I have been married for 30 years. Until recently, we were the best of friends. Then he began being distant, though he remained kind. I thought this was a passing phase, a midlife crisis of some sort. But one day I found out by chance that he had been engaged in a year-long affair with another woman. Life as I knew it collapsed.
It was not so much that my world was turned upside down, as it lost its cohesion. I was instantly reduced to pieces. No matter how much I try to make sense of it all, I cannot. I am (was?) a super-active person with many interests, and this betrayal has splintered me and narrowed everything down to this single event.
I wake up thinking about it and go to bed thinking about it. But the worst thing is the sense of utter shame at being deceived, at having lived a lie, of not being good enough. When I am alone, I am assailed by awful thoughts.
I long to feel in control of my life again. I don’t want to end up bitter. I know I am not the first, and nor will I be the last person to go through this, but what does it take to recover? And am I overreacting?
There was no mention in your letter of what happened after you found out about the affair, or since then. It’s as if this one event – traumatic though it was – is all that is under the microscope and has blotted everything else out. We need to zoom out a little.
I went to Prof Alessandra Lemma, a chartered clinical and counselling psychologist, psychoanalyst and a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. We both noted how catastrophic this loss feels to you. “The discovery of the affair doesn’t register as a painful blow to a valued relationship, so much as the total collapse of your inner and external world,” notes Lemma. “Your language – being ‘reduced to pieces’, losing ‘cohesion’ – suggests a breakdown in your sense of self. It feels as though something essential that had been quietly holding you together has given way.”
Alongside that, Lemma noted the “striking absence of anger towards your husband and a strong presence of shame directed at yourself”. Why aren’t you more angry? Don’t you feel you have a right to be?
double quotation markCan you step back and look at the relationship as a whole, not just its ending? What was good about it? What do you want to happen next?
Lemma thinks this could be a type of coping mechanism: “By locating the catastrophe in yourself, you can perhaps make sense of an otherwise unthinkable rupture, even if that comes at a considerable cost to your mental state.”
When everything narrows in like this, it can be because it taps into something else: previous pain and trauma that has not been acknowledged. Then something unearths the whole lot and it can feel disproportionately destabilising.
Lemma had some questions you might want to think about: “What did this marriage provide for you – your sense of self and who you are? Where is your anger, and what feels risky about allowing yourself to feel it? What feels most unbearable right now – the betrayal itself or the realisation that you didn’t know it was happening?”
Can you step back and look at the relationship as a whole, not just its ending? What was good about it? What – and this is crucial – do you want to happen next? This isn’t to minimise what happened, but to bring some perspective and make this feel more whole and less fragmented.
The shame isn’t yours to carry and it shouldn’t silence you. You trusted your husband, he betrayed you: that’s on him. I’m concerned by the “awful thoughts” you have and would ask you to please share them with someone you trust. To begin processing what happened, you need to start talking about it. You have made a valiant first step by getting in touch.
Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions. The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here.
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