Tag: pain

Broken-Open

So I took the 30-day alphabet challenge during the month of April, writing every day of the month except Sundays. I do not write ahead; rather each day I search for the direction of the moment and follow those thoughts and they result in my posts. Doing that for 26 days out of thirty took lots from my soul. HUSBAND asked me to take a respite after that and at first I scoffed thinking I did not need a break. Seems he knew me better than I knew myself – I needed it. I’ve missed you all and am glad to be back.

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And that brings me to here.

Today. June 1, 2016. A day that I can boldly say is better than June 1, 2015 or 2014 or 2013 or for all my married years prior to now.

How…why…can it be better to be the wife of a sex-addict, to know it? Wasn’t it better to live in the bliss of naiveté? To be unaware that HUSBAND found other women repeatedly throughout our marriage – whether real flesh and blood – or screen images that gave him things that only exist in fantasy?

No. No it wasn’t. It wasn’t for me.

Today is better than the last two years because I am two years out from finding out the awful reality of being a betrayed. Two years of living a progressively less violent emotional roller coaster. Two years of rolling memories around in my brain and reliving moments and trying to make sense of them and going through the cycles of grief again and again. Two years of learning to deal with triggers and a flood of pain that takes my breath away and mind invasions and questions with no answers and self-blame and hatred and overwhelming love. It is who I am now, indelibly stamped on my being and whether I remained married or left to have a different life this is me – me – forever and always.

Today is better than last year when I was a year out. 2015 was filled with anniversaries: One year from anonymous email and finding out HUSBAND was unhappy. One year from several weeks later and finding out HUSBAND was having an affair. One year from several weeks later and finding out HUSBAND’s affair wasn’t what he first revealed and included more time with his AP and more, well, more. One year from several weeks later and finding out there were more affairs. One year from several weeks later from finding out about family betrayal and friend betrayal. One year from several weeks later from finding out there was porn and masturbation and addiction. A year of one years, each one forcing me to take out that date and hold it in my hand and heart and try to decide if it was worth it. I could only look at that one moment, that one day, and step forward.

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And the year before…2014…such a looming wall of torment when I go back to those moments. Reading the anonymous email. Finding the letter of love and devotion from the current affair partner. The conversations and conversations and conversations and conversations with HUSBAND. The realization that pain inside could seep into every fiber of my being and wrack me with sobs that started in my heart and raced into every limb and digit and through every vein and capillary and occupied every cell and screamed and cried and begged for the hurt to stop. Oh the moments of not-wanting-to-die yet not-wanting-to-live or rather not-knowing-how-to-live or not-knowing-what-living-was and just not even being able to breathe. The shame. The guilt. The anger. The hurt. The abandonment. The confusion. The lies and the lies and the lies and the lies that I now knew had been my life.

The years before. They were good. I thought they were good. Or at least mostly. I thought that and yet now that they are good – really, really good – I can see they weren’t so good. I didn’t know about the women in HUSBAND’s life, true, but I always knew I wanted more with and in our relationship. I wanted to be cherished, to be considered deeply from a heart place. I wanted to share dreams and be able to be sad together when they didn’t happen without worrying it would make HUSBAND feel bad or like a failure. I wanted to be able to dream more and again and different without worrying it would make HUSBAND feel like I could never make up my mind. I wanted to be able to touch and be touched in public and private and to exchange glances that spoke volumes across a room and have private jokes that weren’t laced with sarcasm and know that above all else, I could count on being adored and protected.

Sometimes I pretended I had that throughout my marriage. But I didn’t.

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Up until the time the true nature of my marriage was revealed, I counted my words. I timed my conversations and wrapped that in the lingo of various women’s magazines and self-help journals and even religious teachings about wisdom and being gentle-tongued and a Proverbs 31 wife. I wanted so badly to have a deeply allied and intimate relationship that really was one flesh in every sense of the word and I acted like that was what we had and told myself that was what we had. But it wasn’t true.

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That is why June 1, 2016 is so incredibly different. So incredibly good. Because now, it is so incredibly real.

No walls. No masks. No space between our one flesh.

My addict HUSBAND became broken open through the revelations. My addict HUSBAND has committed all the fiber of his being to recovery and loving himself and loving me. I became broken open through agony, and that pain has poured out all the layers and layers and layers of pretensions and excuses and craziness and self-lies. No layers now between us. No secrets and hidden things and carefully (manipulated) thought-out words to try to get the other to respond the way we want them to. All those things that I wanted and had convinced myself only exist in chick-flicks live in my house now. They live in my words and my relationship and my bed. I. Am. Loved.

June 1, 2016. Two people, broken-open and meshed together into one. Battle-scarred, far-from-perfect but oh, so beautiful.

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Zephyr

1. The west wind.2. A gentle breeze.3. Any of various soft light fabrics, yarns, or garments, especially a lightweight, checked gingham fabric.4. Something that is airy, insubstantial, or passing.

