In the 90’s I fell in love with a quirky movie called “Clifford” about a charming boy who leaves a wake of destruction en route to his place of bliss – an amusement park called Dinosaur World. He’s under the care of his uncle, whom Clifford has driven to temporary madness. My favorite part of the movie is when his uncle, after a series of disastrous losses that Clifford unleashes upon him, tries to have an instructive, corrective conversation with his nephew. Trying to not lose his temper, he says “Listen to me, I’m trying to help you!” He tells the boy to write an apology letter to the police and not do anything weird, but the boy’s facial expressions start going haywire as he contemplates having to come clean while still trying to appear charming; deep down, Clifford is still obsessed with getting what he wants (a visit to the amusement park). The uncle, seeing his labored facial expressions says, “Can you just act like a human boy for one minute here? Look at me like a PERSON.” The comedic gold happens when Clifford, played by Martin Short, tries to “look normal” with dead eyes because he knows he can’t impress his uncle or manipulate the situation anymore. Without his outward charm, inward scheming, or dear obsession, Clifford doesn’t know how to behave.

(This movie is a hoot for any psychology geeks out there 🙂 Why has my life in middle recovery so often felt like a scene out of this whacky little movie?…)

A sweet friend who is a betrayed partner, a woman who invested an excruciating level of work into the marriage before and after her husband’s disclosure/polygraph, talked to me about how there was no real change in him despite working with good professionals for many months. The couple was highly compatible and likable. She was caring, smart, funny, successful, spunky, a great catch by any standard. She confided in me that “It’s like the disclosure process cut our chests open for open heart surgery, but no one sewed us back up. After all these months we are just at home and cut open, bleeding out with no medical care to stop the bleeding.”

This gripped me. I know she’s not the only partner who feels this way. Partners and professionals alike think that with a clean slate after disclosure, recovery couples can begin to function in a healthy way. Sadly, it doesn’t work that easily for many couples. I’ve come to see messy middle recovery in a different way, and I hope that my observations on this rocky season can assist partners who are also feeling stuck, exposed, bleeding out, and alone.

The chart above is one many counselors use. It’s helpful. A healthy person has issues they don’t let everyone see (bottom left square). Discretion is healthy and mature in the right contexts. But hiding things in a marriage is not healthy. Especially sexual things. Our husbands were hiding very important matters in the green square that would have changed the course of our lives had they been known to us. In close relationships, SECRETS ARE POWER. One partner shouldn’t be in a “power over” position over the other.

Then there are areas that are “Blind Spots,” places that we ourselves don’t see but are known to other people. As healthy adults, we put in the work to reduce the number of things in the yellow “Blind Spot” box! This is one of the joys of adulthood – eliminating blind spots that hurt us and those we love. This is what we call maturing. Frankly, it’s a necessity in marriage. Sadly, what often happens in middle recovery is that our betrayers have no curiosity about their blind spots – the very same blind spots that got both of us to this dreadful place – and they make us pay if we point them out. Even though it’s clear that their coping mechanisms are destructive, they still refuse to deal with them in a mature way. After disclosure, we as wives expect that our spouses will want to start bringing their blind spots to light like all healthy adults do, but we see that they’re more concerned with “plastic fantastic” than anything else. They’re fine and they think that we should be fine too, like yesterday. Addiction is about escaping pain, right? They’re accustomed to avoiding pain and problems at all costs – even their own internal problems. They’re not interested in knowing what’s in that yellow box!

Podcast “Why Don’t Men Go Deeper” from Be Broken Ministries has some great insight about this.

In middle recovery, we want to see that our new-and-improved marriage relationships are realized. Us ladies are good at it, and we’re biologically wired to attach and pair bond – I get it! However, now is the time to OBSERVE! Now that their addictions and hiding/deceiving tactics are removed, we’ll begin to see who exactly is underneath those behaviors. OBSERVE if they treat you well. OBSERVE if they’ll respect your boundaries. OBSERVE if they go to therapy, read that book, connect with other healthy men, etc. Maybe they won’t do anything… Maybe they ignore you. OK, that’s a data point. Every observation is like a puzzle piece. As we get more pieces, we begin to develop a truer picture of who our husbands really are. If we’re in middle recovery, bleeding out in pain, and they won’t do anything to remedy the situation, it’s because they don’t have the emotional maturity and needed skills to address it. Maybe they don’t know how to help us or draw close, sure… But do they call professionals who can help? Do they apologize for their pain-causing and destruction? Are they trying to do all they know to help the relationship? Can they be consistent? Once the picture of who they really are begins to take shape, our journeys forward will get more clear. We’ll be able to make the best decisions to take good care of us. If they’re open to looking at themselves in truth, then they can be empowered and informed – and go get the precise help that they really need. As long as they want to stay blind to their maturity gaps, well, there’s no hope of healthy relationships.

