Who Are Your Back Seat Drivers?

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.

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“It Is Not About You” – Two Parables

Isiaisis the hurricane loved to blow wind and rain. He took great pleasure in watching the trees bend, the grass of the fields sway. Staying out over the ocean can become monotonous even if the waves, the sea are his life and family. Even though the sea supports his life, feeding and caring for him so he has the ability, the energy to visit the shore and all the thrills that await there.

“I can’t wait to caress the shore, dive deep inland and witness my power. It’s so much fun”.

Many have witnessed what happens when the hurricane comes ashore. If that hurricane could decide to come ashore, Isiaisis would be full of glee in anticipation. “Nothing bad will happen. The people onshore know how to take care of themselves. I provide them life giving rain for their plants and drinking. They will be fine on their own.”

Even though it is known far and wide by all the people the potential destruction of a hurricane, Isiaisis denied it would harm anyone or anything. And before the people’s ability to forecast such a storm, they were well and truly blindsided. No warning. No ability to prepare.

No matter how vital and strong the people, they can not protect themselves against most of the destructive power of the storm. They are witness to the dark clouds and rain, but before forecasting, had NO idea what was coming. Thye lived in the (approaching) rain, the inconvenience of the downpours.

But Isiaisis was hell bent on the shore and all the fun there. He knew he had the potential of destruction but he told himself nothing would come of it. His rain would indeed help. So he came ashore dashing one town and one state after another–leaving a path of destruction far and wide. Some of the people lost their roofs, some their homes, some their lives. The newspapers would talk about him for many days, weeks, months and even years to come. He would be the topic of much discussion. Human experts on how to prepare for a hurricane, how to limit damage would careful dissect the harm he caused. They would learn how to better recover and protect.

“Isiaisis” was on the tongue of the people. Recovery was not about Isiaisis, even though the storm was what caused the damage. Recovery of the people, their homes and their lives was not about the storm. It was about tender care, attention to all the details of healing. PRepart=ation and protection learned for the future.

Did anyone miss the storm Isiasis?

“Good riddance”

Did the people still desire the benefits of the rain? The soft caress of a warm summer storm?

YES.

They needed to attend to the damage of the rain and wind gone wild first. The storm’s name was used often. It was the topic. The damage had to be the focus.

And what became of Isiaisis? He blew up the cost, weakened, gained humility when he saw the havoc his ‘fun’ had caused upon the people and the land. And he turned around, regained water and power from the sea. He looked carefully at all the damage and learned what his ‘fun’ had cost. He wept over the pain his choices had caused. He returned to the land in warm summer rains, soft caresses and care for the land and the people. He brought healing and rebuilt trust over many many months with the land and the people because they saw through his loving, helping actions that the storm can protect and care and love.

The people will always be wary of the dark clouds and wind. They will need the loving reassurance and actions of the caring Isiasis who has changed his heart to never again lash the shore in ‘fun’. He would never again look upon such actions as ‘fun’. No pleasure would the memories bring. Deep regret and sadness, embarassment and grief now power Isiaisis to tend to all he had destroyed–and for the rest of his days when the people talked about him, he would know it was the fear, the trauma and the damage of which they spoke–not him– the rain and wind when he returned in love and repair.

The land and the people tended far and wide to the destruction his choices caused, but it was not about him, the rain and wind. It was about tending to the pain. The wind and the rain of Isiaisis needed to do their own reflection and change, for the people had zero power over his healing. Isiaisis knew he needed to keep his destructive power, even a whisper or hint of it, far away from the people while they healed. It was not about him and his pain of regret, his difficulty in learning how to rein in his power. It HAD to be about the damage, the loving tending to repair in soft, gentle, understanding reassuring actions of life poured down on all he’d destroyed.

It indeed was not about him.
__________________________________

A man and his wife drove along winding roads toward a celebratory dinner for the beautiful new car the wife had bought for him. She’d spent many hours working to pay for the car, but wanted to give it to the husband because it was the model and make of his dreams. She’d lovingly sacrificed to make the car possible.

“Slow down,” the wife request as he sped along the curves. “We want to arrive in one piece.”

