5
DANTE PLACED JUDAS AND BRUTUS in the lowest circle of hell to show that betrayal is the worst of sins. We are hurt most deeply when those we trust turn against us. The loss of trust takes more than grief to get over. It is shocking, isolating, and disorienting. Our challenge is to reconstitute our whole perspective on ourselves, on others, and on humanity. We have to restabilize ourselves in our familiar world, no easy task. A breakdown in trust requires personal work on our part too. We are challenged to revisit similar hurts from the past and grieve them along with grieving the hurt that just occurred.
How does betrayal happen to us? Trust is undermined when someone is unfaithful to us; deceives us; cheats us; lies to us; turns on us; acts unilaterally; shows malice toward us; gossips about us unfairly; makes a big decision without talking to us about it beforehand; takes advantage of our vulnerability; breaks our confidence; doesn’t come through for us; runs from our feelings; isn’t there for us in a crisis; doesn’t check in with us when we are in distress; says no to addressing, processing, and resolving our mutual conflicts.
One of the reasons it is such a risk to trust our fellow humans is that we know so well that there is no limit to human aggression. Some other animals, when fighting, pull back when the opponent shows his throat in surrender, out of an instinct for species preservation. We humans might keep attacking. We have to be taught to stop or be stopped by someone. This is why growing in personal integrity contributes to our collective survival. In any case, we always have it in us to work on our own aggressive instincts and make a commitment to act with nonviolent love in all our dealings. To make that commitment increases our trust in the enlightened potential in ourselves and others.
In friendship and relationship, trust grows when we find safety to express our authentic feelings. Trust is broken when we are shut down or punished for our feelings. Can we trust this friend or partner with such feelings as anger, sadness, or fear? There are two possibilities: Some people easily welcome our sharing our feelings about others. This is the friend who, for instance, remains very present to us as we describe and express what we feel about our spouse. However, that same friend may not be open to hearing our feelings when they are directed toward himself. Then he may become testy or defensive rather than welcoming. When we give him feedback about that reaction, he becomes even more defensive, refusing to address the breakdown of communication. We try once more later, but still no luck.
When this happens, we do not reject him, only recognize his inhibitions about accepting feedback. The challenge for us is to trade in our fantasy about how open we thought he was for the reality of who he actually is. Our level of trust has been reduced and reproportioned. So we may have to switch to small talk and cut back on our time together. This is the response of mindfulness and loving-kindness. Mindfully, we are staying with the reality of who someone is without judgment or blame. In loving-kindness we are not rejecting or retaliating but still holding him in our circle of love.
Trust does not have to end the way a bear dies, impossible to resuscitate. It can end the way a bear hibernates, able to be reanimated given the right conditions and a suitable lapse of time. Trust can begin to be restored when the untrustworthy person apologizes and offers to make amends. Then a long, consistent history of trustworthiness has to follow for us to trust again with confidence, something that happens only gradually, a feature of all grief and reorientation.
There are people who have caused pain to themselves and others by their addictions, compulsions, or crimes. When they find recovery or “get religion” they may expect others to trust them instantly. This is more than an unreasonable demand. It is an illusion often found in conversion experiences: “Now that I am a new person, I have no shadow, no negative side. Before I was totally untrustworthy but now I am totally reliable.” Recovery, transformation, change, and conversion all require ongoing acknowledgment of the shadow side that remains in us no matter how much better we look, feel, and act. In authentic transformation, we remain aware of how unconscious forces of aggression are in all of us. It takes daily discipline to work with the negative impulses that are in no way cancelled by being “born again.”
The Silent Treatment
Mutuality in a relationship builds trust between partners. In adult relationships, sudden unilateral silence or an abrupt disappearance impairs our ability to trust. This is because it is directly opposed to our addressing, processing, resolving, and integrating our problems together. Arbitrary decision making signals a lack of trust from one partner to another.
Someone’s unexplained rejection of us leaves us with so many questions, including what we did wrong. Consider a second kind of experience. We are told directly by a partner that things are not working and why. This partner offers to work things out or to be with us as we work out our feelings about the breakup.
In the first instance, our pain is happening because we are being wounded at the trust level, the heart level, the most delicate part of us. The grief is saturated with betrayal, perhaps reminiscent of past hurts, and will take a while to be worked through. In the second instance, our partner is willing to address the issue, showing integrity. She is respecting our feelings with her willingness to see them through. She is not jumping ship but staying on board with us to the next harbor.
No one can infallibly promise permanence in a relationship, since feelings change. But an adult with integrity can say that though he can’t be relied on never to go, he will be relied on not to run. Everyone can be trustworthy in that way.
An example of a unilateral style, a favorite entitlement of ego, is the silent treatment, an aggressive and vindictive style in a relationship, a form of pouting. In the early phase of a relationship, such distancing can arise from fear, ego’s first name. For instance, Barry is afraid of the closeness happening in his new relationship, so he suddenly ceases contact with Madelyn. Wondering what is going on, she calls and e-mails Barry, but there is no response. Madelyn is wondering what she did wrong. Then she gets angry and wants to be sarcastic. In those phases, she is wise not to contact Barry. For one thing, she does not know for sure what is happening. He may be in the hospital in a coma. (This is unlikely, since bad news gets back to us easily.) Second, Madelyn might say something inappropriate that she will regret later because it was not in keeping with her loving-kindness practice.
Madelyn will wait to calm down and then send one last e-mail to Barry, saying, “I haven’t heard from you and hope everything is all right.” She does not say, “I hope we are all right,” because that presumes a “we,” and that may no longer be the case. Madelyn is hurting, and Barry knows that. His use of the silent treatment shows that her pain is not as important as his own self-protection. That is important information about Barry for Madelyn, especially early on in the relationship. It shows that he has work to do on his ego before he can participate in a healthy intimate bond with anyone. Madelyn remembers that she is in the investigatory phase of the relationship. On one level, Madelyn is glad that she is finding out more about someone she was considering as a prospective partner.
In any case, unilateral silence is a clear indication that Barry cannot be trusted. Hopefully, Madelyn will maintain her own self-respect and make no further inquiries or entreaties but let the chips fall where they may. When and if Barry does call and wants to resuscitate the relationship, Madelyn will need to ask for a full explanation, explore the fact that he knew she was hurting and did not make a simple phone call to ease her pain, and finally make an agreement that Barry drop the silent treatment permanently. Trust grows in a relationship when we can say directly to a partner, “I will never use the silent treatment or retaliation,” and when we can commit ourselves to following through with it.
Madelyn may prefer simply to say good-bye. It’s not necessary for her to risk more with Barry. Her free speech, delivered without concern for the outcome, and her fortifying her own boundaries build Madelyn’s trust in herself. Maybe that will mean more to her than finding a man.
Here is another example of unilateral silence, this time in the early dating phase. We have some wonderful evenings with someone new. She promises to contact us soon. Then we never hear from her again. We speculate that this prospective partner had second thoughts or cold feet. Those mentally generated explanations do not harm us. When we add on story lines, telling ourselves that she found someone better, realized we had nothing to offer, or saw through us, we damage our self-esteem. In reality, the lack of follow-through tells us only that the other person is someone who does not follow through. She does not want to continue the relationship, which is her right, and she does not choose to let us know—not very polite, but there it is.
