Judgement Day: When betrayed wives attack betrayed wives

Okay, so my title sounds like some sort of B-movie.
But just glance at the covers of tabloid magazines or newspapers for a quick education in how our culture views infidelity. "Cheater!" they scream. Or "It's over!" Or the straightforward "Betrayed!"
The betrayed wives are divided into two categories. Those women who dump the cheater? Brave. Strong. Those who forgive? Delusional. Wimpy.
What's particularly surprising, however, is that much of this scorn heaped on betrayed wives comes from...betrayed wives.
Forgiving a cheater and rebuilding a marriage seems a disappointment to our take-the-gloves-off culture. We want revenge. We want retribution. After all, the adage goes, "once a cheater..."
No matter that evidence doesn't back this cliché up. No matter that the majority (80% says a recent study) of marriages will experience infidelity. No matter that of those who divorce following infidelity, more than three-quarters later regretted it.
Our culture's judgement of infidelity – and those of us navigating it – is why so many of us choose silence even as we're experiencing the worst pain of our lives. It's why we hesitate to trust even our closest friends to support us.
It's why we find comfort in anonymous blogs where we can share our story without fear.
Betrayal creates deep wounds and triggers strong emotions. It's confusing to learn that the one person you trusted most has betrayed you. My immediate reaction upon learning about my husband's infidelity was to wander my house, wringing my hands and asking, out loud to myself, "what am I going to do?"
And it's perhaps that question that's central to this issue of judgement. What was I going to do? Sure I'd always said that cheating was a deal-breaker. But that was when it was a hypothetical. Things are always clear when they're hypothetical.
But now I had to figure out what, among my various options, I was going to do. And of course, I – like all of you – was making that choice with absolutely no understanding of infidelity and without a crystal ball.
It's into that uncertainty about our future, our deep pain at the betrayal and our recognition that other people are impacted by our choice (something our husbands neglected to note) that others cast their judgement.
"Well, I could never do what you're doing," one friend told me, just weeks after my D-Day. Within that comment was her deeper point that, really, I was a bit of an idiot. She'd left own marriage a few years earlier because of her then-husband's infidelity and she had no room for any alternative but to leave. I was stung by her dismissal of my choice. I struck her off my confidantes list, which was already pretty short.
And yet, a few years later, after this friend had been in a happy long-term relationship with another man, she wistfully told me that she thinks she and her ex could have actually made it work. But...who knows? My friend is now happily remarried. She made her choice.
And that's my point: We each get to make our choice. It's an excruciating one. Some of us will regret our choice to stay at which point we're allowed to change our minds. Some will regret our choice to leave at which point we're generally stuck with the consequences. Life isn't an exact science.
What we can do, however, is support each other in whatever choice we make. We can encourage each other to get as much information as we can and then make the best choice you can under the circumstances at the time. And we can then acknowledge that your choice doesn't make mine any less valid.
To those of us who've experienced that judgement, especially from other betrayed wives? Recognize that another's inability to tolerate your different choice speaks to her deep fear that she's making a mistake. We are frightened by those whose actions call into mind that there is another possibility. Seeing the world in black and white makes moralistic judgement so much easier...but it makes the world much less beautiful.
See her judgement as evidence of her own deep pain. And offer her compassion.

What the *@#% was he thinking?