But (And) the man thought nothing would happen. He knew this road well. He thought his wife was too careful–a stick in the mud. So he didn’t listen to his wife’s pleas.

Well you know what happened. He drove that car with his wife off the road, down into a deep gorge, rolling over and over.

The man shook his head, took fast inventory of his body, pushed and crawled out the shattered window. A painful gash at his temple stung and his body ached with bruises.

He looked back at the wreckage of his beautiful fun dream.

“Oh shit,” he realized his wife was still inside the wreckage.

He wanted nothing but to run away. How could he ever face her again? He’d ruined what she’d so carefully worked to give him. He’d not listened to the danger he knew his careless driving might cause. He’d willfully and selfishly driven with the wind in his hair, laughing at the power and speed.
Should he dare to look at his wife? He didn’t even want to know what his actions had caused. He sat on the side of the hill, aching head in his hands until the ambulance arrived. He watched as the EMT’s extracted the bloodied, broken body of his wife. One of the EMT’s checked him out. He rode in the ambulance with his wife as the EMT’s tended to her, their expression belying the seriousness of her condition. He waited for hours in the waiting room, his head bandaged and aching.

“Oh my poor head. It hurts. I was so stupid to drive so fast. Now I’ll never have that beautiful car. We’ll never enjoy that special celebratory meal at that expensive precious restaurant we’d always dreamed of enjoying together.” Nearly all his thoughts and energy grieved his losses, thought about his pain.

The doctors told him to go home because his wife would be in intensive care for a long time. The man used their suggestion to justify not visiting his wife. In truth he did not want to see her pain, her brokenness, the pain in her eyes he knew his poor choices had caused. He stayed away for month as his wife recovered in a recovery facility. The doctors told him of the process his wife was required to go through, the pain, the long hours of rehabilitation.

“Don’t you want to visit your wife?” a nurse asked.

“I have to go to my traumatic brain injury classes”, he said. “I’ll come see her in the evening while she is sleeping. I don’t want to cause her any more pain in seeing me, who caused this accident.”
He made the accident all about him and his pain, his process.

He did visit a few times when his wife was asleep. He could barely look at her. He felt so ashamed and guilty. One time when she woke, she cried.

” I hurt so bad,” she said. “But(AND) I am working hard to recover. I am making progress.”

“That’s good,” he said, filled with self hatred. All he could think about was his shame. He touched his head and winced.. He thought about how he was driving his old clunker again and his beautiful fun new car was in the junkyard. He hated having to go to TBI classes and the headaches he still had. He was so focused on himself he could not really ‘see’ his wife’s pain, let alone tend to her pain.

He made the inevitable consequences of his ‘fun’ driving all about him and his painful consequences. “If she’d just not bugged me about my driving, I wouldn’t have had the accident. I could have kept driving and having speedy fun long after our celebration dinner. I would still be on the winding roads having fun.”

The wife came home. The man brought he meals as she healed more. He continued to go to his TBI classes, did his self care fun and exercises, watched tv–escaped from the reality of his recovering wife. Even when he heard her moan or cry at night, he turned over and went to sleep in his bed. He could no longer sleep next to her–it was too painful for her while her wounds healed.

He held it against her that he had to sleep in the extra room. He blamed her injuries, knew she needed to heal, but still felt deprived of his own bed and his beautiful fun new car.

She wanted to talk about the car, his driving, the accident. She wanted to understand how the accident happened even though she knew it was his carelessness that lent to it. She needed to know what curve, what blind spot, what speed, what mechanical factors if any had led to this horrible lifechanging crash. She felt she may never be comfortable driving with him again. Surely not unless and until he had dug deep to understand everything that led to the crash. Not until he learned and choose to tend to her, care for her and her recovery, be there for her in the years of painful recovery. The physical pain may never allow her to sleep in the same bed with him. The emotional pain and fear may never allow her to feel comfortable with him driving especially with her in the car. She may never be able to earn enough to buy another new car. He might not either. They’d have to do with the old clunker. Or someday get a better used car, but (and) never the shiny special one.

