Nothing and no one is going to prevent me from growing into a stronger, more loving person. No action undertaken by another will deter me from finding my purpose and living it.
Have you heard that the best revenge is living well?
Coming from one who does not believe in revenge, I have to admit that this saying is steeped in life affirming possibilities.
Perhaps if you look at it as revenge on the brokenness of the world that produced people that can choose such destructive actions — yes! We live in a broken world. No one is born to betray. They are grown. No one born to murder. Other broken people and circumstance produce people who are capable of such.
Never stop dreaming. Dream of a world without brokenness and pain. Dream big that you can add to the healing, the love.
Let no mountain, no circumstances, no person, place or thing stop you.
Recently, while on vacation, I was trying to open a package to get to the grounds for my morning coffee. Yes, I’d searched for a scissors, but to no avail. So I used one of the steak knives in the knife block on the counter of the hotel kitchenette. Never in my life have I slipped with a knife — this time, my left index finger the unintended victim of my action.
In the split seconds following, before the gush of blood, I admonished myself in disbelief that the package had not given way to the knife, in full knowledge I would now pay the price. I’d never really considered how nerve rich my fingertips are, but it became painfully apparent a moment after the slash. Almost as quickly as the blood ran, tears sprung from my eyes, tumbling in a torrent down my cheeks. I grabbed a paper towel and applied pressure, walked to the couch and sat–all while balling my eyes out.
My UH spewed a litany of questions. Evidently he’d not realized what had happened and then not the severity of the wound. I couldn’t talk. I was crying too hard. As the pain sliced from finger to brain, I struggled to catch my breath. I became nauseous. My UH suggested I try to lie down. He said something about getting ‘shocky’.
Even in the midst of this sudden unexpected injury, the parallel to the many hours I’ve spent crying in grief over the loss of my marriage to infidelity loomed in the background of my awareness. It felt like I was so practiced at crying, the tears from this very real pain intensified to the level of my betrayal crying fairly quickly. I asked myself if the knife wound was actually as painful as it seemed–that it would cause gut wrenching, choking sobbing.
Yes, I decided. It was very painful. Yet I was amazed at how my body’s reaction was nearly identical to the agony of losing my past to betrayal. I have yet to read a visceral enough description of the pain of having one’s spouse sleep with another, but this shock and awe, this razor’s edge of deep slicing pain, was as close to what I have experienced over these many months as anything. Fortunately our bodies won’t allow us to always be in this morass of deep pain. We do eventually catch our breath, clear the choking mucas, stop the shaking and regain ourselves. There is little else as draining as this sort of pain and our response to it.
I ask myself if this effect, this shadowing of my grieving replayed through a physical wound, is not a part of what Bessell Van Der Kolk refers to as “The Body Keeps The Score” in his scientifically based book of the same title, about the effects of trauma. In those moments as I held my bleeding finger wrapped in crimson soaked paper towel, it sure felt the same. I’ve never had such a severe body-racking reaction to a physical wound. The intensity was much closer to that of the physical trauma reaction to the life altering discovery of intimate betrayal.
Am I saying that intimate betrayal is the worst pain I have ever experienced?
Yes.
Hands down. Nothing I have ever experienced–not physical or emotional –surgeries, injuries, broken bones, sexual assault, loss of sibling, parents, childbirth –nothing has come close to the pain of learning my life had been lived inside a lie at the lying, manipulative hands of my spouse. And what is so gut wrenching is that this pain was caused volitionally. Unlike the slip of a knife, infidelity was premeditated, planned, worked toward, hidden. It was not an accident.
I imagine that those of you who have not experienced intimate betrayal would have a hard time believing it could be that painful. I would not have believed it either — until I experienced it. I hear it over and over again from other betrayed. It is the worst pain of their life.
I believe that if it were more widely recognized as being as physically and emotionally shattering as it is, there would be far less intimate betrayal. As most betrayed say, “I would not wish this pain on my worst enemy.” –True. I believe most unfaithful are shocked at the intensity of their betrayed’s pain.
I am a positive person as far as humanity is concerned. Believe it or not, I am an optimist. (though you may question that when you read some of the descriptions in my posts) I believe most unfaithful spouses have no idea how deeply they are wounding their spouse and their marriage. Most are in denial, minimization and frankly, don’t believe they will ever be found out. “What my spouse doesn’t know won’t hurt them.” That is the biggest self deception of all.
