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Betrayal
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He cheated for 16 months – mostly on the phone
05 Oct 2006 by Rod Smith / 2 Comments
Reader Writes: “I don’t believe my spouse had a sexual affair, but he definitely was too involved with a female coworker. I just found out that they have been talking on the phone for the past 16 months (January 05 to May 06) behind my back. They talked every morning and two and three times every night, and then on weekends. He says they are just friends and they talked about ‘work and general stuff.’ I know everyone he works with, and all his friends. I even know this woman, yet I never heard one conversation they had in those 16 months. He says I need to put it in perspective and move on. He has ended their communications and has apologized for his ‘transgression.’ So yes, I consider myself ‘cheated on.’ If she is such a friend, why isn’t this friendship shared with me and his family like every other friendship we’ve had?”
Rod Responds: Your reasoning is superb, and your question utterly valid. I hope your husband values the treasure he has in you, his wife. Any friendship consuming the time and energy you have described is most certainly not a healthy liaison. That it ever had to be secret is the largest and most glaring red flag.
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How to heal a broken heart — can I get over this?
02 Oct 2006 by Rod Smith / 3 Comments
Reader: I have had a breakup with someone who was everything to me. I can hardly sleep. I think of nothing but him. I cry everyday. I don’t want to eat. I am losing weight. I am closing myself off to other people. Can a person survive such heartbreak? (Letter shortened)
Rod Replies: Writing, the very act of getting your words onto a page might be an important first step in re-discovering your life. I’d suggest you keep a journal of your gained strengths and small victories. While the journal might include details of your pain, be careful not to make it the focus of your writing.
May I suggest, as kindly as I know how, that the next time you fall in love, you have enough of a life of your own, so that you will not need to invest yourself quite so completely in another. Not even a spouse ought to be anyone’s “everything.” Making anyone “everything” creates a lot of pressure for even the healthiest of relationships.
While you might not think it to be true, a broken heart can completely heal. Even though, at this early stage of your healing you may feel like hiding from others, I’d suggest you force yourself to re-enter the world through a few trusted relationships.
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My wife wants to talk constantly about the affair I had and she forgave me for…… Why?
20 Sep 2006 by Rod Smith / 9 Comments
If one spouse forgives the other for cheating, why does it (always) get brought up in conversations long after the cheating has ended and after the forgiveness has been granted? (Question asked “online”)
Here are four, of many, reasons:
1. Sexual infidelity severely wounds people (all people involved) and relationships on many levels. Its power to shake life ought never be underestimated. Betrayal cuts a deep wound and often dislodges the capacity for future trust. (This is for the victims and the perpetrators!)
2. Because of the intense intimacy that can accompany the sex act, the betrayed spouse might go on a quest to know if the “stolen sex” led his or her partner into deeper levels of intimacy than were achieved within the marriage.
3. The forgiver will probably interpret silence (or anger, or even “over” focus) as an indication the affair did not really cease, or that it has been re-ignited.
4. Talking can connect people, and it can (but does not always) offer hurt people a sense of legitimate control and order. People who have been betrayed often want to talk about their experience (hurt, pain) as an attempt to stop their lives from (the feeling of) running totally out of control.Men and women who have participated in infidelity, and who yet have a forgiving spouse who is willing to work on the marriage, are encouraged to talk openly about anything the forgiving spouse may want talk about. There are some necessary limits to this which I will go into in another posting.
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Unsafe relationships: how to tell you are in danger
21 Jul 2006 by Rod Smith / 9 Comments
Are you married to a man who could harm or kill you, or harm or kill someone you love? Are you dating a man who could murder you one day (or at least harm you physically)?
Dangerous relationships are apparently easier to endure than to address, so it is not surprising that the murder of a wife, an ex-wife or lover usually takes everyone by surprise. Secrecy, cover-up and denial are the hallmarks of toxic binds.
Some women could use a set of criteria to evaluate whether they are involved with a man capable of committing a violent crime against them. Accurate or not, the list could help a woman escape a potentially abusive relationship, or at least eradicate the virus before it destroys her.