“Poor me. I’ll never have that fun new car. She will never be able to sleep next to me. She will have pain in her eyes and her body for years, maybe forever. It’s too hard to face her and the consequences of the crash. But (and) I don’t want people to judge me as a bad guy so I will do a little to look like I am helping. But (and) I will escape whenever I can from her and our reality.”

And he made it all about him, his pain, consequences and discomfort in seeing and living with his broken wife.

When she wanted to talk about the accident, to understand, to make sure it would never happen again by hearing his understanding of her pain and the reasons the accident happened–he stayed silent.

He made it all about him and his pain.

“How is this not about me?” He asked when his wife kept on and on about the crash. “I caused the crash.” Oh woah is me. You talk about me and my driving all the time. You talk about all the specifics of what led to the crash. It is all about me and my fuck up.”

“The topic is you and the consequences of your choices. The pain and life changes, yes. You and your choices are the topic”, she said. But (and) the reality is I need to heal, you need to heal and if we are ever going to get along, WE need to heal. That will take a long time and lots of dissection of the why’s the how’s the where’s, the what’s. We MUST understand so this will never happen again and so your driving and attitude will be changed through action. So I can see and experience your change of heart and actions for a LONG time.. So YES, you are the topic. HEALING and CHANGE through reparative action is the focus, the action.

You see this is not about you. It is about healing the pain, the consequences– and understanding, a change in behavior and heart. Repair to me, to you and to us. It is about the critically wounded who will take much longer to heal–ME. And the dead relationship that is traumatized. Your name will be the topic, your behavior will be the topic–the healing will be the focus, the recipient of the care and love and patience.”

Moving Forward – There Is No Moving On

When a person is betrayed by their spouse or significant other their life is forever altered. The past that contained the hidden second life has to be rewritten in the mind of the betrayed to now include the truth. The person they believed their spouse to be is not the person he or she really is. Although the unfaithful may have feelings for their betrayed and in fact enjoyed/benefited from their role within the allegedly committed relationship, they allowed a false self, a second self to exist and be fed. They chose to be and remain duplicitous.

To ‘move on’ suggests that one is capable of putting such an emotional/physical atrocity behind them and somehow ‘forget’. That, in my experience, is impossible. Any traumatic life event is never forgotten. It can, and indeed needs to be rewoven into the fabric of personal and relational history, incorporating the reality of what actually happened. To expect there to be some sort of willed amnesia is just not realistic…or possible.

“Can’t you just move on?” Nope.

While we are living we all move on in time. The sun continues to rise, people around us get in their cars and drive off to work or shopping. Children play and laugh. The dogs need to be fed and walked, the garden weeded and watered. Life does not stop. The earth continues to spin in space and we, each of us, grow a day older between sunset and sunset.

All of us move on in time.

If it is indeed impossible to move forward (toward health and growth) without doing the painful, deep work of processing our new reality, then why would a person choose to deny it as they move on in time?

For the betrayed it is often a factor of the stages of grief she or he must go through to get to the other side of acceptance–hopefully also finding meaning. I think we have all experienced someone who is a shell of their former self as they remain stuck in loops of grief, resentment and denial. While there is no rushing grief, there is great personal and the possibility of relational healing, when commitment to examining oneself and our place in the world is included. And then sharing it with the significant other so understanding, empathy and acceptance can ensue.

Self reflection.

The unfaithful are often resistant to self reflect. They doom themselves to moving on in time, but not forward in growth, in their denial of the vital need to examine their life and what led them to make such devastating choices. They doom their relationship to the death of living in a shallow, pretend co-existence with their betrayed, should they remain under the same roof together. They move on in time, but they do not, they can not move forward in personal or relational growth and healing.

So the original contention of the title of this blog is a misnomer. We all move on (in time). Time can not and does not stop. What is required for health and healing is commitment and choice to self examine for personal growth/healing and empathy, honesty and transparency for any hope of relational healing in order to move forward in personal and/or relational health.

The betrayed will NEVER forget. While they can move forward into personal health, they can not move forward into a healthy relationship without the active commitment of their unfaithful to re-earn their trust and respect. Healthy ‘real’ relationship take two healthy relational people. Active repair work on the part of the unfaithful MUST happen. Although the couple may continue to live under the same roof, the relationship will be a dead, shallow shell–as much a ruse as it was under the manipulation and control of information that existed during active betrayal. Living a lie will continue only this time the lie is faux to no intimacy. If there is none, there is not a ‘real’ (healthy) relationship.

