Dear Sugar,
I need your help with forgiveness. I am carrying a fierce anger in my body every day, and I can’t seem to find my way out of it.
Last year, I discovered that a young woman my husband and I hired was having a relationship with my husband. This woman who I’d invited into my life, who I’d helped with her career, who I’d invited into my family, responded by meeting secretly with my husband and writing him histrionic love letters pressuring him to leave me.
It’s as though my whole view of the world has gone dim. People are capable of the most astonishing and selfish acts. I used to focus on pursuing real joy and delight in my life, and sharing that joy, too. But now it feels like that light has gone out forever. This woman has caused damage in my family that I never imagined possible. I know it harms me to say so, but I really, really hate her.
Recently I discovered that she is STILL writing him letters, some six months after my husband broke it off. I have a white ball of rage about it, a monster in my chest. I imagine terrible fates befalling her, and that consumes me every day. How do I find my way back to compassion and the joyful life I once had? Can I find even a little shred of peace?
Signed,
Mourning and Raging
Dear Mourning and Raging,
How painful. I’m sorry this happened to you, sweet pea. There are few things more devastating than a betrayal such as the sort you describe. It’s no wonder you have a mega-hot white monster ball raging inside of you. It’s a reasonable response to a hurtful situation. And yet, as you know, you’ll only destroy yourself if you continue to allow your rage to consume you. So let’s talk about how you might find some peace.
Your letter implies that you and your husband have stayed together through this turmoil. You didn’t ask for marital advice, so I’ll refrain from giving it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I think a huge chunk of your other-woman fury will be diffused once you and your husband heal the harm his affair has caused. What strikes me most about your letter is how little you say about him. Your rage appears to be directed solely toward the woman with whom he had an affair. You write that she has “caused damage in my family that I never imagined possible,” but of course she couldn’t have caused damage if your husband hadn’t let her. They both violated your trust, but your husband committed the graver offense. He took a vow. She only took a job.
I don’t point this out in order to dismiss her transgression, but rather to call your attention to a dynamic that’s worth examining. To have a covert love affair with one member of the couple who employs you is bad form indeed, but why is your rage focused on her rather than him? Is it possible that you’ve subconsciously redirected your anger to the safer party, since hating her doesn’t require you to dismantle your life, as hating him would? How did you express your anger towards your husband when you learned of the affair? How did you forgive him? Did your rage toward the other woman increase or decrease after you forgave your husband? Why? What does forgiveness in this context mean to you?
I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on these questions. Answering them may restore at least some sense of balance regarding your rage and it will also require you to contemplate core issues that must be resolved before you’ll be able to find “the joyful life” again. When bad things happen often the only way back to wholeness is to take it all apart. You have the strength to do that, no matter how marriage-mucking and soul-shaking that will be. A terrible thing happened to you, honey bun, but you mustn’t let it define your life. Couples survive all kinds of shit, including shit like this. And individuals survive too, even when their marriages don’t. There is a way forward.
You asked for help with forgiveness, but I don’t think that’s what you need to reach for just yet. You know how alcoholics who go to AA are always using that phrase one day at a time? They say that because to say I will never drink again is just too fucking much. It’s big and hard and bound to fail. This is how forgiveness feels for you at this moment, no doubt. It’s the reason you can’t do it. I suggest you forget about forgiveness for now and strive for acceptance instead.
Accept that the man you love was unfaithful to you. Accept that a woman you once held in regard treated you with disrespect. Accept that their actions hurt you deeply. Accept that this experience taught you something you didn’t want to know. Accept that sorrow and strife are part of even a joyful life. Accept that it’s going to take a long time for you to get that monster out of your chest. Accept that someday what pains you now will surely pain you less.
Just writing that to you makes me feel better, Mourning and Raging. Do you feel the shift? In a previous column I wrote: acceptance is a small, quiet room and what I meant by that has everything to do with simplicity, with sitting in the ordinary place, with bearing witness to the plain facts of our life, with not just starting at the essential, but ending up there. Your life has been profoundly shaken by these recent revelations. It’s not your task to immediately forgive those who shook you. Your spoken desire to forgive the woman who betrayed you is in opposition to what you feel. Forgiveness forces an impossible internal face off between you and a woman you hate.
Acceptance asks only that you embrace what’s true.