It was 6 a.m. after a long night of me interrogating my husband. But why? I would ask, over and over in many different ways. What were you thinking?
"I wasn't," my husband finally said. "I wasn't thinking about you at all!"
Bam. There it was.
Though he'd said variations on that same sentiment – that his cheating had nothing to do with me – plenty of times, there was something about his candid admission that, as he left our house in the morning to drive to her house for a pre-work quickie, he simply wasn't thinking of me that hit me like a lightning bolt.
He wasn't thinking about me. This wasn't about him battling his conscience, torn between the pajama-clad wife at home wiping her toddlers' faces or the showered, perfumed Other Woman.
He wasn't thinking about me. At all.
It's crazy right? And crazier still that this made me feel good. In that moment, I got it. I finally understood that his cheating really had nothing to do with me. This was about a parallel world he believed in where he was free to do what he wanted. Where he didn't have obligations or responsibilities. Where it was all about him. He didn't care about her. Didn't even like her. She was escape. And escape was what he craved.
So often when women write to me within their letters is the question "why?" over and over and over. Why would he do this? What was he thinking? How could he ruin our relationship? What about our children? Didn't he think about them? 
Aren't I enough? they ask. How could he throw away five/ten/twenty years? Didn't he think about what he was doing?
I doubt it.
Cheaters become masters at compartmentalization. Some are so good at it because they're truly narcissists who simply don't care about anyone else. They aren't thinking about you because they never think about you except in how you can be of use to them.
But the others, like my husband, are garden-variety fuck-ups. They've got issues, often deep issues, that haven't been addressed. Childhood abuse or neglect. Emotional detachment. Mother issues. Unprocessed grief. An inability to recognize or manage their own fear – of growing old, missing out, failing.
And then someone comes along who offers escape. Someone in whose eyes they loom large and exciting and interesting. The someone is less important than what that someone offers. A parallel universe. Escape.
It's the reason so many of these guys are stunned when the affair is dragged into the real world and suddenly it seems so ridiculous and cliché and embarrassing. They can't believe what they've done. They're acutely aware of just what they have to lose.
It's not always immediate. Sometimes this parallel universe has such a hold on them that it takes them a while to shake it from their psyche. Like someone in the dark arriving, blinking, into the bright sunlight. They're not sure which one is reality, the light or the dark.
But a lot of guys know immediately that they've really messed up. That this escape has been a total illusion. That the price of this fantasy is going to be high.
They're the ones who insist that they're not that guy. That they didn't know what they were thinking. They don't want to talk about it. It's humiliating. It's confusing. They can't really explain what they were thinking because they weren't.
If they really think hard about it they might acknowledge that they were thinking variations on such things as nobody will get hurt. Or I feel young again. But mostly they just weren't thinking at all.

Let's Talk About Sex

Ugh. Sex after betrayal.
As if it's not enough that we feel as though our hearts have been plucked, still beating, from our chests and feasted on by the OW, we will sometimes sooner sometimes later be expected to bare our bodies to the person who betrayed us.
Double ugh.
Even after the hysterical bonding has cooled down, perhaps after a period of sexual anorexia, eventually – hopefully – we will want to respond to a physical need for intimacy and an emotional need for connection.