It is impossible to not see your betrayed spouse through a negative lens in order to justify betrayal. It is impossible not to steal thought-space, consideration, love, time and money from your betrayed while you are engaged emotionally and physically with another. It is thievery. It is as inevitable as sunrise follows the night.
I am so very sorry for all the betrayed who find themselves in the agony of betrayal. I am so sorry for the unfaithful that are now witness to the wages of their betrayal.
And like my knife accident, it is my responsibility to take care of my wound. As the stitches were put in and after, it is I who endure the throbbing pain, the weeks of adjusting to having only four usable fingers, the months ahead of the numb fingertip skin and the flesh beneath that feels like it will detach at any moment. The sensation is brand new, odd, uncomfortable, punctuated with moments of sharp pain when triggered/bumped. It is something I will be aware of for the foreseeable future–no choice. I’m the one who suffers through the healing process.
“Acting on self-will means behaving with the exclusion of any consideration for others, focusing only on what we want and ignoring the needs and feelings of others. While we were busy pursuing these impulses, we mostly left a path of destruction behind us.”
And isn’t all affair limerance and fog an addiction? It has all the earmarks whether or not the perpetrator is an official sex addict, or not. All the pleasure hormones being serviced by the ‘high’ of sexual attraction. The high that was promised to one and only one—the spouse.
When a betrayed comments on an infidelity thread that she hopes her UH choses her and their marriage, when others comment that ‘at least he chose you,’ part of me boils over. WTF was he doing courting what was already promised and given to his spouse? He never should have placed himself in the company of releasing those hormones—the ones that lead to throwing away the marriage. Why wasn’t he protecting his marriage and his wife? HE should never have been in the position to have to choose. He supposedly chose when he said, “I do.”
Insanity. It is insanity, pure and simple.
And now the betrayed or her supporters are stating she’s in any way fortunate to be given that which was already hers? Grrrrr….
Theres not much about infidelity that makes sense. Not much that is in any way fair or sane. That would require a healthy individual that would not allow another person to become a wedge in their marriage. A person that would not risk their beloved’s health or safety. A person who placed his marriage as priority above all else and others.
That obviously was not our unfaithful. They wanted it all—‘married single’ as my UH has called himself. Married when it suited him and served him. Single when it did not.
And what could be more broken, selfish and self centered than that?
What about the human wreckage the addicted leave in their wake? What about the addict that refuses to humble himself, express remorse, empathize, apologize and make restitution/amends? I put it to you that he is still broken, still selfish, still self centered, still unsafe to be in relationship.
This begs the question: how long is a betrayed supposed to wait for the unfaithful to choose to change—to do the hard, deep digging and the long term amends? When every moment spent in relationship with a still broken unfaithful is a risk. I risk. You risk being devastated again because the unfaithful are doing what is referred to as ‘white knuckling it’ in the recovery community. They are using their will power to be a good boy or girl. They are still living delusionally thinking that a promise made to themselves that they will not make devasting choices again will work this time.
The unfaithful promised on their wedding day in front of spouse, family, friends and God and they still cheated. Promises and vows are meaningless. They have proven it.
Like Hillary Clinton once said about raising a child, “It takes a villiage.” Likewise, it takes a village to hold an addict accountable, to mentor, encourage, support and shepherd. Remaining in his own thinking got him to where he is today. His best thinking led him to obliterate his marriage and family. What part of remaining in his head does he think will be successful this time?
More insane thinking. More self delusion.
Wake the *bleep* up, unfaithful. Smell the coffee. Reach out to more reliable people, those further along their recovery journey, and try out their suggestions until you find the combination of actions that work. Rinse and repeat. Keep upping your integrity game. Become the man you promised your wife to be on the day you married her. Become an even better man, you know, the one that she thought she married. Choose to lean in. Choose honesty.
We’ve made all kinds of efforts to change things with little to no impact. That is our experience–or so it is said when taking the third step of the 12 step programs.
______________________________________
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
_______________________________________
We can stop wearing ourselves out trying to make and force everything to happen as if we were in charge of everything in the world.
I’ve come to the conclusion that on my own resources I am helpless and hopeless. There is a resource deep within me that is the source of power. I will look for it… relationship with that resource. Many name that resource “God”, but you can give it a name that captures all the resources that you need in your life.
