My broken picker
my part, my responsibility, the hard truths

(TW: this weeks newsletter discusses rape and sexual violence.)

Last week I unpacked the “evidence” that spelled the end of my marriage. I exposed how getting honest with myself, about what I knew and what I didn’t has helped me be clear eyed. But having clarity isn’t the only aim. My aim is to see, own and metabolize my part in all this. After all, a marriage is made of two people. And as tempting as it is to blame the end of a marriage entirely on a cheating spouse, it’s simply not accurate, truthful or fair.

Next week I’ll unpack in greater detail how a person’s “picker” gets broken. The picker being what you use to determine the biggest decision of your life – to whom will you marry? It’s super loaded and complicated, but in the days after all of this came to light, I did another reflection on all of the relationships and traumatic experiences I could recall. Here goes:

At 15 years old I was in a coercive relationship with my first boyfriend. He told me that he had cancer in an effort to get me to sleep with him.

At 16, I fell in love hard. I came to learn, over the course of our 2.5 year relationship, that he made a play for my best friend while I was out of town. I was so “in love” I stayed with him – without confronting, without so much as getting mad. I also strongly suspected him of being closeted and bisexual – but I had no “proof”.

In the summer of my 16th year, my two girlfriends and I went to a party. There were five boys, to the three of us and there was Everclear. When one of my best friends disappeared for a bit I later found her, completely blacked out, with one of the boys next to her, sexually assaulting her. I stopped him. She went to the hospital the next day and got a rape kit. I lost my voice but not before I gave a grand jury testimony as to what happened that night. He was never held accountable.

In college I met a bad boy. He partied too hard – he was an addict who came from a lot of abuse. He did 12 hits of acid in one night and took more then six months to regulate from that experience, he got kicked out. I housed him on campus where he ramped up his crazy, his addiction and then pivoted to both verbal and physical abuse of me and my room mates.

And then I got married.

So, I’ve been with liars and cheats my entire life. So, why did I choose them? Well apparently being surrounded by secrets, lies and closeted addiction created the blueprint for the shaping of my broken “picker”. Now, I know that I am in no way responsible for my husbands fidelity, nor am I responsible for the lack of safety I experienced as a child. But I was and am responsible for cleaning up how I was shaped then and how that affects my relationships moving forward.

Due to the childhood trauma I became hard wired to fear sex. Of course I loved intimacy, closeness and also loved physical sex, but I had a metric ton of fear. I knew all too well that the secrets and lies which rotted so much of my family could potentially rot me too, and those were just the ones I knew about. And if I could simply keep sex, the exploration, any kink and most certainly all the sexual empowerment at bay – maybe – just maybe, I’d be safe.

So, there it is, I cut myself off. And in relationship, all of the self exploration I should have had, could have done, got shuttled to my husband’s column of responsibility. No, not fair to him, or to either of us.

Next week I talk about the MASSIVE breakthrough my body has had in the midst of this, it’s really good stuff. Stay tuned.