Finding a balance as we heal from #infidelity: are we settling by staying?

These past four weeks I was immersed in an enlightened fog. I mean I questioned my love for my ex-unfaithful husband. It's been almost four years since I caught him red-handed having phone sex with a married co-worker. The pain of betrayal after twenty-two years of marriage led me into looking inwards, healing and nurturing my inner child, then my inner teen and, lately, my inner woman. 

Inner is a synonym for real, pure, the essence of who I am. Andrew G. Marshall calls it "the dead bodies" that float to the surface as we do recovery work. These dead bodies are self-esteem issues we deal with as we look inwards post-affair. 

Betrayal is excruciatingly painful and it exposes deeper wounds.

Betrayed spouses who decide to work on their marriage, even with a remorseful and cooperative ex-unfaithful, are shamed by our toxic culture of romantic (self-destructive) or self-sufficient (pair-destructive) kinds of love. It is very difficult to work on self-reliance and not wonder: "if being happy depends only on me, my thoughts and my choices, why do I allow someone who betrayed me to be my life partner?"

I've also been wondering: "Do I really want to share my life with his friends (that are now our friends, but in case of separation would be his only)?" It's become a little too intense. 

To me, the simplest explanation was that betrayal killed love and that, even though I was sure that I still loved him right after DDay, now that almost four years have passed, maybe I didn't love him anymore. I felt disconnected, I didn't feel passionately loved and I started to see similarities with the time just before and during the affair. 

Triggers is how we call these situations. My brain was triggered and the emergency response was set off. I wanted to run away from the possibility of being only mediocrely loved. So, I started rationalising my urge to fly and I remained put. I told myself I'd do it for our youngest child. I'd play along the outings and excursions with her dad just so that she could have a nice time. I felt an impostor. I was faking it in hope of making it. 

As the days passed by, I was hoping to get in touch with my real feelings but there was nothing there, no clarity. I didn't want to pray for inner peace because that would mean putting up with an unhappy marriage. And I don't want just to settle, I want true-love, a term I am still in the process of defining. 

I then decided I had observed myself long enough to communicate my doubts to husband. And I did. I asked him to consider the possibility that it is better for us to stay apart than to insist on us (which is what we have been doing since October 2018). I explained that recovering from his infidelity has changed me and has made me redefine and reframe my whole life. And that I was not feeling in love with him as I once did.

He was saddened by my words and shared that he is afraid one day I will just say enough is enough and walk away. He reminded me of the past three years of creating new memories and working on us being happy together. I stated that all we have is a daily lease, so the past doesn't count, as that is the only way I can also leave the affair in the past.

Tricky, right? 

I'm writing it down for clarity. I was surprised to go back to my Tweets and read that I had acknowledged I was in a state of panic and I could not see things clearly. Believe me when I say that I wrote it but my brain did not process the meaning of those words. It took me another twenty four hours to realise that I was having a panic attack. 

I was paying attention to the tension in my body, my shallow breathing and all the symptoms of being on high alert (my mind was screaming "he could be cheating again"). I just couldn't reconcile the panic attack with my reality. My husband has been more committed to me and more focused on our marriage than he ever was in the ten years that preceded the affair. Yet, I was triggered again. 

I wasn't expecting it, it was completely irrational, yet it happened. 

I am sharing this with you in case you think that past a certain number of years of ideal behaviour from your spouse you shouldn't face an uncontrolled sense of uncertainty in your relationship/marriage. I just did and it was pretty intense. 

My husband remained firm in his choice of us growing older together and in being happy as we both know we can be. I pointed out that it was not helping me "feel the love for him in my heart". He stayed around, at a distance where he wouldn't lose eye contact but without crossing the strong invisible boundaries I had placed around me. 

He did many things to show his love and commitment over the few days after my brutally honest confession and my proposal to consider living separate lives. 

I suppose it all made me feel safe again. It took more than three weeks to realise that I had been on an adrenaline driven state. When I started to feel peace again, I was able to see clearly and to appreciate what my husband has to offer and how much I like "us". 

Is it love? Am I settling? 

Maybe. 

We keep walking.