It is a leap of faith into the chasm. I know that I don’t know and that I can’t know for sure. I am making a decision to behave as if this power exists. I am going to behave ‘as if’ it does. My effort is the chemical ingredient that gives me the willingness to be taken to a place that I don’t even know exists.
This power could and would help if it were sought. So we decide to turn our will and our life over to the power. We turn ourselves over to the care of this benevolent energy. In truth, I am a manifestation of this power.
It is our decision. God is or God isn’t. It is our choice. Our actions are to go with this decision. Selfishness and self centeredness is the root of our trouble and it must be uprooted. God makes that possible. We can not do it alone.
We are left in a spot of complete desperation. Our current experience now is that we are restless, irritable and discontent. My will will only choose me and it manifests itself in all the disturbance in my life. We must turn from being self centered. We must make a decision to be turned away from this. We are turned into relationship to and for others. Other centeredness.
We will become habituated to where it is organic that we need the passionate service to others.
Our spiritual malady –this selfishness and self centeredness will be removed.
We have to quit playing God. It doesn’t work. My perception, attitude and behavior do not work as long as I maintain the myth that I am at the center. Hereafter in this drama of life, God will be our director. We the actor. We are his agent.
It is the keystone through which we pass to freedom. The cornerstone is willingness. The keystone in the decision to believe in this power greater than ourselves and turn toward it.
The component parts of the fourth step are the building blocks. We will look at our (self)deceptions, our inappropriate sexual relationships, resentments, fear, dishonesty, secrets; our brokenness in body, mind and will.
What relationship does your heart yearn for with the mystery of this higher power? The qualities you need personally. Turn our life and will over to the care of. I am finite and vulnerable. I am looking for infinite and unconditional. I am looking for a relationship, a turning of my will and my life over to the care of this mystery. I will be provided with what I need (not necessarily what I want).
The promises. Coming from the dim darkness of no power, with a little bit of willingness, action and grace. We become less and less interested in ourselves. We become more and more interested in what we can contribute to life. We begin to lose our fear.
We begin to be restored to our humanity. We are spiritual beings having a human experience through a connection to the source.
We will know that we did not know. See that we did not see. Abandon ourselves utterly. Honestly and humbly. This is a beginning.
Steps four through nine are the actions that demonstrate we really mean to turn toward the power. Actions. Willingness. Submit to being turned toward.
God, I offer myself to Thee – to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy will always!
Every day she takes a morning bath she wets her hair Wraps a towel around her as she’s heading for the bedroom chair It’s just another day Slipping into stockings, stepping into shoes Dipping in the pocket of her raincoat It’s just another day At the office where the papers grow she takes a break Drinks another coffe and she finds it hard to stay awake It’s just another day Do do do do do do, it’s just another day Do do do do do do, it’s just another day
So sad, so sad Sometimes she feels so sad Alone in her apartment she’d dwell Till the man of her dreams come to break the spell Ah, stay, don’t stand her up And he comes and he stays but he leaves the next day So sad Sometimes she feels so sad
As she posts another letter to the sound of five People gather ’round her and she finds it hard to stay alive It’s just another day
________________________________________
This song swept into my mind after yesterday’s post. Yes–Sometimes I feel so sad. It also has to do with a man, as is the case in this McCartney song.
And how those betrayed intimately often ‘find it hard to stay alive.’
The man of my dreams comes, but he leave the next day….so sad.
Of course my UH did not leave the next day. No. We were steady dates four years and married eleven before he decided to leave. He didn’t leave physically, but he did emotionally and in authenticity.
If he’d have left physically, I’d not be writing this blog. At least not about him. He would have given me my freedom to pursue an authentic relationship with my humanity intact and my ability to execute my own choices.
Funny how lyrics of a song written nearly fifty years ago can be so poignant today.
How sad that humanity has not evolved at all.
That a man can promise to have his spouse’s back–to protect and honor her and throw it all away for a broken woman of zero morality or integrity. And if that were not bad enough–hide the fact from his wife for decades. Still using her for his own benefit.
Funny–not as in “ha, ha”. Funny as in curious. A curiosity to any who have not felt the gut wrenching effects of infidelity in their own life’s story. Far from any kind of funny for those who have.
“Stay…don’t stand her up…”
I’ve been stood up for years by a manipulator that had more interest in having his needs met than in anything or anyone else. He, a validation addict. Me, his luckless stooge. The butt of his humor-less jokes.
