Happy Mother's Day, Warriors

Hate is the Ugly Mask of Pain

If I hadn't had my rage in the days and weeks following D-Day, I would have wondered if I was dead. I was so angry. Viscerally angry. I had never hated like that in my life. I could taste my hate.
I recently spoke with a woman going through what they call a high-conflict divorce. Her husband is a narcissist who told her to her face, when she dropped off her sons for a weekend with their dad, that he was going to make her life a living hell. He did. Until, she said, she disengaged. When one partner declares war, it can only be a battle if the other one agrees to fight. With the help of her therapist and a support group, she stopped reacting to his long-winded e-mails, crafted to inflict maximum pain and generate maximum response. She made sure to be "on the phone" during drop-off and pick-up so that he couldn't draw her in. Slowly, the dynamic shifted.

The thing with hate is that it consumes the hater more than the hated. It takes an extraordinary amount of energy to hate, to summon up the effort required to laser-focus on the ways in which someone deserves your wrath. At first, it feels as though it takes less energy to hate than to manage the hate. The hate comes naturally.
Which is what makes it so dangerous. It's insidious. It eats us from the inside out. And before we know it, we're empty except for a deep hot rage.
We've know that hater, haven't we? The one with whom any conversation inevitably turns to their grievances, the ways in which they've been wronged. They relitigate insults, slights, snubs. It might have happened a decade ago. But to the hater, it might as well have happened yesterday. The hate is fresh.
And this is because the pain is fresh. Hate is the ugly mask of pain. Behind any howl of hate is the whisper of hurt, muted but nonetheless there.
But pain makes us feel vulnerable. Pain reminds us that we want connection and belonging but that we aren't getting it. And so we lash out in an attempt to reclaim power.
Power fuelled by hate isn't power at all. Hate is a lack of control, the opposite of power. That's not to say hate can't wreak a lot of havoc, or inflict a lot of pain of others. But it leaves the hater hollow, unable to connect except in the most superficial ways. It keeps us from exactly the thing we want most: to connect to someone else. And connection requires vulnerability.

Is there anything more difficult in the wake of betrayal? To keep ourselves vulnerable? To avoid arming our pain with hate? I could feel the hate eating me alive. It made me cruel and bitter. It made me hard. And, frankly, it made me miserable. Hating people feels really shitty.
What's more, it's exhausting.
I'm not sure what, exactly, shifted my hate into something healthier.
Part of it was using it as fuel. I ran farther and faster than I was accustomed to. As I exercised, I exorcised the hate and always returned home less angry.
Part of it was meditating. Sitting and breathing is so much harder than it seems. It strips us of our armour. Alone with our thoughts, we have nowhere to hide. And so the pain emerges and insists on being seen.
And finally, I learned to extend compassion to the hated, thanks to meditation and church, where a minister stood at the pulpit and told us, in no uncertain terms, that our job was to try and see the face of God in every single person we met. Even the OW? my mind wondered, aghast. Yep. Even the OW.
And it worked. Slowly, by seeing her (and my husband) not as some monster who had the power to destroy me (and therefore deserved to be hated) but as a wounded person herself, inflicting her own hate onto others. It wasn't easy (LORD, it wasn't easy). But it was so much better than the bitterness that had consumed me.

I recently asked on Twitter (you can follow me here) how other betrayed wives manage their own hate. I was amused to discover that plenty turn to games on their phone to distract themselves from it. When they feel the hate clouds gathering, they turn to Candy Crush.
I say, whatever works. Therapy. Meditation. Exercise. Words with Friends.
But don't let hate fester until you no longer recognize it as anything other than a virus infecting the host.

Wednesday Word Hug: Rock Bottom

With Friends Like These...

Don't stress over people in your past. There's a reason they didn't make it to your future.
~Anonymous

My hiking partner had been uncharacteristically quiet for a few hikes. She kept the conversation light. We talked birds and deer, engagement party plans for her niece, the weather.
And then she said she told me something that she had been avoiding talking about because she was so angry with herself. It involved a woman she thought was her friend. This "friend" had hired my friend's husband to renovate their bathroom. (This isn't going where you think it is but bear with me.) And then the problems began. This "friend" wasn't happy with the budget, she complained about fixtures, she insisted that the workers had damaged some belongings. The complaints mounted. A supplier told my friend's husband that he thought this woman was scamming him.
By the time the job was finished, my friend's husband hadn't made a dime and had suffered many stress headaches.
And my friend felt completely betrayed by this "friend". Who does that? she asked me. I sighed.  Well...
I used to be like my friend. A "friend" would pull something shitty – she'd gossip about me, or exclude me from something, or accuse me of something I didn't do.
And I'd wonder what I'd done wrong to be so misunderstood.
A decade ago, when my world was collapsing around me thanks to infidelity, a "friend" turned on me around the same time. We were organizing a fundraiser together, divvying up duties according to our strengths and available time. And then the weirdness began. I would open my computer in the morning to long protracted e-mails about how I was "sabotaging" the event, how I wasn't a "team player". I felt blindsided. I was doing this volunteer gig – which had been my idea – while finishing up a big paid assignment. I didn't yet know my marriage was imploding but the storm clouds were gathering. I hadn't the time, energy or inclination to deal with asinine accusations.
So I didn't. I put my head down and did my work. And then, when it was over, I told her I needed a break from our friendship.
It was long overdue.
And that's the thing with toxic "friends". There's usually evidence that they're trouble, evidence that we often overlook or excuse. And there are inevitably other people in these "friends'" lives with whom they also have trouble. Toxic people can often fool those around them for a period of time. Sometimes years. But, eventually, people wise up.
When my hiking partner looked more closely at her "friend", she found a past littered with people who'd been similarly screwed over.
When I look at the "friends" who've turned out not to be, they've always ALWAYS had problems with other people.
In other words, it's not me. It's her.
That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, of course. Being rejected, lied to, betrayed by, or accused of is painful, especially when it's by someone we let into our life. Someone we thought was our friend.
But resist the urge to take the blame. See if there's a pattern in this "friend's" life that makes you not so much an exception but another in a line of suckers.
Your future should hold only people who've made the cut. And make sure the bar is high.