The marriage is dead, two hurting people in its wake. Both can heal if they choose to do the work of self reflection and growth. The relationship, not unless both are committed to truth and behaving in love; the best interest of the other, paramount.

Consider well what you are forfeiting in continuing to live in a hollow lie.

Good Guy, Bad Guy – Which Is It?

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com

So which is it?

A man who would betray his wife is the ‘bad guy’, right?

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”
Scrooge trembled more and more.
“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain!”

A guy who works hard at a lucrative career affording his family the niceties of life and a great vacation each year—goes to church on Sunday and votes in every election. Good guy—right?

You may have just been caught up in the same sort of black and white shallow judgementalism that pervades most addicts thinking. And the thought patterns that lead to destructive choices, such as betrayal.

No one is born ‘bad’, as most of culture defines it. We are molded through our upbringing mostly by people who have likewise been molded–to have strengths and weaknesses, good and bad qualities. And you know what? Most of this modeling has no nefarious intent. It is the result of the unexamined life. The failure of generation after generation to do the difficult work of realization, responsibility and change.

It takes courage and fortitude to break old patterns that are ingrained from childhood. Old, rusty, ponderous chains. Often these patterns were survival mechanisms that allowed us to adapt to scary or difficult situations when we were powerless youngsters. Coping mechanisms that did the job as kids, but when carried on into adulthood reek havoc with selfhood and relationships.

A little boy who is sent to military school run by nuns, ostensibly to gain a foothold on the path to college by parents who struggled to pay for this schooling, but could not see their way to making any other choice when overwhelmed by multiple siblings, one of whom was deaf, and an alcoholic dad. Bad people? Hey, they sent their seven year old to boarding school where his tender heart was terrified by a system meant to mold young boys into men. There he learned to hide and lie and cheat to survive. Fly under the radar. Don’t get caught or reprimanded. Bad kid?

No matter the good intent of the parents. No matter the innocent child turned to manipulative survival skills. No matter. The intent to pass on destructive life coping skills was not there, yet it happened…worked like a charm.

“The best laid plans of mice and men.”

Where was the introspection of the parents when they made those decisions, convincing themselves that discipline and structure would be to their eldest son’s advantage? Where? When Dr Spock was touting ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’– and ‘let them cry it out’? Where was the language of the heart that could have looked into the innocent eyes of the eldest of four and seen a young boy who needed his family so much more than a structured college bound education in isolation? How else could that tender heart have taken it, but to feel rejected and punished. A human doing, not a human being any longer. Straighten up and fly right, boy.

We are not born to lie and cheat, steal and break vows. We are carefully taught –mostly by people who are justifying their choices by convincing themselves they are doing what’s best. Until and unless they figure otherwise, the legacy goes on. From grandfather to father to son the story continues. Until and unless someone can look deeply into self and reality to say ‘no more’.

How do you break the cycle of learned self-deception?

Why? via the opposite. Truth. Vulnerability. Hard conversations. Courage like one has never before had to muster.

Breaking the code of silence.

Breaking the chains of addiction’s mandate. Secrets and silence.

Breaking away from passive, looking the other way existence.

Unabashedly sharing one’s heart and the pain overflowing from all the mistaken choices made and enforced in one’s own childhood. Grieving innocence lost. All those years missed in the loving bosom of an imperfect, but caring family. The message internalized: ‘I am not worth loving.’

And so the same story, different scenery and timeframe, but the same broken story is repeated again and again.

Until someone says

“No more.”

The destruction stops with me.

Tears in My Ears

How many nights?

Meditate … ask God to direct my thinking.

Some times success–a calm gift, a way to help myself or another.

Some times no chance, no choice

In floods the sadness

Like an unwanted storm

A guest uninvited, unwelcome

And before I know it the tears pool

In my ears

Like so many souls before me

Betrayed

Hearbroken

Forever changed

Never to be the same

Dreams shattered

Unchangeable history

Happy memories forever tainted

By a new and ugly truth

God help me

Take this heavy burden

For it will surely smother me

Smother me

Tears in my ears

What Does Reparation Look Like?

