Everyday People

DB and I have lived in the same town for about 10 months now.  It has been really ... for lack of a better word, nice.  We shop for groceries, go on dates, walk the dog.  He has a great rapport with my children, and they adore him.  When I don't have the kids and he's not traveling, he stays over.  He has a drawer at my house.  I have girl shampoo and conditioner at his.  It's all very normal.  It's everything I used to fantasize about.

But the adjustment to normalcy, while wonderful in many ways, isn't that simple.  Each of us has gone through a lot to get here.  He is divorced; mine is still in progress.  My family and friends know I'm seeing someone, but I'd rather they didn't know the circumstances.  Some of his friends and colleagues know what happened; his family doesn't.  He'd understandably like to avoid living the rest of his life, and spending our relationship, under a cloud of scandal.  So there is still some degree of hiding as we phase in this relationship for public consumption.  And we are discovering that we have to work to avoid making the same mistakes with each other that led us to be where we are.


I'm not talking about cheating; I'm talking about communication.  And that's hard when he is traveling for work or to see his kids, or I have my kids, and the only communication we get is in snippets.  We have a lot to talk about.  We want to get this right.  I honestly don't know how we ever lived before, only seeing each other for a few hours every few weeks, talking in bits and pieces, e-mailing, g-chatting, never getting that stream-of-consciousness conversation that comes with the luxury of having hours and hours to spend together with no fear of discovery, no needing to get back to where we're expected to be.  I never got into that thrill-of-forbidden-love thing.  I want to be for real.


Each of us spent more than a decade with someone who didn't really care what we thought.  He at least spoke his mind, for all it mattered.  I didn't even do that; I just took whatever was dished out.  We both learned bad habits.  We want to un-learn them, to be honest even when the truth isn't pretty, to have the difficult conversations, to disagree and work it out.  We are trying, and I believe in us.


But, if you're involved in an affair and think you will have a blissful and uncomplicated relationship with your lover once you are able to be together, give it up.  You can't escape yourselves.

Here's how it was for me

Usually when a person is caught cheating, it’s assumed that the cheater was out sniffing around town for something to rub up against, while the faithful loving spouse was home ironing the cheater’s shirts. Sometimes it’s like that. It wasn’t for me.

First off, no one was ironing my shirts. Well, sometimes the nice lady at the dry cleaner’s was, but (a) I wasn’t married to her, so I don’t think she can legitimately complain, and (b) I’m mostly a wash & wear kind of girl anyway. But more to the point, I wasn’t looking for an affair. I was minding my own business, going to work (after a long stint as a stay-home mom before that), taking care of my children, spending most of my free time with or in service of my family. I was not trawling through bars; I was not on dating websites; I was not going on business trips and trying to pick people up. Still, I found trouble without looking for it.

Obviously, I made choices, each of which incrementally added up to what ultimately transpired. I chose to friend DB on Facebook; I chose to have a regular e-mail correspondence with him; I didn’t stop that correspondence when I realized I was checking my e-mail frequently, with a certain breathless anticipation that could not be chalked up to catching up with an old friend. I shared emotions with him that I couldn’t discuss with anyone, I realized how desperately I desired him physically, and still I didn’t put the brakes on. I think this is what people often mean when they say an affair “just happened.” But of course it doesn’t “just happen.” People choose, maybe not all at once, but by degrees.

I didn’t see it that way at the time. At the time, I felt like I was getting hit by a tidal wave. The emotions were so intense, the highs and lows so conflicting. It wasn’t that I didn’t have control over my actions; I did. But I was drawn to this man in a way that I’d never been drawn to anyone. Yes, I desired him, but it was beyond lust. It didn’t matter whether I could actually be with him or not. My heart was his, and I couldn’t help loving him. I was willing to wait for him as long as it took. If that turned out to be never, I wasn’t going to stop loving him. I still love him that way. I can’t help it.

I know how I sound. I know that at the time, I was high on neurotransmitters and adrenaline, and I did not see clearly the pain that I was going to rain down on myself and others as a result of my actions. I thought I did, but I had no idea. I have lost so much sleep, cried so many tears, agonized about what to do, writhed in guilt and shame. It has hurt more than I can describe.

Here’s the thing. After all of this pain, after everything we have both been through, he is still holding my hand, and I am still holding his. If this was only a booty call, or an attempt to relieve boredom and get an emotional high, I would have bailed on him long ago, and he would have bailed on me. It would not have been worth it.

