Escape from Reality

Escape is tremendously maladaptive in the long-run, a child’s solution… but many “solutions” that a child used to cope end up bleeding into adulthood, becoming ingrained patterns. You’re quite right, escape is selfishness, whether it be through alcohol, over spending, over eating, infidelity, they are ego-run-wild… in other words, a child living in an adult’s body.

YEs. This has been my experience of the way my UH has handled his life and therefore, our life. Hiding and lying never give the faithful partner the opportunity of choice. Whether or not we would choose to be in a non-monogamous relationship. Whether we would sleep with a spouse who was sleeping with another.

The answer to the above would be ‘no.’. It would not have been my choice. I signed up for exclusivity. I signed up for protection from STD’s, and emotional safety. I signed on to be cherished and loved. I NEVER would have slept with my UH had I known he was sleeping with another. I so wish I could take all those sexual encounters back. They were undertaken under false pretense and therefor without my consent.

I still feel so dirty and violated. So objectified.

I’ve never been one to escape from reality. Perhaps it is why I wrote contemporary fiction–not sic fi or fantasy or even historical fiction. I like the present day, even with all its foibles and problems. I take on a challenge because it needs to be handled. I fight for what I believe in and protect what I love.

But then I forget…I am not as broken by my family of origin as my UH. There but for the grace of God go I. I chose differently in spite of my loneliness.

As much as I hurt. As many hours and days and months of agony as I have endured at the consequence of my UH’s choice to betray me and our family..I still want to be right here in the bright light of day knowing the truth. I was taken advantage of. I was used and betrayed. I was disrespected, objectified and thrown on the trash heap of acceptable collateral damage to his selfishness.

At least I know now where I stand. I know under what peril I was placed and I know that I have come out of the false world I was living in as good, neh, better than when I was living inside his lies. I KNOW I gave all the love I could give. I lived my truth. I did not betray my family. I spent my days with feet firmly planted in reality…and I have survived even all the bull sh*t he has throw at me and our family. I am going to be okay. I can and will choose to be grateful for all I still have.

I do not want to escape from reality. I have but this one life and I want to live it as it presents itself–in the here and now.

I think that is what they call ‘forgiveness’.

I Miss My Old Self

“I will never have the innocence again. Now I’m trying to figure out how to live with myself as this new me, this glued back together and changed me. I’m different. But how can I embrace that and continue to grow? 🤷” – Betrayed Wife

How I miss waking up in the morning thinking of daily life in its trivialities or even its challenges—without the knowledge of heart shattering betrayal. Feeling safe even in the midst of …anything. I’ve gone through the death of both my parents and only sibling. It was occasion for grief and reflection upon the meaning each of those individuals had in my life. But it was all experienced with the presence the person I thought was my husband. This man I thought had my back and would be there no matter how many tears I cried or what financial challenges might bring. I had the comfort of a spouse. The innocence, the trust I had. I felt secure in his love.

That has been ripped away from me. I do not know this person who still looks like that guy I felt safe with. And he has not demonstrated that he is changing in that he is not willing to move toward me to sacrifice his comfort by humbling himself in remorse and amends. He just doesn’t. He feels fake and unsafe. He acts like pre d-day him which, in my heart and experience, means he is keeping his old mask glued in place. His nice guy mask that only cracks and shatters now when he gets frustrated. He has a very short fuse or tolerance for ANY difficulty, even the simplest ones life brings his way.

He no longer rages, rattles and cracks dishes in the dishwasher and cabinets or throws household objects. He has chosen to control his anger. Image maintenance?

It is no longer what he is doing (see above anger descriptions). It is what he is NOT doing that keeps me entrenched in my room night after night alone with my dogs. (God bless their furry unconditionally loving hearts) He is not welcome in what used to be our bedroom. Not for a year now. I set that boundary a year ago when he was still choosing not to control his anger. SO in that sense, he has made progress.Reminds me of the old adage: You know what feels so good about pounding your head with a hammer?…When you stop.

