror that I was nowhere near as good as I pretended I was. That I wasn't worthy of the accolades, or the success, or the love.
I was only barely aware of that, of course. Mostly I performed so convincingly that I believed myself. I believed I had transformed myself from the shame-filled adolescent who feared that people would discover the truth about her hospitalized mother and her alcohol-soaked home life into someone respectable. Someone who needn't fear others' judgement. Except that I still did.
So when I discovered that my husband, the "perfect" spouse, was anything but, those monsters I'd barricaded behind closet doors came crashing through. Of course he cheated on me, was their rallying cry. I was a nobody. I came from dysfunction. I was a fraud. I didn't deserve love or loyalty. 
Forgiveness?
How could I even think of forgiving my husband for what he'd done when I couldn't forgive myself for being who I was. 
As long as I was fuelled by self-loathing for not being perfect enough to deserve a faithful husband, I could offer my husband nothing but loathing for his imperfection. And that's what I served up. Anger. Disgust. Hate. Shame.
I demanded to know how he could do this to me. How dare he?

I remember the day when I finally understood that his affair wasn't my failing, it was his. If I'd been a cartoon, there would have been lightbulb over my head. 
And it was at that moment that the grip of loathing I felt for my husband – but which was really at myself – loosened a bit. 
If it really wasn't my fault that my husband cheated, then maybe it wasn't my fault that my mother chose alcohol over me. Maybe it wasn't my fault that my father chose self-pity over me. 
Maybe the only person who ever had to truly choose me was me. 
It was a radical thought for someone who believed her value lay only in who she could be for other people. What if, my thought process went, I gave myself permission to be myself. Flawed. "Not the greatest, or the worst." Somewhere in the middle.
It felt terrifying. 
But if I allowed myself that freedom, could I – dare I – allow my husband the same latitude to be neither the greatest nor the worst. In the middle.  A guy who'd made a colossal mistake but wasn't a monster.

Forgiveness has been the single greatest gift I've ever given myself. I still – often! – fall into my self-bashing ways. I must be constantly vigilant against the critic (what's up with your ass? When did it get so big? You look old. Of course, that publication rejected your piece. It sucked. And so on.) Not surprisingly, I've noticed that my self-judgement runs lockstep with my judgement of other people. And that, when I can be gentle with myself, I can be gentle with others. 
Whatever your path toward healing from betrayal, I believe it begins with self-forgiveness. Only when we let ourselves off the hook for being who we are are we able to let go of what others have done to us. Their choices become entirely about them. We need only take responsibility for our own.
Whether we allow those who've hurt us room in our lives is another question entirely. Forgiving others doesn't necessarily mean an open door into our world. That's another choice that is ours.
And that choice need be neither the best nor the worst. But in the middle.