Want to join your BWC friends for a "showing up" on the North Carolina shores (no "retreat" for us!)? Check out My Heartbreak, My Rules, My Healing, a weekend of sharing our stories, making space for our healing and showing up in our lives. Space is limited. 

Weekend Word Hug

Once a cheater, maybe a cheater

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.

I wrote that in 2015. I was reminded of it when I recently stumbled across yet another person espousing the "once a cheater, always a cheater" narrative. It's a seductive motto. There's appeal in such a black-and-white view. And like most catchy maxims, there's enough truth in it to keep it alive. Lots of guys, given a second chance, completely blow it. They reveal themselves to be unworthy of our loyalty. But beneath that pithy phrase is a worldview that gets in our way. Between that black and that white is where most of us – yes us, not just our unfaithful spouses – live our lives. 
Which is not to say that women can't toss out a cheater. I've been piled on enough for being an "affair apologist" to make me wary. We don't owe anybody anything other than our own honesty. If a guy has cheated on you and you want to wash your hands of him, get out the soap and scrub. 
But do it because of what he did, not out of some calculus about what he might do. It's the might part that ties us in knots. It's the might part that takes us out of the now and moves us into the arena of the unknown. And that arena is terrifying because pretty much anything can happen there. 
It's there, in the arena of the unknown, where we paralyze ourselves with hypotheticals. You know what I'm talking about right? We're going along, relatively okay for someone who's discovered a partner's betrayal, when the "might" intrudes. He might be with her right now. They might be planning to run away together. She might be pregnant. No matter that there's no evidence of any of this (unless there is, in which case it's not a "might", it's an "is"). Our stomach is in knots, our blood pressure has skyrocketed and we're pretty sure we're going to throw up. And all because we've been led into the arena of the unknown by an intrusive "might". 
This is what the "once a cheater" narrative promises to rescue us from. We don't need to trouble ourselves with the arena of the unknown if we've already dumped the guy, right? Far better, this thinking goes, to just get rid of the guy – after all, if he's cheated, he's going to cheat again so it's just a matter of time before our heart is, again, shattered – and move into some certain future where cheaters have been dealt with and summarily dismissed.
And again, that's exactly what we should do with some cheaters. But (ugh, I hate myself for saying this because I sound like a white man), not all cheaters. Not all cheaters will cheat again. There are legions of men (and women) who regret their actions and have used it to become better people. We don't owe them our forgiveness. But I, for one, am glad that I believe in second chances. Not only for him but for me too. There has been freedom in learning to forgive. What's more, it has taught me to forgive myself.
Life isn't certain. It never was, even when I was certain my husband would never cheat. You probably were certain too. And we both know how that turned out. Betrayal stripped me of the illusion of certainty. But once a cheater, always a cheater, is, frankly, bullshit. It's a cynical promise to vulnerable people. It offers certainty in a world where certainty is an illusion. It's a world view that defines all of us by the worst mistake we make. 
Each of us is accountable for his actions, including cheaters. And anyone who cheats but finds ways to blame-shift or minimize or gaslight is telling you that he has zero interest in your pain or in cleaning up his own side of the street. Toxic people should be excised from our lives.
But be wary of any catchphrase that purports that life is tidy and that pretends to have a crystal ball. 


Want to join us for My Heartbreak, My Rules, My Healing – a weekend together with the Betrayed Wives Club? Click here for details. 

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For almost a decade, betrayed women (and a few men) have washed up on the shores of this site. Frightened and angry, weary and anxious, desperate for answers: Will this pain ever end? Can my marriage survive? Will I ever feel safe again? And for those years, I and so many of you have responded. Sometimes with a "It hurts so much. I know." Sometimes with advice. But always with fierce compassion.
And yet, though we share our most intimate pain, we've never seen each others' faces. Hidden behind our warrior names, we are anonymous.
A few of you, however, have longed for the chance to gather together. Which is what the My Heartbreak, My Rules, My Healing weekend is about. This is your chance to claim your story among those who can hear it and claim some time for you.
Retreat? Hardly. We're not retreating, we're showing up! 
It's on, Tigers. 
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Update: Space is filling quickly! Thanks to those who've already registered. I'll be in touch. 
My Heartbreak, My Rules, My Healing – September 28 - 30.