For some of us, the healing that can follow betrayal will easily make its way into the bedroom. For others, like me, the healing that has followed betrayal screeches to a halt outside the bedroom door. But, I'm increasingly forced to admit, that's a huge sign that there's still much healing to be done. And it needs to be done largely within myself.
My therapist calls it "sexual trauma" and for a long time I resisted that label. It made me feel damaged. But betrayal does damage us. Not irreparably, not all of us anyway. But profoundly. Betrayal, for far too many of us, is confirmation that we're faulty. That we're not enough.
Our path to healing involves understanding, truly and deeply, that is a lie. The "faulty" or "not enough" script comes from long before our spouses cheated. It's rooted in childhood or adolescence. It's a message we got from our parents, or siblings, or teachers or schoolmates or the culture around us. And then, just when we thought we found that person who sees us, truly sees us, as whole and that maybe, just maybe we can begin to believe it too, we discover the betrayal. "See?" we say to the universe. "I knew it. I knew there was something wrong with me. Why else would he cheat?"
The answer, as those of us further along the path to healing know, is that there was something wrong with HIS thinking. The answer lies in the stories he was telling himself about his own worth, his own needs. But that's not your stuff. Your stuff is about about ensuring that you don't build such a hard shell around yourself that sex becomes little more than scratching an itch, or becomes such a frightening prospect that you ignore it altogether.
Which brings me back to the point of this post. Sex, post-betrayal, is scary. But so are a lot of things worth doing.
My therapist, who I've recently begun seeing again for the sole purpose of helping me get my groove back, said something recently that resonated with me. She often takes groups to Kenya. Some clients take the trip more than once, and to those clients she says, "see Kenya through Zen eyes." In other words, she explained, no matter how many times they've seen the same things, she urges them to look at it as if for the first time.
My husband and I need to come together as if for the first time. We need to banish the baggage of betrayal to the basement (how's that for alliteration?) and come together as if we know nothing about the other. To find out what each other likes. To learn what each other doesn't like. To look at each other as if we've never really seen each other before.
Which, post-betrayal, is a really great approach but no less scary. We are different. Far different than the couple who clung together on D-Day as if we were drowning in pain. Far different than the couple who slogged through that first, and then second, year, wondering if we had the strength, the patience, to rebuild a marriage that had revealed a lot of holes.
And now we've fallen into a comfortable pattern. We talk more, we share more, we love better and more deeply. But I, at one point, drew a line around sex and put up a whole lot of Do Not Cross police tape around it. I became terrified at the prospect, despite a lifetime of loving sex. I wept at the idea of being naked in front of my husband – I felt so incredibly vulnerable.
He couldn't understand. "Because I feel hideous," I managed to finally say. His face measured pain and surprise. "But you're gorgeous," he told me.
No matter. I might feel gorgeous when I'm fully clothed. But take that armour away and I'm a woman terrified that he'll see I'm "faulty" or "not enough."
That's the old story, I know. That's the narrative I've spent years trying to erase or rewrite.
Sex after betrayal is where our wounds are laid bare. It's the arena in which we feel, perhaps, more vulnerable than anywhere else.
I'm learning though that it's an arena worth entering. That my vulnerabilities are also where my power lies. My strength is in letting my husband see those vulnerabilities, confident that I have built a strong enough foundation that no matter what anyone else says or does, I can know that I am enough. That I am not faulty.
That I am gorgeous.

