Lessons Learned in the Fetal Position – Lesson No. 1

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery, Encouraging Stories

At this time of year, when we, in the Northern Hemisphere experience the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice, the beginning of winter, I’m often reminded of one of the first lessons I learned about myself from the worst experience of my life. On the day when we experience the most darkness, we also recognize that we’ve turned a corner, so to speak. The days begin to get longer. Every day, we get a little bit more daylight, imperceptibly at first, but by February, it’s noticeable. One day in February, we wake up and realize it doesn’t feel like we’re living in darkness all the time anymore. And we realize the long sunny summer days are coming again and will be here soon enough.

The months that followed my first husband’s abandonment of myself and my children were dark days. I remember the fear and hopelessness I felt. The loss of identify, the loss of my story, my past, my future, my present. What did anything mean? I couldn’t get out of bed some mornings, but most days, I did. I plodded along, trying to make sense of the bomb that had hit my life. Mostly I stayed in the game and kept getting up and going through the daily motions of life, formulating and working a plan to deal with all the fallout that kept revealing itself. I carried on for my children. My four innocent children who needed me. They needed me to figure things out, to stay strong and to be brave. Things were grim. There were financial concerns; I had a house to sell and it wasn’t going well. My soon-to-be ex-husband wanted to make some money off the house even though we had barely moved in before he ran off with the other woman. He refused to lower the price so that it would just sell, and I could see into the future; I could see that if I couldn’t sell it by the time I moved to another city to take the engineering job waiting for me at the end of the children’s school year, we were going to lose the house altogether. This was only one of many problems.

I felt mostly dead inside for those months. I never clearly formulated the thought, but deep down, I wasn’t sure if I believed I would ever have a reason to feel joy again; I didn’t know when or if I would laugh again – I mean really laugh because of the lighter side of life. I wasn’t sure if I would ever know that again, or feel that again. Ease, peace, a sense of calm and surety about my life. Were those things available to me anymore? I didn’t even know. I had never been in such a dark place or for so long. I didn’t know if a light at the end of the tunnel even existed for a tunnel this deep, dark and long.

Then, one day, I was in the kitchen with my four year old girl. She was so cute and little and I tried every day just to try to be the relaxed easy going reassuring mom I knew she would need. I tried to make things as normal for my kids as I could. We kept on with the visits to the park, walking the dog together on Sundays, making crafts and cookies, music lessons and sports activities. I was really trying to keep things normal for all my children. So, this one afternoon, my littlest came into the kitchen while I was working in there, and I had just dried my hands. And out of the blue, I grabbed her and just started a tickle fight with her right there on the kitchen floor. It was unexpected, unplanned, spontaneous and so “normal”. I did it hoping to make her smile, to make her giggle and to bring a bit of enjoyment into her young life. I did it so she could feel her mom’s attention and interest in playing with her, being with her, getting on her level. But something amazing happened to me in that moment, as I was on the floor with her, listening to her little peels of laughter rising like weightless, shiny bubbles, floating on the air. I had this intense moment of joy course through me, caught up with her in the fun of the moment. I felt a hope, a glimmer, really, that a light somewhere at the end of the dark tunnel I felt myself in could exist. For the first time since my husband had left and I had discovered the heart wrenching emails between him and his affair partner and felt the sting of the de-humanizing ways they talked about me to justify their actions, I considered and even believed that I would find joy again. In that moment, I learned the first and most important lesson about myself of many that would follow – I understood that no matter how dark things felt, I was going to find myself and my joy again someday; that I was capable of finding joy and love again. I believed for the first time that I wasn’t going to have to spend the rest of my life in that dark place. The sun was returning.

And just like that day in February, that first day each winter after driving to work and home in the pitch dark every day for months, when suddenly it seems, the sun lasts long enough to see the sun go down on the way home, and you remember that summer and sunshine are not too far off. 

Sharing My Story

by chandralaframboise, posted in Encouraging Stories

(Scroll down for the podcast links)

“Talking about painful events doesn’t necessarily establish community-often quite the contrary. Families and organizations may reject members who air dirty laundry; friends and family can lose patience with people who get stuck in their grief or hurt. This is one reason why trauma victims often withdraw and why their stories become rote narratives, edited into a form least likely to provoke rejection. It is an enormous challenge to find safe places to express the pain of trauma, which is why survivor groups…and support groups can be so critical. Finding a responsive community in which to tell your truth makes recovery possible.” – Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D., The Body Keeps the Score

In February 2022, I shared my complete betrayal trauma story, start to finish, on the btr.org podcast. My podcast interview came out in a four-part series, beginning in September 2022.

Publicly sharing my story was probably one of the scariest experiences of my life. Normally, I’m a very private person and based on the kinds of reactions I’d received from those around me after years of emotional abuse ended in betrayal and abandonment, I understand that I may not be believed, I may even be blamed and rejected for speaking my truth as I understand it, and as I’ve been able to articulate it.

I’ve experienced rejection, dismissiveness, blame, criticism and more over the 15 years since my first husband’s actions culminated in the most traumatic experience of my life and probably the lives of our four children. All in response to my attempts to share what had happened and get the help I needed to heal, and often from individuals that I assumed would respond with compassion and caring.

When I found the Betrayal Trauma Recovery podcast in the fall of 2021, I realized I had stumbled on something I’d been unable to find for over 15 years. A safe place to hear my own trauma described in ways that resonated and made sense to me, in contexts I had not heard anywhere else. I listened to many other women’s stories of betrayal trauma and emotional abuse and found the common threads that ran through my own story. I burned through the entire 5 years of podcast episodes, listening constantly, then listened to the everything a second time, start to finish. It was like learning how to speak for the first time, finding the words and ideas that adequately described my own experience.

In finding the BTR community, a responsive community where I could speak my own truth and hear the truth of others, as Dr. Van der Kolk says in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, emotional recovery became possible. I’m still working on it, but at least finally, true healing has begun. The decision to add my voice to the many others was partly a way to continue my own healing process, but what helped me overcome my fear the most was the belief that my story could help someone else – I hope it can.

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to share my story and would encourage any woman that has been through betrayal trauma to find a way, when she is ready, to stand up and add her voice and strength to others who have spoken up. The more we shine a light on the issues of emotional abuse and betrayal trauma in intimate relationships, the sooner more women can find their way out and through.

