Be You

Wednesday Word Hug: Sing Anyway

All My Rage: Let's Talk About Anger

Anger terrifies me. Other people's anger.
I'm quite comfortable with my own, though it's rare that I get truly angry.
My husband, however, has what he calls a "steam valve". He routinely lets loose with a string of expletives, or slams a door, or snaps at one of us. He's far better, thanks to a half-dozen sessions of mindfulness training. He's learning to respond rather than react. Still, it happens.
Ten seconds later, he's absolutely fine. Hardly remembers what he was annoyed at. I, on the other hand, have a knot in my stomach. I feel shaken.
And I hate it.
I hated it when I would wake in the night to my parents fighting. The yelling. The thuds on the wall that divided our bedrooms. The slamming doors.
I hated it when my brother would suddenly turn from the guy I adored to the guy I feared. Once or twice I was so battered and bruised my mother suggested a trip to the ER. Unfortunately, nobody was sober enough to take me.
So the math in my head goes like this: Anger = Chaos + Violence
In my world, if someone is angry, anything can happen. Marriages can go poof. Friendships can dissolve. Brothers can betray. Everything can fall apart.

I didn't want my childhood shaken. As long as nobody was angry, we could pretend that everything was fine. It wasn't, of course. My mother drank to quash her anger and hurt. My father drank to forget his frustration. My brother drank and smoked pot to silence his anger and confusion.
I raged.
I ripped the pink flowered wallpaper off my bedroom wall in a fury at 17.
I stormed out on boyfriends. I screamed at a teacher who took issue with one of my assignments.
I fought with my mother when she'd come home from the psychiatric hospital for a day or a weekend, despite my father's demand that I "behave". When she'd ask to go back early because of our argument, I would be blamed for "ruining the visit".
Girls aren't supposed to be angry. And so I drank too. I drank my shame. And I drank my hurt. And I drank my disappointment and my fear. And I drank my anger.
By my 20s, I had only two responses to pain: Absorb it. Or rage. 
Usually, I would absorb as much as I could, doing my best not to rock the boat. I continued to drink, which often distracted me from pain. Though there were plenty of nights when the alcohol allowed the wall to thin just enough, and then my grief would pour out. Or someone would say something I took offence to, and my anger, grateful to have a target, would unleash. 
All of which created a second equation: My Anger + Expression of it = Shame

Which brought me to the point when I learned of my husband's cheating. I swung wildly between debilitating emotional pain and a red-hot fury that consumed me. I destroyed an expensive watch, I trashed a diamond necklace, I knocked a television set onto the floor. I threw a hot pizza at my husband. I felt crazy. I was crazy. 
And then, my anger spent, I would feel empty. Void of anything except a deep shame at my lack of control. 
All of which kept me from taking steps to address my husband's infidelity. As long as the focus was on me and my anger – and I was locked in my own shame – I wasn't dealing with his behaviour.
My therapist taught me how to feel my anger without breaking things. She taught me that my anger was legitimate, that it had something to teach me. She gave me a new equation: 
Healthy Boundaries + Violation of Those Boundaries = Righteous Anger
I started to pay attention to my anger before it consumed me. I tried to notice when I'd get that flicker of irritation because my husband said something, or did something or didn't do something. I'd take the time to check in with myself. I became able to ask myself what my anger was telling me. Was I being disrespected? Taken for granted? Devalued?
We often talk on this site about how anger is a mask for hurt and fear. Which it is. It's what my therapist calls a "secondary emotion". Except. Except when it's not a secondary emotion. Except when it's a signal of something that deserves our attention. Except when it's signalling that we're in danger of betraying ourselves.
I don't always get it right. I'm still guilty of dismissing my anger sometimes until it makes itself known in unhealthy ways. I recently lashed out at my son for leaving his clothes lying around the house because instead of addressing it early on, I'd muttered to myself as I picked things up. My anger was telling me that I was feeling disrespected. That I was feeling unvalued. Taken for granted. He deserved my honesty. I deserved courtesy. Instead, I got angry, he responded with anger and little got resolved.
So...I'm learning. Anger might always be a problem for me because those early-life lessons leave deep marks in our hearts and our brains. But, slowly, I'm learning to use my anger to stand up for myself in a way that gets me heard. 