Getting Past the Fear of Uncertainty

"In truth, we never know our partner as well as we think we do. ...even in the dullest marriages, predictability is a mirage."
From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel

I would have told you that my husband would never cheat on me. I suspect you would have said the same thing. With very few exceptions, every woman on this site was absolutely shocked when she discovered her husband's affair. Despite statistics that indicate that more marriages are affected by infidelity than aren't affected, we nonetheless think we're among the lucky few. Delusional, yes?
I've long thought that willful blindness is part of the problem around infidelity. It's what happens in other marriages, we believe. If we discuss it at all, it's in absolutes. Don't cheat on me or it's over, we tell our spouse (or our spouse tells us). But, as Perel also says in her fascinating book, "the most complex issues tend to polarize in a flash, and nuance is replaced with caricature."
Infidelity caricature tells us is that cheaters are low-life Casanovas who feel entitled to sex with whomever, whenever. It tells us that wives are frumpy nags who don't like sex. That the Other Woman is a cross between Jessica Rabbit and Glenn Close.
The truth, as too many of us know, is far different. But our culture's adherence to infidelity caricature makes it hard for us to push back...especially when we're reeling from disclosure of our spouse's affair. It makes it difficult to make our own choices within the context of the marriage we're in...rather than the one culture thinks we're in based solely on a spouse's infidelity.
What's more, we're also reeling from the recognition that our spouse, whom we thought we knew inside and out, had a life completely apart from us. It's unnerving. It threatens everything we believe we know about our world.
But, as Perel suggests, it shouldn't. It should be simply understood that we can't ever completely know another person. It's something that I've come up against when I've responded on another Web site, one that purports that all cheaters are narcissists and abusive, and that the best remedy is to cut them from our lives. A one-size-fits-all response to infidelity reduces it to caricature. It disallows nuance from the conversation.
And God knows, we need a conversation around infidelity. We need to acknowledge, publicly, just how rampant it is – and we need that acknowledgement within the context of a non-judgemental conversation. Not a conversation that says, necessarily, that infidelity is okay; simply a conversation that says it is. That says all people who cheat are not bad people. All women who stay with their unfaithful partners are not doormats. And all cheating isn't remedied by throwing the cheater out. Infidelity caricature implies that, by removing the cheater from our lives, we'll somehow be protected from future pain. Or that, by removing the cheater from our lives, we won't have to deal with the pain of healing. We won't have to cope with the  uncertainty of will he do it again? True, perhaps. But the only way to completely protect ourselves is to close our hearts to not just our cheating spouse...but the world.
Life is uncertain. It's messy. It's a truth writ large when we're healing from betrayal.
And by acknowledging that our spouse has parts of him that we don't know, we not only face the possibility of infidelity (again), but we also open ourselves to the pleasure of "new". As Perel writes, that compromise we believe we must make in a long-term monogamous relationship – that in order to have the safety of fidelity, we must give up the excitement of the "new" – isn't necessary. It's possible, she proposes, to have both fidelity and the thrill of "new" by recognizing that our spouse is constantly evolving. That we don't know everything about him.
It's something a lot of us learn post-infidelity but few understand before: healing from betrayal can include the reinvention of the marriage into something exciting and fulfilling. Rather than sounding the death knell, infidelity can be the spark that ignites a new passion. We can see our spouse in a new light. Not always flattering, at least at first. But if we're open to it, we can rediscover our spouse in a way that encourages the rebuilding of our marriage.
That's not to say I'm an advocate for infidelity. The pain it creates is simply too devastating. The cost to families is just too high.
What I am saying, however, is that if we could open ourselves to the recognition that long-term monogamy can be stultifying, that even good spouses can feel deadened by the day-in, day-out demands of marriage and parenthood, we could have that difficult conversation – beyond "if you cheat, I'm outta here" – with a deeper understanding. We can't inoculate ourselves from pain by trying to frighten our spouse into good behaviour.
Being tempted isn't a sign that the marriage is dead. It's a sign that we're alive. Temptation is a warning to turn back toward our partner. To ask ourselves what we can do to make the long-term partnership more appealing than the lure of a new partner. To make the choice, again and again, to work on what we have rather than risk it for what we don't.
To do this is to face our fear of abandonment, a fear that runs deep in many of us. By talking about infidelity, we don't make it more likely, we make it less likely. Pretending we're immune to it doesn't make it so.
Let's agree that we can't possibly know everything about our spouses. And let's allow that to make us curious about them, not frightened. It requires a leap of faith. But choosing to stay with a spouse who has betrayed us is all about faith. In him, yes. But more importantly, in ourselves.
Having that faith in myself, though, is one of the gifts that arose from the pain of my husband's infidelity. I learned, the hard way, that the only person I can ever really trust is myself. At first that struck me as sad. But a deeper look made it clear how liberating that is. I can be the rock upon which I build my life.
And I can open myself to the unpredictability that is everyone else.

The Woman and The Child: Which Am I?