A special note: In speaking out, I did my best to leave out identifying details about family members and others that were close to the situations described, however, I was also not trying to hide my identity – for me, this is part of speaking my truth. Some of the interviewer’s questions brought out sensitive details of the story intended to provide context and clarity, not to cause any undue harm. If any part of my story causes anyone harm or pain, this was not my intent and I’m sorry. The entire experience has caused enormous suffering to everyone touched by it, and the sharing of my story is an attempt to foster healing and recovery, not to cause more pain.

This is How Abusers Control the Narrative
Abandonment: What You Need to Know
Abusive Second Marriage? You’re Not Alone
Is Healthy Marriage a Myth?

“Me Too” – The Silent Victims

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

We don’t really understand silence. Silence serves a useful purpose at times, then destroys and crushes us when it’s imposed, or we cannot seem to break it. Maybe the key is in whether we’re in control of our silence, or it’s in control of us.

As a woman that has experienced many years of domestic abuse in the form of lying, manipulation, gaslighting and betrayal, I have been silent for much of my adult life, at different times and for different reasons. I only speak up now after finally finding myself in a place of relative safety, free from these forms of abuse.

The “Me Too” movement, started by Tarana Burke in 2006, went viral on social media in 2017 giving many women and girls a safe space to break the silence around their sexual abuse, assault and harassment. Being surrounded by so many others that had experienced the same thing made it possible to feel strong enough, and/or safe enough to speak up.

But no one really thinks of the wives and children of the male perpetrators of this sexual abuse, assault and harassment who are married, maybe with families; I’ve heard them referred to as the “silent victims” of the “Me Too” movement.

I discovered my first husband’s patterns of lying, manipulation and betrayal initially by coming across an internet search looking for naked pictures of one of his co-workers (I recognized her name in the search bar). From his co-worker’s perspective, his sexual interest in her certainly qualifies as sexual harassment because she probably didn’t know that he was stalking her like that online. I’ll never know if he was making advances towards her when they were at work and whether she was welcoming them or not.

It only occurred to me when I heard someone refer to the wives of perpetrators as the silent victims in the “Me Too” movement, that there may have been many women working with my first husband that saw him as a sexual predator or felt he was sexually harassing them. I was deep in my own suffering for his harmful actions at the time, we had long since divorced. He may have sexually harassed many more women in the workplace, and possibly other places (at the gym, at church, etc). A man like him, addicted to pornography, and incapable of viewing women as anything more than an object to use for his own purposes, could have done plenty of harm outside my home, to other women, not just me.

But the “Me Too” movement was focused mainly on those women – the ones that men like him victimized “out there”, while the women in committed relationships with these men are usually unaware of what they’re up to at work.

We, the silent victims in “Me Too” lived in a special kind of hell with these men. We noticed the flirtations when we were out with him, or when he put his phone away a little too quickly when we walked in the room. We felt the knot in the pit of our stomach every time he lied, and we had no proof, or he called us “crazy” for asking for an explanation. We practically turned backflips trying to regain or maintain the love and attention we thought we should have as his life partner and wife, confused about why it had disappeared in the first place. The children were silently suffering too. They could feel our anxiety, they heard the arguments, they knew something was wrong too. Our shame, confusion and fear about our situation kept us quiet, just trying to make sense of it all, not understanding that we were being emotionally, psychologically and sexually abused too.

Because if sexual abuse and coercion is about not obtaining consent, I NEVER consented to having sex with a man I didn’t really know. I NEVER consented to having sex with a man that was chasing after other women, sleeping with other women and putting my health and wellbeing and the wellbeing of our family at risk. I NEVER consented to having sex with a man that was diverting the time, energy and resources that belonged to me and our family to other women. He did not have my consent and I was not fully informed about who he really was or what he was really up to.

We, the (ex-)wives and children of the “Me Too” perpetrators are among the silent victims in the “Me Too” movement.

Breaking Silence

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

I know this is going to sound a bit woo-woo. And I’m not really woo-woo. I mean, I’m an engineer. I like facts. I like things to have explanations. But, I do believe in mystery too. I’ve had enough “meta-physical” experience not to dismiss things I don’t understand.

In the spring of 2019, I was following a guided sound meditation. 12 years after my life exploded when my first husband abandoned me and my kids, I had learned how much things like yoga and meditation can help with recovery from the trauma of emotional abuse, abandonment and betrayal. I have a https://www.gaia.com/ membership/subscription and one of my favourite yoga/meditation teachers on that site is Emily Spurling of Karma Being https://www.karmabeing.com. Emily had this 6-minute sound meditation in her Passageways to Peace series that changed the course of my life. It gave me the push I needed to start this blog and begin finally to tell my story, which I didn’t realize at the time, would be exactly what would help me put my emotional self together again.

At the very end of the meditation, when I was in a completely calmed state, Emily says, “In a moment, you will hear a bell. Notice if the sound resonates anywhere in your body.” When the bell rang, I had an unmistakable, sudden feeling in my throat that felt exactly like an adrenaline rush, but I’d only ever felt an adrenaline rush as a full body feeling. It shocked me. “What was that?!” I thought. To say I was puzzled is an understatement. What did it mean? I wondered about it for a couple days, then decided to do the meditation a second time to see what would happen.

The second time I did the guided sound meditation, the exact same thing happened. “Notice if the sound resonates anywhere in your body”, says Emily. Then, the bell rings. And my throat exploded again with a completely localized feeling of adrenaline rush. “Bizarre”, I thought. I have no clue why something like that would happen. I had never experienced anything like that before.

“If this happens a third time”, I thought to myself, “that’s it, I need to find out what’s going on”. So, a day or two later, I tried the sound meditation one more time, and the same thing happened. But, this time, having had just enough exposure to the woo-woo world to know vaguely what Chakras are, it occurred to me that there’s a throat Chakra. “Maybe it has something to do with that” I said, as I pulled out my laptop and started searching.

It took less than 2 minutes to find out what the throat Chakra was and what this experience with the sound meditation and my throat Chakra was trying to tell me. I found websites like this one: https://www.chakras.info/throat-chakra/ where I quickly realized that my long silence about my experiences with emotional abuse, betrayal and abandonment needed to be broken in order for me to be fully truthful about my life. My throat chakra was blocked, and I needed to start expressing and communicating what has been on my heart and mind for so long.