Strange as it sounds, I don’t think you’ve done that yet. I can hear it in the pitch of your letter. You’re so outraged and surprised that this shitty thing happened to you that there’s a piece of you that isn’t yet convinced it did. You’re looking for the explanation, the loop hole, the bright twist in the dark tale that reverses its course. Any one would be. It’s the reason I’ve had to narrate my own stories of injustice about seven thousand times, as if by raging about it once more the story will change and by the end of it I won’t still be the woman hanging on the end of the line.
But it won’t change, for me or for you or for anyone who has ever been wronged, which is everyone. We are all at some point—and usually at many points over the course of a life—the woman hanging on the end of the line. Allow your acceptance of that to be a transformative experience. You do that by simply looking it square in the face and then moving on. You don’t have to move fast or far. You can go just an inch. You can mark your progress breath by breath.
Literally. And it’s there that I recommend you begin. Every time you think: I hate that fucking bitch I want you to neutralize that thought with a breath. Calm your mind. Breathe in deeply with intention, then breathe out. Do not think I hate that fucking bitch while you do it. Give yourself that. Blow that bitch right out of your chest. Then move on to something else.
I don’t meditate, though I admire a lot of people who do. I don’t do yoga regularly, though it’s on my list of things I aspire to. I’ve never worshiped a guru, though I’ve had sexual fantasies about doing so. I’m not versed in healing or spiritual practices of any sort, though in this column I half pretend that I am. I’m just telling you exactly what I do when I feel the kind of rage you describe and it has worked for me better than anything over and over again.
I have breathed my way through my father, through my grandfather, through my stepfather, and through the woman my stepfather married after my mother died. I have breathed my way through one friend and another friend; through people I’ve fucked and through people who fucked people who were supposed to be fucking only me.
Sometimes while doing this I have breathed in acceptance and breathed out love. Sometimes I’ve breathed in gratitude and out forgiveness. Sometimes I haven’t been able to muster anything beyond the breath itself, my mind forced blank with nothing but the will to be free of sorrow and rage.
It works. And the reason it works is the salve is being applied directly to the wound. It’s not a coincidence that you describe your pain as being lodged in your chest. When you breathe with calm intention you’re zapping the white rage monster precisely where it lives. You’re cutting off its feeding tube and forcing a new thought into your head—one that nurtures rather than tortures you. It’s essentially mental self-discipline, much like the approaches I’ve written about in different contexts in my columns about how to deal with professional jealousy or how to live with our deepest sorrows. In all cases, I’m not suggesting one deny negative emotions, but rather to accept them and move through them by embracing the power we have to keep from wallowing in emotions that don’t serve us well.
It’s hard work. It’s important work. I believe something like forgiveness is on the other side. You will get there, dear woman. Just try.
Yours,
Sugar
37 responses
Oh boy. As I read the letter, the thought did cross my mind that her HUSBAND – who took vows – allowed the affair with the hired help in first place. Also, I imagine husband broke off affair after wife found out. What if she hadn’t?
The young woman is still writing letters? Husband has accepted them in home? Opened them? Not thrown them away or Return to Sender?
Sugar, you’re very wise with your advice. I would still be fuming at husband for his MAJOR part in causing damage to his family.
Yes.
Two months out of a relationship with someone who turned out to be an alcoholic, and all that could possibly entail, I find myself still feeling white hot flashes of anger, but also of shame. As though there is something wrong with me, that I would invite someone like him into my life.
There is a part of me that knows I am not a bad person – and that he behaved the only way he knew how – but I still find myself consumed with thoughts of the relationship (such as it was) and all that went wrong.
Your advice to accept what happened – to see it for what it was – and to breathe through it on my way to forgiveness is so helpful. Thank you, Sugar.
I hope that Mourning and Raging finds some serenity.
Sugar, you did it again! Reading this, breathing deeply, I realized I’m still blaming myself for my father abandoning me, and for my mother neglecting me. I feel I’m now a step closer to accepting that these actions were the choices of two pained adults and that I am not responsible for their choices. What I am responsible for is accepting, forgiving and moving on. And breathing deeply.
Bullseye Sugar.
This was my life last year, and this was my process. I never blamed/hated “the bitch” (I am not really sure why). You are so correct when you say at some point, you have to face that anger/betrayal/possible dismantling of your life HEAD ON before you can move forward. This process has forced me to look at myself too, to examine the things that I need to work on and how strong I truly am. We are not perfect, we are human, we are fallible.
Your advice is perfect, simple and true.
