blackacre02631

Catching Up

I’ve been gone for a minute. I needed Summer to regroup and repair my soul a bit. I thought I was coping well enough with my mom’s passing and with the car accident my daughter had that seriously injured my husband. In retrospect that might have been a little wishful thinking. It was a lot, all in a very short time span. I probably didn’t process either of those events very well at the time.

I miss my mom. Holy heck do I miss her. We often battled and she was a tough cookie, but I know she loved me fiercely and always had my best interests in mind, even when we disagreed over what those best interests actually were.

I have been at my (usually) happy place since mid July. In my entire life I have probably never been here for more than a week or two without one or both of my parents. Their absence has left me reeling. I have such amazing memories here with them. I’m trying to rely on those to carry me through. It helps, certainly, but the grief still comes in hard, powerful waves at unexpected times. Even the smell of the beach can bring me to tears if I don’t brace myself. I really feel a bit adrift without both of them. Not lost, just… unmoored. Like I’m trying to find where I belong now that I’m untethered from them. I’m a 53 year old orphan. That’s tough to get my head around.

I’ve had another major life change too. Handsome had to retire from his job due to his injuries from the car accident with my daughter. (I am so lucky and grateful that no one was killed. It was that bad, and easily could have been much worse.) His retirement has me losing sleep for multiple reasons. First, losing an entire salary two years before our eldest heads off to college wasn’t in the fiscal game plan. Not even close. Second, although he has been really wonderful for multiple years at this point, I do worry about him getting bored and spiraling.

Let me explain. I have a dear friend married to a lovely man. He has multiple degrees from Ivy League schools and, before he met my friend, he had an amazing work history. He gave up his last (to die for) job to move to a small Midwest city to be with my friend and he simply fell out of the job market. He went on dozens and dozens of interviews and nothing materialized. (He was often told that he was over-qualified and/or that they couldn’t pay him what he was worth – even when he was ready to take any offer.) After literally years of rejection, they decided he would stay home and she would work outside the home. Cool. I have no issue with that. But if you spend a few hours with this couple you see the mental and verbal gymnastics my friend does to make her husband feel valued and important. We all like to feel valued and important but I don’t have the bandwidth to pump someone’s ego up every day. I can’t fake not knowing how to do something so he can jump in and save the day. I need to be able to make decisions for certain things on my own without prior consultation. (Not big things, but small stuff… what doormat to buy or what flowers to plant, etc.) Most importantly, he can’t wield a credit card like a light saber when I’m the one actually paying the bill. I’ll be certifiably miserable if I have to deal with this with Handsome. I recognize that may be uncharitable and bitchy but I know myself. Valuing his contributions to the household and showing legitimate appreciation is one thing, but having I would seriously resent having to coddle him.

Fortunately, Handsome has been running his tush off shuttling children, running errands, and overseeing major construction on our home (that we contracted and paid for before the accident). He literally hasn’t had time to be bored or feel unimportant. I’m not sure how long that will continue. He has been sober since DDay, and has given me no reason (in several years) to be wary. But recovering addicts are still addicts. It would be cocky to think otherwise. I don’t know if he can find fulfillment in being a stay-at-home dad or if the absence of adrenaline rushes from work will take a toll. (His therapist jokingly told him to teach kids to drive if he’s desperate for a rush.)

These are both “new normals” that are going to take some adjustment. I’m game, but I’m also exhausted from the weight of these things on my shoulders. I know I’m still grieving. And I’ve always been okay being the primary breadwinner but being the sole breadwinner is a unique kind of pressure. It’s no one’s fault. My mom fought valiantly to stay alive and Handsome didn’t cause the car accident and had no intention of giving up his career. Things just happen. Life happens and it isn’t always filled with sunshine. I get it, but I’m already wishing 2023 out the door and hoping 2024 will bring more peace and perhaps some joy.

Questioning Karma

It may not seem like it here, but I am a reasonably optimistic person. My glass is more than half full. I have said on more than one occasion that karma would sort stuff out, so I need not worry over it. Generally it worked well for me (or for my little slice of the universe).

OW #1- Husband divorced her.

OW#2 – Husband became incapacitated so now she has to care for him 24/7 on welfare.

OW#3 – Repeatedly arrested and occasionally homeless.

It goes on and on. Karma.

And yet my own fate/ luck these last few months has been utterly awful. Or has it??

Shortly after I last posted, Handsome and my 16 yo (who was driving on her learner’s permit) were in a terrible car accident. I had to drive to the accident scene and there were 3 ambulances and two fire trucks there. Car was totaled. The car she hit was totaled. Daughter black and blue head to toe. Handsome has a lumbar fracture. Awful scene.

Then, my 90 yo mom passed away last week. She was in 3 facilities over 2 months, but was discharged to come home the day before her birthday. Six days later she had to return to the hospital with a pneumonia that killed her shortly thereafter. She was fully alert till her last breath and I was with her, holding her hand.