The truth is I'm both.
I'm a woman when I'm able to trust myself and my ability to handle whatever comes my way.
I'm a child when I feel frightened and small and threatened.
And only recently have I become really aware that I can control which "me" arrives to face whatever situation has arisen.
This past week, for example, I've been cranky. The holidays have been long and, since I work from home (a generally silent home), I've been getting little done. I missed working. I missed quiet. I missed my own company, which felt drowned out by my husband's larger-than-life personality.
I resented him and began counting the days before he would return to work.
But in the process of recognizing that I was looking forward to him NOT being here 24/7 was the recognition that he might feel the same way. And that is terrifying. It's one thing for me to admit that I've had enough of him…but quite another to acknowledge that maybe, sometimes, he's had enough of me. My "child" is triggered, fearful and anxious. Abandonment seems imminent.
In the past, I might have been aware on some level that my fears around abandonment loom large. I've long known that I hate being left…I far prefer to do the leaving, even for something as innocuous as a trip to see a friend.
This time, however, I understood on a deeper level just how much my "child" distorts my thinking. Something as normal as a husband getting on my nerves gets blown out of proportion and I convince myself that our marriage is doomed. Or more to the point, that I will be left.
I've learned, albeit slowly, that this is old stuff. This is my "child" curled in a ball, feeling powerless and scared.
So I tried something different. I imagined myself being left. I imagined that, even though there was absolutely no evidence that my husband was planning to file for divorce rather than simply returning to work after a long holiday, I was being abandoned. I imagined that he was having another affair and I would be blind-sided.
My heart beat faster. My breathing became shallow.
And then…I realized that I was not a child. I was a woman with all the resources available to me that women have. I could contact a lawyer. I could lean on friends. I could access whatever I needed to get myself through a challenging time.
I've done it before…and I can do it again.
And in that moment, I realized how often I relinquish the floor to the child I was instead of the woman I am.
I hear it sometimes in the letters you send me. I hear the fear of abandonment. I hear the anguish of those who feel small and powerless. I hear how betrayal triggers our deepest fears -- that we're unlovable, that we're not enough, that we will be alone.
But within those letters, I often also hear something great. Strength. Determination. An ability to rise to the occasion. Some will say they take heart in others' stories of survival because that means that they, too, can survive.
Acknowledge that scared part of yourself that is triggered by betrayal. But be sure to remember too that we women are a force.

My Christmas Wish to You

The other night my family hosted its annual holiday party. The only year we missed it was THE year. The one in which I found out, two weeks before Christmas, that my husband was cheating.
This year, a houseful of family and friends gathered. Some I see regularly; others I see only once a year but all are cherished.
This year, three of the women at our party are dealing with betrayal. One friend told me about it at the party. She just found out a week ago, though she has suspected for ages.
As another of those women said to me, when I told her of the others, "don't you wish you could just save them all?"
And yes, I do. I wish I could save all of you from the agony of this. I wish I could give each of you a hug and remind you, as often as you need to hear it, that you do not deserve this. I wish I could convince each of you that the day will come when the pain of this experience won't have the same sting. That you'll get through this. That the day will come when you can look back on this, not as something you're glad of, but as something you learned from. As an experience that took you from one place in your life to a better place. Where you value yourself. Where you can give yourself deep compassion for being imperfect. And where you can extend that compassion even to those who've hurt you, whether or not you continue to share your heart and body with them.
In the meantime, while I might not be on this site as often over the next week or so, I think of your stories. They stay with me. And I wish you all a measure of peace over the holidays.
If at all possible, take time each day to sit alone. Remind yourself, in that moment, that you are fine. That you are strong. That you will get through this.
I promise you will.

Seven Lies We Believe After A Spouse's Affair

It's hard to overstate how much being cheated on messes with our heads. Marriage experts refer to betrayal as a "trust violation" and note that it's one of the most psychologically damaging experiences. It shakes our sense of safety in the world. It triggers our fears of abandonment, threatens our primal need for security and love.
But though all that is true, we often do the most damage to ourselves. In the wake of betrayal, we tell ourselves all sorts of untruths, based on a deep fear and a conviction that, if we've been betrayed by someone we trusted, there must be something wrong with us.
Not all of us do this, of course. Though among us with healthy self-esteem often go straight to outrage. I remember reading something, post-betrayal, where a marriage counsellor said that he didn't worry about the women who got angry. He worried about the ones who didn't. They, he said, were the ones more likely to blame themselves.
Blaming ourselves can be strangely appealing. If it was somehow our fault, we reason (fallaciously), then if we fix ourselves, our spouse won't cheat again.
Uh…no.
It doesn't help, of course, that our culture piles on. If a guy cheats, it's because his wife was frigid. If a guy cheats, it's because his wife is frumpy. If a guy cheats, it's because his affair partner was hot and performed like a porn star. His wife was a nag. He fell out of love with her. And on and on. On some level, a lot of us believe those lies, even when our husbands are swearing that's not it at all. Harder still, of course, is when our husbands join in, blaming us for their choice to cheat.
Before long, the chorus of lies reaches a crescendo, making the truth almost impossible to hear.
With that in mind, I've compiled a list of the lies…along with the truth.
Which, a wise soul has said, will set us free.