The thing is—there is no benefit of rehashing it all. Zero.
So why do we betrayed feel led to the slaughter of revisiting the atrocities of the past? What is it about we humans that we are haunted for years by trauma? What was God thinking when he built in this feature of human nature?
Dang if I can figure it out.
It is a humongous waste of time and energy. The whole undertaking was a waste. It caused the wasting of our marriage through emotional anorexia. Starvation through choosing a lie over reality. Sapping all the good and positive that might have been the unbeatable couple — ‘us’. We could have been even more than we were. So much more. SO much to grieve.
It is f*#king amazing that we accomplished all that we did. Yet–What a waste. What thievery. My life’s blood has been syphoned into a woman who partook in an affair with a man whose wife and children she knew–so she could have a nice meal, a pretty hotel room, a roll in the hay and some fake kudos thrown her way by an equally broken man who craved validation so much he betrayed his family, his life.
Waste.
verb
to be consumed, spent, or employed uselessly or without giving full value or being fully utilized or appreciated. To become gradually consumed, used up, or worn away
noun
useless consumption or expenditure; use without adequate return; an act or instance of wasting
____________________
Perfect word to describe what his choices did to ‘us’–did to me. I was consumed, spent and employed (though not uselessly because I served him well). I was deprived of being given my full value, fully appreciated. I was not appreciated AT ALL. I was consumed. “gradually consumed, used up, or worn away”. Perfect description.
I was used without adequate return–at least to me. He got all the return. All the benefits of wife and whore.
‘Sometimes she feels so sad’…..
I invite you to grieve what you have lost, what I have lost, what is lost every day to those who are still in the dark about the unconscionable choice their spouse has made to betray them. Their lives are being stolen, their goodness, their gifts, their love, with no choice afforded them.
“Don’t listen to friends when the Friend inside you says, “Do this!”. – Mahatma Gandhi
For so many years of my life I felt compelled to be the fixer, the helper, the supporter, the doer, the responsible, the buck stops with me person. Perhaps it was the role I grew up with–my brother taking all my parent’s emotional energy to handle. He, the black sheep, the different, the rebellious, the learning disabled. I felt it incumbent upon me to be the cushion to their fall. The good girl to give them hope. The light in the darkness of dealing with a child who they could not figure out.
So I was the easy child. The giving, the quiet, the sweet, good grade earner, compliant, complacent. I was the yang to my brother’s yin. I provided the sun when my brother’s clouds darkened their days. Even though I do not remember being intentionally placed in this role, I nonetheless felt it was mine.
So it has taken me years to listen (to my body, my mind, my emotions, my needs) and learn to respond. To respect me. To be my best friend. I am still learning how to do this. It is a practice–definitely not perfection.
I try to check in with myself on a regular basis to see how I am doing. I remind myself that I have limits and I must pull back from reaching them well before the breaking point.
I remember one December evening slaving over a sewing project for my parent’s Christmas gift. We couldn’t afford gifts that might display the value in which we held our family members. Perhaps I need to own this and say “I felt we couldn’t buy something that demonstrated the love I had for them.” So I made Christmas gifts from scratch. I taught myself to fabric paint and sew basic things. I crafted. I tried to give something personal to each family member so they might receive the message that they were worth my time and effort. I felt homemade said love and respect, loud and clear.
So I baked dozens of homemade Christmas cookies to accompany the handmade gifts. On this remembered pre-Christmas night, I was sewing fabric quilted placemats and complementary napkins for my parents. I was struggling. My sewing machine was messing up. The thread tension was off and consequently, the linear perfection I strived to achieve became knotted and tangled. And it was getting later and later–closer to the deadline before the start of school Christmas break. Tears fell, exhaustion knotted my shoulders and my kids pleaded for me to just go to bed.
I dissolved into self reprimand, disappointment and tears.
Fast forward all these years and post intimate betrayal with all the trauma that has heaped upon me. I am now kinder to me. I cut myself a break. I realize my limitations. It has been demonstrated in technicolor that I have zero control over anything and anyone. If all my giving and love could not keep my spouse from a long term affair, there simply is nothing I can ever do to earn fidelity or respect. I didn’t cause his betrayal and I can’t cure it.