I really started wondering who I wronged in the universe for all these awful things to happen. Who did I wrong or betray? Was I selfish or greedy or just a general jackass? Why?

And then I took a deep breath and tried to step outside myself for just a minute. Yes, these things were all terrible and sad and stressful. (So very stressful.) And yet… there is also unquestionably good fortune in each.

My husband and daughter are alive. They can walk. Not everyone walks away from an accident like they had, but they did. Yes, Handsome is injured but he can and hopefully will heal. The car is replaceable. They are not.

I’m so very sad about my mom. She lived with me for the last 6 years. I saw her every day. I’m really missing her. But she had a good, fulfilling, long life and was in reasonably good health and had all her faculties up until the very last minute. I had her for 53 years. I know how lucky I am. Yes, she died and it hurts and I’m crushed, but I was so very fortunate to have her for my mom and to have her for as long as I did.

Maybe my karma was the good kind after all.

Showing up

I have spent hours writing here about Handsome’s faults and flaws. I do, however, want to be fair and give credit where it is due. Over the last 6 weeks my husband has shown up for me in a way I haven’t really seen in a long, long time.

When I last wrote we were in the midst of Handsome’s potential dementia/ Alzheimer’s diagnosis. We are still toiling away with that as he has received differing opinions from two cognitive neurologists and also an MRI that purports to rule out both Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia. Let’s just say that getting to the bottom of this is a slow work in progress. (I still think there are serious issues. He got in the car two days ago with the TV remote instead of his phone. His ability to keep track of appointments is nil too.)

In the midst of that drama, my 89-year-old mother fell and fractured her hip. She lives with us in an addition we built on our house for her, and I am her only living relative, so coordination of all of her care fell to us. It was a ten-day stay in the hospital followed by a little more than two weeks at a rehabilitation hospital. Then, she was doing great but just wasn’t quite able to come home yet. We moved her to a skilled nursing facility near our home for some additional recovery time and rehab. That seems to be where the wheels fell off the bus.

It’s a highly regarded facility but within a week she tested positive for CDiff (funky bacterial infection that causes seemingly constant diarrhea) and developed a UTI. She is dehydrated and lightheaded and is likely headed back to a hospital to get stabilized.

I try to spend about 2 hours a day with her. And maintain my full time job. And shuttle my kids to their busy Spring schedules. And take care of my mom’s dog. I would tell you that I’m burning the candle at both ends, but there is no candle left. I don’t think that I have been this frazzled, exhausted, and emotionally spent since I brought my eldest home as a newborn.

In the midst of this, Handsome has completely stepped up to the plate. I’ve noted before that he excels at crisis management when the crisis isn’t of his own making, and that’s so true. The man has been a rock star. Our eldest gets on her school bus at 6:20AM (which is both cruel and unusual but that’s a different story). He has gotten her off to school almost every morning just to let me get an extra hour of sleep. He has played shuttle driver and defense coach and grocery shopper all on the same day. He has taken me out to dinner more nights than I can count just so I could get a decent meal and maybe a few moments to relax. He laughs at my bad hospital jokes and walks the dog before bed for me.

When I called him in hysterical tears because I snagged Taylor Swift tickets for our daughter and then had issues checking out, he calmly took over and emerged with the coveted seats. Then he did it again two weeks later when Beyoncé’s tour went on sale and I had a similar issue. (Ticketmaster is literally responsible for the record pace at which my roots are growing out this month. 👵🏻) He’s not a fan of either artist but said it was important that I would have something to look forward to this Summer.

He dishes out random hugs and has watched silly TV shows with me while I try to decompress. He runs interference with our kids so I don’t have to worry about the missing cleat, forgotten homework, or arguments over chores.

Do I wish that he had showed up like this after DDay? Of course. But I’ll take it now. Happily. It’s a much more mature and balanced support than I’ve seen before. There is no hidden resentment, no mumbling under his breath, no sighing loud and useless sighs. He’s just buckling down and helping. I’m incredibly appreciative. This feels like a partnership. As unfortunate as the circumstances are, this still feels good.

Memories (or lack thereof)

I’ve been pretty silent here as of late. It’s been a bit of mayhem but not, thankfully, anything having to do with Handsome’s SA. Nope. Just regular life nuttiness.

Our daughter fractured her spine at a school event in May. It was a terrible injury, but she is wrapping up PT next month and is healed enough to go back to sports. We are very, very lucky.

Despite being fully vaxxed, my mom and I both had bouts of Covid. Mine was quite bad. Paxlovid helped, but I was utterly exhausted for close to half of the summer. (Brother-in-law’s new GF did not appear on my vacation, so that was good.)

Then we had bats in our house. INSIDE the house in the living space. My son and I ended up going through the full protocol of rabies shots. He needed them because a bat was in his room while he was asleep. I got them because I didn’t want him to go through it alone. (I admit that I’m feeling like a shoe-in for mom of the year for that one.)