Let’s explore some paradigm shifts that gave me enough stability to stop “engaging with crazy” and getting hurt, you know… doing the same things and expecting different outcomes…. For people who are master-hiders and in heavy denial about their weak points, they will not engage in self-disclosing very easily. Don’t expect your partner to participate in this process with you (at least for a long while). The onus is on you to assess your husband and the situation correctly, because your husband will likely be focusing on his own image-management and personal comfort. My looking beyond Phil’s well-constructed persona helps me to be less trapped in a bog – treating him like an adult while he has the relational skills of a child keeps us stuck. It keeps me getting hurt and it allows him to stay emotionally immature. Here are the shifts that are helping me:

Shift #1 Stop over-functioning in the relationship or doing things for him he can do for himself. I am embarrassed to say that in the past I did a lot of “mothering” for Phil like packing his lunch, washing his clothes, cutting his hair, etc. I loved making our house and home and making times like holidays special for our family. I managed our calendar. Phil never had to remember family events because I reminded him of everything. I didn’t realize how that kept him from adult tasks like being realistic about how much work it takes to maintain a home and run a family. He wasn’t getting practice at meeting basic needs of others. It was painful for me to see the kind of care and attention that Phil required from me through the years, that he wasn’t able to give to me in return…. What was clearly needed was for me to turn that energy and focus to myself at that time.

Shift #2 For healthy hearts, it hurts to hurt the people you love. As I observed Phil hurting me with things (unkind words, keeping distance, no acknowledgment) when I’d ask him to do something like read a certain book, it became more clear how he could break our marriage vows and my heart in secret for so many years. If hurting your spouse is easy, there are serious problems in your heart. It’s healthy and normal to expect your spouse to care for and protect you. They lack a healthy awareness of how their choices impact those closest to them, and this puts you at risk. If their heart isn’t affected by you being harmed, it’s not safe to partner with them yet.

Shift #3 The addiction didn’t cause the relational issues you now see. The underlying personality issues made it easy to engage in addiction. If addiction was the main problem, middle recovery (healing the relationship) will be much easier to navigate. This is true for some. But if you’re stuck as a couple after sobriety is established, there are deeper issues. This is the topic for the next two blog posts. When this is the case, sobriety isn’t going to be the magic bullet that you’re hoping for. Middle recovery reveals that getting sober is really the first step in addressing a lifetime of arrested development, poor emotion regulation, and bad decision-making skills.

Shift #4: Maturity begets more maturity. Mature people can read a book, apply what is learned, and undergo lasting change. Rich people can invest their money to make more money. Fit people can do more strenuous exercise to get even more fit. You get the idea. Bleeding out while stuck in the messy middle is related to your husband’s immaturity more than anything else. Due to maturity gaps, it’s hard for him to navigate the serious problems you face as a couple. He can’t run to addiction or hide, but he doesn’t yet know how to relate properly, so he does nothing. You’re in this painful place with your spouse because they didn’t handle matters in a mature manner to begin with. They have to start somewhere, but an honest assessment about gaps in their maturity and relational skills are needed. It takes the guys a while to be willing to face this. The good news is that once they start strengthening these skills in their life, growth happens exponentially. By way of reminder, the heart of maturity is the ability to care well for yourself and those closest to you. Real maturity can’t be simulated – it’s up-close-and-personal.

Recently I saw an interview of a former leader of an organization that was now facing many problems. The journalist asked “How would you deal with these problems?” He replied “That’s a really hard question because I never would have let things get this bad. I would have taken serious action before now.” Our partners hide and deny problems. This creates monster problems that are very hard to deal with. Healthy people turn to face problems when they are much smaller and more manageable. For me, it was shocking seeing in middle recovery the tolerance Phil had in denying his destructive problems. This can feel like intentional malice toward partners, who are paying a price to clean these problems up but didn’t give consent for them in the first place.

