After the initial parabola of passion, infidelity can be a crashing into a particular kind of hell. A roller-coaster ride that burns our heart. Infidelity scalds us with guilt and grief in the after-shock of transcendent bliss.
In virtually every marriage code in virtually every society, infidelity is unequivocally prohibited.
In a lot of places today, the punishment for this “crime” is divorce, financial ruin, loss of their children, ostracism from their families or worst of all, the burial of our real feelings and our real selves deep within a life of quiet desperation and rage.
Increasingly in these financially sobering times of infidelity, estranged couples bounce around in the empty shell of their marriage because of the mortgage or rent. Some stick it out for the sake of the children, their elderly parents, blocking their ears to the silent scream of pain and/or indifference which brutalizes the soul.
The tender memory of their lover’s embrace bruises the skin for years to come, long after the infidelity has been killed and thrown into the deep ocean.
Infidelity … adultery. The biggest difference is around the context of the action.
The word adultery comes from Latin — which means “ to pollute, or corrupt.” What is polluted? Trust? Ownership?
Marriage therapists urge couples to “work harder” at their relationships. To come up with strategies and formulas to fit the broken pieces together again.
So often, in Love, the dots do not connect in a straight line. The waxing and waning of the moon, the human heart has phases of light when we turn to face the magnificence of the sun and times of darkness, while we enfold the mystery of our passion.
There’s no book of rules, no etiquette to guide us through the choppy, unpredictable seas of Love. Do we throw everything away if love comes knocking at the door, splintering our hearts, battering down the walls of the life we have built so carefully?
Do we risk all for passion, adventure, the unknown, when the rugged terrain of a long relationship has been charted and co-habited?
Do we stay, knowing there will always be more deep-soul work, more growth work, as we chip away the sharp-jagged edges of our defenses?
Do we encounter the paradox of forbidden Love, collapsing as our hearts sweeten with joy while our minds crucify us between the emotional hijackers of Shame and Sorrow?
If we are the one who leaves, our parting of ways will involve a dismemberment of the life we knew, an annihilation of our old self. There will be dark nights when we wake with fear and trembling piercing through our belly.
At some time or another, we will come to the crossroads of choice and the awakening of consciousness. So do we hone what we have into what our heart longs for? Do we differentiate, individuate, heal our childhood hunger … if we can’t be with the person we love or do we love the one we’re with?
The 13th century poet Rumi said, “There is some kiss we want with our whole lives.” Some of us search for that kiss through our adolescence, our experimental, turbulent twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties..
We stuff our longing deep down. Numb it with the busy-ness of life. “Is this as good as it gets?” we ask ourselves, filling the hole in our heart with longer hours on the computer, the gym, the office, the club, another glass of wine when we get home and upping our prescription medication.
Sometimes it take the catalyst of infidelity to expose the cracks in the chalice of our marriage/relationship. It may take the sweet kiss of just one person to awaken us from our slumber of disillusionment, denial.
Re-birthing our souls is never as simple as leaving the husk of a unfulfilled relationship, or changing jobs.
Unless we’re willing to look honestly at ourselves, merely switching partners will bring the same issues we tried to escape from with our previous partner … often leaving us marooned, stripped of our innocence and even more fucked up.
But if we are conscious, and serious about the tugging at our heart, there are profound lessons in every relationship, as we retrieve the long-buried parts of ourselves — our passion, our sensuality, our joy — our deceitful, destructive Shadow.
This is the very essence of Humility.
At last, when we come to trust our own instincts, hear and respect our own voices, feel valuable enough to touch that erotic, vulnerable part of our self, buried beneath the sediments of cultural and familial conditioning and wipe the sleep from our own eyes, we dare risk blossoming.
Our choices in love are sacred.
Real love feels like a re-union, re-cognition, re-membering, and if we must part, the love we once shared remains, all-ways.
~Ask about my 2/3 -Day “Healing from the Aftermath of Infidelity” Couples Private Intensive. All inquiries are confidential.
Blessings & peace,
Paula