And here we are with the holidays. Time flies. I turned 53 a few weeks ago. I have a very good memory. Handsome used to as well, but not any longer. He turns 60 in a few weeks and is vibrant and healthy.

The kids and I have noticed though that his memory seems to be failing. I’m not talking about misplacing keys or a wallet. Yesterday, he couldn’t remember that I had Covid. Or that we traveled to Washington DC once I was out of quarantine. Readers, those things happened in June.

He has had disassociative periods in the past and I wondered if that was going on, but I don’t think so. This seems… more alarming (scary? serious? real?). It’s so strange. He functions just fine 98% of the time, but then something comes up and he absolutely cannot remember it. Even when prompted he only occasionally manages any recall. More often he tries to laugh off the fact that he can’t remember. I’m not laughing. I’m terrified.

He has an appointment with a cognitive neurologist in early January. Getting that appointment was quite difficult and he made the appointment himself. He doesn’t remember that.

Could this be caused by any one or more of the numerous meds that he takes every day? Yes. Could it be related to his shift work and the related sleep disruptions? Absolutely. Those two things are both fixable, but I am gravely concerned that these are early warning signs for some form of dementia.

I know it’s “fortune telling” -and uncharitable- but I’m also angry. Fear may be the underlying emotion, but I am angry too. Why? I’m angry that so many of what should have been great years were affected by Handsome’s SA and other issues. And we may now lose out on the retirement I had held out in front of me like a carrot for the last few years. I’ve watched loved ones suffer from dementia. Life becomes very small, not to mention exhausting.

We’ve had such a good year together. This just feels unfair. 💔

Safe Places

While I cannot believe that it’s July already, I am excited that means that my family’s annual summer sojourn to New England is just around the corner.

Handsome has a younger brother who, throughout the entire 20+ years I’ve known him, was in a long term relationship with a lovely woman my kids have known as “Aunt _____.” They never married but they were together as a couple during that entire time. In January, Aunt ____ was summarily replaced with a 23 year-old new girlfriend. (Handsome’s brother is 57.) It is reasonably clear that this relationship started as an affair. They were living together within days of the breakup with Aunt _____.

I’ve met the new GF. She’s what you’d expect from a young woman willing to date a recovering alcoholic who is older than her parents and whose last long term partner still had clothes in the closet when she moved in.

Handsome asked if I “minded” if his brother and the GF would stay with us on vacation. 🤔

Yes. Yes, I do mind. Very much so.

I worked incredibly hard to reclaim my happy place there from any acting out Handsome engaged in while in that house. While she isn’t an OW of mine, the GF is an OW of someone I still think of as family. I don’t need that gigantic trigger around me on my vacation. I also don’t want to normalize any of that for my kids.

I note that Handsome did not ask whether they could vacation in the same place at the same time. Evidently, they are planning to be there. (To be fair, I’m confident Handsome didn’t invite them or suggest that. I believe they planned their own trip.) The only question is whether they stay at our house so I’m compelled to see them 24/7. I think not.

Thoughts? Am I being unreasonable? Should I just suck it up and not make waves? Old me would have done that, to be honest. I’d have chewed on that poop sandwich throughout the main vacation I look forward to all year just to avoid rocking the boat. New me would prefer to burn it all down and have a bourbon while watching the flames.

Unexpected Consequences

On my DDay, almost four and a half years ago, my children were 8 and 11. After assessing who knew of Handsome’s behavior and what the possibilities were of the kids learning anything, I made the decision not to tell them about their dad’s infidelity and sex addiction. There was simply no reason for them to know.

Handsome was drinking often before DDay. While they never saw him drunk, they did see him drink daily. We did have some discussions with the kids when he stopped drinking about why he made that decision. We also talked to them about why he went to Sierra Tucson for 6 weeks for mood disorder treatment and what he hoped to accomplish after his inpatient stay.

Here we are these few years later and, while I still believe that not telling them about his infidelity/SA was what was right for them (given our particular circumstances) I now see some unintended consequences of that decision. Namely, all of Handsome’s prior bad behavior witnessed by the kids has a reason attached to it in their minds. Dad drank too much so of course he was miserable. Dad yelled a lot because he couldn’t regulate his emotions. Dad didn’t have the meds or the skills he needed to control his moods.

Those reasons are true. But…

The cherry-picking of what my kids know vs what they don’t know means that they have some context for his behavior whereas I now see that they have zero context for mine. During an argument, my now 15 year old daughter said “It’s like you woke up one day a few years ago and just decided to be mean.” 💔 I just wanted to hold her close and say “no, darling… one day your father tore my heart apart and irreparably changed me. He took my peace, my patience, my sense of humor, and my sense of self-worth. I’m still working on getting those things back and it’s hard and sometimes I still struggle. Sometimes I fail.”