I like this advice because i think it also speaks to what it feels like to be obsessed with someone who’s wronged you: thinking about them constantly, convinced you will see them everywhere, anxious about events you know will overlap. Taking that breath and blowing that bitch right out of your chest. Letting yourself off the hook of exhausting diligence by not thinking about them as much as the chattering demons in your mind want you to think about them. And then expanding that place, and making room where self is more important than that bitch, as it rightfully should be. Sometimes forget has to come before forgive.
Oh Sugar… You hit my Sugar-spot EVERY TIME.
Great response. You didn’t say GO PUNCH HER IN THE FACE. Which might provide some solace, but of course is not the answer. This is.
Grateful for you and your awesome awesome heart-galvanizing letters. Keep on, Sugar, keep on.
xx
Matthew
sugar, you hit it out of the park every time. reading this through, before i was even FINISHED i closed my eyes and attempted to breathe out resentment and breathe in acceptance. breathe out righteous indignation and breathe in acceptance. breathe out self pity and breathe in acceptance. within five breaths i realized what had happened. i was breathing out hope. and breathing in faith.
thank you.
nicole
@Sugar – Your writing on emotions and hard things gives me shivers. I actually get goose bumps.
@Letter Writer – re: Sugar’s thoughts on breathing and blowing the bad thoughts out and mental discipline angle.
Sometimes I say to myself (heard this someplace else, not sure where. maybe breakup girl?) when I’ve been ranting about someone doing stupid things in my life… ya know: I’ve talked about this enough. By talking about it further, I’m letting this person into my house right now. Because when I continue to spend time thinking about someone who’s angered me, then I’m spending time inviting this person into my life. Sometimes that helps me choose to do something else. Anyway, it’s a good mental image that works for me some of the time. Good luck!
oh, Sugar, I adore how you make me weep with every single column. You always find those little spots inside that I didn’t notice were aching and you sprinkle your sugar on them and they heal. And thank you for including links to past columns, I find new gems in those every time i read them.
Piggybacking on what Lulu said…Sometimes I hold tight to anger because I am worried that if I am not vigilant I will leave myself vulnerable to that experience again. The fact is, life is messy and there are few guarantees and all you can do is be as honest and real as you can. Look before you jump but don’t let the disappointments of life keep you from ever jumping again.
And “not letting someone in your house” doesn’t have to involve kicking the person metaphorically out the front door. It can sometimes be enough to accept that they sometimes come in and wander about or try to strike up a conversation or get into a fight. And if you leave the door open and focus on other things and other people they often leave while you were otherwise occupied. After a while they come less frequently.
Neither acceptance nor forgiveness need to involve inviting them back into your life, either. Sometimes the process of letting go of the anger is also a release of what a person or experience meant to you. What is left is the calm quiet of considering how you want to occupy the present and move into the future.
YOU ARE MAGICAL, SUGAR. MAGICAL!
This advice could not be more impeccably timed. This is what I needed to read today. Thank you Sugar, for this column and all the rest of them.
M&R’s letter makes me sick to my stomach.
My mother dealt for years with anger and hatred towards the woman involved with my father, who ended up divorcing her. She told me that she kept a quote taped to her mirror and read it every time she saw it. Don’t know who said it, but it went something like this: “Anger is a poison which does far more damage to the vessel in which it is stored, than to the object upon which it is poured.”
Sweet, strong, smart Sugar x
The idea of forgiving one tiny smidge at a time, a tactic that may be applicable to someone who is truly sorry for damage caused, is dead-on, Sugar–thanks! I also embrace the idea that acceptance of a bad thing does not necessarily require full and complete forgiveness. The other woman in this scenario does not sem to want to be forgiven, and discovering that I can let go of anger towards people like this with acceptance, rather than the overly-saintly brand of forgiveness that we often feel we must muster in these situations, has helped me make more progress towards true understanding and freedom from hate than I ever would have imagined. It is possible to heal through acceptance of people who are unaware of or unwilling to change hurtful behavior, saving real forgiveness for people who care–the husband here may be a candidate.
thank you, sugar.
As a longtime practitioner of Yoga and a teacher of the physical practices of Yoga going on a decade, I can see that you, Sugar, truly understand an essential piece of the system of Yoga and made it fully accessible to all who read this, if they want to use their breath as a tool for self-awareness and healing. It’s simple and then not so simple how much our breath is intertwined with our emotional processes. Our bodies are truly our diaries and unlike our thinking selves, our physical selves cannot lie or deceive. As our breathing is one of the more subtle aspects of our physical selves over which we can have some conscious control, it’s a clean lens into our unedited emotional and mental states. I’m grateful for your insights.
