Was it Forgiveness or Fawning After the Affair Disclosure?

spoiler alert: probably a bit of both

When my then-husband confessed his infidelity to me, one of the first things I told him in response was, “I forgive you.” Or it may have been “I will forgive you.” I don’t remember the exact words given the horrific flush of stress hormones racing through my body. I felt the room both spin and freeze. It was slow motion. It was blurring. It was enraging. It was heartbreaking.

How on earth does one process such a confession when it is so unexpected and out of character? He hinted that there was some sort of disclosure for the upcoming marriage therapy session.

Hallelujah. Perhaps we were finally going to unpack the emotional affair from the previous year. The emotional disconnection and tension between us continued growing since then. But any attempts to discuss this were met with stonewalling.

I would give leeway and tell myself he was going through a midlife crisis. This was a rough patch and we would work on things and come out stronger in the end. Just give it time…

How naïve of me!

But anyway. In the session, he brought up the emotional affair. Admitted that he did indeed lie to me about how he had asked her to “take things further in their relationship,” only to be rejected.

I’m a little embarrassed to say, I felt compassion for him when he told me about the rejection. After living with this man for over three decades, I knew that would be very painful for him. Looking back, this reminds me of how mentally I was fucked up from the growing stress.

But still. I was relieved that we were FINALLY going to address this. Since I had known about it, I had thrown myself into reading about the psychology of affairs, and also watched TED talks by Esther Perel, a Belgian psychotherapist and author who specializes in infidelity. I was trying to understand what was driving his behavior. And what I was doing to contribute to the martial breakdown.

I joined a forum, Bloom for Women, a site for women who were struggling with the aftermath of their spouses’ infidelity. Reading some of their devastating stories made me think, thank God, it was “only” an emotional affair.

But that reasoning didn’t take me very far. The stories from other women on emotional affairs showed me how damaging a sexless affair could be. This was serious shit. This wasn’t some harmless mid-life crisis flight of fancy into fantasy to shake up marital doldrums.

I went into the session, feeling prepared and eager to hear what he had to say. Finally. We are going to unpack this!

I wasn’t prepared to hear about the full-on affair with his yoga buddy. Which brings me back to that first paragraph. The whirling room.

Looking back, I believe my declaration of forgiveness was a trauma response. Fight, flight, freeze or fawning.

I was fawning.

Unfamiliar with that term? Here is a definition found at Psych Central:

Fawning refers to consistently abandoning your own needs to serve others to avoid conflict, criticism, or disapproval. Fawning is also called the “please and appease” response and is associated with people-pleasing and codependency.

I had been making strides in healing my codependent behavioral patterns, but now I was facing an existential threat to the very life I had built, that of a wife and mom. With the inner work I had been doing along with therapy, I developed healthier patterns. But I also learned that the old patterns don’t just go quietly into the night, you simply learn to build and strengthen new pathways.

My old pattern came rip roaring from the depths of my being.

Maybe if I play nice-nice, he’ll come to his senses and realize what an amazing gal I am and we will start a new chapter and happily move into our golden years together.

And then we will buy some tropical beachfront in Alaska and all will be well, my inner snark suggested.

I am no lightweight in the trauma department. I grew up in a tumultuous, alcoholic home, experienced a horrific sexual assault as a child, and survived numerous other small letter “t” traumas, (as opposed to big letter T trauma.)

But nothing prepared me for the trauma of affair disclosure. And the conflicting emotions made me want to run and keep on running.

I still loved this man. Was invested in the marriage. My role for most of our marriage was that of homemaker, so my very economic survival was also threatened.

The outrage and fury came later as I tried to process the confession. I had so belittled myself by tolerating his behaviors (like the emotional affair and his increasing contempt for me); I was disconnected from any healthy anger.

I tried to understand what he was going through. But when he expressed anger over the support I was receiving from friends and family, as opposed to support for him, I could finally feel and express the rage that had been piling up and suppressed. He could not be both perpetrator and victim here.

I had plenty of work to do. The societal and religious nice girl training would do me no good here. It was time to allow my inner enraged bitch to speak up. It was time to advocate for myself.

And hear the inner whisper…. You deserve better.

Part of that “you deserve better” also meant forgiveness.

True forgiveness.

Starting with myself.

Aaaaaand that, dear reader, will be the topic of my next article.

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