The problem was, as Dr. Bessel von der Kolk, M.D. points out in his landmark book about trauma (The Body Keeps the Score), finding words for the deeply traumatizing experiences we have is not so simple. But, once I KNEW I needed to speak, I was able to start working on finding those words. It led me to find a betrayal trauma recovery group in the fall of 2021, something that in 2007 would have been either non-existent, too hard to find, or perpetuating messaging that further harms victims of betrayal trauma and emotional abuse instead of helping. The betrayal trauma recovery group I found in 2021 helped me learn the language I needed to start describing all the trauma that had been floating around in my body, mind and spirit for 14 years.

And so, here I am. A weird woo-woo meta-physical experience and now I’m cautiously sharing my thoughts about what happened to me. And as I share, I heal. I still struggle painfully to come up with a blog post more frequently than once per month. I know, I know, bloggers “should” be a lot more prolific. But, it’s really, really hard to wrestle all the thoughts and feelings that have grown out of the experiences I’ve had into a coherent written piece that is fit for human consumption. I agonize over how poorly the words actually describe the feeling of the experience. But, it’s all I’ve got.

There are other reasons for the long silence. There are many other things that kept my throat Chakra blocked. Not just the difficulty of coming up with the words. Lots of reasons. Some of them, I still don’t understand. Maybe a topic for another post. Reasons why so many women don’t speak out about this, because it is a BIG problem. Betrayal trauma is no joke. But because it is so every day, so normalized in our society, I don’t think we really understand how much having so many people walking the streets, driving their cars, joining meetings, running errands dragging around this much pain is slowing ALL of us down. We really do need to talk about this a lot more. There’s got to be a way to stop this.

  • Lessons Learned in the Fetal Position – Lesson No. 1

  • Sharing My Story

  • “Me Too” – The Silent Victims

  • Breaking Silence

How I Stopped the Bitter/Angry/Resentful Train and Got Off (Part 2)

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

If you haven’t read Part 1, start here..

Recognizing that I had unintentionally become the archetypal angry, bitter, resentful discarded woman that none of us ever want to be, I resolved to do something about it.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to do, but without realizing it, I already had done something about it. I had put myself on a “time out”, interrupting the steady source of fuel that stoked the flames of my bitterness and resentment when I went to church and exposed myself to the people that had unknowingly gotten under my skin week after week. By changing to a congregation where I didn’t know anyone and the demographic was so different, leaving me very few people to compare myself to, I got a break from being around the people that had made me feel “less than” in my “less than ideal” family situation. No one in my new faith community really knew anything about me, so they welcomed me with warmth and without judgement.

I took my “time out” further, and completely removed myself from social media for several months so that I wouldn’t have to feel “less than” looking at everyone’s “perfect family highlight reel”. I just didn’t need that when I was struggling so much with focusing on what I DIDN’T have.

I started to feel better almost immediately, but I knew I had more work to do. I was holding grudges against many individuals for specific hurts and harms leveled against myself and my children. I knew that if I was ever to get any peace, and freedom the anger and bitterness, I needed to find a way to let these things go, to forgive and move on.

I turned to journaling. I started out by making a list of all the people that had tried to help me and my children since my first husband had abandoned and betrayed me. Then, I made a list of all the people that had done or said hurtful things to myself or my children during the same time period. I needed to see that the list of those that had offered us compassion and caring was much longer than the list of those that had behaved with insensitivity and judgement.

Next, I began to write down, for each of the people on the “hurtful” list I’d made, every gritty detail of how they had harmed myself or my children. I wrote down what they had done, how it made me feel and why I was so angry at them for how they had caused harm. It helped to really think through and get down in words, exactly how their actions had made me feel.

This took several months, not because there were so many people or so many hurtful incidents, but because it was painful work, and these were long journal entries. I struggle to find enough time in my day to write, and so usually, I didn’t do these journal entries until I found myself up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, ruminating on some of these negative interactions and memories. My sleepless nights were the perfect time to write.

As I wrote, I instinctively began to understand that the only way to let go of the harm others had caused me, so that I could forgive, and find peace, was to see myself in their actions. I needed to understand that I was just as capable of harming others in a similar way. I needed to see their humanity and that I’m just like them. I needed to think of a time that I HAD harmed someone else in the same way.

This is Shadow Work. Shadow Work, conceptualized first by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, is all about focusing on our “shadow self”, so that we can get to know our own hidden self – the part we don’t want to see.

And lucky me, I found my shadow self in every single hurtful interaction I was holding onto with anger and resentment. In every case, I could think back on my life to a time when I had perpetrated a similar harm on someone else in judgement, condescension and criticism.

These realizations were powerful, cathartic and healing. One-by-one, each person that had done or said hurtful things, were transformed in front of me on the pages of my journal, and I was able to see them through a different set of eyes. Eyes of understanding and grace. It’s not that what they had done or said was no longer wrong, but that I was just as wrong in all the same ways that they were. I understood that I could forgive because I’m just like them, and I also hope that others will look past my flaws and understand that when I step on the toes of those around me, I too am doing my best as I fumble along in life. If I want grace, I have to give it.

After these journaling activities, I happened to hear someone (I wish I could remember who, sorry) say in a podcast that the antidote to resentment is gratitude, and I realized that I had long ago fallen out of the habit of listing 5 things every day in my journal that I’m grateful for. I used to also habitually think upon waking, “I have everything I need in this moment.” I’d had some good habits around keeping myself cognizant and aware of how great my life really was, despite the losses and re-directions. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost track of how much those good habits were doing for me. So, I picked those up again. And by the time I re-joined the social world, I was on my way to feeling gratitude and peace for the beautiful life I have instead of comparing my life to others and allowing their missteps to result in my own resentment, anger and bitterness.

What a relief to get off that crazy runaway train.

