Hi Friends, I can’t believe I haven’t written since January! I think about you, our journeys, and the truths we share here often. I had a very busy Spring with work. Over the summer I got to teach some material that I love – not recovery/infidelity related. I enjoyed it tremendously. Fall is always busy for our family. Lots of hustle and bustle around here. But I’m glad to be back, and I want to tell you I have a great series coming up SOON!! So make sure to enter your email in the subscribe box.

We are 4.5 years into recovery and making progress, albeit slow at times. As I continue to heal, it’s easier to see the “brain damage” I was living with after Dday. I lived with the effects of what I’d call serious shock. There was no silver bullet to expedite healing this effect on my brain and heart.

In the workbook The Couple’s Guide to Intimacy, the authors say the dynamics of grief, shock, and repair are at play for both the partner and betrayer. These categories grow and shrink with time. Ideally we want shock and grief to subside, leaving more room for repair. I feel like I was living with 50%+ shock, and this kept me stuck for a long time. I attribute this to a couple of things unique to our story. Firstly, Phil was a very active church member and dad with a penchant for rule-following and rule-enforcing! (still is) I was operating under the belief that it would be difficult for him to A)break “the rules” of christian marriage and B) to lie to me about anything. He was, by any estimation, an “over-sharer.” Our lives weren’t problem-free, but I certainly saw no indications of problems in our marriage or s3x life

Secondly, we had worked on the issue and effects of lust early in our marriage. It was a very painful process. We got a lot of help and counsel from pastors and church leaders. We came out of that with tools and commitments that I thought were being upheld up until Dday. When Dday happened, we were about 14 years into this “recovered” phase of our relationship, and Phil was still doing a lot of the “good” practices that we had learned during that repair season. This rupture (and subsequent healing) earlier in our marriage was still very much at play for how I interpreted our relationship and my approach to life. The new trauma of Dday in 2018 exposed the agreement I thought we were living by for the past 14 years wasn’t binding for him. This new trauma on top of the old marital trauma is what some professionals might call complex trauma. Some partners experience complex trauma because they lay infidelity on top of trauma from someplace other than marriage. Complex trauma is a little trickier to heal from because at the root of healthy brain function, we must have safe attachment and safety in the world. When we knew our (christian) marriage to be that safe attachment in the face of previous traumas, betrayal hits HARD…..

If you feel like you’re experiencing significant shock at your partner’s secret betrayals, you’re probably struggling not only to heal but to simply function in every day life. I did! You’re not “doing it wrong.” You will heal when your brain feels safe again. The video below is meaningful. The entire video is excellent, but the issue of a shattering of the self starts at minute 13:25