Our reaction to silence may take one of the three forms we explored earlier: reaching out, anger, or despair. We may keep reaching out to the other person no matter what. This violates the boundaries of the silent person, who has made it clear that she does not welcome further contact. It can also indicate a willingness to let ourselves be hurt by the other’s rejection, over and over.
We may simply remain angry until it becomes a bitterness that can lead to depression. In addition, our ability to trust diminishes when we are depressed because an effect of depression is that nothing seems reliable. This too makes us agents of our own homemade suffering. It is also contrary to a yes to the given that no relationship is possible with this person and it is up to us to move on to grieving and to let go of blame. This will take an embracing of vulnerability, the quality that we may believe got us into this trouble to begin with.
We can distinguish the silent treatment from a time-out. Our silence then is not aggressive. It is the normal time it takes to understand and feel through an experience or idea. In this instance, we might say to at partner: “Give me some time to be with this on my own.” We then resume communication as soon as we have a clearer picture of what we really feel and need. The silence is meant to clarify not to punish.
Finally, Buddhist writer Stephen T. Butterfield wrote of a positive dimension in betrayal that is not to be overlooked: “Since no relationship can be made entirely safe and secure . . . this has to mean trust in one’s own ability to use any consequence, including betrayal, as a means for waking up.” Thus, the spiritually conscious person might take a breach of trust as a teaching about the given of life that anyone can bolt from us with no explanation, another reminder of impermanence.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
—MARK TWAIN, PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S NEW CALENDAR, FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, 1897
Lies We Tell, Hear, or Won’t Hear
In an episode of the TV sitcom All in the Family, Archie Bunker is disappointed with his wife, Edith, because she would not lie to gain the family some money. Archie chastises Edith, saying, “I’m talking about families sticking together.”
Edith, in her characteristically naive yet profound way, replies, “Oh, Archie, I believe in families sticking together, but if I hadn’t told the truth, you’d never be able to trust me again. And then how could we stick together?”
“Archie” and “Edith” may represent two sides of ourselves. Deep down we believe it is wrong to lie, in that it breaks the bond of human trust. At the same time, our need, fear, or greed may make it seem all right to take liberties with the truth.
We lie for a number of different reasons:
To get what we want
To keep a secret
To hide the truth
To protect our body, possessions, or turf
To save ourselves from embarrassment
To preserve our image
To avoid further inquiry
To justify our behavior
To avoid a responsibility
To avoid conflict (or conflict resolution)
To preserve the status quo
To inflate our ego
To hide our feelings
To manipulate someone
To make a fool of someone
To get back at someone who has lied to us
Notice that these reasons are all fear-based. When we are afraid, we may seek refuge in lying rather than in being forthcoming. Unlike Gandhi, we do not trust in the power of truth as much as we do in our own version of what works.
Once we see the connection between lying and fear, we begin to understand why trust and truth have to go hand in hand. Trust requires an ongoing commitment to truthfulness in communication. Yet communication can include lying. However, communion does not. In that trusted bond, we feel safe to share the truth about ourselves. This is why trust and truth can happen only in a relationship of authentic intimacy.
Lying about oneself or one’s actions undermines trust. Being truthful stabilizes trust. As we have seen, trust means that we do not fear the one we trust. If we believe we have to lie in order to feel safe and secure, we are not in the ballpark of trust.
Honest self-presentation is actually built into us biologically. The muscles of our face are geared to portray in exact detail every mood and feeling we are having. This happens without conscious thought. So when we hide our truth, we are overriding a natural tendency. Our body wants to tell the truth. Our fear wants to cover it up.
We can distinguish honesty from self-disclosure. A trustworthy person is always honest but is not necessarily self-revealing to everyone. His sense of boundaries includes keeping some information about himself private. In fact, at times he may be obliged to do this—as in maintaining confidentiality. As wise adults, we are unconditionally honest in our dealings and conditionally self-disclosing. We are unconditionally honest in our speech and conditional about what we choose to reveal.
For instance, in loving-kindness, our honest opinion of others has to be seasoned with compassion. We tell as much of our truth as we imagine they can handle and in as kind a way as possible. Here we face conflicting imperatives. One rule is to be honest, and another is to be kind. It is not a struggle between good and evil but between good and good. When we keep practicing loving-kindness, we always know which path to choose.
Some people lie to their partners about their past, what they did and with whom, as, for example, in the film Deception. Some partners lie about their present feelings. They may not tell us what is positive about us, such as how much we mean to them. They may hide what is negative, such as the fact that for them the thrill in the relationship is gone, that someone else has captured their fancy, that they are leaving tomorrow. Some partners lie about the future. They promise us the moon but have no intention of giving it to us. They vow fidelity but secretly retain the right to break that vow if someone better comes along. Their fidelity is contingent on their options.
That secret holdout shows the primacy of “me” over “us.” Those who hold out without telling us may feel that it is legitimate to do so. They may believe it is a needed protection of their liberty, something to which they are entitled. Trustworthiness toward a partner is secondary to their own needs and therefore not of great value to them. A truly trustworthy person has become mature enough not to be fickle. He gives up the chance of getting immediate gratification from a better offer that has come along. He has become willing to subordinate his own pleasure to the tremendous value of an enduring commitment. This is what is meant by true fidelity.
It is hard to know whether someone is a liar unless he slips up and gives us a clue. But there are people we trust implicitly and rightly so. There are also people we never quite trust, though we have no specific evidence, just an intuitive sense about them. That doubt will not be acceptable very long in a healthy adult relationship. The one with the doubts will want to address the issue until suspicions are laid to rest. It is important to check out our doubts, to say out loud that we are having them. We can usually tell by the response, especially if it is defensive and blustering, whether we have hit a nerve. By the way, the ability to lie to someone’s face and look sincere is not a talent but a major and tragic deficit in the ongoing enterprise of human relating. Not to be embarrassed or ashamed of oneself (healthy shame) for lying is a clear sign of untrustworthiness.
It is rare for a person to lie only once. People who lie to us are usually doing it in a variety of areas. Some people lie automatically in order to prevent others from seeing what’s really going on. Addicts lie repeatedly to protect their addiction, for example. As we have been seeing, integrity is always the best indicator of trustworthiness. We can trust that we are with someone who tells the truth by noticing her standards with people across the board. If she lies, cheats, steals in the wider world, she is most likely doing it with us. If her life program involves a commitment to integrity, honesty, and loving-kindness in all her dealings, we can trust her to be that way with us.
Humans have become quite adept at concealing. A boy walks to school every day from kindergarten to twelfth grade with his best friend. He has been beaten by his mother this morning or last night, and he does remember it but he will not tell. He does not discuss it even with his own brother, who has also been beaten. He could have told the story of his pain and asked for comforting. Most of us boys were so repressed we could not chance asking for the five A’s from a male friend, lest he think we were weak or perhaps coming on to him. We learned early to trust our fear more than our right to ask for support.