How I Stopped the Bitter/Angry/ Resentful Train and Got Off (Part 1)

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

A few years after my first husband ran off with someone else, after living a double life for the entirety of our marriage, I fell in love again and re-married. My children and I were living in a small, remote northern community and it worked out better for my children and I to move to where my second husband lived. My second husband just happened to live near the large city where my ex-husband and I had lived for 5 years when our 3rd child was born, 10 years earlier. He also happened to live in the same part of the city where my ex-husband and I had previously attended church and participated in our faith community. I had only positive thoughts and hopeful expectations when I considered that I would be returning to a congregation of people that had known me when I was married to someone else. After all, I was still me, and I knew that the divorce and what myself and my children had been through was not my choice or my doing – I would have been willing to try almost anything to keep our family intact if that had been an option, but it’s hard to address problems that are being so carefully hidden and avoided, it was far too late by the time I knew about them. It had only been 7 years since we had attended this faith community – surely things would not have changed all that much and I had memories of friendships and a warm, welcoming atmosphere. I looked forward to seeing everyone again and thought that myself and my children would really benefit from being in the familiar setting.

Eleven years later, my children all grown, I left the faith community I had been a part of for a combined total of over 15 years to find another, taking my resentment and anger with me. I’ve spent many hours thinking about what transpired during those eleven years, while I raised my teenagers, built a career, discovered I had married the same problem a second time and finally made the internal shift I needed to leave the emotional abuse of betrayal behind me for good. In journaling about the causes of my anger and resentment, largely felt towards certain “good” members of the faith community I had left behind, I realized that while there were far more people who reached out in love, caring and support to myself and my children during those years, it was the ignorance, micro-aggressions, silent judgements and ostracizing actions of only a few that had left me feeling marginalized, misunderstood, and hurt. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

One of the first times we went to church after we moved back, I saw someone I recognized after the services were over. Her husband held a prominent position in the faith community. We hadn’t been that close, but her husband and I had gone to the same university (he was two years ahead of me) and we had all known one another while we were students; it had been almost 15 years since we’d seen one another. I started walking towards her and began to say hello to her, and looking directly at me, she turned her entire body away from me and then turned to face another direction, obviously pretending not to see me. She was sitting alone in a comfortable arm chair with no good reason to do this (by this, I mean, she wasn’t talking to anyone else around her, even though there were several people milling about). A little surprised, I puzzled over why she would do something like this.

Later, at a large out-of-town event, I happened to be sitting at the same table as another woman, the wife of the clergy in our faith community. It was quiet, we were waiting for something and there weren’t that many people around. Our high school aged children had known one another since they were 2 years old, and when we returned to the area, they had become good friends again, attending the same high school and spending lots of time at their home. We’d never been close friends, but we were chatting and I happened to mention something in passing about one of the challenges we were facing with my new situation. Everyone knew my kids were away every other weekend visiting their father – we didn’t live close to him and we spent close to 10 hours driving every other weekend in order to make the visits happen. Maybe I made her uncomfortable, or maybe she thought I had crossed a line in our relationship, which was perhaps much more superficial than I’d realized. But she immediately shut down and the conversation completely fizzled out. I felt silenced. I felt like I was being told to sit down and stop complaining; that, whatever it was I had to say it, she did not want to hear about it.

A couple years later, I was meant to work with the same woman on a volunteer assignment, but over a period of several months and after a consistent effort on my part to make arrangements to get together, I realized she was just avoiding me and making excuses so that she wouldn’t have to work with me. That really hurt. I had never been treated like that by anyone before. When I was married to my children’s father and attending that faith community previously, everyone was happy to associate with me. I had a hard time understanding that even though I was still me and I knew I was still doing my best to be a good person and raise my family as best I could, some of the people that had known me before were not interested in being around me anymore, even though the only thing about me that had really changed was the configuration of my family (and that were going through a lot of difficult challenges).

Another incident that left me feeling unfairly judged happened at Christmastime, after my second oldest daughter had left home to go to university. She was visiting for Christmas, we had just finished our Christmas service and we were standing around socializing with other members of the congregation, enjoying the festive atmosphere. My daughter and I were joking around about how my children had so much fun teasing me while they tried to get me to reveal who my favourite child was by comparing things I did for or with each of them. Another prominent member of the congregation, a woman whose daughter had been friends with my daughter back when we had attended services with the children’s father, joined the conversation and chimed in with a tone of carefully veiled superiority, “Well, in OUR home, we argue over who LOVES each other more…’I love you’, and ‘No, I love you more’…” I could feel and hear in her words that without ever really getting to know me, she had come to the conclusion that I had somehow “done it wrong”, that my misfortunes were my own fault somehow and that she had something she could teach me so that I could do a better job with my family and maybe be more like her. It was terribly offensive. So condescending. How could she possibly know how much I’d sacrificed in order to keep my family together and safe; how I’d done my level best, how unlikely it was that she had some secret sauce that I didn’t know about? No one had tried harder or been more resourceful than me, I knew that for sure.

After awhile, I saw the dismissive, marginalizing, judgmental, ostracizing behaviour all the time when I went to church, I had practically forgotten the real reason I was there in the first place – and it really wasn’t ever for the social life. I remembered how often our family had been included, invited for dinner, how we’d had guests at our home from our faith community when we had attended as an intact family. All that was gone. I was busier than I had ever been, trying to parent my children, build a career, rescue yet another failing relationship and then on my own again. I couldn’t address it, I couldn’t put my finger on how I was feeling. I saw members of our faith community treating my children the way I was being treated, then I heard from another mother in a similar situation as mine tell me that certain women in our faith community that had “intact” families were actually telling their children not to associate with the likes of ours. My anger and resentment grew. But this was not who I wanted to be. People wonder why discarded, betrayed, abandoned women become bitter and resentful – well, now I know. Anyone can end up this way when things go so terribly wrong, when all one’s best efforts seem to only be met with despair; and then, if that’s not enough, there are people that blame, judge, criticize or worse, look right past you. Talk about feeling kicked when you’re down.

Most of the time, the discarded woman hasn’t done a thing to deserve her predicament, and instead of reaching out in the spirit of empathy and inclusion, the “privileged” women in faith communities push her outside the warmth of the community. I had spent my life in this faith culture, learning that we’re meant to all look after one another, to grieve with one another and help one another carry the burdens of life. There were three times as many people and far more examples of people around us that DID respond this way to us – so, why was I still so angry six months after I’d moved to another faith community, and why these specific kinds of incidents and people? How come I couldn’t stop focusing on the hurtful, ignorant, privileged few?