Embracing the You You've Become

How often do we read the lament of a newcomer (or an old-timer) to this site who misses "the old me"? What they (or we) are saying is that they miss the lightness with which they used to live life. They miss the naivety with which they lived, the absolute conviction that they were safe with this partner they'd chosen.
I understand the lament. I felt it myself and wailed to my husband, on more than one occasion, that he had "broken me". I imagined myself irretrievably damaged, never again to live with a lightness, a faith that the path before me was clear.
I was no fool. I knew that life could easily deliver pain to the innocent. And yet, I'd convinced myself that I'd had my share. That I'd chosen well. That I was safe.
I was right, of course. But not in the way I'd imagined.
I'd outsourced my safety. I'd placed my heart in the hands of a man who, at the time, was unworthy of it. And I'd kept little of my heart for myself. I had no blueprint for self-love. It struck me as arrogant, as selfish. Self-love meant less for others, surely.
And so I gave it all away. And I was empty.
Which is why, when I discovered my husband's infidelity, I was so thirsty for evidence that I was loved, that I was worthy, that I was safe. But my well, long forgotten, was dry.
Healing from his cheating was a process of refilling that well. It was a daily practice of self-love, of seeing my own pain and not fleeing from it, of holding it and allowing my soul to grow stronger from it, by feeling it and letting it teach me. 
Healing from his cheating was about letting the rain fall and knowing that that water was being collected, that it was nourishing me in some profound way. And that, when the sun came out again – and was slowly believing that it would – that the collected rain would be necessary to quench my thirst again.
Healing from his affair about letting go of our fantasies about "the old me". It's about honouring her, about grieving her. But it's about realizing that the old you has grown muscles in your soul that weren't there before, or at least, hadn't been tapped.
New you = old you + pain x wisdom. 
The lightness inside you has become a light inside you, that illuminates the path for all others still to come, who will learn from what you've learned, who will heal from your healing, who will gain strength from your strength.
This is how we heal. By loving ourselves and then extending that love outward but always making sure there's water in our well for when we thirst. And we will thirst.

Wednesday Word Hug

What if his affair really had nothing to do with you?

"Sometimes when we seek the gaze of another, it’s not our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. ... So often, the most intoxicating “other” that people discover in an affair is not a new partner; it’s a new self."
~Esther Perel, Why Happy People Cheat