Just because he is not physically and emotionally abusive outwardly (things he does) in no way makes me feel affectionate or close to him. I can not think about reconciliation with a man who does not take responsibility for all the myriad of ways he has harmed and diminished me and our family. I have pleaded for him to talk through all his betrayals so that I will hear what his thinking is now–how it has changed?? I have told him numerous times that he does not present any remorse in any form or fashion, nor does he own and acknowledge the many costs his choices have dumped upon me. He is avoidant. He will not allow his heart to soften and break for the monstrous ways he has harmed me–the woman he purports to love. He is a stone wall with a ‘good guy, happy go lucky mask’.

I have less than zero desire to be married to someone like that. Reconcile? Geezz…no. I still often struggle to tolerate his good guy mask because it is always at my expense. Always a reminder of the fake faux husband I have had for thirty years. No reparations, no empathy, no kindness, no grief, no tears, no apologies, no , no, no. He is waaayyy too busy being busy…and avoiding me, avoiding taking ownership of the damage he has caused.

I have forewarned him that I am not at all sure how much longer I can keep bumping up against him in the house, triggering me. As I say, not so much at what he does trigger. It is what he fails to do.

I miss me. I miss ignorant of his betrayals me. I miss the sweet innocence of the woman who thought her marriage was forever and that her husband would always love and protect her–the verb.

I miss waking on a summer morning like today, with the sweet smell of flowers drifting through the bedroom window. The rich smell of coffee mingling and the sound of the person I thought loved me, pattering around the kitchen. Those days before he was either gone to a recovery meeting or sleeping in, out in the other bedroom. Those days he still at least pretended to care about me enough to do some extra niceties. I even miss my childhood days with the sound of the shower water running through the pipes and the soft drone of the morning news show on the TV in the living room. Those innocent days where I felt cherished, valued, safe, secure….and loved.

I miss feeling loved.

I miss soft, innocent, giving, vulnerable me. Optimistic, benefit of the doubt giving, trusting me. Those days when tears were only brought by a sad story on TV or a cute dog food commercial.

I miss feeling valued, cherished, accepted, part of a family.

My heart feels tightly squeezed in my chest–with longing for the feeling of being safe and loved.

Was It “Worth It” to the Unfaithful?

I sure wish I could help make the reasons it was acceptable to cheat more…well, acceptable. If former unfaithful would be willing to take a stab at it, that would in fact be hearing it from the ‘horse’s mouth’ so to speak. I think a former unfaithful would have to be healed enough to put aside his or her shame to reach out in this way to help other betrayed. A tall order.

As a betrayed whom has worked at understanding and recovery for three and a half years now—much of that time, full time, with the rest of life’s responsibilities being the part time job– I can share my experience, strength and hope.

As my FUH (former unfaithful husband) has stated, he thought he would never get caught. He also led himself into the delusion that cheating has no consequences if one is not caught. As we all know cheating opens a vein in the marriage, robbing it of truth, trust, intimacy and reality. It blood lets–making even a good marriage anemic, a weaker marriage, a shell.

At the same time my FUH also admits that he thought being caught would mean the end of the marriage. Losing it, access to the kids and the house/home he loved. He deluded himself into thinking getting caught was unlikely. And in our case, he was right. It still killed our marriage through the bloodletting, but he did not get caught.

He announced his affair to me as a weapon to hurt me. He did it in retribution for me setting a boundary because of his pot addiction. But you see, he is an addict. Although not all UH’s are addicts, it is my experience that the same sort of thinking allowed them to enter into an affair. The same delusional, blame shifting, entitled, ‘stinkin’ thinkin’ that is hallmark of the addict. It is not rational. It is not based in reality. It is demonstrated over and over again in the media–smart, successful, intelligent men with everything to lose, still risk it all for the fantasy of the affair. They know it can destroy them too. Yet, they still choose it. This is addict’s thinking.

I have also found that unless an unfaithful is a sociopath without conscience, he or she does not set out to destroy their spouse. They are way too self absorbed to purposely plan lifelong sadness and pain to their spouse. Are they aware that the discovery will cause pain? Yes. Do many/any of them have any notion as to the severity or long lasting devastation? No. Another form of delusional, minimizing thinking that is believed by the addict/cheater.