So I am left with a choice: reject myself as hopelessly useless and ineffective to anyone or ingest the truth–I am limited. I can not make anyone happy. I can not heal anyone. I can not please anyone. All that is on their plate.
I have to learn to please myself. I have to learn to be my own best friend. I have to learn to care for me like no one and no body has ever, or ever could. I know me better than anyone and therefore know how to manage and care for me. To think there is someone else in this universe that is going to care for me simply has not proven true. The closest people to that were my parents and they are gone. Even they were not mind readers and got it wrong plenty. They too had their rightful limitations and challenges.
So softly, kindly, compassionately talk to yourself, Christine. Whisper in your own ear a lullaby of life and love. Take care of you as best you can. Then just maybe there will be leftovers enough to share.
Why has this been such a lifelong difficult lesson? Why did it take coming to the end of myself to learn it? Why do I still need booster shots to remind me that I am limited? It’s hard to unlearn a lifetime of behavior. It hurts not to be able to be everything for those I love. It hurts not to be able to make them whole and happy. It just plain hurts.
I remind myself that we live in a broken world. There is no such thing as lifelong contentment and happiness. We–each of us, are responsible to find our own snatches of it.
So I will search everyday to find what is so often blatantly obvious–the gifts, the good, the stuff and people for which to be grateful.
I don’t know why I am still here. Why am I left behind and my parents and brother are gone? Why am I in this place of betrayal and loneliness? What am I supposed to learn and feel and give? Why is there no rest, no answers?
I’m committed to searching, trying, learning, growing…
I can become more aware each day of what my inner voice is trying to tell me.
I am three year plus out from intimate betrayal D-day. I’ve done an amazing amount of concentrated work to regain some semblance of a life I can enjoy.
I don’t know about you, but this has been a task requiring a tremendous amount of fortitude and “fake it until you make it”-ness. I’ve taken the standard wisdom-advice to try new things and resurrect enjoyable old things that perhaps I’d been neglecting or putting off. I’ve read, taken workshops, classes, gone to individual counseling, journaling, marriage counseling, Retrovaille, even participated in a Gottman Institute infidelity marriage counseling therapy study. (Which, BTW, we were dismissed from because my UH was unwilling to complete the assignments to talk to me/process with me) I’ve done just about anything and everything my finances and time would allow.
I’ve prayed, meditated, deep breathed, walked in nature, gone on trips to girlfriend’s houses. I’ve taken the surveys, answered the questions, thought through the timeline of my life, perseverated over said timeline, practiced mindfulness, presence to avoid perseverating.
All that undertaken with as much investment as I could muster. Virtually most waking moments not occupied in work or home maintenance, I have attended to this pit of pain and despair.
And you know what?
I have been marginally successful. Why do I say ‘marginally”? Because I am still so sad. Beneath all the effort and the blessings and the investment in gratitude and joy producing activities, there is ALWAYS a background of sadness. I don’t seem to be able to shake it. Not for a moment.
All life events are tainted with the yucky brown haze of betrayal. Like a 1970 L.A. skyline, my sunny and cloudy days are encompassed with a sulfuric, lung scorching presence of toxicity. To continue the metaphor–I can’t seem to take a deep breath without coughing. My UH’s choices clog my heart and lungs with a presence, an unhealthy pall that never seems to clear completely.
It’s ALWAYS there.
I wish I could give you the answer to the cure, dearest betrayed. I pray there are many of you who have or will come out of this toxic sludge. It’s not pretty, healthy or ‘fun’. It darkenes even the brightest days, like the presence of the grim reaper at my shoulder.
There isn’t much more I think I could be doing to self help it away.
How much more time will soften the cloud, turn it to mist that can lift? Or is there something I am failing to see or do? I don’t know. My gut tells me I can’t heal in this lonely place without my UH’s healing and reconnection OR my leaving the relationship to find a healthy man with whom I can regain intimacy in my life. That left aside, maybe I can be ‘manless’ all together and find the illusive clear headed joy on my own. This third option seems least likely to me–a person who thrives on deep intimacy. Not sure my life will ever again be complete without it.
Which, as the experts say, ‘Life can still be good’.
Maybe– just not great, joyful, love filled, smog free.
What has been your experience with the smog of betrayal?