Those words would have made me spit with anger if I'd read them in the early days following the discovery of my husband's affair. So I can imagine how more than a few of you are feeling right now. "Who the hell cares if he's discovered a 'new version of himself'," I can hear you yelling at your computer. "I am destroyed by this." 
And yes, it can be painful to hear some of the rhetoric around how affairs can help some cheaters get in touch with their own pain, or about how an affair can actually deepen a marriage. No matter that it's true. Who cares when my own heart is shattered! Why couldn't he get in touch with his pain without hurting me?
I hear you. And I agree. Just because he was so messed up that he thought he could find salvation in the arms of some woman with a trunk full of her own emotional baggage, why do I – and my children – have to pay the price? 
Fair question. And the answer, unfortunately, isn't very satisfying. Life isn't fair. Sometimes we are asked to show up for things that we didn't ask for. Often we are delivered situations that just suck. 
This, clearly, is one of those times.
And yet.
And yet, there's so much truth and freedom in what Perel is saying that if you can find the space in your shattered heart to even consider it, it just might change everything.
Because the thing with infidelity is that our first response, our knee-jerk response, is almost always to point the finger at ourselves. What is wrong with me that he would cheat? What does she have that I don't? Even those of us who are more charitable with ourselves can still find themselves wondering how they could have been so stupid as to miss that their partner was cheating. 
It's all about self-blame. It's about thinking we could control way more than we can actually control.
It's about thinking his affair was about us. When it wasn't about us at all.
It defies logic, doesn't it? How can he cheat on us and yet it has nothing to do with us? Of course, it has something to do with us, our rational brains insist. We are the injured party. We are the ones to whom he pledged fidelity. 
I remember the morning after a long night of "but why..." and "but how...", that I asked my husband how he could drive off in the morning toward her house and leave me to take care of three young children. "But that's the thing," he said to me, exhausted and exasperated from my endless questions and lack of sleep. "I wasn't thinking about you at all."
Heartless, isn't it?
And yet.
And yet, in that moment, the light went on. A-ha! His affair wasn't about hurting me. It wasn't about me at all. In the Venn diagram of marriage and affair, there was no overlap. It was simply two circles, side by side. 
I wasn't even outraged, though I was aware that this was completely fucked up. Instead, I was grateful. I was off the hook. This was completely on him. It had nothing to do with me. It wasn't because I wasn't skinny enough or successful enough or young enough or any of the personal shortcomings I thought were the reason.
In Perel's telling, "happy" people cheat, though I've never seen that up close. My husband cheated because he was looking for something outside of himself that he lacked inside himself. He cheated because he was in pain and he had no remedy for it, indeed he could barely recognize his own pain. He cheated because, as Perel says, he was looking for another version of himself, so disappointed he was in the current version.
In another of Perel's podcasts, a husband who cheated throughout his marriage describes it this way: "The sadness runs all the time. Never goes away. It was there before but I didn't know it. I made sure never to feel it."
This guy didn't find that better version of himself in the affair. But he did find it in healing from the affair. It was the same for my husband. It was when he could fully acknowledge the pain he'd caused, when he could face the shame that had driven so much of his behaviour for so much of his life, that he could unshackle himself from it. 
Yay for him, right? And all it took was completely devastating me. Small price to pay, huh?
Of course not. And though it took time, I became able to recognize that the complete unravelling of my husband, while creating the conditions for wholesale change that he needed, nonetheless caused me incredible pain. It damn near killed me. And our marriage was precarious for a long time.
But, with the long view, I can also admit that my marriage was precarious before I knew it was. When one partner is so disconnected to his own heart, and consequently, to his spouse, the marriage is already on life support, even if the tubes are hidden. 
Whether or not my marriage survived, we each had wounds that needed attention. That we were able to heal together – and to rebuild a marriage – is a bonus. 
We both discovered intoxicating others in ourselves. He can face himself in a mirror having long since stared down the shame that had ruled so much of his life. I too can face myself in a mirror, clear-eyed, having been roughly invited to tend to some long festering wounds from childhood that insisted I was unworthy of love.
Perel's words can feel like tough medicine to swallow so take a tiny dose, if that's all you can manage. But don't discard her words completely. They just might offer you the liberation that you need in order to move forward and heal yourself 

Guest Post: Your Guide to Staying

by StillStanding1

Have you ever experienced the phenomenon where you thought about buying a certain kind of car and then suddenly you start seeing that car everywhere, even though you are sure you never saw more than three before in your whole life? Ever since I wrote my post about how a separation is sometimes the right answer, I feel as though I am seeing a lot of separations happening here on in the BWC community. And maybe I’m just seeing things that are always there. Maybe there is a lot of it. Maybe I’m assuming an undue level of influence for the post I wrote (I still take responsibility for things that aren’t mine). I know no one here is jumping into a separation willy-nilly because of something they read on the internet. And of course, as I wrote earlier, sometimes it is the rational, healthy choice for someone in a toxic situation. But, I’m also feeling that I want to add some balance through discussion of the other option, one that can be just as hard, and that’s staying.

