On Karma and Liberty

 It doesn’t matter what other people say or think, it only matters what you do.

~Marcus Aurelius, The Daily Stoic

A woman came to this site recently talking of "karma". Her husband was with the Other Woman and she was still hurting. She wanted some sort of universal justice, some indication that right wins, that cheating will be punished.

I'm 56 years old and still cling to my fiercely held conviction that life should be fair. Should, yes. But it's not.

And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can move on with living our own lives rooted in our own values and letting go of the outcome. What's more, the sooner we do that, the sooner we'll realize that's enough. That though it's infuriating when the refs make the wrong call, when liars and cheaters get away with it, when the powerful hurt the weak, it doesn't change our fundamental responsibility to live our own lives with integrity, to refuse to get down in the mud, to accept that the only thing we can ever control is ourselves.

It sounds infuriating. I have a daughter, 22 years old, who's refusing to address a medical issue. What I want to do is drag her into a doctor's office and insist that she be treated. I won't. I can't. She's an adult. And what I'm learning is that the more I plead or cajole or shame, the more she digs in her heels. One would think I'd know this by now. I'm a slow learner.

But it's a reminder. That when we liberate others to live their own lives, we liberate ourselves. We are not responsible for whether he goes to therapy or his 12-step group. We are not responsible for whether he shows up to work on time, or whether he's too hungover to make that meeting, or whether he forgets to come to his son's soccer practice. He can bear the consequences of his own actions. We are only responsible for our own. My friend Betsy calls it "keeping my own side of the street clean."

Ignore the haters and the critics and the whisperers. They aren't living our lives. They'd do well to focus on their own. As my mother, a longtime 12-stepper used to put it, what others think of me is none of my business. So hard, I know. I often try to think of myself at my life's end. Will I really care what some mother of my kids' friend said about how I raised my children? Or what some person on the Internet said about staying with someone who cheated? Or what some woman cheating with my husband said about my marriage? Pretty sure I won't.

But back to karma. Oprah once said that the problem with karma is that we so rarely get to see it work. And though I don't believe in karma per se, I do believe we reap what we sow. Which means, if you're a fundamentally dishonest person who doesn't honour commitment then that's who you'll remain in any relationship. So, if that's who he is, then that's who she got. It hurts now because you thought he was different than that. It hurts because you're telling yourself a life about how it has something to do with your worth when really it's about his. It hurts because it hurts when people let us down. When we put on our perspectacles, as Glennon Doyle calls them, and realize we weren't seeing clearly. But now we do.

And that's the key here. Seeing clearly. Really understanding that we didn't lose a great guy, we lost the fantasy. Whether or not karma catches up with him isn't the point. By the time the misery and dysfunction he takes into a new relationship reveals itself, we'll no longer care. We'll be focused on ourselves and the life we've created, surrounded by others worthy of being there. 

"No More...But Not Yet"

No more...but not yet. 

I read that phrase in a tweet by Samuel from Overcoming Infidelity. And wow, right? "No more...but not yet."

It so beautifully sums up that place so many of us inhabit where, sure, things are better. He's not cheating for one thing (as far as we know), our marriage hasn't collapsed (not yet, anyway). But steps feel tentative, as if at any moment the floor just might fall from beneath us. We hold our breath. 

No more.

If we've taken steps to create clear boundaries, then there are many "no mores". No more tolerating his unexplained absences. No more ignoring our own needs. No more telling ourselves that this is just what marriage is like after a few years, after a few kids. No more.

But not yet.

We're not where we want to be, are we? Where is the trust? We don't feel it yet. Where is connection? Not feeling it yet. Are we sure we made the right choice? Not yet. We're not yet able to trust that when he says there was traffic on the way home, that there was, truly, traffic on the way home. Not yet able to believe that "it meant nothing". Not yet able to forget him saying that he loved us but wasn't in love with us. What if he cheats again? What if he's still cheating? What if? No. Not yet.

And so our challenge is to figure out how to inhabit this space of transition, as Samuel calls it. He urges us to face this dark place but to bring backup. Like a superhero with sidekicks. A therapist. A trusted friend. A support group. Online programs. Even, perhaps, this blog. 

It will feel horrible. Uncertainty will summon all of your fears. That's okay. Stay with it. You can handle it. It's temporary. We can endure just about anything when we know it won't last. 

Inhabit the space of "but not yet". It's where we live most of our lives even as we pretend it's otherwise. And if we can make peace with that, if we can embrace that "today, I'm fine even if I'm not yet where I want to be", we will take ourselves a long way toward genuine joy. 

Transitions are hard. That is the nut of it. So hard. Gather together your superhero sidekicks to support you as you carry on.

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

When Is His Reckoning? Why he needs to address his shit head on

 Aspects of this process keep getting referred to as a “reckoning” because it’s a lot easier to say reckoning than it is to say “having all your biases laid out on a table and correctly picked over because it’s time we addressed this shit head-on.”

