“But what I want to tell you is that I left my fiancé when it was almost too late. And I tell people the story of being cheated on because that story is simple. People know how it goes. But it’s harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn’t need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it was my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.” — CJ Hauser, “The Crane Wife,” The Paris Review
I’ve been thinking and writing about heartbreak, about what therapists call “partner betrayal” a very long time. Almost two decades ago, I finally woke up to the knowledge that my husband was cheating. And a lot of us think that’s the problem, the cheating. But one of the things I’ve learned by thinking and writing and listening to others’ stories is that the cheating might well be the rupture. But almost always the strain was already there. And so, when women tell me their stories and they ask me, “when will I get over this,” and “should I stay or go?” and “will I ever trust again?”, I can’t really tell them.
That’s not entirely true. I can assure them that, somewhere within the next roughly three to five years, they will feel better. They won’t have that gut-punch feeling any longer. They’ll have reassembled their lives. They’ll have made a decision whether to stay or go and, either way, will likely have made some sort of peace with it. But I’m not the least bit surprised to learn that lots of them – of us! – are still struggling on some level because whatever it is our partner has done to us, the damage that seems to last the longest is what we did to ourselves. Or, put another way, how we betrayed ourselves.
And that betrayal likely began a very very long time ago.
I try to stay out of the advice-giving business and stick to writing and thinking about relationships and heartbreak and how we find a way to love ourselves in a world that sometimes doesn’t love us very well back. Or, more accurately, how I can find a way to love myself in a world that sometimes doesn’t love me very well back. Cause I still struggle sometimes. And it’s easy to say, “I still struggle 20 years after waking up to the fact that my husband was cheating.” But, in truth, the struggle pre-dates that horrible day. I had simply become so good at hiding the struggle, particularly from myself.
Like CJ Hauser, I absolutely believed my lovability rested on needing nothing from others. Look at me! I can take care of children, work a job, write and promote my books, volunteer at my kids’ school, host birthdays and holidays, run marathons! I need nothing. I am entirely self-sufficient. I was the consummate performer. I had learned not to ask for anything. Or at least not to ask for much. I knew that needing was dangerous. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I had imagined the trade-off: I won’t ask for things and you won’t betray me. I kept up my end of the bargain. He, however, did not.
It took a total rupture, an annihilation of any agreement I thought we’d made, to see that, long before he betrayed me, I had betrayed myself. I had accepted that the price of love was to ask for as little as possible.
Many years ago, I was listening to the podcast of couples counsellor and author Esther Perel. The clients in this particular episode were a gay couple. One was a sex addict and had grown up with abuse. The other wanted only to give his husband comfort. He saw his husband’s wounds and understood them. “I don’t need much,” he told Esther. And then she spoke the words that made me gasp. That made me pull over in my car and rewind the podcast to listen again. “Who taught you to settle for crumbs?” she asked him.
Who taught you to settle for crumbs?
Not every person whose partner cheats on them has learned to settle for crumbs … but a whole lot of us have. Or maybe it’s more true to say, those of us who struggle the hardest and longest are also those who, somewhere along the line, learned to settle for crumbs. Those like me, who learned that needing was dangerous. Who tied my lovability to my incredible capacity to absorb others’ wants and needs while quashing my own. I was so good at it that I forgot I had any. Twenty years later, I’m still surprised sometimes at how I reflexively wave people off. I’m fine. No, I’m good. Really! I don’t need anything. All said with a smile. With total conviction. Because of course. I believe it. Or rather I did.
Author CJ Hauser writes that “I tell people the story of being cheated on because that story is simple.” I think some of us do that, too. And betrayal is devastating. Of course we struggle to heal! But Hauser also writes, “it’s harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn’t need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it was my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.”
Who taught you to settle for crumbs?
A big part of my healing has been to reacquaint myself with my needs. To not only allow them to exist but to invite them out. To trust that naming them out loud won’t make the people I love disappear. I don’t entirely believe that yet. But I’m getting there.