Does the intent of our partner matter to the betrayed? To me – others may differ – the answer is “no” with one initial exception.
Handsome and I have been doing a “Transparency of the Day” exercise to improve our communication and, frankly, to get him to exercise his integrity muscles. The idea is for each of us, every day, to very briefly share something that we are feeling or that happened and that may not be obvious or known to the other. At least twice a week Handsome is supposed to share a transparency specifically related to his recovery. Most days the exercise is quite helpful. On a few days the transparency or the resulting discussion has turned into an argument, but I’m seeing that the arguments usually stem not from the transparency shared, but from the editorializing that follows.
Handsome was recently officially diagnosed with ADHD. He is 57, and the understanding that he has lived with this throughout his life – and the impacts it has likely had on everything from his distaste for school to his interpersonal relationships and his addiction – has been somewhat overwhelming for him. In particular, the fact that ADHD is so readily treatable with a variety of meds led him to sadly question whether his self-esteem, judgment, and impulse control would have been any better had he been appropriately diagnosed long ago. He wasn’t throwing out the ADHD diagnosis as an excuse – in fact he noted that it was no excuse at all – but rather he was sharing deep sense of sadness over “what could have been” if he knew and was treated earlier.
Looking back, I’m not quite sure where the word “intent” popped into the discussion, but it did. (Again, the transparency wasn’t the genesis of the debate, the discussion that followed was…) Handsome opined that I should take his intent into account in assessing his actions. I told him that his intent is utterly irrelevant to me except for my initial decision to stay and to try to re-pair with him.
Why did his intent matter then? I had to believe that he did not intend to hurt or to destroy me with his acting out (even though the harm he caused was an obvious and inevitable consequence to anyone with half a brain not mired in disordered thinking). If I believed that my husband meant to hurt me, or that his behavior was vindictive and targeted at me, I would have left. It was clear to me though that wasn’t the case as so much of Handsome’s conduct focused on hiding his secrets and keeping me from finding out the truth about him. He could not have been trying to hurt me because he never wanted me to know.
After that initial threshold decision though? I could care less what his intent is. The analogy that I drew was as follows:
– If you shoot me in the heart on purpose, I’m dead.
– If you shoot me in the heart by accident, I’m still dead.
To me, the injured party, the result is the same either way. Dead is dead. The shooter’s intent is utterly irrelevant to me. It may matter to the shooter, law enforcement, or other people, but I’m still dead no matter what.
The same is true with betrayal trauma and recovery. I really don’t care what Handsome’s intent was in striking up a conversation with the Flame. It doesn’t change the harm to me. I’m not going to try to invent some reasonableness test based on his disordered thinking. I’m not going to waste time trying to justify or figure out the crazy. I can only judge his actions for what they actually are, not what he intended them to be.
Intent, ADHD, addiction, PTSD, etc., etc., rarely flies with judges as excuses. The only intent they care about is the intentional change that needs to happen. Maybe you need a black robe and a gavel because you’re judging this situation 100% correctly, IMO.
Thanks Joshua! Again, to give credit where it’s due, my husband does a lot of things right. (Well, maybe not so much over the Summer, but generally…) I just think he’s really wrong about this. Maybe, as happened with Maggie’s husband, he’ll grasp this over time with more sobriety and recovery work under his belt.
1000000 yesses 👍🏻
Hey there SSA. 😊 Are you still posting, or not as often? I noticed that your blog is private now (was it always??) and maybe I’m just not seeing notifications anymore? 🤷🏼♀️
It was public but I changed it to private; I noticed some suspicious viewing (possibly by one of the OW), but I was probably just being paranoid 😉 I haven’t posted in a while, life is very overwhelming at the moment (more family illness and a bit of my own health stuff which will soon be resolved I hope with a surgery scheduled in November) and because I live it everyday I am trying not to write about it too. All is good with Mr. P and I – I’m still far away from healed (is healed even possible?), and maybe all of the other life stuff is a distraction, but I’m doing ok and finally feel less conflicted about my decision to stay. He’s doing what he needs to do to stay healthy 😊
For now, I’m just a reader and supporter of you all xo
Good to know. If it was a OW, I hope she understands what we think of her. 😂
I think about you often and I hope all of the health issues resolve in your favor. Glad to hear Mr P is doing great too. ❤️
I was surprised when I investigated karma: how important the aspect of intent was, and I got it. But..when we have majorly f****d up when does integrity and intent overlap? We all learn lessons, or not, our learning should teach us that integrity, or lack of, after so may lessons, can in itself be interpreted as intent. I understand your thinking, for me him contacting the flame indicates a lack of boundaries led by a lack of learning. Sorry my friend but ultimately I agree, I would not be me if I were not honest. You know your experience resonates with me. ❤️
Yes Rosie… lack of boundaries coupled with muddied integrity. Regardless, it happened and his reasoning or intent just doesn’t matter to me. I can’t get wrapped up in that circus.
❤️
Sending you strength my friend, always with a hug, but strength is I think is more in solidarity. ❤️
You are right not get wrapped up in his circus. I suggest telling him to discuss this with his sponsor and leave you out of it. Addicts lie to themselves. I think it takes another addict to call them out on their bs. Many times I said to my husband, “See what your sponsor says.” That always ended the argument.