~Rebecca Traistor, Wide Awake

He'll do just about anything to avoid that, won't he? Addressing this shit head on? He'll minimize. She meant nothing to me. He'll deflect. Our marriage was really bad. You know that. He'll blame-shift. You said yourself that you weren't happy. He'll reassure. I never stopped loving you. He'll defend. I was never going to leave you. Why won't you believe me?

He'll do just about anything except the one thing that he absolutely must do. Address his shit head on. Traistor, in the quote above, is referring to the reckoning taking place politically in the US. And I am, of course, referring to a more personal reckoning in the wake of infidelity. But the two aren't necessarily as separate as we might think. Even our cultural understanding of infidelity is through the lens of misogyny, entitlement, patriarchy. "Addressing this shit head on" is about examining what made cheating okay for him. "Addressing this shit head on" means turning the light on the stories he told himself, long-held beliefs, a value system that was malleable enough to make space for cheating (or that never excluded cheating as unacceptable in the first place). Because if he's asking you for a second chance, what exactly is he offering to make that second chance seem like a fair bet?

It will be painful. For him but likely for you too. It's hard to look deeply at our shadow selves, behind our polished exteriors. And it's something that will likely require a professional, not only to open the path toward a deeper understanding but to offer support when what's discovered is hard to look at. When it feels easier to turn away, to say that's enough, to figure that not cheating is as good as understanding why he cheated in the first place.

It's not. It never will be. 

Addressing this shit head on is the admission price of a second chance. What? He thought there wouldn't be a price? He thought he could make promises and plead for mercy and wipe the slate clean? He thought the price was paid by being a witness to your tears, your pain, your shattering? Absolutely not. Observing the pain he created is never to be confused with reckoning with his own. 

Besides, we're likely having our own reckoning. Addressing this shit head on. Because although we are never to blame for another's choice to cheat, there are often ways in which we betrayed ourselves. By ignoring our anger. By silencing our wants. By denying our needs. By allowing him to abandon us in ways we barely recognized but nonetheless felt deeply. We felt alone, didn't we? We were alone.

Infidelity is a nuclear bomb. And pretending it's not only reduces the likelihood that the necessary rebuilding will take place in its wake. If he can pretend that it wasn't so bad, that it was a small aberration, that the damage was contained then he can avoid his reckoning. But only if we go along with it. Only if we don't demand he commit to his reckoning.

Let's not. Let's make absolutely sure that he addresses this shit head on. Let's insist that the price of his second chance is his commitment to doing everything he can so that he never needs to ask for a third chance. 

I'm convinced it's the only way to rebuild a marriage in a way that creates emotional safety. Only when we have seen his reckoning, only when he has examined his actions through the lens of how he got there, what he told himself, what he lied about – to us and to himself – can we begin to let down our guard. Only when he will make himself vulnerable can we begin to trust him with our own vulnerability. Only then.

How to Tell the Difference Between Good Anger and Bad

 

Anger gets a bad rap. Women, particularly, are socialized to stifle our anger. It's unladylike, it's off-putting, it's hysterical. My husband used to shut me down with "you're acting crazy." Which only made me angrier. "Crazier."

But anger is an important emotion. It's an inner guardian warning us when our boundaries are being violated. When we're being dismissed. Or ignored. Or treated like we have no value. Anger is the logical response. It isn't anger that's bad. It is, however, what we sometimes do with that anger that causes problems.

Anger, when tapped to keep us safe or stand our ground or carve out space for ourselves, is potent. As I wrote here, "Anger can feel like power. It can be empowering. If anger is channelled to give you the strength to create boundaries for yourself, to refuse to be disrespected, to wake you up just how deeply you've lost yourself in a desire to be loved or secure, then that's a good thing.... Just don't confuse it with moving on."

I see a lot of anger in the infidelity world. And I get how satisfying it can be. There is something intoxicating in hating someone who deserves it. And I think anger can provide a valuable role in helping us break the spell, as the mother of an ex-boyfriend put it. "You should hate him for a little bit," she advised me, as I moaned about how much I loved him after he broke up with me.

She was right. Rather than focus on what I missed about him, I began focussing on what I didn't miss. The emotional distance, the unpredictability, the cheating. Hating him helped me see him as who he really was, not who I wanted him to be. The thing with anger is we can't let ourselves stay there. It's an emotion not a way of life. We need to feel it, respond to what it's trying to show us, then move on. Hating my ex-boyfriend released me from him. It broke the spell. But I didn't continue to hate him. I didn't need to. He had no power over me. As I wrote in 2016, "Just don't confuse it with moving on."

Mrs Whatsit urges Meg to acknowledge her anger because it has something valuable to show her. It is fuel for Meg to right wrongs. 

That's good anger. To right wrongs. To stand our ground. Anger as our inner guardian.

But anger turns bad when we're harming ourselves. When it's making us cynical or bitter over time. When our anger is keeping us tethered to the person who hurt us. When we engage in behaviour that is unethical, illegal, dangerous. At that point, our anger has become the poison that we're drinking. 

Let your anger be fuel not poison. Let it motivate you to demand respect, honesty, decency. Let it fuel you to walk away from anyone or anything that doesn't allow you to be your full self and express your full emotional range. Which includes anger.

Thursday's Thought