Most of the time it probably isn’t worth it. Most of the time I think people are looking for something by having an affair that they’re not actually going to get from the affair: a sense of completion and wholeness and safety they can only find within themselves. And I know I am not immune from that, nor is DB. We are flawed and broken people, and neither of us can heal the other. We are trying to rebuild ourselves, and it is not an easy process, nor one that will ever be truly completed. The affair was not a fix for all our existing problems. We simply took those problems with us.

I’ve struggled with how to end this post, because I don’t endorse what I did, but I love this man. I’m not naïve or stupid. I don’t believe in happily ever after; I believe you have to work at relationships. If it were easy, we would not have such a high divorce rate. But I would never have believed that I could love a man the way I love DB. The only other people I love with such fierce devotion are my children, who are obviously in a different category, but it’s that kind of intensity. I wasn’t looking for this relationship because I didn’t even know such a thing could exist. And once I knew, I couldn’t turn away from it.

People who haven’t stood in my shoes can judge me all they want, but if it happened to them, if they truly felt this way about someone else, I question whether they would be able to walk away, and what they might find themselves willing to do to be with that person.

Here’s how it was for me:

from Pablo Neruda’s Cien Sonetos de Amor (100 Love Sonnets)

XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Glass Houses

I never thought I would have an affair. I truly believed I was a better person than that. I didn’t realize that I was a setup for an affair long before I had the opportunity. I think that many betrayed spouses assume that the source of an affair lies solely with the person who cheated. They believe that the cheater is defective, either that s/he is a heartless traitor or weak and deluded. It’s difficult to admit how warped the structure of a marriage has to be in the first place for one partner to consider having an affair, and the extent to which both parties are responsible for that structure.

Happy spouses don’t cheat. If a spouse is not happy in a marriage, there is a reason for it. That’s not to say cheaters are justified in cheating if they’re not happy – of course not. But if your spouse cheats, and you’re surprised because you thought everything was great until that point, you have probably been ignoring some pretty key problems that pre-date the affair, often by years, and those problems are partially your responsibility.

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s (of Eat Pray Love fame - I know, you either love her or you hate her) book Committed, she summarizes Shirley Glass’ research on fidelity and affairs, which I now totally need to read (her book is called Not "Just Friends": Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity). Glass posits that marriages are made up of windows and walls. Communication between spouses should flow freely (windows); the intimate parts of yourself and your relationship should be closed to the outside world (walls). It’s only natural to be attracted to people other than our spouses sometimes, but when it happens, we open a window on those feelings with our spouse, at the same time setting a boundary with the outsider and refusing to become emotionally or physically intimate with that person. This has the practical effect of avoiding temptation, but instead of pretending the attraction doesn’t exist, which is unrealistic, you use it to build intimacy in your marriage by talking about unmet needs and finding a way to meet them within the marriage. It makes sense.

I think the corollary, and maybe Glass talks about this, is that if you try to open a window during these times, and your spouse shuts you out, then you have still done a good thing by exposing some key problems in the marriage. Then you can figure out whether you can resolve them or not. If not, at least you know why the marriage dissolved, without the confusion and chaos of involving someone else.

In my own situation, the windows and walls were all wrong, and had been for a very long time. My ex made it clear what he wanted my role to be. I was there to perpetuate a lifestyle, a paradigm of what he wanted his life to be. My needs were dismissed, in large ways and small. I tried to talk about it, perhaps not in ideal ways, but I did try. I tried nicely, I tried passive-aggressively, I tried outright aggressively, I tried in bitchy ways, I tried while sobbing my guts out and begging him to consider me, I tried by asking him to go to counseling with me. It didn’t work. I was walled off. He implied that I was crazy and unreasonable, that I had no right to want anything he didn’t want. After running into those walls for years, I lost all desire for any kind of intimacy with him. I was marking time, getting through the days, serving my sentence.

And then DB came along, and suddenly there was a window, and I didn’t want to close it. Now, Glass’ theory is that when I realized how attracted I still was to DB (and always had been – I thought about him over the years far more often than was entirely healthy), I should have cut off all contact with DB, then spoken to my ex and told him I was feeling this attraction to someone else and it had made me realize that I had a number of unmet needs that we needed to discuss. Realistically, I know that would not have flown. My ex would have raged and/or convinced me I was nuts. I don’t believe for one second that we would have been able to save our marriage. But at least I would have tried. And then I would have realized what instead it took having an affair to realize: that my marriage never was what I thought it was. And I could have gotten out of it with a clean conscience. And if it was meant to be with DB, we would have eventually been free to be together.

