The Big Why

In the wake of discovering betrayal in my marriage, I was often confronted with asking WHY. Why were those decisions made? Was it Addiction? History of trauma? Narcissism? The emotional toll was heavy with many lines of thinking about the causes of decisions that had been made. Being able answer the why question was really important to me at the time because it seemed like it should shape what happened next. 

In my line of work of investigating medical errors, if you can't clearly define and name the problem, you can't fix it. I lived by that at work, and it was absolutely logical to me to apply it here. I desperately wanted a concrete, black-and-white answer. Why did he make those choices? For over one year, I naively thought that if I could just figure that big "why" out, it would lead me to the right answer about what to do next.

So I went to work to figure it out, oftentimes feeling alone as I did so. I literally drafted an analysis of all the information I knew at the time, complete with a timeline(!). You should have seen the look on the therapist's face when I showed up with this 15-page typed document. Talk about trying to grasp at any degree of control in a spiraling situation. My problem: I had no action plan. I didn't know what to do with all those facts on-hand, because there was no clear why; there was still no probable root cause that I could uncover.

I intentionally left little room for grey and started on my own path to try and figure it out.  I first tried to read as much as I could muster about addiction and compulsive behavior. I would research/read/listen in an effort to understand and I would actually get physically sick. Stop. Start again. Get physically sick. Stop. Repeat. It was awful. But I tried as best I could to learn about motivations. I sought to understand all that I could about the circumstances, what led up to them, and more about his history than I previously knew.

I operated in a world of crazymaking for a long time, but I wasn't getting anywhere. I was mostly sick and anxious, and no closer to discovering anything but a lot of pain. The fact is, another person held the keys to know why, and I’m not even sure he did. I certainly couldn't define the problem if he didn't even know what it was. 

I stopped trying to name it, to learn, to guess. It felt like giving in, but it also was a relief. I surrendered to the fact that I couldn't get inside someone else’s head, and I didn't want to anymore. The more time I spent trying to understand why, the less time I had to spend on my own healing. I re-framed my options not from his vantage point and put them in my own sights.

I created a new question, Who Cares Why? There was never going to be a Why in this world that was big enough to rationalize what happened. Even in the case of trauma or mental health issues, the longevity and gravity of the choices left the future dim at best for us. Regardless of any cause, my new question brought relief and empowerment in that (alongside mourning and grief of course). I may never know the "Big Why" (or maybe it's a million little whys) that led to those decisions throughout our relationship and marriage.

I didn’t ever find the answer to my WHY question. Perhaps this prevented the happy ending I wanted, but I'm absolutely convinced leaving the question unanswered gave me the healthy ending I needed.