Deb is not her real name, but her story is very real for many women. It’s a story I would only write with her permission, and one that I’m hoping will help liberate you from whatever shame and self-judgment you feel when it comes to the state of your relationship and your choice to speak your truth—or not.
Deb was smart, professionally successful, and the mom of two children, 13 and 6. She was a highly respected professor and wrote books on feminism. Deb was also married to a man whom she didn’t like and who scared her; she felt afraid and unable to speak the truth in her own home. For the past five years, her husband had been angry and unkind towards her. She walked on eggshells, kept the peace, and pretended all was well. Trying, as she put it, to “keep his demons from waking.” Despite her emotional and intellectual intelligence, Deb had been unable to make the situation better. Still, her husband’s defensiveness and emotional manipulation made it impossible to address the issues or her suffering. This strong, self-sufficient, smart, and attractive woman felt trapped and stuck. She didn’t know how she could stay, but she didn’t know if she could bear to leave. While Deb desperately wanted to be free of his control and emotional abuse, she didn’t feel capable of telling the truth and confronting the consequences. Even if, on paper, she didn’t have much to lose, and even if she was desperately unhappy, still, she was too afraid to risk losing the relationship and the “ground” it offered. And also, too afraid that she couldn’t endure the process of leaving.
There are three stages to what I call the “truthing” process. In the first stage, women start to discover who they are, independent from the roles they play for other people. They wake up to their truth and uncover their own wants and needs. During this stage, women become aware of how deeply they’ve abandoned themselves and sought connection, harmony, and stability above all else. They recognize how much of their life has been driven by “shoulds” and controlled by guilt; women realize that they’re disconnected from their own truth.
In Touch with the Truth
When I first met Deb, she had moved through stage one of the “truthing” process and was uncomfortably situated in the painful, second stage. This is the stage when women are in touch with their truth, internally, clear on how they feel, but too afraid to speak it out loud, to bring it to the people who matter. Too afraid of the consequences of being honest—conflict, anger, punishment, aggression, withholding, silence, abandonment, rejection, loss of financial security, family structure, children’s well-being, societal inclusion, or all of the above. In stage two of “truthing,” women are paralyzed by what they imagine will be the fallout from authenticity.
As women, we believe and have been conditioned to believe that telling our truth will lead to the loss of connection with those we love and need. The chain: If our truth is unlikable, we will be unlikable. If we are unlikable, people will go away. If people go away, our needs won’t be met—we will end up unsafe and alone. We won’t survive. At the most primal level, disapproval equals death.
Often, even when a woman knows in her head that she would be okay if everything were to fall apart in her relationship, that she could and would be able to take care of herself, her body often hasn’t caught up with her head. Her nervous system still experiences the prospect of speaking her truth as terrifying and profoundly threatening. This terror is not rational, and not usually tied to a particular consequence that might result (although sometimes it is). But the fear I’m describing is primal, deep in our biological wiring, a fear that lives in the body and doesn’t always make “sense” to the mind. Voicing our truth, if it will be difficult for a partner (or anyone else) to hear, generates feelings of dread, despair, and even grief, as if our very existence is on the line. An unwanted truth is an unwanted self and the loss of connection, which means the end of us.
Deb didn’t respect or enjoy being with her husband, and had not been happy in the marriage for years. Her husband was angry, anxious, and scary to be around most of the time. Just his presence made Deb feel dysregulated and emotionally in danger. But his defensiveness and reactivity made it too risky to be honest with him. And so she stayed and silenced her truth. She was in a marriage that felt deeply dishonest and emotionally unsafe, but it felt even more unsafe to be truthful.
Often, the losses a woman fears don’t match her actual reality.
Deb was the breadwinner in the family; she paid for the children and all household expenses. Independently wealthy, she earned a large income and would always be financially safe. This was not the case for her husband, who relied on her help to get by, which was part of his anger towards her. At the same time, Deb had a strong circle of friends and community. Her husband, on the other hand, was isolated, without friends or family.
The reality was that Deb had financial resources and an emotional support system that she could rely on if the relationship were to go away. It was her husband who had everything to lose, not her. But despite knowing this and despite the immense suffering and constant anxiety she was living with (and had been living with for a long time), this empowered, self-sufficient, and independent woman felt paralyzed—unable to speak her truth.
Feeling stuck in the chasm between what your mind knows and your body experiences is the mark of stage two in this “truthing” process. In the post entries that follow, I’ll dive into this chasm and explain more about what creates it. Also, I’ll discuss how to move through the fear and into the third stage of “truthing.” To create an integrated and authentic life in which you feel safe in both body and mind, with solid internal ground on which you can stand and face whatever external conditions arise. A life in which safety is not just based on your relationship with others, but on an internal state and relationship with yourself.
