A Great Day for Marriage

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

-- Obergefell v. Hodges, No. 14–556, slip op. at 28 (U.S. June 26, 2015) (Kennedy, J.).

You and I Endure That First Pain

Herman Finley
Jericho Brown

I didn't tell you that, in the end, he begged
For the end. Death like the bed after
The bedtime story. Death like a widening
Crack of light beneath the door.
He begged them to let him
Go so he could go. Said I want
To die. Then said kill me. Please.

You and I endure that first pain.
We just want to die. People with that
Other ultimately physical agony say
Kill me and know they won't discuss it
In therapy. Kill me. I'm thinking
Of him today because I want to die
And I am ashamed to say it. My thinking

Is red and sticky. Rather than kill me,
I'd like you to listen as I live
In a perpetual whine. Can't I still be
Somebody's baby? Say yes for yourself.
Call me sometime. Every day I wish to die,
Remind me how he insisted.
Kill me. And I'll live again.

Digging for Answers, Diffusing Their Power

Rebuilding My Past
CerebralSpouse

Imagine that you woke up one day and realized that all of your memories from the past couple of years were false.  Everything that you understand in your current life is based on your memories of past events, of how you got to the moment that you’re in now.  How much confidence could you have in your present life and your current relationships if those memories suddenly became unreliable?  Your first reaction to such an experience would most likely be to dig for answers, to reconstruct your memories according to reality.  Whether or not those memories were more pleasant than the ones you previously held would be secondary to your obsession with discovering the truth, and you would most likely be willing to restructure your view of the present according to that newly discovered reality. 

This is how I felt upon discovering my wife’s affair.  I suddenly realized that my memories from the past two years were inaccurate, but I had no idea what reality was.  Before I could focus on any attempt at moving forward, I had to reconstruct my memories of the past.  I needed to know when the affair started and how I could have been so blind to it.  I needed to know significant dates when my wife was with the other guy instead of with our family.  I needed to hear the truth behind lies that I been told.  Most of this wouldn’t be pleasant for me to hear, but at least it would be real. 

The problem was that as I started to get those details, they tainted my existing memories.  A family event that I used to look back on fondly now just felt like a façade masking our turmoil.  An evening that I spent alone with our two kids now just represented my ignorance as I recalled the lie my wife used to get out of the house.

 [...] 

I found myself confronted with conflicting goals.  I needed sufficient details of the affair to reconstruct my past, yet those details consumed me and tainted my positive memories.  My initial reaction was to try to suppress the negative thoughts, to be content with the information I had and put the past behind me.  But that would mean that my wife and I would have to essentially pretend that those events never occurred and never discuss them.  How could we build a marriage based on mutual trust when such a significant event in our lives was off limits?  How could I have an honest relationship with my wife if I was forever left with lingering doubts that I had been given the full story? 

Rather than trying to suppress the details of the affair, we had countless conversations about it.  Those were thoughts that were going haunt me anyway, so there was no point in making a futile attempt to avoid them.  I learned all about the other guy, confirmed suspicions that I had regarding specific dates and events, even asked details about the sex.  While it was obviously painful, forcing myself to thoroughly confront that information addressed a variety of symptoms of the affair. 

Your pride takes an enormous hit when you learn that your spouse has been having an affair without your knowledge.  I felt stupid for believing lies she told me.  I felt foolish as I recalled smug comments I had made over the years about our great life and solid marriage.  I felt naïve that I never considered an affair the remotest of possibilities.  But uncovering the details of that affair helped to restore my pride.  I may have been stupid and naïve in the past, but at least I was being intelligent now.  While it may have taken some time, I did discover those secrets.  My wife and the other guy were now the ones who looked naïve for thinking that they could keep the affair a secret from me. 

Married couples are supposed to share exclusive information with one another.  They share special moments and have knowledge about one another that no one else has.  One of the most difficult things for me to deal with was the knowledge that my wife and the other guy shared those things while I was an outsider to their relationship.  As I learned more about affair, I took that exclusive information from them.  Just like my positive memories became tainted by my knowledge of the affair, her memories now had to include the pain and embarrassment of revealing them to me.  It was as if the affair could only survive as long as its details remained hidden, and I could dismantle it piece by piece as I slowly uncovered its secrets. 

[...] 

[B]y directly confronting the details of the affair, I diffused its power over me.  I don’t have to avoid those ugly thoughts anymore because they don’t have the visceral effect on me that they used to.  The affair has just become another chapter in our marriage, and we’re more likely to joke about it now than argue about it.  It’s difficult for something to have power over you when you’ve reduced it to a punch line.

Absent Flowers Abounding

Absences
Donald Justice

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano--outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,
Soon to let down its white or yellow-white.