That lack of context occasionally means that I get blamed for the consequences of my husband’s actions. One child expressed frustration recently that we don’t stay home for Thanksgiving (which would be a trigger for me). I was seen as the one making that decision and thus got the blame. Handsome had to step into that discussion to say “I ruined Thanksgiving at home for mom, so blame me and not her.” They assumed he meant that he ruined it with his drinking, so the explanation was accepted. That doesn’t work so well though for things like “why is mom so quick to anger” or “why does mom startle so easily?” How do we explain my CPTSD when they only know half the story?

Telling them now is unacceptable for the same reasons that were valid 4 years ago. I’m not going that route. They just don’t need to know. It is frustrating though that in my efforts to preserve their relationship with Handsome I seem to have unintentionally harmed my relationship with them in the process. Could we just blame everything on his drinking and call it a day? Sure. It just doesn’t explain everything.

Perhaps the problem is that I’m not the right person to address the issue. Maybe Handsome needs to step up more, like he did when the matter of Thanksgiving came up. That was incredibly helpful. I don’t mind being the “heavy” with my kids when it’s needed and appropriate, but I didn’t anticipate catching flak for things I can’t really control.

Things my husband told the OW

Pre-COVID I had an assistant who was really young. Young enough to be my kid, and from a very limited background. Very naive. That said, she’s also the person who would close my office door if I burst into tears post-DDay or if I was too loud fighting with Handsome on the phone. I didn’t have to tell her what had happened. She knew.

When I ran into her in the office a few months ago, she told me she met a great guy. I was happy for her. Then I saw her again yesterday. Turns out, that “great guy” was married. She found out 3 months in, and broke it off immediately.

She relayed some of what he told her to justify his cheating. She didn’t buy any of it, but so many OW do. My husband said many (most?) of these same things to his affair partners too. None of this is original, yet every affair partner seems to fall for it.

– My wife and I don’t have sex. (variations include: (i) we hardly ever have sex, (ii) she doesn’t please me in bed, and (iii) she doesn’t turn me on anymore.)

– Our marriage died a long time ago. I just stay for the kids.

– My wife doesn’t understand me. We grew apart.

– She really let herself go. She doesn’t even try anymore.

– I have to stay for now because she’s sick/ unwell, and it would look bad if I left.

– My in-laws are awful.

– I only stay because of how much I’d lose in a divorce. It’s cheaper to keep her.

– We have an open marriage.

– She’s not my soul mate. You are.

– When I’m with her, I’m only thinking about you.

These are all so traditional and unoriginal, it’s depressing. Who buys this stuff? Affair partners buy it. Their married guy is different. He really isn’t getting any at home. He really is henpecked and under-appreciated. His wife really is frigid, and a bi**h too. He’s so awesome because he’s willing to sacrifice his own happiness so his kids can have an intact home. He’s a unicorn of cheaters because his home life really is awful and divorce is impossible. Right…

Here is the lesson that my young assistant grasped so easily: even if he is a unicorn and all of those things are true, he’s proven that he is immature and unworthy of your time and attention because he has utterly failed to act like a responsible adult. Cheating solves nothing. Ever. Addressing problems in a head- on way, even if potentially uncomfortable and/ or costly, evidences integrity and maturity.

Afterlife

This feels like a weird topic, but maybe it’s not. Perhaps we just don’t talk about death enough in polite society.

Q (from my best friend): Has the betrayal changed your estate planning?

A: * hurries to revise will and write out directions about last wishes

I had always assumed that Handsome and I would be buried together. That is, if we were to be buried at all. Cremation has long been my personal game plan.

Then DDays (plural) came and I realized that -like Beyoncé – my version of Heaven is a love without betrayal. Suddenly, spending eternity next to the source of my trauma seemed a lot less appealing. So, I told anyone I thought might survive me that I wanted to be cremated and scattered in the Atlantic Ocean.

Then, ever slowly, Handsome and I started to heal. Getting tossed in the ocean no longer seemed as appealing. Add on the pandemic, and figuring out my last wishes seemed more urgent somehow. One day, in a stack of mail at our summer house I received a postcard ad for a nearby cemetery. Not a shiny new place sandwiched between highways, but a lovely and historic cemetery close to the beach dating back to some of the earliest families to arrive in America, less than a mile down the road from our summer home. It turns out that they were opening a small section for the purchase of plots. It seemed so perfect.

Unfortunately, when I raised it with Handsome he was utterly nonplussed. I thought he might find some measure of reconnection in my renewed suggestion that we be buried together. Nah. If nothing else, I thought he might appreciate the practicality of simply not having to worry about this later on. Nope. He literally can’t tell me what STATE he would like his ashes scattered or buried in. No clue. Just… anywhere but the place that made my heart happy at the thought of being there forever.

What to do? I’m afraid if I leave it to Handsome I’ll end up somewhere I really don’t want to be. Or stuck on a shelf or in a closet.

Friends, I’m buying 4 plots in the cemetery. That’s enough room for me and 7 other cremated peeps. Maybe he’ll decide to join me. Maybe one or both of my kids will eventually want a spot. Or, worst case, I’ll be on my own with only the neighboring sea captains and Mayflower descendants for company. That’s okay too. Honest.