Men capable of killing a “loved” one often leave a trail of early indicators, like rose petals around an open grave, before they commit a horrible crime. Ignoring them is understandable. It can also be very costly.
Perhaps someone’s life will be saved because this list, incomplete as it is, will assist someone toward getting appropriate help:
1. He tells you how to dress and insists you obey his wishes in this regard. If you resist he becomes irrationally hurt or angry. You are beyond choosing what you wear because your way of dressing has become his domain.
2. He checks up on you for “your own good.” He wants to know where you are, what you are doing and whom you are with. Time unaccounted becomes an accusation. You find yourself explaining or hiding everything, to avoid the laborious conflicts that inevitably ensue.
3. Any move toward independence (“normal” separateness on your part is rewritten as betrayal).
4. He tells you when you are happy, and rewrites what you feel if you are unhappy. He tries to keep you from your family, suggesting they are not good for you. “They are not good for. You think they are but I can see the way they upset you,” might be something he might say.
5. He tells you when you are hungry and what you like to eat. He says he knows you better than you know yourself.
6. He is jealous of your friendships, even those that predate him and those that are already over. He especially gets riled when you are close to your family and if you talk with enjoyment about things that occurred before you knew him.
7. Keeping peace is second nature to you. Ironically, the peace seldom lasts because he jumps on the smallest issues, magnifying them into major breaches of trust.
8. His highs are very high and his lows very low. It seems as if your response to him is inordinately powerful in changing or determining his mood. There are times when you cannot tell who is controlling who.
9. He pouts easily. He manipulates truth so you are taken by surprise. He plays “hurt puppy” if you’re not happy, thereby making your emotions his business. He expects you to always be glad to see him and to drop whatever you are doing to focus on him.
10. He demands his own way and has an inordinate perception of his own importance. He shows off his “power” by threatening to “talk to the manager,” when he is not given the service he thinks he deserves. He becomes irrationally angry at the smallest of inconveniences. He accuses you of “taking sides” if you suggest he is being unreasonable.
11. He lives on the edge of “white hot” anger, becoming very angry with children, animals and anyone or anything that doesn’t obey him. He hides this anger from people outside the “inner circle” and his mood quickly changes if an “outsider” appears so that his anger is kept secret.
12. He removes your car keys or your purse to restrict your movements and then denies doing so. If you catch him in the act he will say he is kidding or he will become angry enough to throw you off the subject.
13. In the early days of the relationship you felt like you were on a fast ride on an unpredictable roller coaster. Everything was too much, too soon, but you did not know how to say it. Any comment about wanting to “slow down” on your part was ignored. You felt invisible, as if you were just along for his ride.
For such men, winning is everything — losing control is not an option, even for those whom they proclaim to love the most. Please note: the presence of some of these indications and not necessarily all of them, are still indications of an unhealthy and potentially dangerous relationship.
(When this article first appeared in print I got the most amazing volume of response. Some of the tales were VERY sad and almost all revealed great bravery of women who, at the end of their respective ropes, decided to do something about their situations. Included in the responses was, on the one hand, a man who threatened me with violence, and, on the other hand, a woman anonymousely sent me roses. Whoever she is — thanks, they were beautiful. To the angry man all I can say is if you can threaten a newspaper therapist you do not even know, I wonder what you are doing to the people you do know).
Copyright, 2004 ROD SMITH, MSMFT
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Reader takes me to task (letter “lost”, found, edited, and finally posted)
20 Jul 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
I would also like to express my regret about your answer to the lady who is attracted to a married man (25th of May: see Category: “AFFAIRS”). In your answer you point aspects that are important (eg. even if the man is lonely, his emotional well-being is absolutely none of her business), but you also put an accusation on top of her suffering. If she is a “relationship piranha” she must have been the victim of that kind of relationship (very probably during her childhood). An explanation of why she feels attracted to a married man would maybe encourage the lady to seek help to change.
Also you end your message to her with irony. Being tough is okay as long as you seek the growth of the person you address. However, I don’t see how the irony can be edifying. Unless the explanation of such reaction of yours is that the matter the lady consulted you about is a zone of fragility in your life, which you have the right to have. As you say, “Being an authentic adult is hard work and a never completed task”.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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