I have no defense. She’s right. But that’s not how it happened. Admittedly, one key reason for this was that I was not willing to cut off contact with DB. I couldn’t stand to lose him. Like many people, I aspire to high-mindedness that I do not always actually possess.

For DB, one of the most galling things about all of this has been that his ex truly believes their marriage ended simply because DB cheated. But while that was the match that set the house on fire, the house was already doused in gasoline and full of frayed, sparking electrical wires. Still, I know he wishes he had gotten out cleanly, and it certainly would make our lives now much easier if he had. His ex would still be bitter and self-righteous, but she wouldn’t have such strong justification for it.

It is really easy to slip into an affair if your marriage is unhappy and you’re subconsciously looking for a way out of it. It happens to good people, all the time. People are complex. I think we are kinder, stronger people when we remember that.

Rethinking - and Fish!

First of all, if you've been to the site before, you'll see that I went a bit nuts with the template designer. I wanted something less serene. It would have been lower-key until I found out you can add fish - FISH! - as a decorative item. Honestly, the ability to add fish kind of made my day. So hopefully the changed look and feel makes the place warmer.

Second, I have wondered whether the things I'm saying are useful in the context of discussing an affair or not. A lot of it would apply to the emotional landscape of any divorce, any single-parenting situation, any contemplation of new love after divorce. And while these are all elements of my journey in figuring out how to rebuild myself and my life after having an affair, maybe there's more to be said first about the affair itself - how it happened, what I learned, and whether it's too soon to make snappy sarcastic comments about the utter destruction of my life as I knew it.

I'd be interested in comments. What do people want to know, if they care enough to read this?

Oh, FYI, I do moderate comments, so it might be a few hours before your comment posts.

Boundaries

I've been thinking a lot about boundaries lately, especially the part where I don't seem to have any. Seriously, the crap I let my ex get away with would amaze you. To paraphrase, he wanted someone who would, to quote the timeless poetry of Sara Barielles, ride off into his delusional sunset. And the sick thing is, I did it. Whatever he wanted, that was what we did. I didn't get to eat when I was hungry, rest when I was tired, leave when I was ready, be comforted when I was sad, vent when I was angry, except when it was amenable to him. Everything, from vacations to sex to child rearing, it was all on his terms. Resistance was futile.

It's not that he is an overtly mean person - most people think he's quite nice, until they are on the receiving end of his narcissism. Even then, his form of manipulation is so subtle that often you don't realize what happened; you know you feel violated, but you don't know why. He doesn't yell, he doesn't throw things, he seems reasonable and oh-so-nice, but what he wants is what is going to happen, period. He pushes and pushes and pushes until he gets what he wants, and he will run over you with a bulldozer and never stop smiling. It's like Chinese water torture. I quickly learned that it was just easier to give him what he wanted, because he was never going to stop pushing. By the end - and the end came about 6 months before I had an affair - I felt like I didn't have any skin left. I felt like a pulpy mass of exposed nerves, and no one knew, because he was such a "nice" guy. It was a painful, enclosed, lonely, horrible place to be.

So, how do I not end up there again? The more I look at myself, the more I know I am susceptible to being manipulated in all kinds of relationships, from work to friendships to love. I was custom-built for someone like my ex. My whole life, I avoided conflict, because it always ended up with me losing, often painfully. So I just stopped resisting. In a way, there was sort of a Zen-like quality to the idea of bending so I wouldn't break. Only it didn't lead to a peaceful, detached, enlightened Nirvana. It let to footprints on my back. Once I realized that, it was as if a new lens clicked into place over my vision. I could never see my marriage the same way. I could never see any relationship the same way. Some say my spine grew 3 sizes that day (sorry, I've been reading too much Dr. Seuss with my son).

DB is a sweet, kind man, but he is human, and he has his own agenda. He does not want to manipulate me, but we all want what we want, particularly from those who are closest to us. Boundaries are important. Not to shut anyone out, or in; I think of it as more like a permeable membrane than a wall. I envision a barrier that lets certain things pass through, but protects my structural integrity and separateness.

Frost was right: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall,/That wants it down." ("Mending Wall," the poem is here). But we need to know where others end and we begin, and we need to know the difference.