One evening, Craig and I were sitting on opposite sides of our family room couch. He was happily watching TV while I silently fumed at him. Somehow I was able to lift my perspective and look down at both of us. There I was, fired up with fury, and there Craig was, undisturbed and utterly unaware that I was miserable. All the fire was in me. None in him. I thought: How can this anger be about him? He can’t even feel it. Suddenly I felt possessive and protective of my own anger. I thought: This is happening inside my body. If this anger is in me, I am going to assume it is for me. I decided to stop being ashamed and afraid of my anger, to stop being ashamed and afraid of myself.
From that moment on, whenever anger arose, I practiced staying open and curious. I sat with it. I let it be. My anger and I hung out and listened to each other. I asked my anger questions like “What are you trying to tell me? Not about him, but about me?” I started paying close attention to patterns in my body, because my body often clarifies for me what my mind is too convoluted and hopeful to accept. Bodies won’t lie, even when we beg them to. I noticed that anger flooded my body whenever I opened myself up to Craig emotionally or physically. My anger lifted completely when I watched him with the children. Before I started paying close attention, I thought this meant that I was flip-flopping. But over time I began to understand that my anger wasn’t arbitrary, it was incredibly specific. My anger was repeating, “Glennon: For you, familial intimacy with Craig is safe. Physical and emotional intimacy are not.”
I knew this. My body knew this. And I had been ignoring what I knew. That is why I was so angry: I was angry at myself. Craig was the one who had strayed, yes, but I was the one who decided, day after day, to stay married, vulnerable, and angry. I was ignoring what I knew, and I was punishing him for forcing me to know it. There was nothing he could do to change what I knew. Maybe the question was no longer “How could he have done this to me?” but “How can I keep doing this to myself?” Maybe instead of forever repeating, “How could he have abandoned me?” I needed to ask, “Why do I keep abandoning myself?”
Eventually I decided to stop abandoning myself—which meant honoring my anger. I didn’t need to prove to anyone else whether leaving was right or wrong. I didn’t need to justify my anger anymore. What I needed to do was forgive the father of my children. I was able to do that as soon as I divorced him.
After the divorce mediation, Craig and I stood side by side in an elevator, watching the floor numbers light up one at a time while we descended. I looked over at Craig, and for the first time in years, I felt true empathy, tenderness, and warmth toward him. Once again, I could see him as a good man with whom I’d like to be friends. I felt real forgiveness. That was because for the first time in years, I felt safe. I’d restored my own boundaries. I’d begun to trust myself, because I’d become a woman who refuses to abandon herself to keep false peace.
I have friends who did find safety and lasting forgiveness inside their marriages after infidelity. What comes after betrayal cannot be striving, contorting, or suffering to honor an arbitrary idea of right or wrong. What comes next must be an honoring of self. We must disregard the should out there and face what is real in here. If constant anger is what is real in here, we must address it—both for ourselves and for the other. Because it is not kind to keep those we can’t forgive close to us and punish them forever. If we cannot forgive and move on, perhaps we need to move on first, and forgiveness will follow. Forgiveness does not mean access. We can give the other person the gift of forgiveness and ourselves the gift of safety and freedom at the very same time. When both people become unafraid and unpunished, that is a good good-bye. Relief from anger is not something that is bestowed upon us; it often must be forged by us.
Anger delivers important information about where one of our boundaries has been crossed. When we answer the door and accept that delivery, we begin to know ourselves better. When we restore the boundary that was violated, we honor ourselves. When we know ourselves and honor ourselves, we live with integrity, peace, and power—understanding that we are the kind of woman who will be wise and brave enough to care for herself. Good stuff.
And there’s more. Even better stuff comes when we go deeper. When we say, “Okay. I understand that this is my boundary.” But what is a boundary anyway?
A boundary is the edge of one of our root beliefs about ourselves and the world.
We are like computers, and our beliefs are the software with which we’re programmed. Often our beliefs are programmed into us without our knowledge by our culture, community, religion, and family. Even though we don’t choose those subconscious programs, they run our lives. They control our decisions, perspectives, feelings, and interactions, so they determine our destiny. What we believe, we become. There is nothing more important than unearthing what we really believe to be true about ourselves and our world—and nothing unearths what we really believe faster than examining what pisses us off.
My anger at my ex-husband was a relentless doorbell trying to alert me that a major boundary of mine had been crossed. My boundary was the edge of this root belief of mine: The most important values in a marriage are honesty, loyalty, and faithfulness, and when those are gone, I am no longer safe.
That belief of mine was neither right nor wrong. Beliefs have nothing to do with objective universal morality and everything to do with each person’s specific, personal one. In this case, I decided to accept and keep this root belief about marriage and loyalty because it served me, made me feel safe, and felt true to me. I accepted that delivery and brought it right into my second marriage.
But sometimes my anger delivers to my door a root belief that I don’t want to keep.
Abby works hard and rests hard. Often in the middle of a weekday, she will lie down on our couch and watch zombie shows. When she does this, I get clenched and tight. I get agitated, then angry, because she is relaxing at me. I start tidying loudly and aggressively in the couch’s vicinity. She hears my violent tidying and asks, “What’s wrong?” I say, “Nothing” with a tone that suggests “Something.” This dance plays out again and again: Abby relaxing on the couch and me getting angry about it and Abby getting angry that I’m getting angry.
We talk this out, again and again. You have not seen talking until you’ve seen the incessant talking of two married women who are introspective spiritual seekers and also sober so they have nothing else to do. We adore each other. We never want to hurt each other. We want to understand each other and ourselves, so we really want to get to the bottom of things. So we talk, and we talk, and we always seem to arrive at this conclusion: Abby is a grown woman, and she is the boss of herself. Glennon should stop feeling angry about Abby’s decisions.
I always agree with this conclusion. My mind does, at least. But how do I get this memo to my body? What do I do with should? Should never helps me because I am dealing with what is. Layering a judgment on top of a feeling doesn’t change the feeling. How do I not become angry? How do I not become…activated?
One day I walked into our family room and saw Abby jump off the couch and begin straightening pillows, trying to look busy and productive for my sake. I stopped in my tracks and stared at her while a memory from childhood floated into my mind. When I was young, if I was at home relaxing on the couch and I heard my parents’ car pull up in the driveway, I’d panic, jump off the couch, and try to look busy before they opened the door. Exactly like I’d just seen Abby do.