In our communities, in ALL kinds of communities, we hold up ideals. I don’t think this is wrong. But, the inherent problem with this is that when someone just can’t live up to it, how do they NOT feel marginalized or “not good enough”? In a faith community where ALL are supposed to feel welcome, if the faith community holds up the intact family as ideal, anyone that doesn’t fit the mold, is prone to struggle and to feel that they don’t belong. This was my situation. And, this is also why it was the small slights and offenses from specifically the more prominent women, the ones in the faith community that had the privilege of an intact family and the support of a loving husband, that I had the hardest time forgiving their insensitivity. I thought these women should know better, and that maybe they even had a responsibility to be empathetic and understanding towards someone like me. But they weren’t. Instead, they were human. They didn’t really try to understand, they just made incorrect assumptions. Their fear of ending up like me drove them to separate themselves from me by looking for ways that I had brought my challenging, less than ideal family circumstances upon myself. If they could find some identifiable flaw in me (presumed or otherwise) that they could convince themselves that they didn’t have, then they could believe they were safe from the fate I’d suffered. They looked away from me and my children when our grief was unmistakable and written all over our faces because most humans are afraid of grief – we know it’s coming for us, all of us eventually, one way or another, and we don’t want to see it.

In my time away from the people and situations that were the source of my anger and resentment, I got the space I needed to think these things over. The new faith community was in a smaller, less prosperous town, where most of the people were aging, humbled by life and a lot more wise than the younger, perfection-addicted, striving women I was trying to avoid. I knew I needed to do something about my bitterness and resentment – first and foremost, to understand it. I had noticed it off and on over the 15 years after my first husband left, this feeling of negativity and cynicism towards happy newlyweds, or young couples with small children, all smiles and giggles. Don’t they know how it could all end? Didn’t they know that I had done all I could to deserve the same kind of happiness? Then, why not me? The unfairness of it sometimes felt so crushing…

…to be continued in “How I Stopped the Bitter/Angry/Resentful Train and Got Off (Part 2)”

Jaw-Dropping…A Wife’s Dream Outcome

by chandralaframboise, posted in Encouraging Stories
https://tim.blog/2022/04/19/terry-crews-2/

I had to pick my jaw up off the floor of my car while listening to Terry Crews tell Tim Ferriss the story of how he nearly lost his marriage. Why was my jaw on the floor? Because I’ve been married to two men with similar problems to the ones Terry Crews and his wife were struggling over; and separation was not the catalyst that led to my ex-husbands finally taking a serious look at their behaviour. Not even close (they never did as far as I know). I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s a RARE occurrence when a man, that is lying to his wife and using porn or other forms of extra-marital sexual behaviours without the wife’s agreement, will actually admit to himself that HE is the problem in the marriage (instead of blaming his wife).

Crews’ honest assessment of himself led to recognition of how twisted his thinking had become. When they’d initially split up, he’d blamed her. He was frustrated that she wasn’t believing his lies; but he was able to recognized how screwed up that really was – to think she was the problem because she had this persistent feeling he was not telling her everything, and she wouldn’t believe him when he was lying to her. (Wow! How uncooperative of her!)

In the interview with Ferriss, he also described how he had fooled himself into believing he was respectful towards his wife and women in general, when in fact, on closer inspection of himself in the mirror, he could recall specific examples of his language and behaviour that were clear evidence of the opposite. He was able to admit that he had objectified women in his behaviour and thought patterns, that he had betrayed his wife and then tried to hide his actions from her behind lies and manipulation.

When they first separated, he’d convinced himself that he really didn’t care if their relationship ended. I wish I knew what made him change his mind. I would have given anything for my first husband to make the kinds of changes Mr. Crews made when he recognized that losing his wife and family really did matter and that they were both worth fighting for, whatever changes he needed to make.

Very refreshing. But, sadly, all too uncommon. But still…it gave me some hope – for other women struggling in marriages to men who betray them and lie to them. Maybe men who respect and admire Terry Crews will hear in his vulnerability, his introspection, confessions and self-exploration, that this is where the real men are found – fighting for their relationships and their families, doing the heavy lifting that’s required sometimes. That’s what real heroes do, they fight their own inner dragons when they rear their ugly heads. Kudos to Mr. Crews.

Journey Out of Shame

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emancipation Encouragement, Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

READER BEWARE – THIS ONE IS LOOOOONG…

Why is it that victims of abuse and betrayal feel shame when they are the ones being harmed and wronged? There’s something very counterintuitive about the shame victims of emotional/psychological abuse, and abandonment feel. Adults who were abused as children also often feel this way – even though logically, a child is not responsible or at fault for the harm caused by their abuser(s). It’s almost as if the victim’s feelings of shame represent a joining with the perpetrator in the all-too-common victim blaming that goes along with abusive relationship dynamics.

It wasn’t until recently I recognized that it was shame that caused me to hide my first and second husband’s sexual acting out (once I knew about it), flirting, narcissistic behaviours, lying, compulsive pornography use, pre-occupation with money/wealth/materialism over family priorities and other integrity issues. But shame didn’t only drive me to hide the pain I was suffering in my marriage from others, it also drove me to try to hide it from myself. For years, I did not want to face the fact that the person that had promised to love and care for me would behave in ways that could be so harmful.

In my first marriage, the evidence mounted for years before I really started to question my husband, I just didn’t want to see what he was doing to me – I didn’t want to face what it would mean. But, another reason it took so long for the evidence to become overwhelming enough for me to start to see my situation for what it was – he was also a really good liar. He was skilled at manipulating, blaming and gaslighting me. From the first time my first husband confessed to me that he had started developing a relationship with another woman at work (and this, when our first child was 18 months old and we’d been married only 2-1/2 years), I took it on. I determined (with his help of course) that there must be something wrong with me and that I had to be perfect to earn his love or keep him. I didn’t realize at the time, but now I see that he was emotionally abusing me. He wanted me to feel this way – and, some of the things he said to me to make me believe that his fidelity needed to be earned by me (even when he was busy carrying on and secretly acting out anyways)…it makes my skin crawl thinking about it now. But tearing down a woman’s self esteem is a tool abusive men use to control them – blaming, shaming and generally making their wife feel like they aren’t good enough and that if they don’t do XYZ, or look like a model, or keep the house clean, or make dinner every night by 5:00…then bad things will happen in the relationship – fill in the blank. For me, I was afraid he would start up another extra marital relationship but take it all the way next time and leave us.