I know we think of self-care as being something we do for our health or well being in this life, but planning for my eternal rest seems equally beneficial. It’s one less worry for me. It’s not left up to chance or to Handsome’s questionable judgment. I hope like hell that I won’t have to make use of the plots for a long, long time. Whenever my time comes though, I’ll be at peace due to decisions I’m making now.

I started writing this post a few weeks ago and last week my closest work colleague suddenly lost her husband. He was 53 and it was utterly unexpected. I’m shaken by the loss but it reminds me that we aren’t guaranteed our tomorrows. Yes, I hope to live 40ish more years but, if I don’t, I want my loved ones to have no doubt about what I wanted. Could everyone ignore my wishes and do what they want anyway? Sure. You can’t control people from the grave, but I’m hopeful that my loved ones will honor my wishes even if they choose to do something different for themselves.

Amends: Better Late than Never

If you’re keeping track, my DDay #1 was in December of 2017. After multiple fits and starts Handsome did a full, therapeutic disclosure this past January, a hair over 3 years later. My presentation of my impact statement took place just a few weeks afterwards. (I had written it ages ago but it just sat in a file on my computer till he finally reached the point where he could hear, absorb, and appropriately respond to it.) The next, and last, “step” on the path towards healing that our CSAT uses calls for an emotional restitution letter to be prepared by the betraying partner in response to the impact statement. It’s an attempt at an emotional, empathetic amends.

I have a feeling that for many SAs, the exercise is painful but doable. It probably flows fairly naturally as a response to the impact statement. “I heard clearly how I hurt you and I take full responsibility and I’ll do whatever it takes to help you -and us/ heal.” Handsome isn’t typical though. I knew this would be a challenge for him.

First, my impact statement was long (16 single-spaced pages… I had a lot to say) and doing a deep dive would have him sitting in discomfort for quite a while. Handsome is better with discomfort now than he used to be, by far, but it’s still challenging for him.

Second, it would require him to take responsibility in a way he has struggled with in the past. Yes, ever since he did his intensive with Dr. Minwalla he has been clear that everything he did was about him and not me and he has been out of his addict-y deflection mode for a long time. There is, however, a difference between the type of responsibility one takes in doing a disclosure (“I brought Angel Baby to our house for two nights when you and the kids were out of town.”) and the way that gets addressed in the emotional restitution phase. In the latter, it’s more like: “I know that by having AB in our home I destroyed your sense of safety there and that no amount of paint or redecorating will undo that damage. I see how physically uncomfortable and triggering it is for you to be in our basement and I’m so sorry that I caused that…” etc. It’s the same deed addressed two very different ways.

If I’m really honest, I thought the concept of the letter would die on the vine. I didn’t expect Handsome to go through with it. Months passed. Our CSAT would occasionally bring it up, but I didn’t say peep about it. A few weeks ago I was told it was done and ready to be presented to me. We’ve been doing tele-health sessions since the pandemic started, but we did this one in person. I won’t tell you that it was brilliant, but he put more effort in than I thought he would. More importantly, it was very heartfelt and sincere. I have no doubt that he meant every word. I could not only feel that, but I could see it on his face and hear it in his voice. I haven’t felt that way about anything coming out of his mouth for a long, long time.

So, are we all good? We are still a work in progress, but actual progress has been made. Handsome still has a lot of work to do. I have more healing to do as well. I had an EMDR session last week to help me address a particular memory. I know it doesn’t work for everyone but I’ve found it works well to diminish my trauma response to certain things. (And I have some absolutely wild dreams for about a week afterwards.) As we move into this season which is generally fraught with triggers for me, I’m feeling good. While that feeling has been a long time coming, like the amends, it’s better late than never.

On being small

I recently had an experience with my 89 year old mother that opened my eyes to a lingering side effect of my husband’s infidelity and related nonsense. Namely, I am accustomed to making myself small.

I am not small in stature or in voice. Despite that, I realized that my goal since DDay, has been to blend in with the wallpaper. The seeds were certainly sowed before then, during the period of my marriage where I was slowly manipulated into making my needs nonexistent. I was astonished though to see how it still impacts me, even when I least expect it.

Picture a stereotypical New England clam shack at a beach. Great lobster rolls and seating at picnic tables with paper towels for napkins. It’s me, Handsome, and my mom. We have a terrific meal. As we go to leave, my mom gets her legs kind of caught up on the picnic table bench. At her age, her skin is incredibly thin. She immediately has blood pouring from both shins.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a normal person slow trickle from a scrape. By your standards or mine, these were small contusions. Nonetheless, I’m talking about a blood thinner- induced river of red that was running down her shins, pooling in her shoes, and soaking the ground around her feet. We were totally silent, but yet the mere fact of the situation made every movement seem loud.

