” A friend of mine left a bad relationship and declared (on Facebook), “I choose to hurt no longer. (Ex-partner) can’t hurt me anymore.” The second sentence is 100% true and cause for celebration. But the first sentence doesn’t make sense from an attachment/completing the grief/anger cycle point of view. When you leave a bad relationship, you have all the pent-up hurt and rage and even fear locked up inside you, which must be allowed to discharge safely.

What makes more sense is “I choose to allow the hurt to heal.” Healing always involves pain — if you break a finger, it hurts, gradually less and less until it heals. Same goes for healing emotional injury. You can’t chose for your broken heart not to hurt. But you can recognize the pain as part of healing, and you can trust your heart to heal, just as you trust your bones to heal, knowing that it will gradually hurt less and less as you recover.” – Emily Nogaski, Ph.D.

There is so much wisdom in this. I hate all the pain I have gone through since my UH chose to blindside me with his 27 year affair. I hate every trigger, every technicolor image in my mind of him having sex with someone else, I hate the friends who now treat me as though I have something catching, I hate the minimizing judgement of my adult children, I hate that I can never go back and be in an always-been monogamist only one partner in our life marriage, I hate the tightening in my throat every time I choose to share my pain with you so that you might feel validated and not so alone in your anger and grief, I hate the robbery of time from a life of joy and happiness that his choices have stolen, I hate how much this has aged me, I hate waking up warm and safe, only to open my eyes to this never changeable reality, I hate falling out of respect and loving feeling for my spouse, I hate feeling anger toward another woman for her selfish hurtful choices (all she had to do was say ‘no’.), I hate being turned away from marriage recovery resources because only one of us is leaning into them, I hate the look of pity on the faces of the few friends that are still there for me, I hate the circles under my eyes and the dull look, I hate that my smile looks forced in photographs , I hate the nauseous pain in the pit of my stomach, I hate the loss of good sleep, I hate waking in the middle of the night flooded by ‘memories’ I can’t shake, I hate feeling the used fool, I hate all the years we could have been working together as a team instead of emotional closeness being drained away in justifications, I hate being seen as the cause of his choices in his mind for so many years, I hate feeling like having to pull teeth to get him to cooperate with daily adult responsibilities, I hate the unresolved/ungrieved family of origin abandonment issues that put him in a place to act out, I hate knowing he threw me away for a false fantasy, I hate not feeling special anymore….need I go on? (There are literally hundred more things I hate about his situation I did not ask for and lived under the influence of for so many years)

I hate that the above quote is true. I must choose to feel the pain until I don’t. I must live in it, steep in it, experience it, though never troll for it. I (and you beloved betrayed) must hurt and grieve in order to heal too.

I am so very sorry that this is truth. I hate that it is truth.

But all the hating, denial, anger and grief in the world will not change the fact.

It hurts to heal.

But you must accept and feel that hurt.

To heal.