I remember my father’s wistful complaint, “It’s a lonely place.” He referred to the place he occupied in his world. He was the thinker of thoughts, the considerate intellect that pondered things most don’t. Curious to a fault, a miner of the ‘why’, he spent many late nights listening to ham radio broadcasts, reading modern prophets and analyzing the current events. He was a thought-full man.
“It’s a lonely place to be.” Sadly, I don’t see there being any improvement or increase in men of thought. So absorbed are we by over use of our devices, never ending entertainment and mindless distractions, it is the rare person indeed that spends his life in never-ending curiosity and learning.
How I miss you dad.
Curse or blessing, I too am a thinker. I come by it genetically and through environment. I listened to the questions dad asked. To his ‘howling at the moon’ moments of frustration as he grieved the insanity and just plain stupidity of men. I watched him operate day to day as he reached out to offer those around him some of his perspective, but mostly treasures of information and thought from the best thinkers of his time.
I still have the carefully cut our articles, the primitive computer research he undertook in support of my thought life and reality. I also remember his mother sending him typed letters with news clipping and commentary. She was a thinker of a different flavor, but a thinker nonetheless.
In both of them I saw a brand of love not often found. They offered the depth of their thinking, the sum of their experiences, the illumination of many of the strivings of modern life. They did not keep their thought life to themselves, even if it was a lonely place to be. They shared it without reservation or expectation. They planted seeds for the future.
As a former fiction author, I used the bank of my own experiences to weave stories and construct characters that might reflect the deepest parts of our humanity–not to make any money, but to plant something that might reach eyes and heart yet unborn and speak of times and places familiar and unfamiliar, but also of human nature and strivings and love. I use my late night thinking to type away on this modern day typewriter, this computer. I send these blogs off into the vast tech universe of the world wide web. I plant seeds that have potential that may or may not grow.
Happy is the man and full of love who plants saplings he knows he will never enjoy the shade beneath. Call it legacy or fate. I come by it honestly. I am driven to reach out using what gifts I have, experience, research and words.
And I pray.
May some of this bless you. May it soften your worldview, lighten your load, expand your outlook or simply bring some hope into a dreary day.
Yes, I too am different and yes, it is often a lonely place to be. But I believe in the power of words, of communication, of thoughts and experience shared. I believe in you. I believe in me. One article, one blog, moments shared over coffee or found through search engine happenstance. There are no coincidences.
May the power of the universe bring you much thought, many intellectual and healing riches of the heart. May your life be resplendent with serendipitous stumblings and the sharing of many hearts, experiences and wisdom.
I hate watching television or movies that depict graphic violence.
“But it’s all make believe,” I hear some say.
To me it matters not. It still depicts the inhumane treatment of other human beings. I have been treated inhumanly as a betrayed wife. I have suffered more than my lifetime’s share of trauma as a result. I do not have any desire to court that sick feeling of anxiety and pain in my gut. As an empathic soul I strive for no more trauma.
And that is what I feel when I am exposed to graphic violence. Even if it has zero to do with intimate betrayal, it guts me in the same manner. It is an enormous trigger. I find no entertainment value in it, no matter the brilliant script, the excellent acting, the glorious backdrop. It is violence against others.
“Why do you watch the news then,” I’ve heard others ask.
The news does not show graphic violence–images the can not be unseen on the internal screen of my mind. The news talks of man’s struggles, and yes, inhumanity to other men. But it also portrays the heroes that fight against violence. It speaks of the first responders, the crusaders, the justice system, the everyday man on the street that comes to help.
Recently I watched a documentary focusing on the late Fred Rogers. Mr Rogers said that his dad always used to tell him to look for the helpers when he would experience inhumanity, tragedy and loss. “There are always helpers.”
I love this outlook, this truth. It focuses on the best in us. On the helpers. On the strong men and women who live good lives in service to others. Thank God they are still and always have been the majority. Heaven help us on the day that balance shifts.
It is so easy to destroy. So easy to complain, to judge, to tear down.
Brene Brown uses the ‘man in the arena’ quote to highlight this truth.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
Dear Betrayed and Unfaithful,
Please remain in the arena. Don’t listen to the naysayers, the critics who tell you that you are reduced by your past or that you can never change, or effect change. Don’t believe for a second that you need to throw your life away because of what you did or what someone did to you. You have the power of choice. You have the power to change. You have the backbone of human dignity and willingness to fight for what is right and good.