My heart hurts even approaching this subject. Maybe it is because I have never read nor have I been able to come up with a list of things an unfaithful can do to repair the life altering damage their selfish choices have inflicted.

But I can not find it in my heart to excuse the absence of attempts.

My unfaithful does not even attempt to repair the damage. So I can tell you what reparation does NOT look like.

My first inclination is to think that he is overwhelmed with the enormity of the task. But then I remind myself that thinking this is assuming his response and thought patterns are like mine. As a healthy person, one would be overwhelmed. But he is not a healthy person. I find it astounding that even an addict can attend meetings and be in therapy for four years and still not be able to deal with the inflicted pain they have caused.

Yet I see it—every day.

I see him joking with our adult son. I see him laughing with our housemate. And I see him avoiding interaction with me. How does he handle the gaping wounds he is fully aware of in me?—- He avoids it. He avoid me.

In marriage counseling he admits to reading, hearing or knowing well the steps and tools to repair. He also admits that he does not use those tools. WTF?

I mean really. WTF.

Our Marriage counselor commented yesterday via online meeting that I look resigned. Not as in grudgingly resigned, but as is living my life fully engaging in what remains that is good. YEs–I do. Yes I am.

In my heart I still hurt. I still grieve the loss of my marriage. A marriage that I increasingly realize has been a mirage for years. He has been pretending to be my spouse for so many years and is so good at the mirage that I grew to believe the lie. I lived in the false flattery and upbeat jokes. I tolerated, I lived inside the lie believing it was his way of communicating his care. When in reality it was his way of hiding his duplicity. His life as a two faced cheating liar.

Small wonder I now carry a visceral gut reaction to his mask behavior. I have no way of recognizing if or when he is sincere. It all feels false. Yes–after four years since d-day, his joking and laughter all feels false. Because he uses it to avoid looking at himself.

And I feel sad that this is my reality.

How could he repair? (Ostensibly the topic of this blog)

Admit each and every damaging action and behavior he has chosen. Talk about it ad naseum. Talk about it as much and as often as I am faced by his actions to think about them. Talk about it until I am tired of his expressed grief and deep understanding of the damage he has caused.

Tell me specifically the lies he told himself about me that allowed him to justify betraying me. Each and every lie. Tell me specifically what the truth of me is. What is the truth about how I supported and loved him? Verbally appreciate all the love and care I gave. Enumerate the specific behaviors I did throughout all the cheating lying years that demonstrates the absolute lies he told himself.

Ask me about myself. Demonstrate that he is interested in ME. Me the person. How are you interested in ME? Do you want to know what my dreams are? What my struggles are? You demonstrate zero interest in me because you avoid me.

That is not love. Love ACTS. Love cares. Love demonstrates interest, investment, involvement.

The best I can come up with to repair the unrepairable theft of the precious exclusivity that was our marriage is to consistently undertake the above. For as long as it takes which, if it lasts as long as the repercussions of betrayal will most likely be– for the rest of my life.

Does that mean we could never be easygoing friends again. NO. I can foresee being friends. I have been able to treat him in friendship even under the weight of lack of repair. How much more could I feel safe enough to be friendly if he showed care for me and the consequences his choices have inflicted upon me?

For now I choose what I have. My garden, my painting, my writing, my dogs, my granddaughter, my life as it is.

How Do I Get Rid Of Negative Thoughts?

In my experience, negative feelings are something that must be acknowledged, felt and let pass. All emotions ar by nature, temporary.

That said, one of life’s biggest challenges and battlefields is in our minds. Only we can choose our thoughts. With (much) practice, I have found it possible to steer my thought life to gratitude for all that is good in my life. With gratitude, I have found that the good thoughts reproduce and the negative are quelled. It is not a perfect solution. Nothing is.

It is, however, a choice. It is the one thing we CAN control.

As the grief process progresses and the anger/saddness burns white hot and cools, I can choose my focus. Increase the thoughts of people, places and things I find good and beautiful. Be so very kind and patient with my process. Encourage beauty and gratitude through self guided meditation/quiet time.

