Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Don't Build the Same House

If a house is levelled, don't build the same house.

~Dr. Debi Silber, PBT Institute

If there is one fundamental misunderstanding by those who don't see the inside of our marriage (but who think they do, and yes, I'm talking about the other woman), it's that our marriage post-infidelity is pretty much the same as our marriage pre-infidelity. I've heard the wails: "He gets to go back to his wife and his marriage and I'm alone." As if we welcome them back with open arms. As if we aren't shattered by betrayal. As if...

But it's a mistake that, sometimes, gets made by those of us inside the marriage. We're so desperate to get past this, to have our marriage back, that we build the same house, as Dr. Debi Silber puts it. We recreate the same marriage with the same dynamics with the same guy and then expect everything to be different. Or at least one thing to be different: That he doesn't cheat again.

It's lunacy, isn't it? Even if we thought our marriage was great – even if he's telling us that our marriage was great, that his cheating had nothing to do with us, that he never stopped loving us – even with that, we still need to build a new house. Cause the old house is gone. The trauma of betrayal blew that baby to bits.

But the thing with trauma is that it can help us lay down an entirely new foundation. This is, in no way the same as saying that trauma is "good" because it helps us grow. (In some cases, it does exactly the opposite as Lisa Arends so beautifully described in a recent blog post on her site.) But trauma, when it hits us as adults, is lay bare all the cracks. In my case, the trauma of my husband's betrayal forced me to look at all the ways in which I'd been abandoning myself. I brought childhood trauma into my marriage. I was the capable one, the responsible one, the "fixer". Which left my husband the role of errant teenager, which fed into his family dynamic that, without an adult telling him what to do, he was likely to get it wrong. And so I seethed with resentment that I had to do everything. And my husband seethed with resentment that he was treated like a child. 

Enter the trauma of betrayal. I had the choice to either build the same damn house or build a new one. And though I still slip into that old house – my default as fixer shows up every single time I'm stressed – I nonetheless built a new one. One that required my husband to be a partner to me. One that required my husband to work through his own childhood stuff while I addressed mine. 

As Dr. Silber tells us, the problem isn't trauma, it's staying there. When you heal from it, you learn that even though it was done to you, it wasn't about you.

I had to learn that. And I don't know how else I would have learned that if I hadn't had my metaphorical house blown up. We betrayed wives tend to spend a lot of time playing "what if". What if he'd never cheated, would I be happier? What if he'd never cheated, would I feel more secure? 

It's a fool's game. He did cheat. And we are left to rebuild a new house with the same husband (or rather a husband who'd damn well better not stay the same), or to rebuild a life without him as our husband. Either choice is a perfectly reasonable one. But if you choose to stay, you cannot move back into that old house, no matter what the other woman thinks. That house is gone. 

Thursday's Thought

 

If I made the "right" choice, why does it still hurt?

Letting go is actually a long, arduous series of choices and moments that build up over time. I also think “letting go” as a concept gets a little overblown in terms of importance. You don’t have to completely be “over” something to move forward with your life, and what does over even look like? Some things from the past will always sting a little when you press on the wound and that’s ok!

From "Here's the Thing", June 21, 2021

There's something that so many of are taught when we're young and trying to determine which path to take and it's this: If it's the "right" decision, it will feel right.

I believed that. And sometimes that belief served me well. But mostly, it did not. Because what felt "right" for me was often very very wrong.

I stayed, for instance, for seven years in my 20s with a guy who was emotionally unavailable to me except when I got fed up and pulled away. I was locked in this push-me-pull-me dance for seven long years. It felt "right" to me because my whole life had been about being told, in one way or another, that my needs were too much, that I was too much. And so, when he pulled away, it felt familiar. I needed to reign in my need, I figured. I needed to reign in myself. "Right" only felt right because it felt familiar. 

Part of this idea, that a "right" decision feels right, is the belief in a gut instinct, in "trusting our gut". And, again, on some level, I subscribe to this. It was my "gut" that finally convinced my brain that something was up with my husband. It was my "gut" that knew what that something was, that knew who that something was. And I do believe that we often know things before we know them. Which is to say, we can learn to be still, to listen to that small still voice that we've often muffled if not silenced, and discover that's where our truth lies – a truth that centers ourselves and our needs. A truth that respects ourselves.