My first husband threatened me in covert ways with his potential for infidelity more than once and it kept me in line for a long time (and after all the backflips I did, in the end, he betrayed and abandoned me regardless). One time, my first husband told me that the only reason he’d married me was because he knew I would always stay skinny (I was 25 years old and became a 104 lb marathon runner after that); another time, he told me that a lesser man would have left me a long time ago (we’d only been married 2-3 years at that point and I had been in university, we had a new baby and he worked nights – sure, things were hard and we’d had what I thought were normal marital disagreements for two people trying to get through school with a new baby… but, why did he have to make it about me?). Another time, my first husband remarked, as I was killing it in every aspect of my perfectionist life, that I was his “trophy wife”, and I actually felt proud of myself in that moment. I guess I thought I was “winning” somehow. But the lack of connection to him that I felt, the fear of what he might be doing while away on business trips, the sense that I was on some kind of hamster wheel all the time, just to keep him from humiliating me and hoping no one else could see what I felt – it was all too much sometimes. Being a trophy just means you make someone else look good while you sit on a shelf neglected. I recall speaking with clergy right after he left our family to go off with his affair partner and they said, “he loves you, he’ll come back”. His own parents said, “he worships the ground you walk on, he’ll come back”.

But, without really knowing yet that I had been in an emotionally abusive marriage for 14 years, and not understanding how common it is for abusive men to create an outward facade of devotion and caring for their partners – I knew they were wrong. He had fooled everyone else, and even me for a time, but not anymore. I recognized that I had not felt valued or loved by him for many, many years. In fact, I had felt on a cellular level that he had discarded me many times over the years, from fairly early on, without really knowing why. The shame and humiliation I felt when my first husband left me and our family was so difficult. I could no longer hide or hide from the fact that my husband did not love me and that he was discarding me openly.

Unfortunately, at the time of my first husband’s abandonment, the most common treatment available to me were various forms of covert victim-blaming, including telling me I was co-dependent, even though I did not exhibit co-dependent behaviours in any other relationship in my life. All of the therapy I received was geared towards helping me taking responsibility for “my part” in what had happened in the marriage. We like to feel in control, and I felt so much shame, and had been blamed so much by my first husband for his secret sexual life (especially after he left, the blaming and emotional abuse got much, much worse), that I spent more than 10 years after he left trying to figure out how I had contributed to the demise of my first marriage. But, after watching him bounce from relationship to relationship, and spiral into drug and alcohol abuse, I concluded that while I was far from perfect, he would have lived a secret sexual life no matter what I had done.

I probably embraced this freeing perspective around the same time I realized something similar in my second marriage.

One night, while attending a women’s conference, several years after marrying my second
husband, a speaker I was listening to briefly touched on the fact that women like myself who had been betrayed and abandoned often felt shame over these events occurring in their lives. Despite my best efforts to find someone to talk to about what I was going through (especially someone who had been through it and could really relate), I hadn’t found anyone to confide in, and it was a light bulb moment for me to hear this. I felt for the first time that maybe I wasn’t the only one that had been through betrayal and abandonment that also felt shame because of it. I was not alone.

In my second marriage, despite discovery of an affair 5 years into the marriage (which was ended immediately by my informing the affair partner that her new “boyfriend” was in fact in a committed marriage – she honestly did not know and was horrified to find this out), I continued to imagine that I could “fix things”, driven by the motivation to avoid a second divorce, and the shame that I felt would accompany another failed marriage. But after discovering many other inappropriate online relationships, actually speaking with some of the women my husband had asked to send him “pictures”, speaking with another woman who had actually been on dates with him, and catching him on a date with yet another woman one year after the first time I caught him having an affair, it still took me two more years of hiding the truth from extended family and friends while I got up the courage to face the shame of marital failure again. And I finally left him. I had learned what narcissistic abuse was like – he seemed to have no remorse or empathy, to feel entitled to his extra-marital activities and to have no sense of accountability or responsibility for his actions. I learned to accept that you just can’t change another person, no matter how hard you try. I had tried to go back to my old tricks of “giving it my all” as I had done in my first marriage, and it didn’t motivate my second husband to change anything. If an emotionally abusive man is committed to their entitlements, and their need to control you, nothing you do will change them. I felt shame again – but this time, it wasn’t because I didn’t think I was good enough – this time, I was ashamed for not recognizing the red flags at the beginning, for not getting out sooner, and for allowing myself to be cheated on, lied to, manipulated and hurt again.

6 months ago, I was still struggling with feelings of anger towards family, friends and members of my faith community that I felt didn’t or wouldn’t try to understand what I was going through. I felt judged and blamed; I felt the expectation that I “should be over it” after 15 years. I felt shame about two failed marriages and apparently not being able to let it go and move on. I felt ashamed of my own anger. Then, I came across podcaster Anne Blythe (see btr.org), and things started to change. For the first time since my first husband disclosed his work affair 26 years prior, I heard things that made me feel validated and understood. I learned that what I experienced in my two marriages was a form of covert domestic abuse – it was emotional and psychological abuse (with some sexual abuse, financial abuse and spiritual abuse sprinkled in for good measure). I used to wonder why battered women (those who experienced physical violence) couldn’t leave relationships and had “studied” the cycle of abuse as it was defined in the early 80’s as part of a school project in elementary school. During my second marriage, while trying to make sense of what I had been through with my first husband, and also trying to figure out why I couldn’t seem to leave my second husband, even when I knew he was hurting me, I thought, “I’m acting like a battered woman.” But at the time, I didn’t realize, that’s because the impacts of ALL forms of domestic abuse cause the same reaction in women, and even though I’d never received a scratch – I WAS AN ABUSE VICTIM TOO!