Right on the dot Sugar. What fine tools you craft. Useful tools. Tools made for specific jobs, fitted for use by anyone in need. What clear instructions you provide. Sugar Shop. Anything less is everything else.
Love. this. so. much. Sugar!!
As I read, I could feel all of my inner “white balls of rage” re-accumulating themselves, after years of meditation and years of therapy. But when you breathed back out, I breathed with you. Someone above wrote a version of this, but I have always believed, scratch that, *known* that “Holding on to anger is like eating rat poison, and then waiting for the other person to die.”
I think you are right on with the goal as gradual acceptance, because I have always secretly believed that righteous saintliness is a very sneaky form of rage.
Forgiveness is for US, not for the fuckers who have wronged us. Because it is just too painful to live any other way.
Eventually.
Sugar, your words are so healing. I came here in the hope of seeing a new column, and I was so happy to find what I was looking for. I came here because the pain I’ve been carrying was getting too much and I was starting to feel self-destruction looming ahead; but your words reminded me that I have a choice, and it begins with a breath.
Thank you.
With love,
deena
I am an intelligent, educated woman who has made a career of being attracted to men who are going to cheat on me. It’s a way of never having to be committed yourself if you subconsciously choose to partner with a person who is not going to stay focused on you. It is important that you find your means to cope–other than self-destruction, which I’ve used incessantly, which is rather limited, as it turns out–and flat out focusing on breathing from one minute to the next is the best advice anyone can give. And walking. Just walking and being in your body. Those minutes eventually add up to something.
But don’t forget that anger is part of the grieving process. You do have to give it its space. And it is usually self-limiting.
But it’d be a lot more fun to file for divorce and take the bastard for all he’s worth.
This is stunning.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this column over the last few days. I was actually surprised (and thrilled) to see Sugar give this simple but powerful advice of just simply *breathing*. We’ve all been breathing for years (it’s hardly a new fad) but doing so with intention is subtle work that I’ve practiced for many many years myself and have found profoundly moving.
Sometimes one’s pain and anger and rage and loss really is too much to deal with all at once. And that’s OK, because the whole point of this breath work is that you’re not dealing with it all at once. What I like is that you’re not sweeping the “bad” feelings under the carpet until someday you can’t help but trip over all the ridiculous lumps everywhere, but you’re taking a bit of “bad” and truly dealing with it a little manageable bit at a time, and then off it goes to where it belongs, whether it’s on a shelf somewhere or out with the rubbish or wherever. It’s dealt with. And then holy crap, that Big Bad you started working on years ago? It’s something you can now hold in your hand and give a good talking to. And there’s an added bonus in that you’ve probably grown emotionally quite a bit, too, after digesting all those Little Bits of Bad over time.
Really powerful stuff here. Sometimes I think you can move a flippin’ mountain, one breath at a time. Oh, and also that line about sexual fantasies of guru worship totally made me laugh. Especially because even if you’re moving a ginormous mountain, well, don’t forget about other important things, too!
Reminds me of Pema Chodron and buddhist concept of Tonglen.
When I read the line, “this woman who I’d invited into my life, who I’d helped with her career, who I’d invited into my family…” I get chills. The pain here is also about being made the fool, isn’t it? There you are, giving of yourself, being nice to this person, from your position of more money and wisdom…and you feel like a fool for being so very very nice, so very naive. And like Sugar says, it’s less disconcerting to be mad at someone you were helping out, someone you felt in some way superior to, than your partner when that person makes you look a fool.
I don’t know if it helps you to move past rage, if you accept that this is part of the dynamic, that her youth, her vunerability, led her into her betrayal of you, even if she should have known better. Many many women have made the mistake of crossing lines with older men they work for- its such a strong power dynamic, such a powerful plot line. I have had friends who nearly made this mistake, and they talked about how compelling the older man with a beautiful amazing wife is, because the idea that he will have an interest in them when he already has so much is validating, makes them feel powerful and interesting, at a time in their life where they’re anxious to find direction. It doesn’t make it okay but I would find it much harder to forgive a social equal in age and economic status for her part in an affair, because she wouldn’t be compelled by the same overall setting, and would presumably be old enough to know better/be able to help herself.