We also had to hide the violence done to us because we did not want to be seen as victims, an image not compatible with being a “man” in our society. Instead, we kept up appearances, covering up our pain and the violence of others toward us. How sadly ironic, since that is precisely how we remain victimized.
The boy in this example is not really lying to his friend, only not self-disclosing. He is protecting his mother’s image and his own embarrassing victimization. In that sense, he is lying to himself. In addition, society lied to him when it said that males are not allowed to be victims, only heroes; not to have needs, only solutions. The path to changing that in adult life is in admitting our wounds to someone we trust, asking for support, and grieving our childhood experience.
If our habit is lying within an adult relationship in order to maintain our own self-centered purposes, our work is not grief but direct change through a commitment to truthfulness. The tools of psychology or psychotherapy alone won’t get us there. This may require a spiritual program. Once we develop our spiritual consciousness, our commitment is to appearing as we are rather than having to look good at all times, telling the truth about ourselves even when it is embarrassing, expressing our appropriate feelings as they arise, asserting our needs no matter how vulnerable they make us look. When we live by such standards as those, we can trust ourselves to be truthful rather than caught in the default setting of lying-to-protect. It is only when there is no longer anything to protect that lies can yield to honest self-presentation. We recall Janis Joplin singing, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
We are sometimes lying to ourselves in subtle ways: we might deny when and how we need help, what our real needs are, what addictions we are caught in, how much or even whether we really love those we say we do. These lies also originate in fear. We are afraid of the challenge underlying each one. We stop lying to ourselves when we admit to ourselves and someone we trust who we really are, with all our shortcomings. Lies thrive in an atmosphere of isolation. This is why having a trustworthy support system makes it easier to be honest.
When we lie to others, we are cheating ourselves. Getting what we want has become more important than maintaining our integrity. We lower our opinion of ourselves because we know that we are liars. That causes a dangerous erosion of our self-esteem. We cheat ourselves and lose our self-respect.
It is intriguing and curious, by the way, that lies figure into the stories of the origin of most religions and become useful teachings. In Judaism, Jacob lies to his father by masquerading as Esau to steal his brother’s inheritance. In Christianity, Peter lies three times about knowing Jesus. The Buddha’s father lied to his son about the world, protecting him from knowing there were such realities as sickness, old age, and death. Krishna, in one interpretation of the story, lies to the goatherdesses, telling each of them that she is the only one for him, as he secretly engages in sex with all of them, by turns.
All four of these lies are based on fear and the desire to protect. Jacob is afraid to miss out on an inheritance and wants to advance his own offspring. Peter is afraid of being arrested and lies to protect his life. The Buddha’s father feared that his son might be saddened by the givens of life, so he tried to protect him from them. Perhaps Krishna lies for fear of not experiencing all the women and to protect his image as faithful in each of their opinions.
In each instance, the lie is a teaching device that opens us to a transcendent truth. Jacob’s lie shows how an unethical act can lead to a mystical journey. Peter’s lie shows the power of fear and the force of repentance. The Buddha discovers the reality of suffering, and that leads to his enlightenment and to teaching us how to find freedom. Krishna is the trickster whose lie reveals to us the folly of believing in special entitlements.
Now our challenge is to learn all that from the truth just as it is. Gandhi is our model, since he believed in the power of truth and was willing to put his life on the line for it. He could do this because his protest had no aggressive charge attached to it. Gandhi could believe fervently but keep his focus on the action, his spiritual practice, which does away with every mind-set, every ego wish to hit back, every ego fear to turn back. We have that same pure potential for trusting in truth. The path to that trust is telling the truth, which is also the path to trusting ourselves.
A Double Life
Some people seem cut out for a steady, monogamous relationship, staying close to hearth and home. They like spending most of their time in the company of a partner and family, having a home together, and being householders. Others like having relationships but seem not to be cut out for staying put. They prefer to keep fires going in a variety of places. They may have another partner somewhere, a wanderlust, or other fascinations that take them away for long periods. They may not want a special someone. But they do want one person they can keep coming back to.
Any of these styles can work if it is mutually acceptable. This means that each person is willing to be honest about his or her agenda and has no secret sideline. One person may say, “I want to settle down and get married and live with you and be faithful to you.” Another may say, “I want to be free to come and go, not be married, have an open relationship, but remain connected to you as my home-base person.” Whatever adults choose to do with their eyes wide open can work as long as there is honesty and a willingness to engage in the extra work it takes to keep the relationship afloat.
The problems begin when someone says he wants to settle down but secretly plans to wander, another form of the unilateral style. This is secrecy as a form of lying, a violation of trust. The partner at home may never doubt the other person, in which case her trust is a mistake. Or she may live in doubt, never knowing for sure what the other is up to, while continually looking for clues. Trust is not viable in either example, nor is intimate relating happening.
A central feature of a trustworthy commitment is keeping agreements. A partner who is leading a double life cannot offer that. A secret life refers to a parallel existence in which someone is engaging in another relationship, an addiction, or another set of behaviors, known only to himself. This can take the form of having an affair or having one or more partners or families in other towns. It may also be a sex addiction, such as to pornography, frequenting of strip clubs or prostitutes. It may involve an alternative lifestyle, such as a sexual orientation not in keeping with what someone says is his. The addiction can also be to gambling, alcohol, or drugs.
An irony appears in the choice of a double life. Usually, the one who engages in secrecy seeks to keep the focus of a partner or family away from himself. Yet, by his lifestyle, he actually draws attention to himself. That is an example of the human comedy at work: we do what is meant to protect us from scrutiny and thereby draw it to ourselves more emphatically.
People who engage in a double life usually do not see what they do as breaking trust with the other person. They believe, or rationalize, that they have certain needs that their partner cannot fully understand and should not be required to fulfill. They rationalize that they can find their own private satisfaction of these needs without harm to their primary relationship. They might not want to upset their stable life at home by letting the truth come out. They might be ashamed or afraid to let their needs be known. They might believe they are “only experimenting” and that justifies their behavior.
Surreptitiousness is the style of a double life. We are purposely misleading our partner. Our motive is not to protect our inner core, as it is in legitimate secrecy, but rather trying to appear one way and act in another. This is why a secret life that is meant to deceive a partner lacks integrity. We are giving the impression that we are maintaining a bond when in truth we’re not.
Some people enjoy the success of their deception because it means they have fooled others. However, gaining a sense of power and satisfaction by getting away with something, pulling the wool over someone’s eyes, is a sign of immaturity. A mature adult will not find pleasure or power in trickery or sham but in sharing, in coming forward, in affirming an identity rather than masking it.
The partner who is being deceived may be truly in the dark. She may also be aware that something is afoot but choose not to inquire into it. She may be afraid to know, or simply not interested in knowing, as long as she has a minimally or generally satisfying or at least nonabusive relationship with her partner.
Some partners lead a double life but not a secret life. They tell their partners openly about their choice to engage in extracurricular activities. The other partner can then decide how to respond. One person may find it a deal-breaker. Another may choose to go along with the program but not to be told of the details. She may take similar action and begin a double life as well. It is also possible that a deeply revealing conversation about the plan for a double life can be so satisfying and illuminating that it does not have to be acted on after all! It is up to each couple to plan their style, but honesty at each step of the way is necessary if there is to be any level of trust.
