Most of us who have experienced betrayal have, at least for a season, anger as our front seat driver.
So who is riding in the back seat, fueling our angry driver?
Fear? Frustration? Betrayal, Sadness? Loneliness?
Who are your backseat drivers?
Once I uncovered loneliness and injustice as two of my backseat driver emotions, I discovered that loneliness/unjust judgements were part of my childhood– when I struggled to be the ‘good child’ as my parents were trying their best to handle a difficult son, my only sibling.
More damaging than that was my mother’s very human tendency to worry about me. Would I go down the same path as my er-do-well brother? Would I stay out late? Smoke pot? Lie and sneak?
Of course I knew that was not part of my character. Hey—I was the ‘good child’. I earned good grades, flew under the radar of the drug culture of my high school. I was not interested. I found those sort of choices scary, repugnant. I wanted to live a life of no regrets.
Why didn’t my mother know that?
Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she did. I remember one evening she came after me, already upset, and accused me of planning to do the things my brother did. I went ballistic. So out of character. I NEVER went ballistic. (Good children are seen not heard) I railed, “How could you possibly think that of me?”
I was shattered. How could my mother, the woman who ostensibly knew me best, accuse me of these things I had not only never done, but would never consider? Why didn’t she give me the benefit of the doubt? No…more than that—why didn’t she praise me for all the hard work I actually did—all the ‘right’ choices, all the giving, loving behaviors?
Looking back, I realize she was under tremendous emotional stress with the challenges of parenting my brother. Special classes, principal office and counselor visits, rebelliousness, suspensions. He was in fact all that.
I was not.
My mother was having a melt down that had NOTHING to do with me. Just as my husband’s choices to betray had nothing to do with me. Both of these human choices, the foibles that led to my personal pain and destruction, were about their woundedness.
That incident of my emotional explosion highlights my character defect or sensitivity to unjust criticism. I have a lifelong trigger, if you will, to being accused of intentions I do not have. In my mind, I work too damn hard at being a good responsible person, to be cast in such a negative light. Such aspersions cut me to the core. They break my heart.
And so the revelation of my husband’s years of infidelity–sexual, emotional and financial, quite understandable and naturally sunk a dagger into my invested, responsible, loving, giving, hard working heart. His casting blame on me for not being enough for him–“What did you expect? You didn’t have enough sex with me?” –ripped the thin scab off the wound of ‘not good enoughness’ present from MY family of origin. All the criticism poured over me by a mother who felt that was the road toward molding a good citizen (me), was in a instant, proven ‘right’.
At least that is how it felt.
How could a man who had benefitted from all my care, my support, my huge investment in home, children and him, choose to abandon our marriage? I knew I was more than enough. I knew I was an excellent housekeeper, employee, mother and wife.
Volcanic rage, held in check– to be told I was not.
This rage did not come out immediately. Oh no. Good, responsible Christine had to see to the hearts of her adult children who had just been devastated with the news. (Yes–their father told me of his long term affair in front of them) It took me many weeks of torrential tears, sleeplessness, agony and sadness to get to the underlying rage.
I journaled that rage. Pages and pages. I filled notebooks. In moments of isolation at home, I would verbally rage at the imaginary him. I spent months and months venting this powerful, very human reaction to being betrayed. Oh the injustice of it all!
…Until the energy of that injustice lessened.
The sadness is still there. The pain resurfaces sometimes when I am tired, hungry, lonely. The difference is that now I have allowed myself the time to grieve. Yes grief. The anger of the injustice of being ‘judged and (my character) executed through betrayal has been vented. Revisiting that anger is less and less powerful.
e- motion= energy in motion. It has taken enormous energy to vent.
As an adult, I can find healthy ways of coping with, mitigating and healing my sad loneliness….and my anger. These methods may include, but are not limited to: therapy, support groups, 12 step, safe friends, going to church, prayer, meditation, exercise, gardening, and other fun hobbies such as painting, writing, reading.
This helps me to relieve my loneliness as I heal, mostly alone, and thus disarm it from influencing and ‘driving’ my anger.
These four and a half years have been the hardest, most painful of my life. They have also provided opportunity toward the most personal growth. I have been put in my own driver’s seat toward healing. And I knew I didn’t want that seat to be forever occupied by a raging, bitter woman. I needed to really believe exactly who and what I am, despite other’s beliefs and actions.
This life experience has reinforced the truth. I am a good, invested, giving and loving person who has been misjudged, accused, tried, found guilty and treated as someone guilty of –something I am not—by a person wounded by his own life circumstances projected oh so painfully onto me.
His inability to see my love in no way diminishes the reality of all the years of caring, giving, support—LOVE that I gave. Hey—I AM that loving person who would no more harm, ignore or abandon my family than I would fly to the moon using my arms. I gave all I had to give. I lived my life as a loving person.
That is reality.
And the broken accusations and behavior of another–even if that ‘other’ is my mother… or my husband, can make other’s beliefs and pursuant behaviors just–or based in truth.
Christine Renewed 