Now, only these poor snow-flowers in a heap,
Like the memory of a white dress cast down . . .
So much has fallen.

                             And I, who have listened for a step

All afternoon, hear it now, but already falling away,

Already in memory. And the terrible scales descending

On the silent piano; the snow; and the absent flowers

     abounding.

The Worst is Over - and You've Survived

The Worst is Over
Elle

[...]

Betrayal trauma was a notion I resisted. I remembered all too well my response when a friend asked the hypothetical question, "what would you do if your husband cheated." Back then, I knew exactly what I'd do. Dump him. I was so sure that I'd kick him out the house, march straight to a divorce lawyer, wipe my hands clean of him and move forward into my life. At no point did I imagine trauma. Wasn't that for people who'd been raped? Or prisoners of war? Or abused? A cheating husband might lead to anger, I thought, but not trauma.

File that quaint notion under the "yeah, right" category.

Following D-Day, I couldn't sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, waking to panic. I felt powerless. Enraged. Terrified. One day I would feel numb but fine. The next, I couldn't get out of bed. I became a stranger to myself, entertaining thoughts of suicide. Anything to avoid this pain that I thought was endless.

Then a friend, who worked with adult survivors of sex abuse, suggested I was experiencing post-trauma.

She gently explained to me that betrayal is trauma. Her list of "symptoms" rang true.

I felt guilty, however, putting myself in the same list as rape victims. Or abuse survivors. I felt like my experience didn't warrant being traumatized. I should be able to get over this, I thought. I should be stronger.

But I wasn't.

I wish then that I'd heard those words:

The worst is over.

According to Judith Acosta, who wrote the HuffPo blog piece and a book entitled The Worst is Over, those are the most critical words a terrified and traumatized person needs to hear.

And, with the brilliance of hindsight, I know she's right.

Knowing that the worst is over – that gut-dropping, brain-scrambling discovery that what you thought was...wasn't won't ever be repeated because you'll never be caught so off-guard again – can help you breathe again. It can help you focus on what's ahead, instead of what's behind. It can give you the trust in yourself to know that you survived...and that the worst is, indeed, over.

If you can't believe that, then more trauma work is probably a good idea. If you find yourself hyper-vigilant for any signs of impending pain because you just don't think you could go through it again, find someone to hold your hand and your heart (a therapist is darn good at doing that!) while you heal.

But in the short-term just keep telling yourself the worst is over.

Because it's true.

***

Reprinted with permission. Many thanks, Elle! Read the whole post here.

Our First Father's Day

"The greatest thing a father can for his daughter is to love her mother."

-- Attributed to Many

Unknowing Victims, Hidden Harms

The Cheater's High

Robert Weiss

[...] 

For both genders, one reason for cheating, according to a study published last year, may be that “getting away with it” simply makes people feel good, emotionally and psychologically. While this research did not deal specifically with sexual activity, it did look at unethical behavior in general, and the findings can certainly be extrapolated to sexual activity.  

[...]

[G]iven the right circumstances—the cheating is perceived as victimless and there is no looming punishment—people actually tend to feel good about cheating, despite their moral and ethical beliefs.

[...]

All told, the results of the six trials in this study fly in the face of the long-held belief that unethical behavior triggers bad feelings in most people. The research showed instead that people may in fact enjoy the process of “getting away with something,” thanks to built-in neurobiological rewards of excitement and arousal. And it appears this is doubly true if and when they think their unethical behavior is not harming anyone. 

[...]

[T]he aforementioned research did not directly look at sexual or romantic infidelity. But sexual betrayal does in many ways mesh with the types of cheating studied, in that most people who cheat on their spouses and partners choose to view their behavior as harmless and victimless, reasoning that “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” And the fact that cheaters do often get away with their behavior, sometimes repeatedly and over long periods of time, merely reinforces this distortion.

[...]

As a clinician who specializes in the treatment of sexual disorders, I have worked with literally hundreds of men and women who have cheated on their committed partners. And I’ve heard every rationalization, justification, and minimization imaginable (and more than a few that are seemingly beyond imagination), but the primary rationalization nearly always boils down to some form of the following: “As long as he (or she) doesn’t find out, what difference does it make?” 

In other words, nearly every cheater I’ve ever worked with has convinced himself or herself that he or she is not hurting anyone. And this belief that what they are doing is victimless, coupled with their ability to repeatedly get away with it, allows them to experience the cheater's high. 

In reality, of course, sexual infidelity is far from victimless. Spouses and other family members are hurt by the cheater even before the infidelity is discovered, as active cheaters tend to be emotionally distant from loved ones; less sexual, physical, or loving toward their spouse; and also less available. Further, to get away with infidelity over and over again, cheaters often tell lies that make no sense, spend money or time that they don’t have, etc. 

[...]