It’s just after midnight and now April 30. I’m glad. I’m glad because yesterday was a milestone in my life, in my journey of healing.

Yesterday marked the day, two years ago, that I found out about HUSBAND’s double life – that he was a cheater – that he had a relationship with another woman in every sense of the word.

The day came roaring up in some ways, yet snuck up all at once too. I saw it coming, I dreaded it coming, yet all of the sudden it was here and in front of me without me really knowing. We have all the kids at home right now…ready to celebrate the graduation of one of the tribe…and the focus on changing linens and making sure cat fur was vacuumed up and everyone got their favorite room and we had all the right food made me forget for a minute that this was a day to be remembered, to be marked.

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As I looked around at one of the intermissions of the blessed chaos, it hit me with a SWOOSH that this could have looked so different. It could have been such a different day for me. For HUSBAND. For the graduate and all the other kiddos. It could have been a day of dread by the kids, wondering how they could negotiate between their separate parents at a single event and time. It could have been a day when I was forced to look at the person (or one of the persons) who had decided covenants weren’t for keeping and when I may have had to watch HUSBAND play role of lover to another woman. It could have been a day of tension, of terseness, of jockeying for position and fighting for affection and…desperately…seeking…love…

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But instead, the day was like a zephyr. Like a gentle breeze I watched my beautiful children interact with care and fun and depth. HUSBAND and I have a rhythm now, and things flow amongst us and our home and our family without fits and starts like in the past-even though I wasn’t able to see the ruffles when I was living them. Now, the colors of our lives are woven into beautiful fabrics that cover, but don’t bind. That fit, but leave room for growth.

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So rather than pour in and gush over me and us like a rogue wave, this marker day wafted over airily…zephyr-like, kind of insubstantial in light of the glory of being with those I love.

Two years…two years and we are all finding our way.

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.Weight.

WeightOfGrief

Weight of offenses against you.

Weight of misdeeds, intentional and not, curled in and through your being.

Weight of abandonment. Of abuse.

Of corruption. Of deceit. Of exploitation. Of injustice. Of perversion and manipulation. Of hatefulness and rage and retaliation. Of resentment and vengeance. Of scorn and mockery and neglect.

Of infidelity. Of betrayal and collusion.

Of exposure.

Of distortion and evasion and slander.

Of selfishness. And ill will. And disdain.

Weight of grief.

Questions.

Curiosity is something I often simultaneously value and disdain at once. When each of my children began to talk, I embraced their newfound voices and was excited by their questions. And then they hit the “why” stage…I found myself gritting my teeth as I searched for a response to satisfy their curiosity and then they would ask that profound question that I was elated to be able to address.

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It’s like that in much of my life. I am thrilled when we bring a new strategy to my company, and excited to train staff…embracing their questions through training and even early stage implementation. But it becomes tedious after a time, and the questions become a source of low-level irritation as I find myself hoping employees will stop asking and start doing and if they need support then? Welcomed.

So when sexual betrayal was revealed in my marriage, I was surprised to find myself overwhelmed with the need to ask questions. Questions. Questions. And even more questions. For the first two months of initial denial, leading to one small revelation and the next small revelation and eventually some enormous revelations that dramatically altered everything I understood about the whole of my married life, HUSBAND was avoidant – answering questions with minimal responses – at best and lying – at worst. But once he broke and quit hiding bits and pieces, he became transparent as my myriad questions continued. Questions as I tried to make sense out of all that was senseless and the revelations that had created a new was that didn’t look like what was before.

I asked questions that made sense: when, where, who, how? I asked questions that were important: protection, pregnancy? I asked questions that were driven by my pain: how could you? Do you know you have destroyed me/us/your children? I asked questions that revealed my confusion: why didn’t I know? How did you hide it? I asked questions that showed my anger: you spent our money on her? You talked to her for 2 hours and me for 2 minutes? I threw out questions that were traps:  who did you love more at that time? Did you ever really love me? I craved answers for questions with no answers: what caused you to fuck other women? How did you come home and look me in the eye?

And HUSBAND answered them. And answered them and again, he answered them. Once he moved into remorse, and the progressive realization of the depth of devastation he had wrought, he never faltered in his resolve to answer any question at any moment at any time. No defensiveness, no frustration. Nothing out of bounds, and no resistance even if I’d asked the same question many times before. At some desperate moments, I asked outrageous questions – and he answered them. Sometimes, the answers felt hurtful, but the beauty was that this willingness, this transparency resulted in a couple of huge strides: I began to believe his answers. Since he was no longer lying, his answers didn’t change. Over and over I could ask the same question and get the same answer. So before we both knew it, I began to realize I had a baby-amount of trust beginning to form for him – something I never thought would EVER be restored. Another result was that the more open he was and the more willing to bare all – even if the answer did hurt me – the more I felt like we were on the same team, and his past affair partners were off the team. As I learned of the secrets they’d shared with him, words they’d spoken, places they’d gone…I now was on the inside and they weren’t.

