I don’t know why in the fog and shock of the discovery of infidelity wives think about Christmas! My Dday was in April, but for some reason I asked “Did you look at p*rn in December?” It mattered to me. Christmas can be a haunting reminder of the years and decades that we were being actively deceived and hurt. Maybe in secret or maybe in the wide open for all to see. We can’t understand that our partner could enjoy a beautiful Christmas with the family while harboring terrible sexual secrets or planning future cheating exploits. I am glad you can’t understand it – that means you’re healthy. This is my fourth Christmas after Dday. I am happy to say I am not in trauma mode. I get mildly triggered at times, but I have a lot of skills to cope. Phil is also a champ at handling my triggers these days, not to mention his own! (Let’s face it, extended family is a landmine for addicts.) I want to share a few things to keep in mind as you navigate the holiday season:

Think about S. Heart’s post about 1, 2, 3. Version 1 was the pre-Dday version of us. Those Christmases might be playing on a feedback loop in the back of your mind. Then maybe you’ve had some V2 Christmases in betrayal trauma. These are awful. You’re constantly holding back tears and trying to give the kids the Christmas they deserve. These Christmases feel lean and lonely. You don’t want your extended family to expose your vulnerable heart. Maybe your spouse isn’t holding your pain. I’m sorry. Your pain is valid. If you see one more Hallmark movie couple you might SCREAM. There’s no easy way to get through these V2 holidays and anniversaries – so taking care of YOU is of utmost importance. These traumatic V2 Christmases won’t last forever. This year I’m having a V3 Christmas. I’m not the old me, and I’m not traumatized. In V3 we take things a lot slower and simpler because I don’t have a lot of capacity. We allow space to work through triggers. Phil respects our boundaries so I feel safe. We share the tasks around the house. We know extended family makes him feel stress. We make space for him too. Neither of us expects the “good times” we use to have, and we’ve both come to accept that. “Good” looks different now, like the fact that Phil is sober and honest, and that we can be with our adult children. He is engaged. It’s sad I had several Christmases with a spouse who harbored sexual secrets, but I am glad I now know who I am married to.

We all know the ruminating thoughts: Did he love me? Was Christmas real? What our brain is trying to process is the duplicity of our spouse being double-minded. Everyone has a public life and a private life, but not everyone has a secret life. And one should never keep secrets from their spouse. Especially sexual secrets. When I think of his duplicity now in my version 3 mind, I say “He was unhealthy and sick, and that’s how he could be so deceptive” rather than question his love. After Dday, I divided Christmases into good (before Dday) and bad. Now I divide them into when only I was being authentic (before Dday) and now where he is also learning how to show up in authenticity. It’s a new thing. I think professionals can do harm to a grieving partner around this issue if they make light of it. If your core values involve things like family and tradition, it will hurt deeply that your spouse didn’t honor you in those areas, on those days. Addiction doesn’t make sense to healthy people. Mental illness isn’t understood by a healthy mind. For you it was about family and tradition and love. He needs to grow to put the focus on the right things.

Early in recovery I had the chance to learn from another betrayed partner further down the road. Something that really helped her was the therapist who conducted their disclosure told her before her husband began to read it: Remember, there were Christmases mixed in there too and those were real. I didn’t like that story for a long time…I’m like “Nah, nah bro that ain’t cool. Those Christmases were the opposite of real.” Dr. Ramani knows what’s up. Over time what I’ve come to know about this issue that CAN help (and maybe this is what that therapist was referring to) is A) YOU were real. And sometimes that’s enough for me. And B) there are some traits hard-wired into your spouse that were real. Maybe he does love Christmas. Maybe he values family or is great at giving gifts or loves the music and the lights…. If so, those things will be true if he gets sober and connected too. While there were secrets that do a great deal of damage, not every little thing that happened between the two of you was a lie. You get to choose what you take with you into the future as valuable. Maybe you treasure that your children had special Christmas mornings, so you choose to focus on their happiness rather than his deception.

Chances are part of what the Ghost of Christmas past is bringing up are dynamics that are usually so out of whack with addicts. For example, addicts experience good times like holidays and vacations with too much intensity. So maybe your spouse was very sexual during the holidays, and now that feels scary to you. Maybe he is intimacy anorexic and he would purposely sabotage special times like holidays, and you have a lot of pain around this. Maybe because he was a Peter Pan man-child with the emotional skill of an 8 year old, you were forced to over function during the holidays. So now you remember how EXHAUSTING those holidays were for you to pull off. This anger you now feel tells you your boundaries were violated. Your brain is trying to make sense of it all so you can know what real safety looks like. Your heart (and body) knows what needs to bubble to surface to be recognized. It’s OK.

Let the Ghost of Christmas Future take a hike. I loved the idea of a Norman Rockwell family holiday. I am a future-oriented, traditional person. A lot of my pain around Dday was knowing my husband might choose addiction over me and our family in the future. I have no guarantees of future Christmases. It took a long time to come to terms with that. I have a sweet friend who would always say “The present is a present.” That’s true – we only have today. Control is an illusion – no one knows what their future Christmases hold. Also, His presence is the present. Immanuel means God with us. I will always have HIM. And that’s how I can face future Christmases regardless of what my husband chooses. Many of our former traditions had to change in light of me knowing I’m married to someone who is susceptible to betraying behaviors. I put myself out there in a very different way now when it comes to extended family, things like cards to all our friends, or holiday parties.

As I move from V2 to V3 in several categories, I’ve noticed things like Christmas or my wedding ring or even old songs we used to like caused a lot of pain for me. Now, in V3, I can feel neutral about things like my ring or Christmas. I don’t necessarily feel good about them, but getting to neutral signifies a lot of healing, so I’ll take it. Some things may never feel good like they once did, and that’s OK too.