Dec 11
6
Twenty-six months into “recovery” a partner states she continues to feel a deep sadness, is tiring of the continued sense of fear she often pushes back, and cannot stop noticing her husband working not to “notice” attractive women.
The partner is seated in the crook of her betraying husbands arm appearing comfortable, safe, loving and loved. She adoringly and playfully pats her husbands leg as he makes a joke. They laugh together and then she cries. She cannot seem to steer herself into that final place of forgiveness. The partner describes her husband’s recovery and the miracle of who he has become. She reports he is caring, considerate, humble, deeply sorrowful, contrite. She talks about how he helps others through sponsorship and accepting kindness. Her betraying husband has become the man she married; the man he abandoned 30 years ago in his sex addiction. The partner tells her husband she is happier than she has ever been and that she can only promise him that she will stay with him one day at a time.
The partner looks at me and says “He has become an amazing man, father and grandfather who spends much of his time holding, playing with and reading stories to his grandchildren.” She asks “why cant I forgive him?”
How complicated forgiveness can be.
We imagine time will enable us to forgive. We believe humble amends will allow us to let go of pain and forgive. We trust that with therapy, improved communication and a skilled method for expressing our pain and hurt the forgiveness will come. Indeed, all are factors toward facilitating healing and forgiveness.
However, there remains a significant roadblock to partners’ healing. Partners have difficulty forgiving themselves for what they didn’t or should have seen. Partners read books about relational infidelity and are blamed. Books and articles describe partners as co-addicts and codependents who, in a sense, choose not to see. They are urged to do their own work.
In her book Not Just Friends, Shirley Glass discusses an important concept called the truth bias. She states that “…because people in committed relationships tend to have a truth bias that inclines them toward believing what they are told, it seldom occurs to them that they are being betrayed.”
Jennifer Freyd, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon believes in what she calls Betrayal Trauma Theory. She states that “…people who are betrayed by a loved one or institution remain unaware of the betrayal to protect a relationship upon which they depend…” She states that dissociation can be so strong a force that a person can take information in and fail to integrate it into conscious awareness. She refers to this as Betrayal Blindness.
Perhaps the experience of shock and disbelief and then the slow process of putting the “puzzle pieces” of information in place is the gradual reduction of the betrayal blindness. Certainly, in my sixteen years of experience helping partners and addicts negotiate the recovery process, I can report that partners tend not to know of the infidelity. When the betrayal was discovered, the betraying partner was confronted and apologized and pledged fidelity. The truth bias, I believe, is evoked in these moments and the betrayed partner continues to live relationally – inclined to believe the betraying partner will hold his/her end of the bargain and remain faithful.
We know that whether or not partners feel some level of blame or responsibility, forgiveness is a challenge. With partners we work first to forgive self. The truth bias is a powerful force in human relating. It is neither naiive nor “stupid” (as many partners refer to themselves) . Truth bias enables all of us to maintain healthy relationships with partners, parents, children, friends, co-workers, neighbors.
Forgiveness of self, then, involves letting go of self-blame and the automatic negative and self-hating messages that are unpredictible; like land mines in the mind. Partners are asked to accept the truth that they could not have known they were being lied to even though they may have previously discovered infidelity and so were unable to make different choices then and now.
Wishing peace and serenity
Michele Saffier
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