The realization that I had been a victim of domestic abuse was freeing. It was the turning point in my journey (a journey I’m still on, by the way). It was kind of like how Einstein had said that when solving a problem, the first 90% of your time/effort will be spent in defining the problem – once the problem is properly defined, THEN, you can solve it. After finally defining the problem of what was really going on in my first two marriages, I understand now that the abuser WANTS his victim to take responsibility for his abuse. As long as I was feeling shame, and taking responsibility as if I had brought the abuse upon myself – as long as I thought that somehow I was flawed and that it was because of my flaws that I couldn’t get my marriages to work, I was not able to see that the problems in my marriages were HIS abuse problem, HIS sexual acting out, HIS lying, HIS manipulation, HIS responsibility…and I had been unable to begin real, true healing.

Finally, the healing began. The true healing. Don’t get me wrong, I got along for 15 years after my first husband ran off with his affair partner. I raised four kids, built a career, ran marathons, traveled, did lots of great stuff. But my emotional healing was going nowhere.

Recently, while reading Brene Brown’s new book, Atlas of the Heart (and can I just say, I’m a super fan and have read all her books at least twice, and listen to BOTH her podcasts – what Brene Brown has contributed to the world’s understanding of shame and the development of my own emotional intelligence is nothing short of amazing), I came across a quote that stopped me in my tracks. She says:
“We know from the research that unwanted identity is the most powerful elicitor of shame. If you want to know what’s likely to trigger shame for you, just fill in this sentence stem: It’s really important for me not to be perceived as __________.”

So for me, and ALL the women that have been abandoned by their (so-called) committed partner, cheated on by their (so-called) committed partner, abused by their partner…or for all those that haven’t left, who maybe feel like they can’t yet (or ever)- as women who truly value marriage or committed partnership, who have families and are doing what we do (which is everything we possibly can to nurture and strengthen our partnerships and families), the blank in Brene’s quote above would be “discarded” or “rejected” or “not good enough” or “unlovable”. The unwanted identity of the discarded, abandoned, rejected, betrayed, unloved woman is the worst for us. And so, the shame.

Having come to a place where I understand, after a long journey that started with my own victim-blaming and looking for “my part” in the relationship problems, that the shame we feel naturally because of an unwanted identity truly belongs elsewhere. It belongs with the perpetrator of the harm done to us, caused by all the lying, secrecy, manipulation, gaslighting, betrayal, smear campaigns, blaming and general tearing down of one’s self esteem.

And I have a new identity now. I’m a survivor, a thriver and a Shero. No shame in that.

Leaving an Abusive Relationship/Marriage is NOT only for the “Privileged”

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emancipation Encouragement

Girl, I know leaving is hard. And I also know why sometimes you just decide to stay. I was there. I wanted to leave, but I’d never had a broken bone or a bruise because of my husband’s emotional and psychological abuse (gaslighting, lying and manipulating me and others while he carried on a deeply harmful secret sexual life of betrayal). No one would have understood if I left, I would have been blamed…he was Mr. Charisma, and I was quiet, a bit angry, confused, freaked out, anxious. I would have looked like the source of the marriage failure. Everyone thought he was a great guy. There was a lot of pressure from family and our faith community to make things work, and sadly, much of the social scripting about whose RESPONSIBILITY it is to keep a family together falls on the woman, even when her partner clearly has issues that she has nothing to do with. I didn’t have any proof of domestic abuse, or his infidelities – it’s hard to come up with proof when there are no bruises or clear evidence of affairs and sexual acting out.

Plus, when I first started thinking about leaving, I was pregnant with baby number 4, it had been 5 years since I had graduated university and I had stayed at home with our kids since graduation (so, no work experience). How would I survive financially? I knew by then my husband would cut me off financially, he was bad with money and dishonest. I didn’t have family to fall back on either. There would be no financial support or help available for me to help me get on my feet. At least none that I was aware of.

I didn’t think of going to a shelter or reaching out for community resources because I didn’t realize I was being emotionally and psychologically abused and even if I did know, I thought shelters were only for the “battered” woman (those who had the bruises, broken bones and police reports).

Lack of education, loss of self-confidence (all too common in victims of abuse), no financial resources or work experience, new baby on the way…I decided to stay where I was.

Every situation of domestic abuse is unique. The financial resources available to women, their husband/partner’s particular brand of abuse (including fear of retaliation if they leave), children/no children (fear of impact on children), working/stay-at-home (lack of education, employment opportunities), available family support, availability of community support – these are some factors affecting a decision to stay or go.

One thing we should never ever do is judge women who choose to stay, who are not ready to leave. I heard an interview with a woman who had endured years of psychological and emotion abuse, sexual acting out and betrayal by her partner. Her story was the kind anyone would have asked, “why are you still with him?” She explained how her husband had given her good reason to believe that if he was ever left alone with their children, the children could also be in harm’s way. And, her reason for staying – first to keep a close eye on their children when they were around her husband, then to keep a close eye on their grandchildren – I understood, and my heart went out to her. How exhausting it must have been to raise children with someone and feel like you could never leave them alone with him. Since hearing that story, I don’t question why a woman doesn’t leave, or her timing, if she does…it’s a personal journey and a decision no one can make for you.

Recently, in a private Facebook group for betrayed/abused women, I saw one woman make the comment in response to a post by another woman, that the option of leaving was only for the “privileged”. I can understand someone making a comment like that because definitely, one of the biggest barriers to women getting out of abusive situations is lack of resources (especially financial) and there’s no doubt that some segments and members of our society have more financial resources than others. (According to Anne Blythe of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, http://btr.org, “the number one reason women don’t leave abusive relationships is because they don’t know they’re in one”. This was certainly true for me.)

The problem I have with perpetuating the idea among women experiencing domestic abuse, that leaving is only possible for the “privileged”, is that it joins the abusers in creating stuck thinking about the situation. Men exerting coercive control over their partner want her to feel like she can’t get out. PLEASE, don’t give abused women more reasons to feel like the obstacles are overwhelming by labeling the way out as only available to the privileged few. At some point, if a woman wants to leave badly enough, she will, and no lack of resources will stand in her way. It’s called MOTIVATIONAL DISSATISFACTION. It’s a difficult and scary experience to leave an abuser, sometimes fraught with severe challenges that can follow us for YEARS, but if someone wants out bad enough and plans and prepares, learns about the resources available, calls the hotlines, reaches out for support in a safe manner, I like to believe that ANYONE can make it out.