If one were to ask most non-sociopathic unfaithful if they knew the extent of the damage their choice would cause, most would say they had no idea. Therefore, I believe unfaithful who set out to do the kind of damage that is lifelong are rare as hen’s teeth. They simply did not believe it would cause this kind of trauma. More minimizing and delusional thinking. Acceptable collateral damage that in their magical thinking will either not exist, or will not be too bad.

It is also my experience that most former unfaithful think they would not have crossed the line into infidelity had they known the extent of the trauma. That said, I believe this is also a form of delusional minimizing thinking that is common to those who justify cheating. They minimize. “It won’t be that bad.” “It’ll blow over.” or “I’ll deal with that should I ever need to.” Denial of potential harm. Ahh…another of the ‘izings’ of this sort of thinking/ non-thinking.

Did my UH intend to inflict lifelong pain and suffering upon me? (even though as one of the few who actually meant to harm me by telling me, still did not think it would be anything as bad as it is) He told me, because his addictions had escalated over the years and he was just that sick in his thinking. He did not set out when he began his affair to tell me or to harm me….as I think most unfaithful operate.

Was it worth it for him? Not if he has stayed around and is trying to change, even if he stinks at the trying and it is as slow as molasses in January. If he has not left for the delusion of the AP or other self-medicating tool, he is witness day in and day out as to the consequences of pain on the betrayed. Not a pleasant place to be even when in denial as to whether he deserved his fling or not. He is living with the destruction, the shame and the guilt. Not fun.

Was it worth it? Few would say ‘yes’. Even those without a lick of empathy for the betrayed. They hate feeling bad about themselves and having their nose rubbed in their failure.

I wish I could help you, fellow betrayed, to let go so that you can move toward more authentic enjoyment in your life. I have found that it takes a lot of practice and intentionality to find some fun, happiness or joy. It is another unasked-for job, but one with potential pay off. Is it fair that we now have to search for joy, fun, happiness? No. Is it an opportunity, should you choose to look at it that way, to strengthen your gratitude muscles, and therefor joy. You bet.

Will I always remember this? Yes. Will it bring pain at the memory–yes, in varying degree. Does it have to rule my life?

That is my choice.

From Stress to Strength

What makes the difference between those who recover from trauma to thrive and those who remain mired in victimhood?

In every life challenge there is a lesson to be learned. Belief, optimism, perseverance–those are the skills and choices of the thriver. If you surround yourself with supporters/helpers, your success will be much more attainable. If you allow yourself the time to think things through and choose optimism, your stress levels will drop.

Those who recover are those who can let go of any hope of having a better past. The one thing you have control over when in the battlefield of a challenge, the war of recovery, is creating space. Use your neocortex. Your higher brain is wise. It has the capability, as part of a sentient being ahead of the other animals on this planet, to observe itself/ourself and choose a path.

Trouble is, that higher brain is slower than the lizard brain. The flight, fight or freeze fast reaction lower brain will rule your life if you don’t take a deep breath and let that Neo cortex–that higher brain kick in. I think it is poetic that the neo or new part of the brain actually wraps around the more ancient. It’s almost as if in our development, our more advanced higher functioning brain is hugging that old knee jerk area like a wise mother holds her petulant child back from darting into the street.

When you take the time to remember to what or whom you are committed, the driver behind your life, the passion—and take those few moments pause–you will be able to focus on that which is bigger than yourself…. compassion, empathy and love. All that stuff is not in the realm of the lizard.

It is not about adding things to your life, buying more, taking on more responsibilities. It’s about subtracting. Simplifying. Streamlining, in order to allow for those spaces to exist in your schedule, in your day, to take that deep breath and engage your higher brain. The planning brain, the consideration, empathizing, compassionate and thoughtful brain, to lead to better decisions that can serve both you and others.

There’s a good reason for the old cliche “Look before you leap”. The frog leaps, the lizard (brain) leaps. The human animal in all its thousands of years of development has the capability to achieve that which no other species on earth can–choice. And it t’ain’t through leaping.