But that's different than assuming that the right decision feels right. That right somehow feels easy. Quite the contrary. Because often the "right" decision feels horrible. It feels panicky. It feels incredibly uncomfortable not because it's wrong but because we're not accustomed to making decisions that are "right" for us. For many of us, it's been a lifetime of making ourselves small to fit into what others want us to be. It's been a lifetime of dancing the same steps we've been taught, even when that dance was harmful to us. To stop doing that can feel like being parachuted into a strange country.

But look around. This new strange country, while frightening, can also be beautiful. This "right" choice might feel uncomfortable only until we start taking a look around, acknowledging just how fresh the air tastes. That doesn't mean we won't have moments of regret. That we won't sometimes miss what was familiar. New is still...new. 

Until it's not. Until we've made it our new home, until we've made ourselves comfortable there.

So, whatever choice you ultimately make, do it with no expectations that your life will suddenly come up roses. You've got to plant those suckers. You've got give them good soil, prune them back. And then, when some time has passed and there's been a good mix of sunshine and rain, just watch that babies bloom.

Thursday's Thought

 

Now. And not yet.

Maybe healing doesn’t have to be the far off place we’ll never arrive; maybe healing is the now and not yet.

~Aundi Kolber

Good lord, we want it over, don't we? We want the pain gone. Banished. Never to darken our door again. We want to get on with our lives. To laugh again. To relegate "what happened" to the past and, fingers and toes crossed, something we never ever have to deal with again.

And we're getting there, yes? We're thinking about telling our therapist that we no longer need to come every week. Cause when we get there, we don't have a whole lot to say. And so we complain about random stuff – our jerk of a brother who isn't helping out with our elderly mom, our kids who roll their eyes at us, our office mate who takes credit for our work. But the infidelity? Well, it still stings sometimes. Our hearts beat a little faster when we drive by the street she used to live. But mostly? It's better. 

Or is it?

We think it's better but then he's late getting back from his guys' weekend and he's not answering texts.

We think it's better but then we watch a movie in which a husband cheats and the scenes are graphic and, ugh, sexy. And we wonder, was that what it was like?

We think it's better but then our friends invite us to their 20th wedding anniversary party and they look so happy and we think to ourselves, well, of course they are because their marriage isn't tainted by infidelity. Theirs is a real love story.

And then we think to ourselves, when will this ever be over? When will I ever be done with this pain? 

Now. And not yet.

You are healing. Have already healed in ways that you can scarcely imagine. Wasn't it just a few months ago, maybe years ago, when you couldn't go a day without sobbing. A day? An hour! 

Wasn't it weeks, maybe months ago, when you couldn't imagine staying with your husband for one more day while at the same time being unable to imagine leaving?

You are healing right now. But also...not yet.

Cause the thing with healing is that it's endless. There is no end point at which point the wound is entirely healed. Just as an x-ray will reveal a bone break from so long ago we have to think hard about whether it was our right or our left wrist, the injury of infidelity leaves its mark. 

And I know how disheartening that reality can feel. 

Because we're tired of hurting. 

I know that exhaustion. 

But I'm here, from your future, to tell you what I see. To tell you what I know.

When I look around, I see a family resurrected from ashes. I see a husband who reassembled himself from his broken bits into a man whose heart carries the weight of the pain he caused. 

I see a life that doesn't look exactly like the dream I had but that is nonetheless beautiful. 

I see the man who stood beside me at my mother's death bed. I see the man that stood beside me in my daughter's room in the psych ward. I see the man who wanted to be better. For me. For us. But especially for himself.

I ache when I imagine another's "perfect" marriage and then I remind myself that I know nothing of what happens between others, just as so many know nothing of my own.

I ache when yet another friend tells me that she discovered her husband's affair. It was years ago, it was months ago, it's going on still. And I assure them that I know their pain and that it will not feel like this forever. 

And I ache when I imagine any of my children going through the pain of infidelity because there was nothing in my lifetime of other pains that prepared for the agony of betrayal. And then I remind myself that they are stronger than they know. And that, if they do go through it, they will not feel that pain forever. And that I have taught them that pain is part of life and it's what we do with that pain, how we refuse to let it make us bitter, that keeps our hearts soft and open to all the beauty in our lives. 

You are healing, my secret sisters. Now. 

And not yet.