Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Anatomy of An Affair

Long-time readers of this blog know that Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things, which is a compilation of her incredible run as Dear Sugar on The Rumpus, is one of my favorite things in the world. Dear Sugar is now back...on radio. And the most recent episode, a celebration of Valentine's Day, features a letter from a woman who reconnected with her high school boyfriend.
It began with a phone call from him...and evolved into daily texts and calls and a meeting (no sex, though, she swears!).
Our heartbroken letter writer wondered, now that her first love's wife found their correspondence and he stopped all contact, whether her "emotional affair" was actually cheating. She also wondered whether she should stay with her husband, for whom she no longer felt any passion though she loved him and had a good life with him.
The "Sugars" – Cheryl Strayed and co-host Steve Almond – were their usual compassionate, warm-hearted, wise selves.
But what was particularly interesting for we Betrayeds was how typical the trajectory of this emotional affair was. Everything about it was cliché. And viewed through the lens of detachment, it can be helpful for us to see just how little our spouses' affairs had to do with us.

She's Vulnerable
Her former love reached out to her when she was about 50. Her kids had left home. She and her husband had a nice, if predictable life. Her career was...fine. Her marriage was...fine. But mid-life is when so many of us begin to wonder if this is all there is. Marriage can, if we haven't worked hard on it, seem a little...stale. Where's the passion? we wonder. Is this all there is?

Enter Distraction
Her first love represented passion and excitement. He reminded her of who she used to be – young, sexy, fascinating. They reconnected and shared their new selves. As Steve Almond says, they shared their stories, which is a more intimate betrayal than sex. So now you've got this alchemy happening. Someone at a crossroads, trying to figure out where to go with her life, meets up with someone who distracts her from those big, scary questions. He makes her feel young again. Like all things are possible.

It Escalates
The phone call becomes regular texting and more calls. They arrange to meet up. They do and it feels wonderful to be with someone who, they believe, really knows them Really gets them. Sure there's a spouse at home but he/she hasn't paid attention to them in years. Doesn't even seem to notice that they're having this secret relationship. Besides, nobody's getting hurt. Right? They don't have sex but the atmosphere is charged. Electric with possibility. How can routine home life compete with that? It can't.

D-Day
The wife finds the texts. She insists that her husband make a choice. Either he loses his marriage and family or he re-commits. He chooses to re-commit telling his former love that his wife found the texts and it's over. We don't hear on the show how this played out...but we're living how this played out.

The Married OW Wonders What's Next for Her
She writes a letter to a radio show that offers advice. That advice includes: Yes, emotional affairs are cheating. They're as devastating (sometimes more!) than sexual affairs. And then the Sugars tell her that there's no escape from life's big questions. We can distract ourselves (look! somebody likes me just the way I am!). We can ignore what's right under our noses (a spouse who loves us. A spouse who's likely feeling as disconnected and lonely and confused as we are. Or who will listen to us as we outline just how disconnected and lonely and confused we are). But there's just no way around coming to terms with who we are, what we want out of our lives, what we want from our relationships, and how we want to spend the rest of our days. They urge her to tell her husband about what she did (thank-you Sugars for advocating for deep, painful honesty over deception and a much shallower connection!) and see if they can reconnect based on the love they continue to feel for each other. They recommend that she do some deep soul-searching of her own to determine what she wants from her life. They remind her that long-time love will never have the intensity or passion of new (and forbidden) love but that it brings rewards of its own.

The End
We don't know what letter-writer decides to do. But we have been given a glimpse into the affair itself. It's so clear that circumstances converged that allowed both former love and letter-writer to reconnect in their secret friendship, convincing themselves all along that what they were doing was okay. Instead of self-examination (who am I now that my kids have left home? how do I create meaning in my life? how do I maintain passion in a 25-year-old marriage?), they opted for fantasy. They created their own world in which responsibilities, disappointments, real life was held at bay. A world in which their spouses were kinda erased.
It had to end. But, unfortunately, not before other hearts were broken.


