So I have returned to Argyll for the first time since Christmas. At the start of Lockdown, my husband (we have been separated since August 2018) moved in with his girlfriend and her 3 kids in the small town where I went to high school. We had moved to Argyll in August 2013 having gotten married in May earlier that year, we hoped to settle down and start a family. Except it turns out I am infertile. And my husband's girlfriend is also the same person he had sex with while we were married.
While I write that line, I inwardly cringed and had to fight deleting not only that line but the entire post. Which is exactly why I am fucking writing it! The ultimate act of brave as fuckness and bad-assery, the feel the fear and do it anyway.
Infidelity happens but it is a killer when it happens to you. It causes post traumatic stress type after-effects where you lose trust in the person you trusted most and the life you had both committed to creating with each other. I also lost trust in other women or perhaps it was more that I lost trust in myself as a woman. I experienced frequent flashbacks, unwanted images of my husband having intimate connecting moments with some one else.
When he first told me, it was n't a deal breaker. As tough as it felt I also know shit happens and I have been there myself. I believe that if both parties are open and committed to resolution then there can be new depth and understanding within a relationship.
I also accepted that I had not always been the best wife. Infertility had rocked my world and not in an awesome way. My tendency to minimise all major emotions in my own life meant that I resisted grieving this loss. Which was a tad incongruent as I was working as a social worker encouraging emotional legitimacy in others.
I had also been pulled under by 15 years as a local authority social worker. 15 years of overworking and emotional contagion meant that I often did n't have any energy to be a very good or present partner.Then combine this attractive mix with childhood insecurities/fear of being alone and relationship difficulties are pretty much guaranteed to ensue.
We tried to make it work for 6 months together-moving house and seeing a relationship therapist in efforts to reconnect. One morning, I woke up early and was reading the wisdom of good old Brene Brown. She highlighted that the most dangerous story that we can make up are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness. Something in me knew I was becoming diminished by this story. That I was assuming all of the responsibility in this story. Some gentle voice inside me urged me to leave, that I had to find my inherent worthiness alone.
However, it has taken a fuck of a lot of awesome therapy (thanks to Jane, awesome former transactional analysis therapist and Laura, current equally awesome person centred therapist) to help me to accept that this infidelity was not my fault (the old childhood patterns of full responsibility taking for anything and everything helpfully emerged). For me to accept that whilst shit happens in life including people having sex with other people when they are married, it is the choice of that individual to do so. And each choice, each action carries consequences which we each have to be accountable for.
For me, after a shaky couple of heartbroken years, I choose to see the gifts within infertility and infidelity. I choose forgiveness for both of us. I choose to see we are humans, that humans fuck up sometimes and hurt the people they love. I choose to see the freedom of my path ahead and the opportunity to get to know my true self. I choose the wisdom of a dear friend, Heidi-that by choosing to embrace what feels diminishing, we are infact enlargEd. I choose to run with Brene Brown and to follow the wisdom of grace where all of my mistakes serve as my purpose rather than my shame. I choose to be a badass.
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