Choosing to stay when faced with a partner’s affair is absolutely a valid choice and one that many women make. The public view of affairs is reminiscent of the ways we used to (and in some places still do) talk about sexual assault. It’s taboo. We pretend it doesn’t happen. We don’t talk about it openly. When someone in the public eye is unfortunate enough to go through this, the public is openly condemning the act of betrayal itself while simultaneously taking a voyeuristic pleasure in someone else’s pain and downfall. Society also tends to blame the victim (sounds familiar, right?). The wife must have been a frozen shrew, or he wouldn’t have strayed. She must be a chump if she stays with a cheater. She’s “asking for it” – being hurt or fooled again – if she stays. A woman is left feeling alone, isolated and with a burden of shame for her choice to stay. There’s no high five, feel good Oprah episode celebrating women who fight this difficult and painful fight. This is piled on top of the PTSD symptoms we’re struggling with from the betrayal itself. Why, then, might a woman choose to stay after the life-altering trauma of betrayal?

Staying might be the choice you make today, right now, because you need time to breathe and find your feet before you decide what is the next right step for you. You are shattered and often a weeping mess on the bathroom floor (no shame, we’ve all been there). Now is not the time to be considering wholesale changes to your life. It’s okay to sit still for the time being and recruit your strength. Staying because you need time to recover is okay. You have as much time as you need.

You may choose to stay because you have a long history with this person. You’ve built a life together. You are not willing to throw all that away. You know there is work ahead, and so does he, but you both are willing to do that work to get somewhere better.  And sometimes, it takes a little while to get from the pain and horror of D-day, to the point where you both are on board for this effort. It is a legitimate choice to stay and give things time to unfold, to settle down and for you to assess whether or not you see him making changes and doing the hard work of figuring out why he made the choices he made. Again, you have as much time as you need to let this part of the story unfold.

You might choose to stay for your children, if you have them. This is a valid choice too. Disruption, separation and divorce are all scary and challenging for children. You are making a choice for them, to keep things safe and settled. But know that they need a happy, healthy mother in their lives. So as you make the choice to stay for them, also own that it is a choice for you. You are not trapped or weak. You are fighting for a better life. What does this look like? Is this also time to assess and let things unfold? Staying for your children is an okay place to start but don’t let it be where you finish. What does your husband need to do to show he deserves this second chance to be in a family with you.

You might choose to stay because you are scared. Scared of all the unknowns out there. Scared you can’t provide for yourself. Scared it will be a struggle. Scared of being alone. Scared of running a household on your own. Scared that you won’t be able to keep your family safe. Scared of anything and everything. This is also real and legitimate. I’ve been there (and still go there sometimes). It’s okay to sit still when you are feeling scared about your future. Take some time to look at what you are afraid of. If you don’t feel like you can support yourself, start doing something to address that. If you don’t have visibility into the family income and finances, take steps to get that access. If you worry you won’t have enough to live on if you do end up on your own, go and visit a lawyer to understand what your rights are. Start taking steps to address those fears and take some of your power back. You have as much time as you need to work through these fears and gain confidence in your ability to handle your own life. This will serve you whether your relationship ends or mends.

The bottom line is that you may choose to stay for a variety of reasons, all of which are personal to you and all of which are completely valid. It is necessary, after trauma, to take time to breathe and recover, to give yourself time to feel through the pain. As you start finding your feet again, take stock. What needs to change? What are your boundaries and terms for staying together? What are your needs? What do you want to work on? What is holding you back personally? What does he need to do to earn this second chance you are giving him by choosing to stay? How are you going to take better care of yourself and ask for what you need? What are your deal breakers? What is your plan if a deal breaker occurs? It’s a lot to think about AND you don’t have to have all those answers today, tomorrow or next week. But, when you are ready, start thinking about where you want to go from here. Claim the power you already have to steer your life. And know that no decision is made in stone. You may choose to stay today, for just today. You are always free to change direction. This is both liberating and scary as help. Just know that we’ll be right there with you.