Meanwhile, your husband has fucked things up so much. Not just you, but her too. He’s offered a temptation to this woman, which has drawn her into the path of hurting you, and led her to a place where even months later she can’t walk away. That’s also cruel- when a cheater gives the other woman false hope that it will work out, false emotional intimacy, that too is a betrayal. Cheaters say things like, “my marriage is almost dead. We aren’t happy. You make me feel things I never felt before” and this is a lie. They go home and have a nice night with their wife, who they still love, and get to enjoy being adored by two people. Perhaps you can find a path to forgiving by knowing that her future ability to love and trust and forgive, will be affected by what she did, by what he said. She will live with the shame and hurt, as she goes forward looking for someone to love her. If she finds someone she deeply loves, she will know how easy it is for that person to be unfaithful. Cheating hurts the cheater too, even if they don’t know it at them time. Better to be a fool for love, than to damage your ability to love.
What he did is at least twice as worse. The rage you need to feel is better spent on him, for encouraging this, for not cutting it off so decisively that she still has hope, for messing up your relationship with this employee you mentored, for all the things he did. These are bad things. If she works for you, she could have made legal troubles. How incredibly selfish of him to do this. He needs to take that resposibility on fully, and he’d better be letting you feel everything you need to feel and express.
“Better to be a fool for love, than to damage your ability to love.”
Interesting thought. I agree…though sometimes being the fool ends up damaging your ability to love, too. Is there a way to engage in love without risking being the fool? I am guessing the answer is no but I wish it were different.
Thank you for this. Its eerie how on the mark it was with regards to what I needed to read and understand.
Janet, the poison quote is great. I know a similar one, and I also forget exactly where it’s from: Anger is like a hot coal. We pick it up with the intention to throw it, but the only one burnt is ourselves.
I also can say from a place of unfortunate, young, and naive experience that E is also correct. It’s doubtful that the employee intended to hurt the letter writer. She probably is, and always was, wracked with guilt, and may have had to bury the guilt behind a built up narrative of love with the husband to allow her to accept her part in the affair. Shit like this is always messy.
Dear Mourning and Raging,
I found out six days ago my husband was sleeping with my two best friends along with a host of other women. The pain and horror and hate is so acrid I have it burning on the tip of my tongue every single morning when I wake up. Rage is shooting out of the ends of my hair and the bottoms of my feet and every day I am surprised I can’t fucking levitate because of it.
Sugar is as usual right on the money. Forgiveness is way too big of a thing, it is a skyscraper and we have to take the stairs to get to the top of it. I don’t know about you but, my future right now feels utterly black and wretched so I am not going to look there.I am going to look at my hands and my feet and know at least I am here in the world able to move in tiny increments every day.
I will try to breathe every day if you will.
Good luck to us both.
Thank you Sugar.
There’s only one time in my life that I came close to this kind of transgression that Mourning & Raging is mourning and raging over, only one time that I sat on the fence between being the “other woman” and not being the other woman. I’m not even sure the choice was mine in the end. But I’m glad I ended up on the safe side of the fence. The kinder side.
I’ve done other things tho, many many other things, that I regret, that no one I know in my now life would maybe ever believe about me.
Reading this letter, I can’t help but take it in as a reminder of what our human failings do to other people. What selfishness, lust, and, let’s face it, addiction, do to those we don’t even know.
I say addiction because it’s only addicts who refuse to think beyond the act, the ingestion, the getting the need filled. Or who when they do think beyond it, just can’t care, because getting their own need, impulse, etc. filled is more important than anyone else’s life, heart, spirit, or peace of mind. I can say this because I am an addict–or was–am in recovery from being one.
I know “affairs” are so common that we don’t think about them as addictions. Some people (usually the people that are having them) think of them as products of “true love”–true love being something that takes nothing else into consideration (like timing, and other people’s feelings and lives).
We are, in our weakest moments, absent of all responsibility. We are sick. We are sad. We are selfish. To decide to feel and face these conditions without acting–that’s where the real pain is, and why so many of us race forward, head first into compulsion.
I don’t know what I’m saying this all for. But I’m saying it. I guess because it’s so easy to look at that other woman and go: BAD BAD BAD WOMAN. Or the husband: BAD BAD BAD HUSBAND. And they are. And Poor Wife, this woman. And she is. But this is all in all of us–at least the potential. And it sucks. And, like Sugar says, is healable, regardless of which side of the equation you are on.
If La Otra is still writing your husband, you can be sure she is doing it in an agony of unrequited crushness. To your eyes, she is the one who stole from you, but from her vantage, you’re the adult, successful woman who has the man she wants and who won everything when he chose her. She is miserable right now, so enjoy knowing that.