19 comments:

  1. Why do I feel like that woman is just gonna find someone else to do this with? Considering the fact that he ended it and issued a no-contact on behalf of his surviving marriage, I can't really assume that she too was ready for it to end. I also see way too often the testimonies of people involved in cheating who ask for advice, but aren't prepared to follow it. Who claim remorse, but not enough to stop. Who claims they don't want to be that person, but will anyway - and all this to show alleged introspection and awareness so they can look or feel more human. I think sometimes this is done to almost make it "okay" to keep going. Like a quota of regret and consideration for others that doesn't run too deep. I know I'm very cynical but I don't think I'd know how else to be at this point without feeling just as vulnerable to people's utter crappiness as I was before when I wasn't as informed of it. Sorry if I'm killing the mood.

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    1. BH,
      Not killing the mood at all. I think you're quite right about many people who try on the cloak of remorse, compassion, etc. but don't actually feel it. I had an old friend in high school who dated my long-time boyfriend about 5 minutes after he and I broke up and she gave me the old "I'm sorry for your pain but I'm surprised you're upset about this because you never really appreciated him." She was convinced that she had done nothing wrong and was paying lip service to the "I'm sorry" bit. But, I came to learn later, she was a total narcissist who really struggles to feel empathy for anyone. So, for some people, you're absolutely right.
      My point with posting this wasn't to imply that this woman deserves our compassion. It was really just a fly-on-the-wall experience of an emotional affair.

      Delete
    2. Oh I totally get that there was another point to this post, I just couldn't help but wonder what happened. But yes, I think it's funny how your high school friend made light of that issue about as much as the OW in my situation did. That's crazy, but common. How some people can have a total disregard for emotional distress in others and boundaries because they think you weren't up to the task to deserve what is yours. It's the laziest thinking anyone can use to justify these things but it happens all the time. Says something about them that they just have to cling to an opinionated, besides-the-point defense to prove them getting what they wanted happened to be more just. Of course it's just a cover for a lack of empathy, for narcissism, and occasionally a plain lack of intelligence but I think at the time they really believe what they say. As for the guy in this situation, well it's nice to know that sometimes people do the right thing.

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    3. My husband's OW was an Anti-Adoption "Activist" - she'd given up TWO children to adoption, but it was EVERYONE ELSE's Fault. The narcissism thread resonates strongly with me. I've run into instances where people with an activist mindset like to tell the betrayed spouse that you should "stay out of the bedroom" when criticizing that behavior, neglecting the fact that the OW was the one who should have stayed out of the bedroom, not the betrayed spouse.

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    4. Not sure if narcissists have affairs, or if affairs create narcissists. Probably a bit of both.

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  2. As always what a great post. I think it helps many of us because it speaks to why. The specifics of each affair are different-- sexual, emotional, sexting; the justifications are different-- it's ok because I don't love him/her, it's ok because I never wanted to leave my spouse, it's ok because my spouse doesn't know, it's ok because it's only sex, it's ok because we never slept together, etc.

    although specifics are different, the commonality is striking.

    Sam

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  3. Why do some people have a moral compass and others appear not to or can at least ignore it. Narcissitic impulsive people in the right environment can jump right in and have no conscience it would seem. According to our therapist, people are capable of many behaviors given that right environment. Yet I really couldn't ever buy into that idea. Just too loyal. Maybe that's what's missing most of all in the people who do cross the line. Don't know but it appears some people really don't give a shit when it comes to boundaries and respecting other people's relationships.

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    1. Some people just don't. That said, I do believe that many of us don't know what we're capable of (especially had we walked in another's shoes). I sometimes tell the story of jet-skiing with a friend in Thailand when we both fell off. I always fancied myself the run-into-a-burning-building-to-rescue-orphans type. But, knowing sharks were sometimes in the water where we fell off, I practically clawed over my friend to get back on the jet-ski. Made me realize that, perhaps, I wasn't who I thought I was, deep down. Gulp.

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  4. That story echoed my story apart from the sex. |My husband continued the contact with his ex girlfriend for 18 years for just the reasons given here. I knew nothing and as she lives hundreds of miles away their meetings were very infrequent. However these did include sex. The most ludicrous thing he has ever said to me was that he told himself it wasn't being unfaithful be she was "somewhere he had been before"rather than a new partner. Total denial and delusion of what he was really doing.

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    1. Anon,
      That line qualifies for our "stupid shit cheaters say" section! Ugh. I'm so sorry for what you're going through. Total denial and delusion indeed!