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I know questions are hard from the betrayed to the cheater. Especially a cheater who has turned from his behavior, and is really committed to moving forward in honesty and newness…but if there is one thing that seems to really be beneficial for helping a spouse heal it is the willingness to be transparent. To meet her where she is, with whatever level of needing to know that she has (and we are all different – no “normal” or “regular” here….) If HUSBAND had been unwilling to take my drilling, or acted exasperated or looked at me and said STOP! Enough!…I’m not sure I would have been willing to move forward with him at all, and it definitely would have been a more rocky path.

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Better Plans

When I was a young teen, my father was a professor at the University of Colorado for a couple of years. We lived in the amazing, green-belt-wrapped town/city of Boulder, tucked neatly into the valley with the beautiful Rockies looming to the west, and foothills part of the landscape.

There were strong winds that swept down over Boulder off this eastern slope of the mountains. Winds that were called the chinook – after the Pacific Native Americans – and, according to the Earth Systems Research Laboratory, are some of the highest peak winds in the entire country. The winds were sometimes strong enough to blow roofs off, down trees and melt a foot of snow in less than an hour. But for the most part, the chinook was something brief and interesting and part of the lore of living in Boulder.

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So for Christmas one year, my parents had rented a condo at a ski resort for a week. Believe it or not, the day before we were leaving, it was in the mid-70s in Boulder – a perfect day to lay out in the backyard in my bikini and get a tan. Dad was at work, and mom was running around getting last minute items for the trip, and our house was filled with a crew of 4-5 men painting the living room and dining room. I was on my lounge chair, soaking up the sun and the phone rang…and this was prior to cell phones that are perched by our sides…so I jumped up and ran to the door…a sliding glass door…and grabbed the handle to slide it open with my right hand touching the glass with my left hand…and

CRASH

The entire 72 x 80 inch door shattered with a deafening sound. Shards of glass were there – inside the door and outside the door and sticking out of various places on my body.

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I was stunned, shocked, completely confused how this could have happened. I did not fly into the door with my body weight, or press hard on the door with my left hand. I opened it the same way I always opened it, lightly touching the door with my left finger tips to stabilize the opening procedure while pulling on the handle with my right, yet this time the door lay in little pieces all around me. Then I realized that numerous places on my hands and legs and feet were bleeding…some small spots of blood, but a couple quite vigorously.

I ran into the kitchen (to this day have no idea who was on the phone), turned on the sink, threw my heavily-bleeding-hand under the sink while telling the very-shocked-painters to hand me some paper towels that I pressed onto my worst-bleeding-foot wound with the other foot. They began to sort-of-panic (isn’t that just like men? Sorry, didn’t mean to be sexist, but I guess I really did) and I took the role of calming them down.

So why this story? There was no man involved, no relationship, no HUSBAND or cheating or loving or even family-of-origin stories here.

Right after the door crashed down, everyone (mostly my parents) blamed me. It was surely my teen-crazed desire to answer the phone…I had crashed into the door…I had wrenched the door open with force. I replayed the incident over and over and over in my head while nurturing the physical wounds, and knew this was not so. Eventually, we learned that it was very likely the glass had been weakened and bore cracks and fissures due to the winds…cracks we couldn’t see…cracks that were actually the cause of the shattering which could have happened to anyone.

Some have suggested that for me to go back and examine my marriage may cause more pain, stunt healing or lead to self-blame. For me, on DDAY, I was the glass door. I looked healthy and clear and shiny with no cracks or hints of instability. But it wasn’t true. And as much as I am me, and I am separate from HUSBAND, WHICH I FULLY BELIEVE, because we were married we were also inextricably woven into one in a mystery I cannot fully understand, so any brokenness in him really was brokenness in me. Those crazy chinook winds had blown over and in my life and over and in his life and over and in our life, and left microscopic cracks and fissures and schisms that I glossed over or thought would be better tomorrow or could not see because they were just so small…but then

CRASH

The entire 27 year marriage of HUSBAND and me came crashing down. Shards of my life were strewn across the years and the dreams and the reality of all that I was.

That gaping hole where the door once stood, where the marriage once stood, has to be rebuilt. It could be a single-hung glass, or perhaps a double-pane, but either way if it is going to stand the chinook bearing down again and again as life does, I want to understand how the original construction allowed those cracks and fissures to form. I want to change the plans, to be able to withstand the winds and not be in danger of shattering again, and to do so, I am willing to take apart every bit of the process and rebuild step-by-step with stronger, smarter, better parts. In my case, HUSBAND also wants that for himself, which is what is allowing us to consider remaining married, to work toward a whole marriage which I can see now, we never had before. If he wasn’t willing to invest and to dedicate his heart and mind and being to both going back with brutal honesty, and moving forward with humble bareness, I would be on this journey alone. Because that is what I am doing, and now, we are doing – going back with brutal honesty, and moving forward with humble bareness.

Looking back, for me, is the only way to build forward.

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