Slow down and choose well.

Dig Deep, Betrayed

“My mate is not the problem, my mate only reveals the problem in me” – Rick Reynolds, Affair Recovery Pres.

When he lies, when he gaslights, when he’s angry…what does that elicit in you? What do those feeling make you want to do? How do you react? What choices do you make?

What are the places of healing do I need to address when my unfaithful spouse acts in XYZ way?

Maybe I am very passive or maybe I have done some things that have diminished him.

It is important to start to look at our feelings, betrayed. Why do you stay? Where have we felt similar feelings before?

You always have a choice.

Everyone can benefit to look at who she/he is and has been in the marriage.

12 Step guru, Herb K., teaches how to dig deep in the fourth step– Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

It is his contention and that of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that when someone else’s actions or inactions elicit resentment or even disturbance in you, it is the crack in your personality that calls for examination. When we have taken the time to look into our own frailties, we come to see patterns. Often these patterns reveal a weakness in us that is reflected/mirrored in how other’s behavior’s effect us.

Example: I hate being misjudged. I work very hard to be the loving, giving person I am. When someone voices that I acted otherwise, when I know that I did not, it pokes at the trauma of my childhood: the message I received from an overly critical mother that nothing I did was ever quite good enough. The present day misjudgment creates a visceral pain in my gut and a dropping out of the bottom of my stomach, that little else can. It feels like being told someone I care for died suddenly.

The trauma caused by a critical over judgemantal mother led me to defend myself in childhood by flying under the radar, being the good girl, good student, gift giver, quiet and unobtrusive one. It has also led me to be a perfectionistic over doer that resents others when they do not hold up their portion of whatever. Yup–I have the knee jerk reaction to judge THEM as not being good enough.

Dang– “My mate is not the problem, my mate only reveals the problem in me”

Does my mate have problems? You bet.. a whole set of them.

AM I perfect and without shortcomings? Hmm….

Matthew 7:3 reads, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” … You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Is it my UH that has the plank and I the speck? Perhaps. That does not negate the reality of my shortcomings, my ‘specks’, nor the pain they may have caused.

Anniversary Lost

I got married forty one years ago today. August 26, 1978. Also happens to be my Dad’s birth-day.

I lived thirty seven of the forty one years since, under the impression I was in a monogamous faithful marriage. You know, “for better, for worse, richer, poorer, good times, bad, forsaking all others.” That kind of marriage…a real one.

The thing is marriage takes two committed people living those vows as does any contract between two parties. Both signees have to keep the terms of the contract. If one breaks the agreements in the contract, it ceases to be in force. In 1989 my husband stopped living the agreement. He broke the marriage contract. The marriage ended. It became a unilateral relationship of deception and control. Him the benefactor of cake and eat it too. Me the duped faithful, kept in the dark as to his duplicitous reality. Me, still expected to continue living up to all the agreements. Him…not.

“Married single” is what he has dubbed himself. That pretty much describes him. Married when he could benefit from all the rights and priviledges of marriage. Single when he wanted to have fun, fast and easy fantasy dates and no strings sex.

I remember all those many years we would go out for a nice dinner on August 26^th; candlelight, steak, nice surroundings. I remember him repeating his vows at yearly marriage retreats too—looking me in the eyes and promising to be true. Thing is there was nothing true about those anniversaries or those vow renewals, post 1989. They were a façade constructed and executed to look like an anniversary, a marriage renewal– a celebration, with one goal—keeping me believing he was someone he was not. Making me believe we were still married and both living the covenant. Manipulating me into remaining in place as a faithful wife and providing him all the benefits of a wife while he didn’t have to live up to the agreements as a husband.

His ring and mine?? Costume jewelry masquerading as wedding bands. Costume jewelry. His toasts to our anniversary? A play, pretend. All a ruse to keep me in place. He an actor. It was a great deal… for him. He got a homemaker, money earner, child rearing, cook, shopper, planner, saver, gardener, remodelers, occasional sex partner, supporter of all his dreams and aspirations, the backbone of making them comfortable and happen. Yeah. Me, the wife. A great deal, especially when he didn’t feel the need to have to be a husband…only a limited run as a pretend spouse when he had to in order to make it believable.

