“There is a moment in every real relationship when you realize the other person could completely dismantle you if they wanted to. And you stay anyway.” – Lara Lou
It is no longer hypothetical. No longer he or she could completely dismantle us if they wanted to. They did dismantle us. And whether or not they wanted to (most, I suspect, are shocked and, if they’re halfway decent human beings, appalled at the wreckage they created), they nonetheless did the deed that dismantled.
And so here we are. Dismantled. And yet … some of us have stayed.
“Mantle” has a number of definitions but they are mostly variations on “covering.” Being “dismantled,” therefore, means being uncovered. Which sounds about right, doesn’t it? A battered heart laid bare. Stripped of our shell. Exposed.
Which brings up something that I’ve long thought so completely unfair. When a partner cheats, so often, we cheated-upons bear the shame. We are the ones who feel exposed and naked. We are the ones who silence ourselves, or are silenced. Our story makes people uncomfortable. Reminds them that they, too, might be dismantled.
I recently posted about Belle Burden’s Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, in which Burden finds herself frozen out of social events. It shouldn’t surprise me, right? We all love a winner. Pain, rejection, loss … dismantling. Yikes, that might be catching.
But where does that leave those of us who stay? It’s harder to wear our pain on the outside when we’ve decided to remain inside the marriage. Our culture typically allows two responses to infidelity: A cosmopolitan cynicism (“men will be men. I know who he’ll return home to”) or a scorched Earth revenge tour, though be careful not to look too much like a victim. Our culture likes its victims with spines of steel.
Those of us who choose to stay might keep ourselves small and silent in part to protect our partner — from others’ judgement, from our children knowing, from any consequences related to their choices. But we might keep ourselves small and silent because we’re still figuring out who we are now. And we deserve the time it takes (and it can take a long time) to work that out.
And there’s another part to this too. As much as we hate to admit it, our partner has changed too. Whether that’s a good or bad thing remains to be seen. I wanted time to make that assessment. I wanted time to clear my head. I wanted time … And that’s okay.
A partner’s infidelity can look (and feel) like only destruction. But within the rubble there is — some days you have to squint to see it — a foundation. Rebuilding takes painstaking work and a willingness to risk further dismantling. Not so much to trust someone who has shown himself to be untrustworthy but to trust ourselves.
Staying after infidelity isn’t passivity. It’s a third thing — one that our culture doesn’t yet have a good name for. I am re-mantled; my marriage rebuilt. What we have reconstructed might look to anyone else the same as before. It isn’t. Couples counsellor Esther Perel refers to it as a “second marriage with the same husband.” But that’s not entirely right. He’s not the same. Nor am I. Which is, perhaps, the best, most honest reason to stay anyway.