An unrevealed, surreptitious life certainly contains its own brand of excitement, an adrenaline rush that is a major feature of the enjoyment. The ancient Greek poet Pindar wrote, “Secrecy has added pleasure to the activity.” The surreptitious style of a double life makes for thrills not to be found in ordinary relating. Committed adults will not be captivated by that enticement, though they will not deny the appeal of the sirens’ lay.
Practice
LETTING GO OF OBSESSION
We may be quite comfortable at home by the hearth, but we are in love with someone who is happier being Peter Pan. We then might become obsessed with the idea of getting him to stay put, wondering about his whereabouts, and being generally unhappy because he does not come through as we want him to. This same style can refer to any relationship in which one person wants more than what the other is willing to offer.
If we become obsessed with our Peter Pan, we give him power over us: he is now in charge of our happiness. Coins have two sides, and human coinage is no different. One side of the coin is that Peter Pan matters to us; the other side is the power we give him. One side is beyond our control; the other isn’t. There is very little we can do to erase or even lessen our feelings for someone. But we can stop granting him power over us.
If you are obsessed with a partner or a potential partner, try—behave, not pretend—disempowering that person in your psyche: Act as if he were no longer the be-all and end-all of your life using the model for reducing ego, the FACE exercise:
Fear: Ask yourself what you are afraid of, and then affirm that where fear is, you can act with loving-kindness instead, no matter what the other person does. Recommit yourself to regular loving-kindness practice. (In this practice, do not mention him by name but include him only in a general way—for example, “May my friends be happy.”)
Attachment: Say to yourself, “In each way that I am unhealthily attached to this person, I let go. I give up all my strategies to make him into what I want him to be.”
Control: “Wherever I am trying to control his behavior so he will want me more, I allow him to be who he is and demand nothing more from him. I give up wishing it could be more. I now put my emphasis on how to be a good friend to myself, him, and everyone. I use healthy control to maintain my boundaries.”
Entitlement: You do have a right to happiness, but you don’t have the right to demand it from anyone. Keep asking yourself, “How can I hold this relationship so that I don’t expect it to deliver something to me?”
When We Cheat
Our capacity to be faithful to someone begins to show itself in adolescence when we are loyal to friends or to a partner. Some of us lack this capacity. Then fidelity is proportional to the opportunities that come along. For instance, a person may be remaining faithful in a relationship mostly because no more attractive person has become available.
When we are in a relationship and a new person sweeps us off our feet, our excitement may be coming from him or her. However, it may also be coming from within ourselves, a mental projection of how wonderful it would be and how perfect life would become if we only had that person in our lives. Such a projection reeks with denial of the given of life that nothing stays the same for very long. Projection here refers to our wishful thinking about what something means, who someone really is, or what someone will give us and for how long.
This kind of projection is powerful for two reasons. Physically, it is fed by adrenaline, the lifeblood of addiction. Psychologically, it is fed by instinctive need. For instance, we want to be accepted as we are, and our spouse is continually criticizing us. We meet someone who does accept us unconditionally, who loves us, foibles and all. We project onto her the archetype of the perfect lover, the one who truly gets us, our soul mate. Some of the projection is reality-based, since our needs will indeed be fulfilled by this person. Some of the projection is based on a wish that our need for acceptance will be perfectly slaked at last, after too long and frustrating a thirst.
When adrenaline and projection kick in, we are sitting ducks for the drama of infidelity. The forces of thrill and desire become so overwhelming that a spouse, no matter how faultless, cannot compete with the new love interest in our lives. A familiar partner or spouse can make all the right moves but can’t awaken that special chemistry that happens in an exciting new dalliance. This is because the person having the affair:
• Feels wanted, valued, desirable, and for those reasons exceedingly satisfied, no matter how objectively ordinary the whole experience may be.
• Can make his own choices and be his free-spirited self rather than fulfill the obligations of a co-parent, a household business partner, or a caretaker, as at home.
• Has nothing to prove, always measures up, does not have to look or act a certain way, is not judged by age or body shape.
• Is more relaxed at home, since he can be more patient with his partner. While being duplicitous and engaging in deceit, “It is now easier to be nice on the outside while still being angry at or indifferent toward you on the inside.”
• Has noticed that time stands still during an assignation with the lover, so there is a sense of the transcendent in the air.
• Is entranced by the special intensity, fueled by the secrecy in the sexual pleasure.
• Has more permission to be uninhibited, to try new forms of pleasure, including recreational drugs, which may not be acceptable to the partner at home.
• Finds an adrenaline rush in the surreptitious planning of assignations as well as the anxiety about being found out.
• Feels the thrill of close attachment to someone who fulfills needs long unattended to.
With respect to this last point, we can notice that the ultimate motivation for most addictive bonds is a merger experience. Our search for merger goes back to the symbiotic phase in infancy, when our oneness with Mother meant total safety and security. All through life, we may long for access to the ocean of mystical oneness. This is our inclination toward the transcendent. Our fear of losing contact with that power once we find it can make us possessive. That is certainly visible in romantic love in which we want so much to possess our partner. Our desire for the transcendent, combined with possessiveness, shows up in any addiction.
How ironic that we seek the permanently transcendent in addictions, which can offer it only temporarily. We seek the profound in shallow ground. This is why recovery from any addiction is ultimately a spiritual program requiring a bond with a “higher power,” the healthy alternative to the merger we experience when we use drugs or alcohol. Now we have found that which is deep, not shallow; ongoing, not temporary; maturing, not infantilizing.
Regarding the “anxiety about being found out” in the list above, we notice that affairs thrive on suspense: “When and where can we next meet safely?” “Will we be caught?” “Will we ever be together permanently?” A healthy person is looking for suspense only in books and movies, not in his relationships. In adult intimacy, we seek the five A’s in an atmosphere of security and safety, reciprocally provided and tranquilly reliable.
Our adult challenge is always to follow our bliss. It is also to follow and investigate our wishes, feelings, and behavior. Yet, in all this, we have to acknowledge and respect the contract we have made with our partner. It also provides us information. As we explore our infidelity and its meaning, we read our new love interest as a dramatic portrayal of what is missing in our relationship. We can choose to act with integrity and to deal directly with our partner about what is missing. Then we decide together or singly whether our primary relationship does have a future, and we take action accordingly. If we decide to work something out within our relationship, we end the affair. Only if our original relationship ends do we make ourselves available to this other person. This, of course, does not apply in “open relationships” in which the partners have agreed beforehand on a nonmonogamous lifestyle.
We know that we have become wiser when we make the transition from the need for the cloak-and-dagger adrenaline rush to the need for honesty and a decision to reconstitute the original relationship or to break up amicably. Our body confirms the sanity of our choice, since that transition will feel right all over, like the shift from a breakfast of black coffee, a doughnut, and a cigarette to a breakfast of wholesome oatmeal.