I’m somewhat accustomed to this. It happens any time my mom gets cut and the slightest bruise makes her look like she has been battered. But there we sit, in the midst of this outdoor dining area, and I found myself resenting my mom for drawing attention to us. For inconveniencing the other diners. For ensuring we were sticking out like sore thumbs. For taking up too much “space” in that moment. WTF??

Of course, like a diligent and loving daughter I was on my hands and knees in the sand trying to stop the bleeding, fielding offers of assistance, and trying to get my mom situated to get her to our car. And I was so incredibly, terribly uncomfortable. Just to pile on, I recognized the absurdity of the discomfort in the moment and it made me angry at myself. Have I really allowed myself to be shoved into such a tiny box that a minor accident makes me feel bad for inconveniencing (at worst) a bunch of strangers??

Having had some time to sit with this I can look back and note times where, during Handsome’s acting out, my whole being revolved exclusively around him and our kids. Therereally was no me. Yes, I worked, but I never really got to enjoy the fruits of that labor other than on a vacation or two. Forget self-care. I recall enduring incredible inconvenience and sacrifice to accommodate him and his needs. I recall not asking for anything, ever, because I knew my request would be discounted or ignored. I’ve written elsewhere here about the one Christmas where I got absolutely nothing from him, and the birthdays and Mother’s Days where I bought gifts for our kids to give me because he couldn’t be bothered and had probably spent all his money on skanks and sex.

When you grow accustomed to that smallness, of course you start to believe that your very existence is likely a nuisance to those who don’t even know you. Fast forward to a sunny day at a clam shack and I was turned right back into that gaslit, manipulated woman, undeserving of space to exist. And I deflected that right onto my mom. How dare she have needs, in public.

I swear, trauma is a bugger. Every time I start to feel like I’m making some progress, something like this kicks me in the butt.

I often de-escalate myself in these situations by telling myself “that was then, this is now.” I need to deliberately remind myself “this is reasonable” to counter all the residual effects of the gaslighting telling me that my needs or wants are unreasonable.

In this instance, Handsome was there, working with me to help my mom and offering reassurances to us both that it would be fine. He wasn’t focused on himself. He was present, both literally and mentally. He was trying to be helpful.

He knew I was suffering, but not why. I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I’m not sure I could make it sound logical. And yet clearly this compulsion to not take up space, not make waves or rock the boat, is still deep inside me. I want it to be gone.

A Day of Remembrance

I find myself thinking about 9/11 a lot. Perhaps more than you might expect. I was actually booked to fly that day on a 3:20 flight from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts via JFK. Needless to say, the flight was cancelled. When I finally flew out -I think it was on 9/14 – the trip was notable both because there was virtually no air traffic, and the sight of lower Manhattan without the twin towers was incredibly disconcerting. If I’m honest, I still haven’t gotten used to it. It’s like my brain struggles to process the fact that they are no longer there.

Years before 9/11 I bought my first piece of pottery from an artist named Mikael Carstanjen. Far from being high-brow, the pieces were functional and they reminded me of my summers in New England. I loved seeing Mikael at craft or pottery shows and I added a piece or two regularly to my set.

On 9/11, Mikael’s son, Christoffer Mikael Carstanjen, was on United Airlines flight 175, bound for LA from Boston. He died at 9:03 AM, along with 50 other passengers and 9 crew members, when the five terrorists on board crashed the plane into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Christoffer is number 383 on the official list of 9/11 victims.

Christoffer’s dad, Mikael, stopped making his pottery shortly after 9/11. He closed his studio and stopped attending shows. I still value and treasure the pieces I have. About a year ago I was walking through an art exhibition in Provincetown, Massachusetts and a painting caught my eye. It was beautiful and I was thrilled to see that Mikael was the artist. He is still creating art. His grief did not take that from him. There is a lesson there in resilience that we can all use.

Hug someone you love today. Remember that none of us are guaranteed another day. Let us all never forget those lost on 9/11 and those they left behind. ❤️🕊🕊🕊❤️

“No” Is A Complete Sentence

During an hour this afternoon I was simultaneously juggling a Zoom meeting on my computer, a WebEx meeting on my cell phone, and helping my son with an existential crisis involving both a Lego build and the Hunger Games. Prior to that I ate lunch while drafting a document on a different call. I can multi-task like nobody’s business, but these multiple demands for the same scarce time are becoming more common.

On a frigid February day -the kind that make Summer seem impossible, like an apparition or distant memory – I volunteered to be in charge of volunteers for my son’s swim team this Summer. This evening, the mom coordinating the whole endeavor asked for my email address to include in an outreach email to the 80+ families with kids in the program. My response? “No, thank you.” I couldn’t even imagine my already bursting in-box surviving that madness. More specifically, I wasn’t sure I could survive it.

I’ve been actively practicing saying “no” more frequently. Work has given me some excellent opportunities recently to use the word. Did I want to organize a thankless office event in October? No, I do not. Would I like to take on a committee position that is of no interest? No. (I did, however, agree to continue on a different committee that actually brings me some joy.)