Shift #5 I don’t assume anything. I must let proof speak for itself. This affects a lot of practical things in our relationship like assuming he’s being truthful or that he will keep his word…. I don’t assume that because we had a nice date on Friday, that he will be kind on Saturday. I don’t assume he wants the same things I want… I ask and watch his follow through. I don’t assume he will hear a sermon like I hear it. I don’t assume he will be able to handle a problem OR that he won’t… We’ve been in recovery enough that I’ve seen him use good tools in situations that were a challenge for him in the past. I don’t assume we define things the same, like “shame” or “faithful.” We used the same words but it meant something different to him in the past. I don’t assume we will be married in five years… I am watching to see if he’s really committed. For years, I assumed Phil and I had the same goals and drive for our marriage and family. I assumed he accepted me like I accepted him. Now I know we see life through different lenses and we respond to things differently. With more recovery, he will come to see how his past wounding is coloring his present-day experience. This dynamic is at play even as the partner is unaware that it’s happening.

Shift #6 Recognizing that his “self states” are very separated. Phil’s calm person is very different than his “offended” person. This paradigm shift is similar to assuming – a good thing doesn’t necessarily flow into another good thing… I’ve come to learn that Phil is very trigger-sensitive and his emotions are so intense (often subconsciously), that he can go from secure and connected to defensive and aggressive very quickly. This is mostly internal for Phil until he lashes out at me or responds in a way that doesn’t fit the circumstances. Then, suddenly, the promise he made yesterday gets completely forgotten. Perhaps we worked through an issue and it’s resolved beautifully, then a new problem comes up tomorrow. I may not even know about the new problem. He can get defensive and combative with me out of the blue – and I am still soaking in the good relating of the previous day. This is very hard to swallow after a close, warm day just happened… When he’s dysregulated and triggered, he can make TERRIBLE decisions… Decisions that he’d never make in a regulated state. Decisions that make matters worse…. Now I can detect these shifts in his responses better and remove myself from the roller coaster. When I started to see this, I’d tell Phil “Only YOU can stop forest fires.” One spark of anger allowed to fly can grow out of hand and burn down a lot of growth. You can’t change this habit for your spouse. He has to get a hold of triggers and mood shifts for himself.

I was so enamored with Phil’s mask that I was blinded to his weak spots that caused a lot of pain to both us and our kids. It takes some work to learn how to see ALL of his behaviors – good and bad, mature and hidden, shown and hidden. This podcast from Flying Free had some really good things to consider when looking for red flags in a partner. I overlooked the few small red flags that were apparent because Phil had such impressive strong points. I mistook job success or religious rule-following for maturity. What I hope this post has brought to light that people who are actually mature address their own red flags naturally because they’re always growing. The KEY difference is that the mature person doesn’t want to stay blind to blind spots. They can address weak spots in honesty, and with love for self and those affected most by their choices. It’s an open process. That’s healthy and normal because no one “arrives” this side of heaven.

The plaguing questions that haunt every partner after discovery are “does he really care about me?” (with safety and commitment) and “will he do what’s needed to uncover and address the root issues that led to him betraying, so we never have to be here again?” When there is a lack of timely work on his part to care for you and attend to his own healing and growth, you get the answer clear as a bell. He doesn’t help with your triggers. He doesn’t read the book you ask him to. He doesn’t get at the roots beneath the addictive behavior. He doesn’t treat you with tender kindness. His habits around the house don’t change. He doesn’t go the extra mile to reassure you of his sobriety and commitment to the marriage. He doesn’t allow you to ask all those pesky questions. He doesn’t follow through on his promises. He doesn’t become a new man – a mature, healthy man. It’s not death by a thousand cuts. It’s death by a thousand lacks. He’s not “doing the things” and he’s fine (as far as he’s concerned). That’s not OK if he’s supposed to be winning your heart back and working the heal the broken relationship.

In middle recovery, if he isn’t connecting with his partner, he should have curiosity about his heart. Joel 2:13 says “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and relents from sending calamity.” Isn’t that beautiful? The men can only rend their hearts – which is critical – as they learn to attach to God and see he is safe. The barriers to connection to his heart hide the keys to his real freedom.

Expecting emotional maturity from someone who is an emotional child or ornery teen isn’t a good idea. Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.” Our men have been (and sometimes still are) very careless with our hearts. In the middle season, healthy detachment in love is the place we can collect those data-points and puzzle pieces to get the real picture of our partner. These are good skills that will serve us in other relationships too. This doesn’t mean that we have to be unkind to our partner. We can engage and enjoy our interactions with them that are good and safe. 🙂 And when it’s not stable and mature, we learn to detach, get support from other places and take good care of us!

Here’s a mystery: Couples in recovery where he’s rending/trusting and she’s observing/guarding in truth and love can experience a lot of transformation and empowerment! The things I’ve written today might seem contrary to love, but this is the soil that healthy, mature loves grows in. It’s not easy but it can truly be worth it.