The sense of satisfaction from such a decision is not hot and heavy, but we no longer crave that anyway. Now we want contented energy, not stressful energy. This is how we know that the Don Juan archetype has finally yielded to the committed partner archetype. Now when other women appear on our horizon who look better than our spouse or offer what we see as more than we are getting at home, we take it only as information, not as a motivation to stray. Our options may be entertaining, but they are not entrancing.
Self-deception and rationalization can enable untrustworthy individuals to continue their unfaithful behavior. They may be remorseful, but only after their untrustworthy actions are disclosed. They may then profess to value the one they have hurt, but this may be to avoid the consequences of loss of home, family, and lifestyle. Remorse is sorrow about one’s offenses. Repentance is sorrow with a sincere desire to make amends and to amend one’s life. A person who is untrustworthy may feel remorse but not repentance.
A deceptive partner might never have felt an obligation to be trustworthy. This is a form of sociopathy in which untrustworthiness—or even crime—is allowed and not considered immoral or unfair. The perpetrator feels that he or she is above the rules of fair play but would not tolerate being treated in that same way.
A sociopath is a person with no guilt or sense of loyalty. He is distinguished from the psychopath, who is, in addition, violent and dangerous to society. Any person may cope with stress by numbing his own feelings and thereby losing his empathy for others’ pain.
We all have the potential to act in sociopathic ways. The imperial ego can make us believe we need not follow the same rules that others do. Our untrustworthiness, we think, does not count against us because we are more intelligent or more evolved than others. We believe ourselves entitled to special privileges in relationships and in life in general. We believe that our needs are highly complex and unique, so only we can decide how they are to be satisfied. In this mind-set, we deceive others about our needs and plans to avoid interference or interruption.
When We Are Betrayed
The breakdown of trust in a relationship is a much more hurtful moment than the breakup of the relationship. To be betrayed inflicts a deep wound that takes a long time to get over. We feel alone—that is, we feel we have no one to trust. This makes our pain so piercing. Our partner, no matter how repentant, can help but can’t really get us through it. Only time and work on ourselves can make a difference. The work is grieving the loss of an uncomplicated connection with our partner—and of our own innocence.
We who are betrayed are confronting a radically adult choice. We can follow the well-trodden path of lamenting our woebegone state, sinking into self-pity and despair, or licking our ego’s wounds by nursing blame, hatred, and plans for revenge. (In all these cases, our physical and psychological health are likely to suffer.)
Or we can choose a path of courage and compassion: we can feel our grief and let our feelings of sadness, anger, and fear lead us to examine our past and how similar betrayals happened to us before. As we stay with our feelings without blame or the need to retaliate, we are healing ourselves and acting with integrity. Then a path can open for us to finish some of our unfinished business from former relationships and to get on with our life, with or without a partner.
As we heal, we rejoice in how much lighter we feel with fewer illusions. That joy is worth so much more than continuing the sham of shelter and security. After all, our life purpose was always about evolving from narrow ego safety into an enlightened openness. And this is helping us get there, albeit kicking and screaming—but there’s no shame in that.
Part of the reason that being left by someone is so difficult is that it is not only a loss or betrayal. We notice when we are left by someone that three archetypes come to roost in our lives: the orphan, the freed slave, and the hero. We feel abandoned, which brings in the orphan archetype. We are released from being with someone who is not really into us, which connects us to the archetype of the freed slave. Finally, the pain we feel is initiatory—that is, it makes us strong enough to face whatever other dragons may come along. Now we are in the hero archetype.
These three archetypal energies happening all at once make the experience somewhat incoherent. Yet they are enormously useful to our growth when we become conscious of them and work with each to gain both its benefits and its graces. The orphan archetype offers us the opportunity to stand alone and survive that way. The freed slave makes room for us to move on in our own life and make new choices that more adequately fit our needs and desires. The hero archetype is about empowerment, so what has happened readies us for whatever challenge may next arise. In addition, making friends with these three energies in our deep self increases our lively energy. This is just what we need to get on with life.
In any ending forced upon us, a spiritual opportunity has also arisen. Every betrayal in a relationship challenges our belief in permanence and our entitlement to fidelity. Being left by a partner who has found someone new is certainly an excruciating way to learn those truths. But from the point of view of spiritual awakening, infidelity toward us is a wake-up call, helping us dismantle our ego. When we realize that promises made to us will not necessarily be kept just because we are who we are, we are finding a path to humility. When we realize that our safe house was only a house of cards, we are being graced with a chance to release ourselves from fantasy in favor of the truth. We may notice that when we are attached to a fantasy and someone brings us down to earth, we will feel as if he took something from us. This adds to our sadness and anger, which helps us grieve more effectively.
When we realize that our wishes don’t matter to the one who has abandoned us, we are being given the gift of freedom from our childish holdouts from the givens of adult life. This blow to our sense of specialness, this feeling of not being valued, this kick in the teeth—none of this is fun, deserved, or desirable. But this is an opportunity for the practice of letting go of ego entitlement and illusion. Betrayal hurts but does not have to harm, not any more than the surgeon harms us with her scalpel. Imagine giving ego-dismantling such priority that we might even welcome the chance to let it happen!
When we are faced with betrayal, these verses from the poet Rumi encourage us to focus on letting go of ego rather than strategizing:
Don’t keep trying to find new ways to move across the chessboard.
Listen for when the word “checkmate” will be directed at you.
Why We Put Up with Pain
When there is a breakdown of trust, we wonder why sometimes the betrayed or abused partner tolerates unhappiness and hurt for quite a while rather than taking expeditious action to make a change. It is a mystery about us humans that we will sometimes act or persist in self-defeating ways:
We may undermine our chances for fulfillment or contentment.
We may be drawn easily into situations in which we will suffer, as in a relationship in which we know that our partner strays.
We may stay in such a relationship for a lifetime. When others offer to help us, we may say no.
We may stay in relationships characterized by abuse or mistreatment even when safer and more secure options are available to us.
We may meet up with healthy candidates for relationship but consider them boring or uninteresting.
Putting up with pain is a form of giving up on our own strength, a loss of self-trust. Here are some possible reasons that people stay put in relationships that hurt rather than move on to greener pastures—or at least safer pastures. They apply to any stuckness in life or any failure to launch. Notice that most of them are examples of despair.
• To go requires letting go. That means grieving the failure or abuse, something we resist.
• Most painful situations become so gradually, and we become used to them. Our suffering becomes an absorption in a drama rather than a pointer to the exit. We may be like the frog in water that is being heated gradually. It is less likely to hop out quickly, as it would if it were thrown into water already boiling.
• The painful circumstances may be familiar in both senses: they resemble our family background, and we feel accustomed to them. They have become so routine that we fail to notice that they are unacceptable. There is a natural link between familiarity and safety. Unless we break that connection, we are at the mercy of it. The real safety is in our daring to move on, not in our standing still, waiting for a push.
• “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know” may be the superstition we live by, a fear of the unknown.
• “Nothing better will come along” is an attitude that reflects an inability to imagine an alternative, which is itself another form of despair.
• Inertia may be happening: a body at rest tends to stay that way, a default setting that can lead to sloth.
