Tug of War Is a Two-Person Game, Part I: The Rope Burns

Tug of war is a simple game.

Two sides grip the same rope, dig their heels into the ground, and pull as hard as they can. From the outside, the rules are clear: as long as both sides keep pulling, the game continues. Strength matters. Endurance matters. So does the willingness to stay engaged.

Inside the game, it’s exhausting. Every pull requires effort, focus, and a constant readiness to resist. The rope burns your hands, your footing shifts, and the tension never really eases. And yet, the most overlooked rule is this: the game only exists if both people agree to keep holding the rope. The moment one person lets go, it ends.

Every romantic relationship is some form of tug of war. Winning and losing aren’t always the point. Sometimes the goal is simply not to drop the rope. One person pulls, the other pulls back, and the tension becomes familiar. In a healthy relationship, no one is getting rope burn.

A marriage marked by infidelity or a high-conflict divorce is where the rope burns are constant — the kind that leave blisters.

For many years, far too many, I pulled that rope. It was no longer about give and take. It became about trying to control the uncontrollable and creating outcomes that felt more bearable than my reality.

At times, I was holding onto more ropes than I could manage. And instead of loosening my grip or dropping some of them, I gripped tighter, pulled harder, and sometimes even picked up more ropes. More battles.

Part of my journey toward healing has been taking a radical, deep dive into owning my own shit. I’ve written before about my path to trusting my intuition. I love her. Yes, my intuition is a “her,” and she has her own identity. She is a version of me that has lived many lives, carrying a knowing that I can’t explain but that I know I can trust.

When my husband cheated, I blamed myself. I blamed him. I blamed his childhood, his teenage years, his young adult years. I blamed the other woman. I sent her text messages and left voicemails warning her to stay away from my marriage.
(True story: she laughed and told me she could do whatever she wanted. She wasn’t wrong.)

I called her husband. I screamed and pleaded with mine. I fired off lists of rules and boundaries, believing they could keep me safe. Danger felt everywhere. Loss of control was everywhere. And the truth I couldn’t yet accept was everywhere too: control is an illusion.

I had spent my entire life being praised for my strength. And yet, no amount of it could control the actions of the people around me.

I’m not sure if it was a trauma response or something else, but when I don’t have answers, I go on a mission to find them. In the early days and months after discovering the affair, I read every book and listened to every podcast I could. I started working with an infidelity recovery coach. I wanted to know when the pain would end and when trust would come back.

Eventually, I found my way to Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. This book was life-changing for me. I was more than four years removed from my discovery of the affair when I finally read it. Four years of pulling the rope harder against everything that threatened my sense of safety and my marriage.

Around the time I began reading that book, and many others, I had already moved on from my infidelity coach. After that, I worked with a sober coach to gain a better understand of my relationship with alcohol and how I was using it to cope and numb. I took long periods away from alcohol so I could lean into the uncomfortable.

When I was no longer numbing my body from my feelings, I began working with a trauma-informed life coach and eventually did EMDR. Once I had a grasp on what was happening in my body, I felt ready to face the reality of my relationship head on.

By the time I picked up Codependent No More, I wasn’t a fully healed woman, but I was a different one.

I had a better understanding of my triggers. I had done countless hours of individual therapy, along with countless hours of couples therapy. Slowly, I began to see that the man I had placed on a pedestal didn’t belong there. I had been handing away my power, my autonomy, and my sense of self for years.

I started to see our relationship from outside its container. Two people with predictable patterns.

A conflict would arise. The silent treatment would begin. Finger-pointing came next. More silence. Eventually, I would apologize, because he could win an Olympic gold medal for pretending he was unbothered. The tension would break. We’d be fine for a hot second. And then we’d return to the beginning of the cycle again. Step one: conflict.

Once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. Codependent No More is all about this work—recognizing that we are individuals with autonomy and authority over our own actions and reactions, but not over anyone else’s.

My trauma coach would often say, "It only takes one person to disrupt the cycle. You can start without waiting for him to join you."

What I didn’t understand yet was what happens after you drop the rope…