Great suggestion! His sponsor sounds pretty “together” so perhaps that would help.
“Handsome’s conduct focused on hiding his secrets and keeping me from finding out the truth about him. He could not have been trying to hurt me because he never wanted me to know.”
And as far as intention, intentions only matter to me, my paid doctor, and anyone interested in listening. It is my burden and it is impossible to prove intention.
I think the saying is “intentions don’t insulate us from the consequences of our actions.” So true. Not only are intentions impossible to prove, but they have no impact on outcome.
I hope your travels are still going well!
Consequences matter.
The difficulty is we confuse consequences with a while lot of other behaviors.
Of course, now that I had a few hours to think about I would add, that failure is feedback.
For a simplistic example, if Person A paints the living room and it looks like shit do the intentions matter? If Person A never painted and used oil instead of latex and a foam brush instead of a hair brush does it matter they tried?
Did Person A do those things because he didn’t give a fuck or because they wete doing what they thought needed done with what he knew and had to work with?
The consequences is a shitty job and Person A has to do it over…maybe ask for help instead of doing it alone…are the consequences they never paints again? Does Person A get beyrated, shamed, for doing a shitty job be Person B?
Are those consequences too?
I know it is a simplistic example but intentions do matter and simply dismissing mistakes of judgement as malicious or worse does not create trust or vulnerability.
Again, I’m not saying intentions should be the excuse for selfish and stupidity but until I talk openly about the intentions than how can I get to the transform the conflict?
Brene Brown talks about this in her chapter about transforming conflict on Daring Greatly I think.
How I judge intentions is often based on how the actions impact me and not what the objective was.
I’ll see if I can find a link to it.
Found it –>
Brene Brown: So if we decide to be brave and stay in the conversation, how do we push through the vulnerability and stay civil?
Dr. Michelle Buck: One of the key pieces of advice I give my executive and graduate students is to explicitly address the underlying intentions. What is the conversation about, and what is it really about? This sounds simple but tends to be easier said than done. The intention is the deepest level reason why the topic is so important to the person. We have to understand what truly matters to us and learn why this topic is so important to the other person as well. For example, two family members may bitterly disagree about the planning of a family event. One or both of them may have an underlying intention of wanting to create more opportunities for the family to stay connected, which may sound very different than the details of the disagreement. Speaking our intentions does not mean that we will suddenly have the same preferences or opinions, but it often helps us navigate different conversations to maintain or build a connection by actually understanding each other’s motives and interests more closely.
https://cadconfessional.com/2019/02/07/thoughts-on-conflict-transformation-intentions-not-excuses-part-2/
I agree with Dr. Buck in certain contexts. It is, for example, important for me to understand a client’s intentions when I advise them on an acquisition or sale. Less so, to me, in the context of a relationship with a disordered thinker with little alignment between his intentions and his actions. In that context the most applicable saying is “ The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
I have ADHD. My daughter told me the other day that they now believe our brains are not disordered. We are the hunters from the hunter gatherer past. We take everything in, and I am mean from one peripheral side to the other. Nothing stays out. I’ll bet he has trouble going into IKEA. I tried and did a U-turn. When I went back to work is when I discovered what I have. I took Ritalin for a few years but gave it up because I like who I am and how I deal with the world. I have never cheated. I have never thought about cheating. Cheating comes from something else, nor from ADHD
Hi Moi. I was glad that Handsome was very clear that ADHD is not an excuse, or the sole reason for his actions. It’s not lost on me though that between 25 and 40 percent of prison inmates have ADHD and most are undiagnosed and untreated. That’s a noticeable overrepresentation considering that it’s estimated that only 4 to 8 percent of the general population has ADHD. It’s difficult to look at those statistics and conclude that ADHD has no bearing on impulse control. Add in childhood neglect and all the other components of addiction and it was a recipe for disaster for my husband.
In the early days of my husband’s recovery, we had many arguments about “intentions” and what he should not be doing. For example, going to a barbershop that was dangerously near a former place of acting out because “that barber was the only one who could cut his hair right” and husband was taking precautions not to run into former AO person, and his only intention was a good haircut so he could look good for me. I kid you not. (Could I even make this up?). We had so many arguments over that damn barbershop. Trust me, there was nothing special about the haircut he got there. He argued so much I did start to doubt my own gut feelings about it. That’s when I suggested he talk to his sponsor, Matt, about it. I said if Matt thinks it’s ok, then it’s ok. Ha! I remember the look on husbands face when I said that. He did ask Matt, however, and as I recall Matt’s response was along the lines of, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Matt even took it a step further and pointed out that the anticipation of going to that barbershop and being in that area was as much of a problem as being in that area. Something I wouldn’t have thought of because I’m not an addict. That was 2 yrs ago. Husband found a barbershop in a safe place of town. His hair looks much better! Every time he gets a haircut I tell him how good it looks and how glad I am he finally found a good barber. We always share a laugh about it. xo
Wow. You’re right. I wouldn’t have thought of the “anticipation” as an issue on my own. I’m glad Matt had enough of his own recovery/ sobriety in place to offer such good advice and I’m glad your husband took that advice. It’s great that something that started as such a battle turned into something you can now share a good laugh about with each other.
xo