I have found that the longer I live, the more losses I acrue.,,and the more gifts I receive. The natural phenomena can be a ‘glass half full/ glass half empty” choice. If I am lucky to have this long life, I will stumble and fall, be let down by others, lose some and gain some. There are always loving good people to meet. There will always be beauty and goodness in this world that also has brokenness and evil. It is my choice to seek and dwell in the good and positive.

No one can steal that choice from you.

Home from Deployment

My daughter came home from her nine month deployment in Afghanistan yesterday. Her hubby posted some photos of the whole regiment arriving, then a couple of them embracing and two of my daughter arriving home and seeing her eighteen month old daughter for the first time.

My daughter’s face was shiny slick with tears as she smiled cheek to cheek with a grinning hubby and her face red , eyes gleaming with more tears as she lifted her daughter who knew it was mommy because of the daily FaceTiming they’d been doing. I can imagine my daughter was wondering if her baby would remember her as she’s been gone half her short life. Thank God for technology.

I cried as I looked at these photos. So many emotions were all jumbled around my aching heart. I feel like I am missing out on so much of their lives yet I am so happy for their reunion. I also remember being apart from my husband early in our marriage when he was still on active duty. How hard it was to spend so long apart. And then a sharp pain in my heart remembering how many of those times my husband was gone on recruiting trips, first in the military and then in civilian life–cheating on me and his family. How could he? How could so much precious beauty be devalued? I will never understand the incomprehensible.

Then I missed them, because they are on the other side of the country. I can’t just hop in the car and go hug my daughter. Even if I could, she has grown more and more distant from me, especially since the revelation of her father’s infidelity. She judges me as harshly as him, more so. She loves her Santa Dad. Respects her responsible mom, but doesn’t seem to want to be close. It hurts my heart. Her dad has filled her head with stuff about me—negative judgements, yet she has built her own. And I don’t understand that either. My heart aches for her–that she has to live knowing her parent’s marriage was not what she thought. Me too.

Sometimes it feels like I have all but lost my family. Either to death or distance or betrayal. My family is small so there are not many people anyways. My heart aches for what I wish I had. Yet I know that a lot of people have distant families, both geographically and/or emotionally. I certainly am not unique in that. To build expectations for it to be different is a set up for resentment and unhappiness. So I try to be as thankful as I can for what I do have. They are heathy. They are reunited. My UH is much less angry than he used to be. He is continuing to go to 12 step groups and therapy. He puts himself in the path of recovery. I can wish all I want that he would become a man of integrity and reliability—use the tools he is exposed to at all those meetings, but once again—expectations build resentment and unhappiness.

It is so hard not to want. I don’t know how to stop wanting and wishing

As the Alanon slogan says:

Let Go And Let God.

So difficult, so sad, so painful.

I will see my daughter in mid March. I am grateful for what short visits I can.

I am grateful.

New Twist

I work as an in home care giver. Today I went to train for and with a new client; an eighty five year old woman who lives overlooking the sea not far from where I lived as a senior in high school. I even drove by my old place on the way there. Such a pretty location.

Anyways, this woman’s house reminded me of my parent’s house. All original 1960’s furniture, appliances, kitchen cabinets, the works. The caregiver that usually works for them trained me in how to prepare the special foods the client needs. Very particular. I am looking forward to time with this new client to learn about her. She had dozens of framed photos of family all over the house. Evidently they all live far away, so I can relate.

Her husband is still alive and lives there too. HE seemed quiet and to himself.

It is always like a puzzle when meeting new care clients. Even though the company I work for provides basic information about them, it is in the talking face to face that I get to know each. I look forward to learning about them. Everyone has such a unique life story. Perhaps it is why I love older people. They have had so much life experience and thus stories. A real wealth of humanity.

Caring for others gets me out of the house. I am a home body and have the tendancy to stay home unless there’s a good reason not to. My work gets me out and about. I can empathize with the elderly and their challenges as they age. I cared for my parents in the last couple years of their lives. It is a bittersweet time. I find a lot of inspiration in how many folks deal with the inevitable slowing down. And I find myself more and more reflecting back on my own life. Way back before marriage and kids. Back when I was just me. That person who had so much life ahead and so much love to give.