• Some of us were brought up to believe that the purpose of life is to endure pain rather than to be happy. Then putting up with a predicament of ongoing abuse can seem like fulfilling our main life purpose. Our religion may promise a reward in the hereafter if we endure pain now. This confirms our despondency about deserving happiness today.
• Connection of any kind may be more important than happiness.
• Intervals of happiness—intermittent reinforcement—make us more likely to stay put.
• We may convince ourselves: “It’s not that bad” or “not that bad yet.”
• Physical acute pain yields to healing so we associate pain with a positive result.
• We may believe that this is the only relationship possible for us since we are so inadequate—our fate.
• We may believe that our suffering will attract a rescuer to save us, so our best bet is to make sure our victimization is dramatic, obvious, and enduring.
• We might believe that we can rescue the one who brings pain into our life. Moving into the rescuer archetype raises our pain threshold. We then become obsessed with helping a partner who wants to continue his or her dysfunctional behavior. Our partner’s story becomes our own. This is an inappropriate loyalty that interferes with our going on in our own life.
• We engage in wishful thinking that things will change for the better. Such false hope is a form of despair, since we have given up on our own power and insight. Real hope is based on actual evidence of progress.
• We may be hesitant “for fear to be a king,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, afraid of the blossoming of our own powers, which happens when we take a courageous step out of pain.
• Someone may be telling us not to make a move, and we are following orders. Then our obedience, not an adult virtue except for the orderly running of society, becomes our obstacle to getting on with our own life.
• We might be waiting our turn to hurt the other person. Our stubborn desire to take suitable revenge or to prove something to ourselves or others can hold us back tragically and pathetically.
• We may be so dependent on or attached to the material goods that have resulted from a relationship that we might stay in it so as not to lose them.
• Moving out of our unpleasant lifestyle means we have chosen to move on to the next chapter of life. We might unconsciously be afraid that thereby we are one era closer to our death. So our remaining on the stage of agony now is our way of avoiding the final curtain. Are we such subtle escapists?
Our personal history shows that sometimes our expectations have been magnificently met. At other times, we have been let down. Yet something in us keeps trying nonetheless to trust again. We keep placing our tender trust in hearts that may turn out, this time, to be warm flesh, not cold stone. That quality is the essence of optimism, something to be proud of. When it becomes a long-term style, however, it is the codependency that makes us servile to those who hurt us. Then we have “trust entrenched in narrow pain,” as Emily Dickinson describes it. We are codependent when we stay where we are hurt, deceived, or disappointed over and over. Some of us deny the evidence for untrustworthiness in the hope that real love and commitment might develop later, and we are willing to wait. Such waiting is the opposite of getting on with life. We keep waiting for more where there is only the same or even less.
One way to move out of codependency is to update what may have been an unhealthy childhood definition of love, as we have, for instance, updated our definition of a suitable diet. If showing love included people-pleasing, putting up with abuse, and not speaking up or showing authentic feelings, our definition is harming us. The adult meaning of showing love is an attitude of loving-kindness toward others while maintaining healthy love of ourselves through self-care, stating boundaries, refusing to tolerate abuse, and being honest about our feelings.
When the way we show love toward others now is based on a self-defeating definition, we are putting ourselves at risk in many ways: People-pleasing drains our creativity. Continual abuse wrecks our self-esteem. Not speaking up can make us doubt ourselves. Holding back on our feelings reduces and depletes our lively energy.
Our years in an empty, deadlocked marriage with no intimacy, no sex, no sense of being deeply loved, are not reckoned only in time. They are shovelfuls of sand that relentlessly bury us. Moreover, the full extent of the deleterious impact—the diminishment of our spirit—can elude us. We may never even realize how cunningly and unalterably our hearts are being narrowed and mangled by staying in such a cheerless relationship—just as we may never know how insidiously pollution is affecting our bodies. We can’t escape the air, but we can escape the house, if only we can wrest the key from the hand of fear.
If we finally do leave a situation that has become empty, abusive, or untrustworthy, we may wonder whether we are being vindictive. It helps to distinguish two motivations for leaving: To “take my marbles and go” in order to get back at someone is retaliation. To leave what cannot work so we can find self-healing, with no intention to hurt the other, is not retaliation but the maintaining of healthy boundaries and a choice for happiness, the choice we all deserve.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
—FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1933
Practices for Rebuilding Broken Trust
We know that our trust in our partner is based on a record of his or her trustworthiness. When there has been a breakdown of trust, the record no longer stands. If our partner wants to save the relationship and is willing to give up the infidelity and work on restoration of the commitment, rebuilding trust is risky because now all we have to go on is a promise, not a record. And that promise is from someone who has just betrayed us. We are entering an in-between space in which all we can do is risk trusting until a new record of trustworthiness is established. It is up to us to decide whether salvaging the relationship is worth taking that chance. If it is, the following practices will help.
NOTICING HOW OUR PAST IS PRESENT
Rebuilding trust is a practice that does not apply only to a relationship in which the trust has been broken. Most of us are rebuilding trust all our lives because of early or later abuse, neglect, abandonments, and disappointments. Broken trust in our present relationship triggers similar issues from childhood or past relationships, so when trust breaks down in the present, we are most ripe for the work of tackling and healing the past. We know our old griefs are being resolved when our grievances are gone.
A helpful practice is distinguishing our experiencing self from our observing self. The experiencing self is the part of us that is immersed in our feelings and thoughts. The observing self is the part of us that can more dispassionately witness our experience—it’s our larger awareness and wisdom. For example, the experiencing self says, “I feel threatened. The people I love always leave me.” The observing self, a more objective witness, says, “This betrayal is triggering a memory from the past. Since this is more about the past than the present, I am being invited to work on my unfinished business.”
This practice is not about choosing the observer over the experiencer. It’s not an either-or. Noticing and accepting both as real is the wisdom that supports our healing and growth. To deny or ridicule the experiencing self decreases self-trust and shames us. This practice works best when we can identify with both selves simultaneously: “I feel this and I realize it is a trigger reaction from the past and I still feel this.” Then a coherent narrative can follow, and we can address, process, and resolve our past, yet still present, fear. This is how we gain a perspective that is not fear-driven.
Here is what the practice may sound like:
I feel hurt and scared as I see my life falling apart because of my partner’s infidelity.
This combination of hurt and fear is familiar—which does not lessen the wallop of this recent event.
I let myself remember my story from both childhood and adult relationships. This is how I simultaneously address what is happening now and what happened in the past.
I let myself feel my hurt as sadness. I let myself feel my fear fully with no attempt to escape from it. I let myself feel my anger toward all the people in my life who have betrayed me. This is how I process what went before and connect it to what is going on now.
I notice I am resolving some of my unfinished emotional business by practicing this as much as is necessary. I keep focusing on my story and my work, not on revenge against my partner.
Now I realize that my fear is a throwback to a time in my life when I was powerless. My commitment to this practice is restoring my powers.
My affirmations are: I allow all my feelings and am free of fear. I am using this event as an opportunity to heal my past and increase my adult powers.