      Delete
  5. Cheryl Strayed cheated on her husband, multiple times. (She "strayed" from her marriage vows.) And her memoir is fiction. Why would you endorse such an unrepentant cheater on your blog?

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    1. Yes, I run into responses such as yours when I post anything re. Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) as well. If I thought they had learned nothing and had nothing to contribute to our conversation, I wouldn't post anything about them. But both made mistakes, take full responsibility for those mistakes, and seem to have gained considerable wisdom from them. That, to me, is something to be applauded. I've certainly messed up myself in my life. I cheated on many boyfriends. I was a really horrible girlfriend. Young, stupid, terrified of being hurt. I've learned a whole lot since then.

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    2. I agree. I find it very helpful when I hear people who have cheated, can learn from their mistakes. It also helps me to find compassion for my mistakes so that I can find compassion for my H. Otherwise, we couldn't move on in a healthy way.
      I am getting a lot from reading Wendy Plump's book "Vow"--her experience of a marraige full of her infidelity and his. Her ability to understand what it means to cheat as well as what it means to be cheated upon, is some how reassuring to me.

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    3. Yes, I too found that once I could acknowledge (and have compassion for) my own frailties, it was easier to have compassion for my husband's. What's more, once I could acknowledge that, if I had led my husband's life, I might have made the same choices, THAT's when my own healing really began.

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  6. I see this as he contacted her. Secrets began but it sounds innocent. She becomes the OW, then he goes back to his wife. The OW is wondering what to do now. The OW got what she deserved. She made a choice be the OW. I don't see how that is an endorsement. This blog tell all stories from all sides. No one is excluded, it is raw and real. For us who have been lied, used. conned and endured the pain we need to hear the truth no matter the subject or circumstances. It is really the only truth I can find. No one is turned away or endorsed or told to shut up. Every single story helps some woman, man or OW in pain from an affair. The minute they started deleting texts it was an affair.

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    1. Thanks Lynn! :)
      And how true re. deleting texts. As Dr. Phil says: If you wouldn't do it/say it with your spouse standing next to you, you shouldn't be doing it/saying it. Pretty simple, huh?

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  7. This is EXACTLY what happened in my case. And let me just say, because my husband has shared so many intimate daily doses of himself with a former college flame - that has been the hardest part to move on from. They didn't have sex, but they did just about everything else. The lying, the secrecy and the intimations. The sexual craving and tension for one another. It has been so so hurtful to me. I know that sex would have added a whole new dimension for how much pain this has caused me, but to know that he still cares, has feelings for and ultimately loves this woman is, quite frankly, really hard to deal with. After D Day, some of the things he would say to me were completely unbelievable. He re-wrote so much of our history coming out of D Day and then he re-wrote theirs too, into a lovely little love story. Affair fog is so real - at least it was for me. The Sugars gave awesome advice - wish with all my heart that my OW would read this. It's nice to understand her on a new level now too. She hasn't grappled with the harder questions in life - something she has to do, ON HER OWN, sooner or later. Great article!

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    1. Affairs are fantasy. That's the truth. And it's easy to cast yourself in a fantasy -- it's exciting and fabulous. But it's not real. The pain from experiencing that betrayal though? That's real. :(

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  8. OMG! Anonymous I can totally relate. According to my H I stopped loving him half way through our 10 year marriage and he's been unhappy for 9 years. He also no longer is in love with me he just loves me like his best friend/family and he's attracted to my body and personality and still wants to have sex with me. Can you see my eyes rolling right now?

    But he could be "kinda" in love with the dysfunctional OW who told him he's the nicest person she's ever met and who he has "rescued from her abusive husband".

    Eyes. Rolling.

    MEN! They love to deceive themselves. Keep in mind he's stopped talking to her and decided to work on himself and us. But their great world changing love is over after sleeping together twice during one encounter. Hopefully he comes to his senses and realizes what an unmitigated ASS he is and how foolish and ridiculous this all sounds. I've actually had to ask him multiple times "Do you hear yourself? Can you hear what you're saying?!"

    God help me! If he chooses to leave then good luck to him in his search for everything that makes him happy. I know he'll never find something to fill that hole inside him. But that's not my problem!

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