5. Acknowledging your losses

"As you continue the centering process you’ll find that there’s a complex and shifting constellation of emotions that either runs parallel to anger or quickly follows it. The most prominent of these is grief. Your grief can be a pulse of sadness sometimes booming sometimes almost imperceptible, but always a backdrop to discovering betrayal. Anger and rage, as you’ve seen, not only don’t preclude grief they’re actually woven into it.

 

That’s because there’s been a death, not an actual person but of the relationship you had, which could never be the same again. And along with it, many of your hopes and beliefs, your sense of trust, and your emotional security have died. A serious lie is a wound to the heart.

 

If you’ve been living with lies for sometime, you’ve probably experienced a loss of confidence and self respect as well. These multiple deaths must be grieved in order to heal from them. The one thing I can tell you is that grief cannot be sidestepped. You need to go through it, not around it or over it or under it as many people try to do. Grief hurts like hell, and I don’t blame anyone for trying to avoid it, but the problem is, it can’t be skipped it can only be delayed. And the longer you delay facing it, the harder it gets."

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Excerpt from When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal.​