Becoming More, Part 3, Your Head
This is the third piece in a series about taking back the keys to arena of your heart, head, spirit and body. We do this so we can pursue our healing and recovery in all those dimensions of our lives without being interrupted and expected to divert critical attention, energy, or other resources to him. As he demonstrates changed behaviors (including how he talks to you and how he thinks) we may begin to share ourselves with him again, but not the same way. The priority now is our healing and our minor children’s healing—which is reasonable, fair, and should be expected and affirmed by him and his treatment group.
So, today is about what’s going on in your head—that vast arena of activity that moves seamlessly from the past to the present and on into the future. Past. Present. Future. And that’s how we will approach this arena.
PAST
You no longer know what was real from your memory bank of this relationship and your family life. For a number of years I lost almost all my memories of those things. They were erased by the trauma of learning I had lived with a stranger and a liar for decades. At the same time, he would try and recall “the good times”, citing memories of occasions when he felt had done something “impressive.” That presented another problem for me, because those were seldom memories I held in value myself. These were occasions that I had endured or tolerated simply because I sensed they pleased him. They were almost always memories in which he had created an audience for himself, and used me to do it.
There are two things here, then, to consider: 1. losing the memories 2. seeing how he uses them for his ongoing manipulation.
1. You are traumatized by the discovery of his secret life running alongside the one in which you and children were fully and exclusively invested. Your mind knows it needs to reframe those experiences for you so that you can engage them in the context of revealed truth. But your mind may not know how to do that, yet. Access to those memories is lost in the meantime. I have slowly recovered many of those memories, so don’t panic about that, but your mind needs to learns how to reframe the reality with the correct information so that you can interpret those memories accurately and carry them accordingly.
2. He doesn’t want you to do that. He counts on your desire for those memories to remain intact and your interpretation of them to be based on the lie, not the truth of what you now know about the reality of those times in your life. He also enters “past memories” for different reasons than you do. He goes there to prop up his own value and remind you of it. He focusses on himself in those memories and what a good person he was. It’s quite stunning for me to see this clearly now. All the memories he wanted to pull forward were not about our life together as a couple or as a family. He did not celebrate anything great about anyone in the memories he chose, except himself. They were memories in which he saw himself as our benefactor. There was no warmth, no sense of how precious we were or that time together was. It was just another justification for him expecting me and our children to suck up new truth and accept decades of his divided loyalties and commitment.
Taking Back the Key to Your Head:
In dealing with past memories I found my big breakthrough came with realizing that even though he was not fully and exclusively committed to our marriage or family in those memories, my children and I were. Every memory that I lost because of who he turned out to be, I began to recover because of who I really was and who my children really were. We were real. We were loyal. We were committed. We owned the memory. He was the exception and the odd man out. In affirming the truths about our authenticity his shadow no longer had power over the memories. They gradually started to come back to me, and he faded into the background.
In understanding how his important memories were all about things for which he should credit and recognition I could see how differently he held our life in his hands than we did. I saw how we were used to prop up his con.
Take back the key: Affirm who you and your children were in past memories. Recognize the difference between how he holds his memories of family life, and how you hold them.
The Present
Once you know he has another secret life that matters more to him and traumatic shock is no longer keep that reality in suspended animation, it’s hard to live in the present in your life with him. You may not know where he would prefer to be, but you know neither you nor your children have what it takes to command his loyalty. He actually has to make that choice for himself. It’s not automatic. It’s not an assumption. There’s nothing you can do to fix what made him disloyal. You can’t love him “better” than you all loved him. He has to love you and your children “better.” That’s his work to learn how to do.
These hard truths are hard for him to admit. His resistance and excuses may wear you down and want to pretend everything’s fine. But it’s unreasonable for him to make any assumption that his presence in your present is anything but harmful. It’s important that you hold your ground in the present with the truth of who has been thus far in you and your children’s live. As Dr. Phil likes to remind his viewers “the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.”
Taking Back the Key to Your Present:
He has to earn the present. It’s that simple. He didn’t value your loyalty or commitment to him in your marriage and family unit for any else than how it served him to provide cover for his secret life. You made him believable. Now, in the present, he has to do better than that. He has to make himself believable to you and your children.
That means he needs to save his drama for his treatment group and let you and your children live in peace. In my opinion, whenever possible, he should be living somewhere else and allow you to re-establish a base of safety and trust for you and your children where you can count on the reality that you create together without the fear of lies and duplicity.
The emotional masturbation that so many of these men adopt once they are asked to be sexually sober is not the kind of energy that is good for you or your children. Whether he’s crying, raging, moping, moody, etc---you don’t need it in your recovery or in your children’s need and right to a safe and nurturing positive environment. It’s time for him to put you and your children first by establishing the most healing present possible. And that’ likely precludes having to think about him all the time and deal with him in your head 24/7. When you are safe in the present you can begin to think more clearly about events, facts, feelings, and impacts. It’s hards to think clearly in the present while trying to manage someone responsible for blowing up your life.
Literally speaking, you may need to take back the key—to your home—in order to take back the key to the present in your head.
The Future
Grappling with the truth of the past creates a leak into the future that travels through the present. That’s another reason to refuse to normalize his recovery dramas in the present with your recovery needs and your children healing priorities. He’s the only one who can’t self-regulate with respect and loyalty for you and your children. So his recovery needs to not infect yours. The future, whether you are with him or not, depends on how well you are able to stop the leak.
My clients come in every age group. The concern for the future often is framed differently because of how much future is left. How much time do you have to turn the ship around? How many more mistakes can you and your children absorb? Maybe these are your children’s formative years and his behavior will be a part of what shapes them emotionally, spiritually, physically and psychologically—can you risk that? What are you teaching your children if you put up with abusive behaviors? What do they learn about human sexuality from him? How are women treated and what should they put up with from men?
The future is something we spend carelessly when we do not address these questions about our lives and our children’s lives. I have often said that women can always give the man a few years to clean up his life and learn how to be a loyal and committed husband, father and family member. If and when he demonstrates that change of character in ways that assure her safety and the safety of her children, she may choose to let him into their present again. But she safeguards their future first.
Chances are, however, that if you propose a divorce with the possibility of getting back together when he’s dealt with himself and is no longer an abuser, he’s not going to bite. That’s too much work. It’s not his agenda. And as more than one client’s husband has said “I don’t want you that much.”
Taking back the keys to the way you can think about the future means he puts his future on the table, not just yours. And, in my experience, these men don’t take any risks. They expect you and your children to take all the risks of your future. That’s why I called one of my resources “Stop taking all the Risks.” Please think about your future differently. Stop risking it—for your sake and your children’s sake. Think about how to protect your future and your children’s future. Think twice about handing all that to him on silver platter just because he and his treatment group want you to do just that. Your lives are not their priority. Make that cognitive adjustment if necessary.
Becoming more means we make the cognitive adjustments to the all facts we now know, that we didn’t know before. Our frame for reality has indeed changed and how we live and move in the new frame will not be the same as it was when we assumed loyalty, honesty, commitment, and respect from the man now called a sex addict. We know now that the problems in him and in the relationship are not episodic. They are systemic. They are due to his deception and pretence about core values in him and in his relationship with us and our children. Our minds need to learn how to make the rational adjustments to understanding our past, living safely in our present, and building a future for ourselves and our children minimizing damage their formation as human beings while standing up for the value of our own lives. IMO.
Do not accept or conform to the mental aberrations and deficits that reflect his disordered thinking and the disordered thinking of any treatment group participating in the hiding and protecting of his relational abuse of you and your children.
There’s more than that for all of us. Go get it as if you are all worth it. Because you are.
With you,
Diane.