Eleven real anniversaries. Twenty seven manipulated fake ones. And the most recent three, today four… Non existent. Post d-day 2016–for the first time in 27 years—not celebrated or acknowledged because there was and is nothing real to celebrate or acknowledge. The cat is out of the bag. All those 27 anniversaries were a ruse. No rings, no champagne, no candlelight dinners. This is the forth un-anniversary I’ve grieved all while grieving the other 27 as well. I wonder how long I will grieve every August 26^th? Probably the rest of my life because you see…that day DID mean something to me. I lost my spouse, the one he presented himself as being and I lost my marriage. Two huge deaths to grieve. Do you ever get over a death of something or someone you loved?

Anything to celebrate? Maybe the woman who actually lived as though she was married. That day might be an opportunity to celebrate the person who lived the contract and an opportunity to acknowledge and thank her. Would my UH think of doing that? Not in my experience. He flies under the radar on August 26^th hoping the day will pass without having to acknowledge the pain of his years of betrayal and the grief it causes. “If I don’t look at it, talk about it, acknowledge it, apologize for it –it’ll pass with as little discomfort to ME as possible.”

Choice words for the atrocity of all the lost years of manipulation, and lies can never describe or match the loss. Some betrayed partners say their former wedding anniversary is just another day on the calendar now. Isn’t that convenient? If it were just another day there would not be any grief at its passing. There would be no meaning attached to the betrayal that unilaterally ended the contract.

No problem. Just another day, huh?

Not for me. Not this side of heaven.

To the one man who always had my best interest at heart….Dad. Today will always be Your Birthday, dear Daddy…a celebration of you. I miss you.

Mental Illness, Betrayal – You Are Not Alone – Part Two

……
But my wife betraying me seemed to knock everything loose inside my brain….

The terrifying things from childhood all came back. The yelling, the hitting, from my father; the unwelcome touches from my friend, the coerced activity from me by that friend; all of it came pouring in on top of the things I DID already remember. My dad’s alcoholism, his death when I was 11, a near death brush from a dog attack. All of that flooding in with the season of lies and manipulation at the hands of literally the only person on earth that I trusted. Given what I’ve shared, I hope you can understand how difficult it is for me to trust someone.

All of these things steered my care team toward calling it PTSD and leaving it at that and working from there. I did however have a nurse practitioner who was managing my meds ask me a series of questions, that had her looking at things from a different angle. Not that the PTSD was not real. It sure as hell was, and intense at that. And a whole bunch of it from childhood too that had never been worked through.

But the underlying depression she started to see as not a classical depression but as bipolar II. My “manic” cycles, which I though were just me feeling ok have really started to show as a somewhat regular cycling of emotion. My manic cycles look like me being normal. And for the most part no one picked up on this. I don’t like what feels like the stigma of that diagnosis, but I guess I accept it because it makes sense to me. I feel ok for a while and then swing into a deep debilitating depression for a while, And then back again.

So here I sit, broken hearted; tired too… Back to my opening thoughts from part one here. Today’s been a bad day. Really bad.

Today wasn’t a win. But throw it all into the blender and we finally after much digression get to the point of this post. I’m feeling awful. Sad, lonely, hopeless. What is the cause? Am I feeling the trauma trigger? Are my feelings hurt from the difficult talk my wife and I had this morning? Am I more isolated lately than I should be and not interacting with people? Am I feeling the normal hurts of betrayal and eventual healing? But now is the part that frustrates me, because I have to ask this on top of it all: “Is this my illness?”

My heart breaks every time I have to ask myself that question. All of the positive messaging I could see in the world doesn’t help me to not feel a certain “otherness”. That tangible feeling that I am different. That I am not normal. I try to talk back to those self deprecating voices, but its hard, because I know that so many people do think that, even though they are wrong. They wouldn’t ‘other’ me if I had a broken leg. They wouldn’t look at me skeptically if I was recovering from cancer.

