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[Kerry]

A news report I'd like to read:

Sandra B sets the record straight

Now appears to be a good time to share a few things I've learned about myself through my relationship with Jessie James. First I wish to make it clear that I am responsible for what has happened in our relationship. I masterminded (albeit unconsciously) the entire scenario. It was all in support of me restoring my integrity. Daily and hourly, even as I write, I'm having more and more realizations, I'm beginning to see the whole picture.

I'm ashamed to acknowledge that I kept silent and supported the media in portraying me as the “victim.” This does a great injustice to all relationships because it perpetuates our obvious pandemic addiction to blaming. Furthermore, it portrays me, and all other women who have manifested deception problems, as wimpy, clueless, unconscious, powerless women who don't inspire integrity, women who can't tell by looking in their partner's eyes if there's a withhold in the space.

I'll begin with the fact that I have been unconscious. I've been living in an imaginary world that pretends talking is the same as communicating. I've had dozens of opportunities to attend relationship communication-skills workshops and chose not to; I arrogantly assumed I knew how to communicate. Only now do I see that I had not been in communication with Jessie. This probably doesn't shock some of you but for me it was a Zen-like awakening.  I see now that when Jessie and I were together I had been doing my imitation of communication. It looked like communication and it sounded like communication but I know now that I did not insist upon open, honest, and spontaneous communication, no thoughts withheld between us. Unbelievably, I also did not make it absolutely clear that I would not tolerate cheating, that cheating would mean an automatic divorce with no second chance. What I did communicate, non-verbally, was that I would tolerate cheating and that I might forgive such a perpetration.* I know this to be true based upon the fact that cheating took place. Jessie knew intuitively that I supported withholds.

I had been so out-integrity at the beginning of my relationship with Jessie that I had lost my sharpness, my perceptiveness, my natural knowingness; I had accumulated a lifetime of unacknowledged perpetrations, incompletes that were clouding my mind, each serving as a barrier to the experience of communication. I couldn't pick up on the first incomplete the first “tell” of a thought being withheld. After I let the first hint of a thought being withheld slide without getting clarity it was all downhill thereafter (read about communication breakdowns).

It's embarrassing to acknowledge that my leadership-communication skills have not inspired integrity, that Jessie mirrors my own integrity in so many other areas, and that I had to drive Jessie into the arms of another just to wake me up.

Lastly, I acknowledge that I chose to marry someone I knew my parents would not have chosen as a son-in-law. I chose to thwart their desires for their daughter. I knew he would not fit in with the family. I also ignored (invalidated) many friends who communicated shock and disbelief in my choice of Jessie. I'm intent on getting to the source of this abusive aberrant behavior.

More to follow

Thinking of getting married? Clean up/restore your integrity using The Clearing Process—it's free and it works.

* See Creating a Wedding Vow that Precludes Cheating