A caveat is necessary: Our intellectual knowledge of our past is always a representation of it, not necessarily what actually happened. We presume that our thinking gives us an accurate portrayal of reality, but it may simply be reflecting itself, like an image of ourselves in a mirror. In any case, we can work with our memories and find the most accurate version of them. This can happen when our cellular, bodily, feelings and sensations evoke our implicit memory of what happened to us in the past: “I lose my power when someone shows anger toward me.” We join this to an explicit memory narrative: “My father used to hit me, and I could not hit back.” The early experience of anger was associated with powerlessness. We know a reaction is from childhood when it is strong and we are not.
When we recognize this connection, bodily memory becomes personal history. We can work with it by acknowledging that fact and feeling our feelings as indicators of our present strength to move on. Then we are no longer victims of what happened to us long ago. We are victims when the memories remain unconscious. We are victims when the old connections seem real and become hooks and triggers that initiate a dysfunctional reaction. This practice can release us from such conditioning.
THE WORK OF THE PARTNER WHO BROKE TRUST
If you are the unfaithful partner, whether you want to leave the relationship or stay in it, this part of the practice is the same:
Admit what you did, honestly and fully, to your partner.
Show your sorrow about the pain your partner has been feeling, including compassion for her pain and acceptance of her anger, without defending your position.
Make the amends that you and your partner agree upon.
Stay with your partner as you both work through the restructuring or ending of your relationship.
If you plan to stay in the relationship, you can also:
Commit to end this infidelity and to remain monogamous for the future.
Focus on rebuilding trust in the relationship, using therapy if necessary, and work with the practice below, entitled “When Both Partners Want to Work on the Relationship.”
If the issue is not limited to this instance of infidelity but is part of a sex addiction, join a twelve-step program. To demand that a partner trust us when we refuse recovery is saying, “Join me in my denial.”
Finally, pay special attention to what is missing in yourself. Earlier in this chapter, we explored how our infidelity points to “what is missing in our relationship.” This usually refers to a lack in our partner. We then look for or come upon someone who can give us what our partner lacks. However, “what is missing” also refers to something awry in the inner life of the partner who is having the affair.
The fact that any affair has an addictive, compulsive quality is a clue that we are trying to fill a need inside that may be a bottomless pit, an indicator that it is an unmet need from our childhood. Thus, the issue for us when we are unfaithful is not only what is missing in our relationship but what is overly needed by us.
Generally, when a need was met in a healthy way in early life, we have the capacity to be satisfied with a moderate amount of that need fulfillment ever after. However, our unmet needs have an altogether different fate. They become insatiable. This, as we saw above, leads to an addictive clinging to and obsession with anyone who seems to offer just the brand of fulfillment we always wanted. The excitement and sense of appreciation we feel toward the one who makes this happen makes us feel that we are in love. In authentic love, repose follows union. Insatiability is a signal that we are mistaking immediate fulfillment for full-on love.
The work is to mourn our past with all its unmet needs and to acknowledge with an unconditional yes just how inadequate our childhood was.1
When we do this without blame or hate toward our parents, we begin to free ourselves from our past. Our search for someone who can give us all we missed becomes an openness to the manifold ways it can happen—for example, through friends, career accomplishments, self-esteem, the sense of being held by a higher power.
Our validation then comes from within. We learn to hold our need without going outside our relationship and without putting too much pressure on our primary relationship to get it met. As a result, we notice a natural toning down of our need, something we can’t discipline ourselves into. It happens as a consequence of our work on ourselves. Without that work, we are sitting ducks for the next person who comes along and winks at us in just that special way.
THE PERSONAL WORK OF THE PARTNER WHO WAS BETRAYED
Mourning is our practice when we experience a loss of trust. We let ourselves feel sadness that our trust is lost, anger at the one taking it away, and fear that we will never find it again. We stay with the feelings of grief for as long as they are up for us. This automatically leads to a letting go of our pain, and we stop blaming ourselves or anyone else.
It is important to pay particular attention to our anger, defined as displeasure at an injustice. This means that anger is appropriate when it is based on the breaking of an agreement, a hurt at the heart level. Alternatively, an expectation is held by only one person. We are hurt at the ego level because our sense of entitlement was not honored. That anger is a frustration that can become aggressive and unhealthy. When we are committed to personal integrity, we look within ourselves to explore our anger. If it is appropriate, based on the breaking of a bilateral agreement, we express our anger directly to our partner, always nonviolently. When our anger is the indignation of our disappointed ego, we call ourselves on our projections and expectations. Then we bring our whole experience—and our unsatisfactory partner—to our loving-kindness practice.
In either case, we eventually find healing for ourselves when we come to see the infidelity as a fact. We say yes to the reality without further protest. This attitude of unconditional yes moves us in the direction of full acceptance of what happened to our relationship and puts us in the best position to deal with it. We do not condone what happened. We do not become involved in the drama that happened between our partner and his lover. To the extent we can stay focused on ourselves and what is up next for our own relationship with our partner, we are in the best position for healing.
All this applies only to a single affair or instance of infidelity. If infidelities keep happening or are part of a general and ongoing rejection of intimacy, we do not have the makings of a healthy relationship and need to confront that, probably most appropriately in therapy.
If the infidelity is a form of revenge, hate, or meanness toward us, then therapy is not sufficient. This level of malice requires a spiritual conversion to loving-kindness if there is ever to be repentance and true amendment.
If the betrayed partner has steered the other into an affair, for whatever reason, the issue requires careful inquiry into what the relationship is really about and what resentments or despair are in the mix.
If our partner’s infidelity is part of a sex addiction, our practice is to join a twelve-step program such as S-Anon.
In any case, commitments like these can help:
I let go of my pictures of who I thought you were.
I let go of any demand that you live up to them.
I will not retaliate.
I look for ways to forgive but to maintain my boundaries too. (When we forgive, we let go of our attachment to the one whose offenses have occupied us. Thus, forgiveness represents a healthy separation, a maintaining of boundaries, a freedom from attachment. We also let go of blame and the need to get back at the person who offended us. Forgiveness thereby gives us the opportunity to reconnect and the freedom to move on.)
I send loving-kindness to you every day and to myself too.
I move along on my own journey.
I move along on the journey we are on together, if that can happen. Then, I offer to begin again with you by addressing, processing, resolving our issues.
We know we are becoming healthier and more spiritually aware when our focus is less and less on how the other hurt us. We orient ourselves instead toward three concerns: how we can gain in wisdom from our experience, how the betrayal has become an opportunity to practice mindfulness and loving-kindness, and where we go from here.
As long as we are demanding absolute trust from anyone or anything—no hurts, no broken promises, no letdowns—we are backing out of the most touching, vitalizing, and soul-deepening chapters of the human chronicle.
WHEN BOTH PARTNERS WANT TO WORK ON THE RELATIONSHIP
If both partners want to stay together and rebuild trust, the program is to explore the relationship and the infidelity, usually in the context of therapy.