During this season of pain, don’t let even the fictional harms tear you down. Steep yourself in the good. Look to the beautiful. Stand strong with the man and woman in the arena. Be careful to what you expose yourself. You need to be uplifted for your courage, to add to your courage bank account.
Come out of the dark, strive toward the light. Keep the faith that there is more good in this broken world than evil.
Look for the helpers and one day you will find that you have grown into one.
I am a two-time cancer survivor. Cancer of the body.
In 2014 I was diagnosed with melanoma–present on my back and on my heel. This was between d-days. My first D-day happened in June of 2013 when my UH gathered our adult children to admit to spending ALL of his retirement savings over the five year period I asked him to take the reins of our finances as I adjusted to my new life in Southern California as an empty nester and now, former, teacher. Obviously a huge mistake on my part. He’d never demonstrated anything but agreement with our frugal responsible lifestyle. But then I had no idea he was a validation addict that would, in turn, spend into huge debt through secret credit cards and bank accounts–all in homage of his image as the generous good guy. So no, he was not spending on a human mistress, but he was spending on mistress ego.
Shortly after his financial revelation he became suicidal…pyschotic…ending up in the hospital. He blamed me for that too. He hated the mental ward and blamed me for taking him to the doctors that landed him there. He was in full blown separation from reality psychosis. I knew the symptoms because my adult son has the same when he suffers a bout caused by inconsistent or improper use of his epilepsy control medications. I was left holding the bag–visiting him in hospital and trying to figure out the wreckage he’d made of our finances. It has taken years and having to mortgage our retirement condo to get out of that high-interest credit card debt. A mortgage we were never meant to have as we’d paid off the condo, or so I was led to believe. Master manipulator at the helm.
So I faced life threatening cancer for two months as I waited my surgery date. Melanoma, the most potentially deadly skin cancer for its nasty habit of mestastising, had taken the life of the best man at our wedding at the age of 27. I was so gob smackied and overwhelmed with salvaging what was left of our financial life, I barely had time to grieve my possible imminent mortality. I pleaded for my UH to dig deep, to find a therapist that would help him decipher what was it in his make up that allowed him to destroy our finances in secret.
He did not dig. He eventually got a virtual therapist through the military–an on screen/online guy who was nice, but clueless as to my UH’s real issues. This guy treated PTSD military, not sex addict, alcoholics. To be fair, my UH never really exposed his sex addction. I don’t think he had realized he had one. He did focus on his frustration with me and my low libido. That is what this therapist and my UH discussed. Not the fact my UH had spent us into a quarter million dollars of debt, in secret.
So that cancer of the soul was not addressed. My melanoma cancer was, and was caught before it spread. I have the nine inch scar on my back and the golf-ball sized skin graft on my heel to show for it.
Body cancer number two came in 2016–yes, right after UH dropped the sexual infidelity bomb. I was in such a fog of shock and grief I really didn’t care if my thyroid cancer took me. Turns out this cancer was an extremely slow growing one that had very little chance of spreading. And so I had the half of my thyroid effected removed, with no ill effect. Neither cancer had required radiation/chemo. So I am a double cancer survivor with no history of the fears of chemo, no nausea, no loss of hair. “Only” the inherent fear of any cancer– that it might recur.
Funny how little I cared. How small a space my body cancers occupied in my brain disc space. That space had been flooded with…flooding. The flooding of financial and intimate betrayal trauma.
I’ve beat the big (bodily) “C”.
Damn if I can beat my husband’s cancer of the soul–addictions. I didn’t cause them and I can’t cure them. Only he can do the work to dig deep and figure out what made him tick–what he told himself that gave him permission to spend our retirement savings and go into debt, what gave him permission to keep a mistress for 27 years, what gave him permission to chase a new woman in 2016, emotionally, with hopes of it turning physical, what gave him permission to risk all he claimed to value, what gave him permission to take up pot smoking in spite of it disabling him to land a job. What brokenness, what shame-based identity needs re-parenting.
“Stay on your side of the street, Christine, Alanon admonishes. Detachment. The only sane thing to do. Put on your oxygen mask before helping others. So wise. So true. So hard when you have spent your life supporting a man emotionally, physically.
I am a two time bodily cancer survivor. Piece of cake compared to trying to survive my UH’s spiritual cancer. The jury is still out on that one.
I will survive. Will I thrive? Will I find my new life’s passion. Baby steps and willingness.
Christine Renewed 