***
Do not contemplate or implement revenge. Yes, the universe should hit her with a bus, but you are not the agent. Revenge is the way the powerless tries to restore balance. The powerful have no need for revenge. You won. You have too much dignity to take the powerless role and no need, so no revenge for you.
***
Society puts huge pressure on people to forgive. The default assumption is that you should forgive. People judge you if you don’t. Blah blah blah, for your own good, for your sake not theirs, forgiveness is not reconciliation, forgiveness doesn’t condone the behavior. I didn’t want to forgive, so I resented it. But that’s the message you will get: just like every commenter above, society really wants you to forgive.
***
Longer:
A few years back, my shrink put a fair amount of pressure on me to forgive my ex and former best friend. I was extremely resistant, so I spent about five months reading everything I could find about forgiveness. Here’s what I learned.
There’s a fair amount of theological work on forgiveness. If you are religious, forgiveness is a quality derived from God’s divine grace. (Mercy is when we get the punishment we deserve and are clean; grace is when we do not get the punishment we deserve and are clean.) It exists and is available to humans because God’s grace exists. This wasn’t helpful for me, but if you believe in divine grace, your forgiveness is an extension of something that already exists.
There’s study about the connection between forgiveness and health, but I’m plenty healthy so it didn’t motivate me.
The work that helped me the most was Dr. Worthington’s technical writings on forgiveness. Not his mass market _Power of Forgiveness_, but his more textbook-like work explaining forgiveness to psych students (_Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application_). He lists a seven-point checklist for whether people forgive; I failed every single item. The ones I remember:
People forgive if they’ve experienced an important forgiveness event. If you were a transgressor and were forgiven, you are more likely to forgive.
People forgive if there has been an intervening justice event. If the transgressor got her comeuppance, it is easier to let go.
People forgive if it is part of their spiritual practice.
People forgive if they are forced to interact with the person frequently (I think).
People forgive everything else more than they forgive betrayal.
There was lots more in his book; I strongly recommend it. It explained a lot to me about why I wasn’t forgiving.
Finally, I found law review articles about not-forgiving. They wrote that not-forgiving can be a way of standing one’s moral ground. “No. What that person did was morally wrong, and I do not forgive him.” Not forgiving can also be a measure of self-respect. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to find these. The pressure had been so strong, and it seemed like absolutely everyone assumed that of course I should forgive and what was wrong with me that I didn’t.
So, after months of consideration, I didn’t forgive. However, the process took a lot of the heat and animation behind my grudge away. Now I don’t forgive them and I don’t feel the white hot rage. If you want to approach it intellectually, Dr. Worthington’s books were the best I found (unless theology helps you). But I give you permission not to forgive them. They hurt you and you didn’t deserve it. No one does.
^^^ Megan, I love what you wrote. Making anger dissipate by seeing a wrongdoer’s weaknesses is generally the most effective way to move past a transgression but this is almost always tied into the concept of forgiveness. I understand why people find forgiveness empowering, but is it really? Is it not sometimes a passive, hollow way of asserting moral superiority over the transgressor – hollow because there’s no justice or fairness and you’re letting them away with doing something wrong, that presumeably defies your own moral code. In contrast, there’s something so honest and admirable about remaining true to your own values in letting all the anger go, accepting the past and still calmly, rationally sometimes choosing not to forgive.
@Mourning and Raging Is that you, Nicole?
The same thing happened to me…a college student of mine who I helped get on her feet..babysat my children…and I blamed her more than my husband for the same reasons mentioned in your response. I realized after awhile that hurt and anger are so interwined, it’s nearly impossible to separate them without some help. (My ex thought I wasn’t being fair to her when I demanded no contact….ever…that I was being hurtful with my comments to her….now I roll my eyes when I think about his criticism.) For a very long time, I blamed myself. Never an apology from either one of them. I was humiliated and hurt, but once I acknowledged the that, I released the anger. Can’t say that I’ll ever actually forgive either one of them, but time has eased how much it affects my life. I did have a bit of satisfaction, however, when I left an angry message on her answering machine, I found out later that her fiance was in the room as she screened the call. They broke up rather quickly when he found out she had cheated. Now that she has a husband and a child, I wonder if she ever thinks about her comment to me. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I don’t owe you an apology.” Since this happened to me, I have shocked at how many women are raising their children alone after their husbands have left them for younger women. Absolutely shocked. Thanks for the great advice. Glad to have found you!
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