Compared to some, I could have been considered “privileged”, but I still thought I couldn’t leave. Privilege is relative. I was privileged in one way because I happened to have completed a university degree in mechanical engineering – a lucky thing considering I’d had my first child in the middle of getting my degree and found the challenge to complete it overwhelming (I nearly quit). But, I had very little, if any, financial support or help available from family. My perceived lack of resources when I was pregnant with my fourth child and fears about how I would get a job and work with a new baby on the way made it hard for me to see a way out, but if I had wanted to leave badly enough, I know now, looking back on what I’ve had to do to survive my first husband eventually abandoning me and our four children, then later escaping a second abusive marriage, I realize, I could have made it work – I could have found a way.

So, ladies, let’s build each other up in our self-confidence. In our self-esteem. In what we know we deserve and what is possible. Let’s encourage each other in our Shero-hood – we are powerful, strong, and beautiful and capable of doing hard things to survive. Just look at all we’ve been through. Let’s try to avoid placing restrictive ideas and attitudes around a situation that for many, many women is already tough to navigate and figure out. Privilege is not a pre-requisite to your emancipation. You can do it, no matter what you have going for you (or not going for you). Take courage, dear heart.

Girl with the Pearl Earring – How Media Can Sometimes Feed into the Victim-Blaming

by chandralaframboise, posted in victim blaming

Has anyone else seen the movie, “Girl with the Pearl Earring”? I came across it last night, looking for something to watch on Netflix, and I do love a good period piece. I decided to watch it. I was intrigued to learn more about the story behind the famous painting by Johannes Vermeer. Now that I’m more aware of how betrayed married women are often blamed for causing the trauma they endure at the hands of emotionally abusive, deceptive, cheating partners, and how their very reaction to their betrayal trauma comes under scrutiny and is often seen as inappropriate or “over-the-top”, I just can’t help noticing when media feeds into this kind of social scripting. It’s everywhere and oh, so subtle. The movie was well done, but the victim-blaming was obvious (at least to me).

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Tracy Chevalier. Scarlett Johansson stars as Griet, a young 17th-century servant in the household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer at the time he painted Girl with a Pearl Earring in the city of Delft in Holland. Essie Davis, a lesser known, but beautiful Australian actress plays the part of Catharina Vermeer, the painter’s wife and Colin Firth plays Johannes Vermeer.

In the movie, the first introduction between Griet and Catharina, the lady of the house (Catharina) meets her new servant (Griet), and comes across as cold, entitled and condescending – she tells Griet that there are no guarantees she’ll be permitted to stay. Griet and her family need the job, and she knows her place so she is obedient, works hard and is at all times respectful. But as Catharina’s husband, Johannes is asked to paint a portrait of the maid by a customer who has noticed the maid’s beauty, and commissioned the work, Johannes begins to spend a lot more time with the maid. But, the time spent and conversations they have and the things he asks Griet to do and the favours he provides her cross the line into the inappropriate for the time period.

Later in the movie, it comes out in the story that the last maid holding Griet’s new position was let go because an inappropriate relationship between the painter and previous maid had developed. Having been betrayed in marriage, I can understand if Catharina felt fear, anger, and suspicion at the prospect of another beautiful, young maid in the house – perhaps her initial cold demeanor isn’t really who Catharina is, and has less to do with Griet and everything to do with her unmended broken heart from her husband’s previous indiscretions?

The movie portrays Catharina as spiteful, ugly and distasteful – even in the way her hair and makeup are done, she is characterized this way. The way the story in the movie unfolds focuses on how unjust Catharina’s treatment of Griet is, rather than how harmful and cruel it would have been for Catharina to witness again (and how many times before?) Johannes’ inability to set aside his desire for a younger, beautiful, innocent maid servant. Catharina throws tantrums, and demands that Griet be removed from the home as she notices Johannes’ increased fascination with Griet, but Johannes, who has the last say as man of the house, does not send her away. Catharina becomes increasing angry and frustrated with the situation as she realizes she has no power to influence her husband to stop the emotional abuse and psychological harm he is putting her through. To me, this behaviour is NORMAL for a woman in this situation, and in my lived experience, I have been this woman.

BOTH women in the story, in fact, are not to blame for Johannes’ harmful and exploitative behaviour – Griet is powerless as the maid. Catharina is powerless as the wife. But instead of focusing on what Johannes is doing that is causing his wife so much distress, the movie villainizes Catharina, who is truly a victim in the story. Her anger, frustration and tantrums make it easy to think that “of course Johannes strays, look at what he has to deal with”…

The movie sweeps the viewer away into the wonder of a man falling in love; the maid is youthful, innocent, beautiful, and the painter becomes mesmerized with her. What married woman that has lived day in and day out with a man, her husband, and maybe the father of her children, wouldn’t want to be the focus of his undying devotion and love the way Johannes is focused on Griet. But when someone else has the attention that was once promised to the wife, the pain is insufferable. In the movie, the budding romance is glorified while the wife’s reaction is made to look wrong, uncalled for, and out of line. The wife “acts out”, is freaked out and seems crazy, while the quiet, soft-spoken, seemingly sweet husband says very little and appears simply to be “taken over” by the maid’s beauty and unaware of the harm he is doing to his wife. This is backwards and a clear example of how media feeds the social scripting around victim-blaming betrayed, emotionally abused women.

Recently, I learned while reading Lundy Bancroft’s book, “Why Does He Do That?”, that it is very common for people to get victim and perpetrator mixed up when there are allegations of abuse, betrayal and harm in marriage. A direct quote from Mr. Bancroft’s book, “I’ve had couples counsellors say to me, for example: ‘He just isn’t the type to be abusive; he’s so pleasant and insightful and she’s so angry.'” As if, a wife’s anger (in comparison to her husband’s smooth demeanor) makes her claim that her husband’s behaviour is harming her invalid and unbelievable?

As her husband, Johannes had a duty to protect his wife, including from any emotional trauma that would result from his betrayal of her. So, to depict Catharina in the movie “Girl with the Pearl Earring” as somehow undeserving of this protection or at fault because of her completely normal reactions to a situation that was making her feel scared and traumatized is adding to the many other backwards messages society is receiving on this issue.