1. The lie: "I'm a fool"
I hear this one a lot. "I'm such a fool for believing he loved me." "I'm a total fool for thinking he'd never cheat." "He made a fool of me."
The truth: You're a loyal wife and friend who trusted someone who betrayed that trust.

2. The lie: "I'll never get past this."
The truth: Yes, you will. It will take time. Far longer than you would expect (experts generally say three to five years…I was closer to five). But within that time, you'll inch your way closer to a better marriage (if you choose to stay) or a better life (if you choose to go). You'll work through the pain and get to a place where you recognize that this wasn't about you. You were collateral damage. You'll get past it to a place where being betrayed is something that happened. A memory. If you've truly healed, it won't even feel like a particularly painful memory.

 3. The lie: He cheated because she must be amazing in bed.
The truth: He cheated because he was seeking something outside himself that's missing inside himself. He cheated because he liked the reflection of himself he saw in her eyes. He cheated because it felt exciting and dangerous. He cheated because he was able to convince himself that it was somehow okay. That he deserved it. That nobody would get hurt. He cheated because he's capable of self-delusion. He cheated because he has addiction issues. Still think it's because of the sex? Read this.

4. The lie: "She must have had something I didn't."
The truth: What she had, you don't want. Being an other woman is rarely like in the movies. While there might be champagne and roses (at least at the start), there's also cancelled rendezvous, erectile dysfunction, arguments, lonely nights and holidays…and a future that's more about promises than plans. What's more, to participate as an OW, you need to convince yourself that you somehow have more claim on this guy than the person with whom he promised to love, honour and cherish. That life (or his wife) is complicating your future together, not him. That all that stuff he says to you is true, even though you know that, at some point, he said the same stuff to his wife. That lying about you and hiding you away is evidence of his love. You want that? Didn't think so.

5. The lie: "He cheated because I gained weight/got pregnant/got depressed/got sick…"
The truth: He cheated because he wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with his own issues. He cheated to escape. Any guy who cheats because his wife gains weight, gets pregnant, is dealing with a disabled child or an aging parent or whatever is a total dick who needs to shown the door anyway. Any guy who cheats is, frankly, someone incapable of having a healthy relationship, one that includes really tough conversations. Marriage has a steep learning curve. Sadly, few of us saw healthy marriages played out for us. So it's hard to know how to broach tough topics, like waning attraction due to weight gain or pregnancy, fear of fatherhood, feelings of abandonment. Many of us don't even really know what we're feeling…we just know we're feeling lonely and misunderstood. An affair can seem appealing. But the smart ones among us recognize that's a dangerous path to go down. That it will cause a whole lot more problems than it will solve. They're the ones who give their marriage a fighting chance before they blow it up. The others…well…we know what happens.

6. The lie: "My happiness depends on him."
The truth: Your happiness depends on you. It always did. Too many of us have bought into pop-song wisdom about finding our soul mates and living happily ever after. Happy comes, generally, with enough soul searching that we exorcise our own demons and discover a deep sense of worth in ourselves, no matter what the world says about us.

8. The lie: "My marriage will never the same (it will be worse)."
The truth: My marriage will never be the same (it can be better). I would have called total bullshit on that a few years ago. I would have scoffed, of course it can be better if he's not sleeping with other people. But really good? Nah.' But here I am, eating my words. It takes a lot of work. It takes a deep commitment on the part of your husband to recognize how badly he's hurt you and how he's damaged your relationship. And it takes a strong desire to want to be a better person. To deserve your love and trust. And you've got some work too. To take a good look at your marriage and take responsibility for your own shortcomings. (This is in no way to say you were to blame for his cheating. That's on him. But there isn't a marriage in the world in which just one partner is to blame for issues within it.) And then, slowly, you rebuild. A few years later, you just might be amazed at how strong that marriage feels. And how deep the love goes.
And that's the truth.