Pause for Thought

Wednesday Word Hug: Walls and Doors

Christmas Word Hug

Please know I'm thinking of everyone struggling this holiday. Let go of expectations of others, but especially yourselves. This is just a day. It is just 24 hours to which some of us have assigned particular importance. 
Abandon all attempts to create anything "magical", "beautiful" or "perfect". 
Breathe. In and out. It is just a day. The sun rises, the sun sets.
Merry Christmas, my secret sisters. 

Guest Post: Making Peace With Childhood Pain: What's Sometimes Behind the Agony of Infidelity

by Lynn Less Pain

John Shedd said, “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

Elle wrote a post a few years ago in which she said that infidelity can be a catalyst for change. I read that and went wild. I fired back saying how much I disagreed with her opinion. It made me angry to think, this is the type of gut-wrenching pain that has to happen for change? Has she lost her mind? He needs to change not me. He needs to own it, find out his whys, not me. He needs to understand why he lied, not me. Catalyst can take a flying leap as far as I was concerned. 

It took me three years to see what the heck she was talking about. 

There came a phase in my healing (not in the first year but later) when I realized my marriage did suck. How did my marital state get that way? Looking at his contributions to a dysfunctional marriage was easy. Looking at my contributions was not so easy. He asked me to go to lunch, I was too busy. I forgot to call him when I said I would. When he talked about his job, I listened but I didn’t hear him. He wanted sex, I was thinking, if only he helped me with the housework, sorry, too tired for sex. Does any of this contribute to hubby having an affair? No. Does any of this justify an affair? No. I was looking at the surface of our marital status. I was the one who was wronged so that was as far as I could go with my contributions. So instead I concentrated on my self-esteem, self-care, self-compassion and self-healing 

All of this finally made sense to me yesterday when I went to therapy. I gave my therapist some examples of my husband’s behaviour. Is this normal behavior? I asked. The therapist told me that we are now in the new marriage phase. OK, did I hear that right? So, after D-day, after the plain of lethal flatness, so after the stay or go scenarios, after being stuck and after forgiveness, yes, my girlfriends, there is more.

This is the new marriage phase – he did this, is that normal? He said that, is that normal? I felt this way, is that normal? Here's what the therapist explained to me: Yes, all that is normal marriage stuff. I gave her so many examples of what he said or what I said. The therapist said, your expectations of a normal marriage are too high. She told me I have this Disneyland forever expectation, which is just not realistic. What my husband is doing and saying is completely normal. His actions and reactions are completely normal. I gave the therapist more examples. Yes, she said, all of that is normal.  

She said, “you grew up in an unstable family with little or no support from your family. No support during any traumatic event or situations. Your difficult childhood experience made you develop certain beliefs about how people think and how relationships work. You developed coping strategies that were not helpful in your adult life."

Those coping strategies which were not helpful in my adult life was my contribution to a dysfunctional marriage.

·      I felt very worried about being abandoned and I would do anything to stop that happening. 

·      I felt just plain empty. I felt like I was running on empty emotions, nothing left to give.

·      I felt like I was the only one who felt things deeply. 

·      I felt like I would go from very happy and confident in the morning and sad in the afternoon. 

·      I didn’t know who I was and I changed depending on who I was with.

·      I went through extremes on food, alcohol, shopping and planning a family event.

·      I believed I wasn’t good enough and didn’t deserve to be happy. Everything but my relationship had to be perfect. 

·      I viewed things in extreme: good or bad; black or white.

·      Any separation from anyone meant they really didn’t care about me. 

This was painful to explore. Talking about my childhood, timeline of emotions, past relationships and reactions to life was like eating food I already thrown up in my mouth.  Once I understood my unhealthy coping strategies, I learned to be kind to myself. Life can be different when you put in the work. Some days I forget what it feels like to be positive but I know that won’t last. I deserve to be happy and live a fulfilled life. I’m not about to let infidelity take that away from me but I had to look under the surface of the water before I could sail my ship out of that harbor called infidelity. I was so tangled up, there was no way I could sail away.

I have finally found that inner peace, I strived to find for so long. It had nothing to do with infidelity really. It had everything to do with me.  

Wednesday Word Hug

Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth

"When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her." —Adrienne Rich

I'm a honest person. I once shoplifted purple eyeshadow from a department store on a dare when I was 12 and was so filled with shame that I couldn't even use it. I routinely confessed to things that my parents didn't even know enough to ask me about. And any time my friends and I would wonder, aloud, if we could ever cheat on our husbands, it always boiled down to one thing for me: "How could I ever look him in the eye after cheating?"
So, to discover my husband's double life was more than a shock to me. It was an assault on the value system I thought we shared. If he lied about the big things, he must lie about everything. Was anything true?
And so I began calling my husband out for every single mistruth. I began to notice lies that I'd previously overlooked. Things that I would have called harmless before D-Day, I was beginning to see were part of a pattern.
He lied to avoid conflict. He lied to avoid consequences. He lied to seem nice. He told people he "couldn't" do things that he simply didn't want to do. He told me that he was late due to traffic instead of admitting that he got distracted at work and lost track of time. He told me he came to bed at midnight when it was 1 a.m. He told his mother he "had" to go visit a nearby friend rather than sit with her when the truth was she annoyed him. And on. And on.
I'm no saint, of course. I've told friends I like their new haircut when I don't particularly. I've professed to love meals that I choked down. Or to love gifts that I didn't.
I've tried to dedicate myself to radical honesty, ever since D-Day. But it's hard. Really hard. Sometimes a little lie is kinder than the truth. But each time I lie, even with the best intentions, I feel a little smaller.
Because I no longer believe that lies are harmless. I'm questioning if it's truly kinder to lie than to tell the truth to "spare" people's feelings. I'm beginning to think it's disrespectful to the person being lied to.
I was recently invited to join a writers' group. The others have been meeting for a few years and I was warned about one person in particular who's prickly about criticism. The others told me to "be careful" about what I say to her. They admitted that they tippy-toe around this person's work because they don't want to "hurt her feelings."
I listened to them and then I said that I wouldn't do that. I would, of course, be considerate. But it's a disservice to an adult writer to not be honest in my opinions of her work and how she might improve it. I don't claim to have all the answers. My opinions might be completely wrong. But she is a grown woman seeking input.
And I owe it to her to be honest, but also to myself.
Honesty is tough. But if we set the bar at "total honesty", then we're a lot more likely to at least get close to it. But if we set the bar at "honesty unless it makes us uncomfortable", then we're going to be living a whole lot of half-truths.
The other night, I suggested to my husband that we should take the dogs for longer walks because, as I pointed out, we could both stand to lose a little weight. 
"I don't think I need to lose any," he said.
"H'mmm...but you think I do?" I said.
He said nothing, which, of course, says a lot.
But at least, he's being honest. 

Infidelity Counseling Network Looking for Peer Counselors

Hey my secret sisters,

The amazing Infidelity Counseling Network, which offers peer counselling on a sliding scale (we link to it in our margin), is looking for strong, wise, compassionate women who've survived infidelity to extend support to those still struggling.

ICN is now taking applications for volunteer telephone peer counselors to join the spring training.

Click here to get started, or contact ICN's executive director Julie at director@infidelitycounselingnetwork.org for next steps.