My home front has been fertile ground to try this out too. Could I keep track of Handsome’s appointments? No, but I bought him a calendar. Could I help him find a highly specific kind of summer hat? No, but I double checked that there was no issue with the internet browser on his phone or iPad.

I am stretched about as thin as can be. Some demands on my time are necessary or at least worthwhile. Others are neither of those things. They might make someone else’s life easier, but not without real cost to me. Could I play on the internet for an hour or so and find my husband a hat? Sure, but there is no reason at all he can’t do it himself. None. And frankly, I’d rather spend that hour doing something else.

I have used the word “no” so rarely that it is catching people off guard. Handsome assumed that I was angry with him. I wasn’t. My managing partner seemed to think that I was kidding when I declined to play party planner… even though my other partners already warned him how overwhelmed I am right now. Nope, not kidding. Swim team mom was totally put out that I didn’t want my in-box flooded with helicopter parent emails. Oh well.

Here’s the funny thing… Handsome has always been a rock-star at shooting down stuff he doesn’t want to do. My observation -as unscientific as it may be – is that men have an easier time saying no. So, I’m acting like a man till my load lightens.

“You’re doing so great…”

Someone who regularly reads this blog recently commented to me “it’s great to see that you’re doing so well.” Hmmm. I really appreciate the kind words, but perhaps I need to point out some of my ongoing struggles.

I am doing well. Most days. I am often great or nearly so for extended periods of time. That is true and real, but I don’t want to “image manage” away from reality. I don’t want to give the impression everything is peachy. A few fun facts:

– I haven’t spent more than 10 minutes in our basement in the last 3 years… since finding out that’s where Handsome and Angel Baby shacked up. It’s large, finished, and beautiful and yet I avoid it like the plague. It would be the ideal place for my home office, except I can’t bear the sight of it. A paint job and new furniture would just be putting lipstick on the pig. I just act like it doesn’t exist.

– I haven’t visited Handsome at work since before DDay. I used to occasionally swing by with lunch or take the kids to give him hugs if we were nearby. I’m still too embarrassed to see his coworkers, particularly since I now weigh about 30 lbs more than I did the last time I was there. I can imagine the “Look at her, no wonder he cheated…” comments. (They’re mostly un-evolved dicks.)

– I don’t stalk the social media of the other women (I never really did) but I do run their criminal background checks every few months just to be sure wherever they are spending their time now and getting arrested is nowhere near where we live or where Handsome works. Every single one of them that I know of found time during COVID to get themselves arrested. Every. Single. One.

– I still occasionally rely on anxiety meds. I had no anxiety pre DDay. Give a speech in front of a few hundred people? No problem. Ask for a raise? No sweat. Work the room at a cocktail party? Happily! And yet these days I sometimes feel like there’s a truck parked on my chest over truly stupid stuff. A simple trip to IKEA today was nearly my undoing. And that’s BEFORE I try to build what I bought.

– I have always been sentimental, but I find myself clinging to “stuff” – particularly my kids’ things – from before the betrayal. For example, since they could walk both kids have had really cute rain boots (Wellies) with whales or sharks or frogs or rocket ships or pirates on them with new ones picked out as they changed sizes. Over time, these boots took up residence in a bin in our laundry room. With both kids long grown out of them, Handsome wanted to toss the entire bin. I can’t. I just can’t. Even if the thought of doing so wasn’t causing me to break out into a sweat, it brings on a deep and profound sadness. It’s as if I feel that in tossing the boots I’m tossing my kids’ lives pre-addiction. That probably sounds stupid, but that’s just one example. I know the boots and other items are symbols of the life -and the innocence- I lost. Somewhere in my mind I don’t want to experience that loss again.

So, yes, I am doing great. It just doesn’t mean that I’m back to normal. That still seems a long way off.

My Person

I married a man who had become my one of my best friends over the course of our four year courtship. I have two “ride or die” friends from childhood, but Handsome was a different kind of friend. He was my partner in life. By the time we walked down the aisle I felt that he was as much a part of me as anyone could be. To pull out an old-timey Grey’s Anatomy reference, he was my person.

I was all-in with Handsome. I told him everything. Always. I was an open book. As we now know, he was not the same with me. He kept a lot of very damaging secrets. The way that betrayal trauma screws with your attachment to your betrayer is nothing short of a mind f**k. When your person rips apart your soul, it changes things.

Our CSAT is looking at utilizing a new assessment tool in her practice. Having worked with us for a pretty long time, she asked us if we would take the assessments so she could get a feel for its validity and usefulness. We agreed. On my assessment, for the betrayed spouse, one component was the “Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support.” That’s a high falutin’ name for 12 questions that triggered the heck out of me.

The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet et al., 1988) is a 12-item measure of perceived adequacy of social support from three sources: family, friends, & significant other; using a 5- or 7-point Likert scale (0 = strongly disagree, 5/7= strongly agree). Here is what it often looks like:

Answering this threw me off my game for hours. In particular, these statements geared towards your relationship with a “significant other”:

– There is a special person who is around when I am in need.