I miss her. I miss being her. That person who thought no one would ever hurt her if she just worked hard and gave her all. I miss being her. I miss the love and protection of my parents.

People so often say the cliche “older and wiser’, as though that is the ultimate aspiration. Personally, I’d rather not be wiser when that means facing the reality day after day of being used and betrayed. All my goodness and giving gobbled up without being treated with the respect and care it deserved—I deserve. No one deserves to be lied to and manipulated. Especially not one who gives her all.

So the new care client’s home brings back a flood of memories of the girl and young woman I was. A really genuinely nice person. Tender hearted, empathetic, loving. I feel sad for her—for me. She did not get her measure of reward for all she gave. But then life isn’t fair though, is it?

While at work I got a text from my daughter telling me she is back on American soil. Afghanistan deployment is over. Praise God. I am so grateful she is home with her family in North Carolina. Truly grateful. More bittersweet–home, but so far away. SO very far away. May God bless her and keep her safe. May she never have to experience intimate betrayal. I pray her husband will be good to her. I pray for my granddaughter and her safety. I feel so left out of their lives. It makes me sad. Yet I am grateful they are together again and well.

Life is funny that way. Bitter and sweet.

Dead, But Not Gone

I watched the Kobe and Gianna memorial service today. It was heart wrenching to hear the grief and loss in the voices of those who spoke of him. Loved ones taken from us too early and all of a sudden is such a cruel loss. Those cut down in their prime, or even more difficult, as children, leave such a hole in the lives of all who know them, depend on them, interact with them.

Which brought me to the comparison of the grief suffered in the reality of intimate betrayal.

My spouse’s body is still here. I see him every day. The person I fell in love with is gone. Some betrayed say that person died on the day they found out about the betrayal. In my case, my UH died a long and lonely death.

I lived with him for years as he slowly withdrew emotional connection and physical investment in ‘us’. A thousand little betrayal cuts piled up upon my heart. A thousand failures to follow through with agreements, chores, responsibilities. A thousand withholdings of help. YEs, on D-day I lost him in full suckerpuch experience, but it had been building for years. I had felt alone in our marriage and so often abandoned.

“Is it so much easier to lose your husband by choice?” Kathy Bate’s character says to her daughter who is grieving the loss of her husband to cancer in the film P.S. I Love You. Kathy’s husband left her for another woman years before.

I can answer that with a resounding ‘NO!!’.

It would have been easier had he died. How do I know that? Because I’ve suffered the loss of both parents and a brother. None of that came close to my spouse’s betrayal or the loss of the person I thought I knew. He abandoned me and our marriage by choice. He killed our marriage volitionally. He chose to betray us time after time and year after year. And he still chooses abandonment–disconnection—surface interaction.

My husband is dead.

In his place is a person I do not know. The man I married would never have even considered touching another woman. He would never have spent his daughter’s inheritance. He would not have spent our retirement nest egg. He would never have considered chasing after other women. Never.

I don’t know this person who looks like the person I married, but does not act like him. The person I married would not allow me to suffer in silence in order to maintain his comfort and shame. He would not have withheld love from me as he does now every single day he remains silent–knowing full well I need him to talk. To share his understanding, compassion and remorse.

But he chooses to remain silent. Day after day. Days adding up and turning into a thousand little cuts of withholding love in favor of abandonment. This doppelgänger that looks like my husband is silent. And in his silence, he is cruel.

I don’t know him.

And I don’t want to know him or be around him.

His likeness and presence taunts me with the reality of all I have lost. And with the reality that he does not love me and has not loved me for many years. He does not and will not give me his heart. He keeps it locked away inside the shell of a man who happens to look like the guy I married. Only older. So much older. Dorian Grey has been outed and his image now matches the old image of the painting that has been in the closet for thirty years. The painting of the person who could betray and lie and manipulate the woman he swore to love… into staying with him, into sleeping with him–into believing he was someone he most definitely was not.

So no–it is not easier to lose your spouse through his choices.

It stinks.

Greif sucks.

Only the shell of him remains to taunt me.