And it all feels like an anvil tied to my legs while I’m trying to swim. I wrote this post for two reasons. The first, and the selfish reason, is that I’m having a really bad day, and I thought that writing all of this could help me. The second is from a sense of my own loneliness and compassion that

I don’t ever want another human being to feel lonely the way that I do sometimes.

To feel unworthy or even not deserving of basic human respect love or kindness. I want anyone else out there who also struggles with things like this to know that you are NOT alone. And even if you cant feel that, know that there’s others out there who also feel alone. So that makes us together, even if we’re alone.

I’ll finish with what might seem like some touchy feely cheer up bullsh*t. Please indulge me because its for me too, as much as it is for anyone else.

Billions of years ago, gasses and dust gathered together under the force of gravity and swirled and grew, gathering and building until a light erupted from the center, setting that gas ablaze with nuclear chain reactions pushing energy and light into the universe. Some of the elements in those explosions, such as iron, are only created in one place in the universe. And that place is in a star. The iron present in your body right now is composed of those atoms. You, me, and every other animal in this world is made of stardust. That is the beautiful poetry of the universe.

I’ll take it one step further to help you (and me!) remember how special each of us is.

The atoms that make up your body, and mine, right now in this moment are a very specific group of atoms. They have never before been arrange precisely this way and never again will. There hasn’t ever been anyone just like you and never again will be.

In every moment of your existence you are a perfectly unique embodiment of stardust.

On Mental Illness and Betrayal, You Are Not Alone – Part One

From the pen of my contributing Betrayed Husband: some thoughts on his challenges, pre and post betrayal; a two part blog… wrapping up in stardust (What??):

_____________________________

“There are days when I am just overwhelmed. Emotionally drained and just tired. Tired of being tired. Tired of feeling so sad, lonely, and helpless. Tired of hoping to just find some hope. It’s been a rough day.”

Today there have been a few trigger moments. This isn’t anything new, but sometimes they hit harder than others. Today I got hit with a “remember when” moment on Facebook. My mother had shared some photos from a family trip along with her comments on what a nice time it was for her and the family. Only now I look back on that time with the most un-rosy of glasses. I now know about the affair my wife had been having at that time. So the good times or memories or pictures from that little family getaway are, for me, tainted. (We can talk about not letting that negative lens ruin every memory of your past in another article. It’s not a simple thing to take on)But nothing I’ve just said should really be any surprise to this readership, who have come here in search of writings and hope following infidelity. And it’s also no surprise I would think to this audience that infidelity betrayal affects so much of your life. It seems to permeate everything sometimes. It makes even getting out of bed more difficult each day. Concentration is harder, motivation is harder.

But there are some out there who, like me, have been betrayed by the love of their life but also carry with them an additional exhausting burden that affects their day to day life in difficult ways. It is not a burden that we can simply choose to walk away from, leave behind, or ‘get over’. And it isn’t something that we can generally share with others without things getting awkward.

It has been said that the fastest way to get someone to avoid talking about infidelity is to start talking to them about infidelity. That conversation will go over like knock knock jokes at a funeral, and the room will clear out faster than a classroom at the final bell on the last day of school. Or if it doesn’t you’re now there with people who look so uncomfortable, you just want to tell them it’s OK if they need to go away because of how uncomfortable this is. It seems almost as if people are afraid that the cheating in your life will somehow affect them or their spouse.

The only thing I can think of that carries with it that same kind of uncomfortable stigma is the topic of this article:

Mental illness.

To the others out there who live with it, and now with the hurts and trauma of betrayal, I offer my thoughts and empathy. In the aftermath of my wife’s betrayal, and the caravan of lies and manipulations that came with it and followed, I received a lot of counseling and therapy. And through that have been diagnosed with several mental disorders. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was first up. This is something that far too many people betrayed by infidelity will experience, and my heart breaks for all of you. I know far too intimately what that is like. The lack of sleep, the nightmares, the never-ending anxiety, hypervigilance, overactive startle reflex, the flashbacks, loss of appetite, loss of interest in everything, over-interest in everything, all of it. PTSD for lack of a better word is living your life inside of a nightmare from which you cannot wake up.