This means looking into our trust histories, our fears of commitment, our sex life, our resentments and appreciations, our willingness and reluctance to start over. We focus on addressing our needs, calling them by name, admitting how long we have been unsatisfied. Then we process the infidelity by showing our feelings and noticing how they are connected to issues in our past. This leads to agreements about changing our relationship radically. These agreements can begin with the commitments listed at the end of the practice entitled “The Personal Work of the Partner Who Was Betrayed.”
In addition, we can make commitments such as these to each other:
I commit myself to trust you and to be trustworthy toward you.
I will respect your boundaries.
I will be honest about my feelings and behavior.
I will be open to your needs and share mine with you.
No matter what you do from here on in, I will never retaliate, though I will say “Ouch!” while looking for healthy ways to work things out with you.
When a problem arises, I want to listen to your concerns and join you in addressing, processing, and resolving our issue.
If our problems become too big for us to handle on our own, I am very willing to go to therapy.
My main commitment is to remain loyal and present to you. I plan to do this in any way I can and definitely by these five A’s:
Paying attention to you and your feelings.
Accepting you as you are.
Appreciating you and stating it often.
Showing you affection in physical ways without having it be sexual every time.
Allowing you the freedom to live in accord with your own deepest needs, values, and wishes while trusting you to remain faithful to our life as a couple.
The challenge is to form a new mutual understanding that commits both partners to a continual exchange of the five A’s and unconditional honesty. This includes keeping each other abreast of feelings, doubts, and agendas. It is an uphill struggle to rebuild trust, the equivalent of starting a relationship over. But it can be done as long as both partners are willing to do the work and keep doing it for as long as it takes to restabilize the relationship or place it on a new footing.
In addition to therapy, trust also builds in a relationship when the partners do things together that involve them in having an experience that is outside their home but that they engage in side by side—for example, going camping or skiing together, going on a retreat. A weekend together each month certainly increases intimacy.
Especially useful is mutual engagement in active lifestyle sports, events, or projects that require careful concentration so that both partners have their attention drawn to something that takes them out of themselves fully. Building such mutually enjoyable and outward-focused experiences into any life together is a fast track to becoming closer as a couple.
Consider also your motivation for rebuilding: do you want to reestablish your relationship because it means a lot to you? A way of knowing the answer to this question is to ask why you want to be with each other. If the answer is “Because we have children, are compatible, have a history, or have nowhere else to go,” your motivation is not enthusiastic enough to make for a real change.
If your answer is “Because we still love each other immensely, are really into each other, and are ready to make a full commitment to each other,” your motivation gives hope that the relationship can indeed come back to life.
In the first instance, you are settling for low stakes, adapting, reconciling yourself to the original status quo, seeking safety and security. In the second instance, you are animated by a chance at having the relationship you always wanted with the person you are really excited to be with.
You may notice that your way of relating in the recent past has been uncommitted, lackluster, or on-again, off-again. After an affair, both of you may realize that you cannot go back to the way it was. Half-in, half-out does not seem to be an option anymore. The opportunity opening to you is for total commitment to make the relationship all it can be with every agreement cheerfully kept, no holds barred and no hold-outs. Anything less will surely feel insincere, inadequate, and unfair to both of you.
There are indeed only two choices now: an unconditional commitment so you can take hold and move on together or a breakup so you can let go and move on separately. Both choices represent healthy change because both eventually lead you to your own truth. That means so much more than half-measures that avail nothing. I am reminded of an Italian saying: “meglio soli che mal accompagnati,” which means “better alone than badly joined.” From the half position we maintain the status quo and go nowhere. From the nothing position, we can go anywhere.
As we have been seeing, when it comes to rebuilding trust, any couple coming out of an episode of infidelity has a strike against it: it takes a while for the betrayed person to trust her partner and for the betrayer to establish a record of trustworthiness. Neither one can be expected to be enthusiastic for some time. Rather, you can expect to be tense and angry and to have low interest in each other for a while. This is not the best position from which to do the work, so patience becomes part of the commitment.
The mourning referred to in these practices is not only for the breakdown of trust. It is also for the low ebb your relationship had fallen to before the infidelity. It is also for your mutual willingness to tolerate that situation for as long as you did. This more extensive realization of where the unhingements and losses have been helps move the rebuilding process along. It is a delicate operation in any case, but it can be done.
All the mysterious angles in the infidelity issue make it larger than any list of practices can exhaust. The four practices above are like steps A, B, C, and D, and the rest of the alphabet awaits attention from each of us in his or her own way and time. This is because any seriously wounding betrayal or deception leads to a grief that does not yield to griefwork, no matter how long we engage in it.
Our more exacting, elusive, and subtle practice is to grow beyond the betrayal. We do this when a breakdown in trust is seen as a call to evolve beyond blindly trusting the promises humans make and beyond hating those who break them. Then we become bigger than our story. Our life is Buddha-size, not ego-size anymore.
For women, betrayal hits hard because the female psyche is so much about relatedness: “We had something special between us, and you gave it away to a stranger,” or “I wanted something special, and you did not give it to me but did give it to someone else.” For men, an infidelity may hit at the ego level: “I thought you were mine, and what was mine went elsewhere.” Both possibilities can, of course, apply to either sex.
In addition, for any of us, trust has a spiritual dimension, so the betrayal is a loss at that level too. That territory is not reclaimed through strategies but by the grace of time and the practices of mindfulness and loving-kindness.
Finally, we do well to acknowledge that not everything that has been broken can be mended. A naive belief within the self-help movement is that any problem within a relationship can be processed and resolved, given enough effort and therapy. That is not always the case, as our life experience has sometimes shown. Sadly, some events that happen in a partnership remain irresolvable, so all we can do is let go of our relationship and move on along our own path. This is, understandably, a daunting challenge for us. To let go of a relationship is to let go of all the encouraging hope that it might have worked. To go on is to be alone, a most unwelcome prospect. After all, we are the beings whose history began with the importance of huddling together and who have evolved to the importance of cuddling together.
The fact that not everything can be mended—or ended—also has a positive dimension. The element of inconsolability in major griefs, the way some regrets hang on, the stamina of certain memories, may all be serving us quite well. Perhaps the lasting impact of inexpugnable griefs is silently making us more sensitive, more creative, more compassionate, more humble.
Our hearts hold such labyrinthine ways, who knows how they really work? Maybe they can open fully only through hurt. Maybe their most profound beat is the echo of an ache.
Recently, I tried to throw away a seemingly useless program in my computer. A message popped up: “This item cannot be eliminated because it is required to make your system work effectively.” We can trust that our psyche operates in that same way. Some events and feelings remain raggedly unsettled in us, and we have to trust that they make our human system work better—who knows how? This may explain why not every one of our psychological issues can, or is meant to, be fully addressed, finally processed, or completely resolved.
Our assignment is only to let go of our relentless need to control our feelings and to keep granting hospitality to our story, with all its gaps in need of mending and all its griefs that have no tidy ending.
What a complex and enigmatic challenge it is to understand—and to become—fully human.
It takes just such evil and painful things for the great emancipation to occur.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
1. I explore all this in detail and present practices that can serve as resources in my book When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds That Sabotage Our Relationships (Shambhala, 2008).