October 23, 2018
Emotional Cancer


Your spouse has cheated on you. You are unable to stop re-imagining what went on. You feel rejected, betrayed, unloved. It is a major crisis in your life, for you. You question yourself. You ask: "Am I not handsome/beautiful enough? Am I uninteresting or not valuable as a human being?" Your self esteem drops to a low. You even consider suicide from time to time.

Your spouse apologizes and wants to resume the relationship. S/he cannot understand why his/her multiple apologies are not enough for the connection to return to contentment with each other. Your spouse does not understand the depth of how you feel.

For the spouse that does know how to commiserate the extent of your despair: s/he apologizes and may do ACTIVE LISTENING once or maybe twice and then wants no part of any further ventilations.

Frequently there is not even that response. Therefore the original despair is no longer acknowledged-creating a greater widening of couple-disconnection. Your spouse does not want to hear your agony and tells you to shut up/walks away and/or ignores you.

THE ORIGINAL FAULT WIDENS INTO A CHASM. Each time the subject is brought up and dismissed without succor the former betrayal widens into the Grand Canyon of grief.

Change the hypothesis: Now your spouse has cancer. Daily s/he is sinking into more pain. Morphine does not dull the agony.

Each day you view the contortions of torment. Do you distain her/his pain? Do you avoid/discount it? I think not.

I imagine since you love your spouse that you provide every comfort/every prayer/every uplifting word that you can each hour and each day. You sit by your partner nights, not sleeping, hoping for a return to health.

Well your partner has emotional cancer. Be there until s/he is healed use ACTIVE LISTENING which is putting yourself verbally in his/her shoes. Imagining what s/he is feeling not once , but each and every time until s/he is healed.

Is it exhausting? Yes, but so was it wearing when s/he had cancer and you wanted her/him to survive.