Coming into all of this I had a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. Depression has been something I’ve struggled with most of my life. But I was unaware, and thus my medical care team had been unaware of the childhood trauma lying beneath it all. So we’d been working off of depression. And for many years I had been on medications that seemed to work, but I would still have difficult down periods….

But my wife betraying me seemed to knock everything loose inside my brain….

—Continued tomorrow—

Heart Hurt

I have a friend in recovery, a fellow betrayed. He happens to be a man, but that is not what separates us or makes us different along this path. I’ve spent many hours on conference calls with him, his spouse and my UH, thrashing through the bloodied waters of betrayal recovery.

Post formatted workshop and follow up program, we have returned to our own lives and struggles–he on the New England seaboard, me on the rim of the Pacific shore of California. We are both drawn to words to help us muddle through the personally uncharted waters of the cost of being on the receiving end of intimate betrayal.

He sent me a second blog he wrote today on a business trip. I’ve asked him to feel free to contribute here as he’s such a genuine, vulnerable and open voice in this desert of recovery.

While he has some added layers to his struggle, we both have the glaringly similar wounds so common when one has been betrayed by the one person who vowed to always have our backs…and tender hearts in hand.

Tomorrow I’ll post the first of a two part entry written by this gentleman. It is so raw and real, perhaps you will find it difficult to read. My heart aches for his battles, even as I continue my own journey toward freedom from the seeming never ending pain of infidelity.

And although I have not suffered the same childhood wounds, or diagnosis, I too have found myself at the bottom of the pit of despair more times than I’d like to admit. It is my hope, my wish that through the sharing of his, and perhaps other’s struggles in this battle of the heart, body, mind and spirit–you might be able to connect, to find some elements with which to relate, to feel and to know that although we may look outwardly different, that we may have different flavors in our infidelity recovery combat story–ALL betrayed share the psychic and physical wounds inflicted when the person we’ve loved best in life betrays us.

To healing.

Get Ready – Gratitude

When I was in high school I had a choir director named Robert Engle. He was one of the most influential persons in my life. Since that time I have spent innumerable hours singing in various groups, everything from chamber music to highbrow Mozart requiems to vocal jazz in front of hundreds in small group of six. As the language that intertwines all of humanity, music has been perhaps the greatest element in my personal spirituality as well. It has been an instrument of joyous celebration and healing salve.

Mr. Engle directed our high school groups and brought contemporary music and dance to the program. It turned the light on in hundreds of kid’s eyes. He got us to become cohesive units in small groups and large, performing music of the day. He turned us on. Not much older than his students, he was freshly out of college with a contagious enthusiasm that became the rudder in many young lives.

I found out that he passed away unexpectedly, his memorial service last Friday. The boulder of shock at his passing, thrown into the pool of our local Facebook page where ‘kids’ of the sixties and seventies reminisce, will no doubt have ripples extending throughout the states and internationally where those who were touched by his life, now reside.

Tonight I attended a free concert on the grass of a small park up on the peninsula where I went to High School. The performing group was a collection of four professional studio/backup musicians for famous bands of the sixties era. The warm still of a late August evening settled over the crowd of perhaps two hundred. Leaves in the trees shone with the last of the long slanted rays of sun. It was a perfect setting overlooking the still pacific.

When the band began to play the Temptations, “Get Ready”, a song that ranked as title of one of Mr. Engle’s seventies choral concerts, people rose to dance. And then, as if orchestrated on cue, a peacock took flight from the trees on one side of the park, lovely vibrant feather glinting. He landed gracefully in the pines on the opposite side of the grass — perfect synchronicity.

Mr. Engle

How we loved you. How far reaching were your gifts. How meaningful one life can be.

I never met a guy who makes me feel the way that you do
(It’s alright)
Whenever I’m asked who makes my dreams real
I say that you do
(you’re outta sight)
So fee fi fo fum
Look out baby ’cause here I come
So get ready ….

Thank you for reminding me of the preciousness and abundance of life, and music, sweet music. I am so very grateful.

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