– There is a special person with whom I can share my joys and sorrows.

– I have a special person who is a real source of comfort to me.

and the kicker…. – There is a special person in my life who cares about my feelings.

Ugh. Pre- DDay every single one of these would be “Very Strongly Agree.” Today though, I struggle with reconciling that my person very nearly destroyed me. Literally. Today, on a good day, I would probably check “neutral” or “mildly agree” with each statement… at best. I don’t yet know how I can get back to “strongly agree” when my “special person” is the sole source of trauma in my life.

Handsome clearly wasn’t around when I needed him when he was checked out in his addiction, and for a long time after discovery I couldn’t open up about my pain because he couldn’t handle the shame it caused. That occasionally still happens. He’s fabulous if a crisis has nothing to do with him, but if my pain is at all related to his acting out he sometimes still fails to show up for me.

As far as being a source of comfort…? Again, if my pain is unrelated to him he does fine. I’d actually say he’s awesome in those instances. More often than not though I need to be comforted as a result of something he did, and seeking comfort from him then is often futile. He still struggles with how to show up for me. So, does he care about my feelings? Yes, but…

He would say that of course he cares deeply about my feelings. I would say he occasionally cares only to the extent that my feelings don’t interfere with the prioritization of his feelings. If he can console me without feeling bad about himself, fine. If he can meet an emotional need of mine without cost to himself, fine. Anything else is something of a crapshoot. I have seen where I stand. I know from experience that if he perceives something as a choice between my interests or his, he will almost always pick his. There is not a self-sacrificing bone in his body.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about practical things. He’ll take his day off and get up early to run errands or shuttle kids or handle any of the home drudgery at any time. But I could hire someone to do those things. It’s when I’m sad or lonely or hurt or whatever and I need my life partner’s support that I want him to be there for me. That’s when -even if it’s hard or uncomfortable for him- I need my person.

Maybe I’m the weird one for being willing to give anything or do anything for my partner. Maybe I give more than is normal. I don’t know. Even if I do though, it’s not a crime.

What I Know Now

I am 3 years and almost 5 months to the day after my DDay. In the scheme of life, that’s really nothing. A blip. In my heart and soul, however, it feels like decades. I feel as though I have endured a lifetime of pain. In many respects I can’t believe that it has been “only” that amount of time. I have certainly aged more in 3 years than I did the previous 10.

A newer member of this very unfortunate club emailed and asked me what the present me would say to the version of myself that existed on 12/9/17. I’d say a few things, as it turns out. Here are my top 10 in no particular order. Feel free to add any of your own advice to your DDay self in the comments.

1. I know it hurts. It’s like being fully cognizant of your own murder. Days will come when you no longer feel that way. It will take time and hard work but you’ll get there.

2. As hard as it is, don’t waste a minute on the other women. It’s easy to focus on them, but they really aren’t the issue.

3. Each bad day will pass. Relish a good day when you have one. (Good days can be fleeting too, but notice and make the most of them when they appear.)

4. Progress is NOT linear. Whether you stay or leave there will be steps forward and back.

5. The best people to have around you are those who listen well and simply offer nonjudgmental support. It’s okay for someone to say “This happened to me and here is how I handled it and how it played out.” It is less helpful to have people around you who pepper their stories with “you should” or “you must.” Be very picky about who you surround yourself with and who you trust with your story.

6. You’re going to hear a lot about self-care. Just do the best you can. Don’t feel shame if you can’t make time for a walk or yoga or meditation. Some days self-care can be as simple as showering or ordering take out. Some days it can also be crying your eyes out if you’ve been holding it in. What works for someone else might not work for you.

7. Prioritize your physical and mental health needs. It’s very tempting to pour all of your attention into your spouse and focus on getting them help to “fix” them. I won’t tell you not to work to get help for your partner, but make sure that you have good therapeutic support too. And do see your doctor. The physical impacts of betrayal trauma manifest themselves in many ways, from PTSD to Kawasaki syndrome to a laundry list of auto-immune disorders.

8. Gaslighting and lies don’t suddenly end on your first DDay. Trickle truth is real. You can be as understanding and nonjudgmental as can be and your addict may still feel compelled to lie to you. Expect it, and know that your hyper-vigilance is not codependency but a common trauma symptom.

9. This experience will change you. I’m honestly not yet comfortable with the new me, but I have a feeling she’s going to change a bit more before all is said and done. I still mourn the loss of who I was, and working through that grief is both necessary and okay.

10. If you stay with your partner and they do the work you can rebuild trust and mend your relationship. I’ll never, ever forget about what my husband did, but it appears now as an occasional dull ache and not a daily stabbing, blinding pain.

You’ll notice that there is no advice here on whether to stay or leave. I could only tell my DDay self not to make a hasty decision either way. Traumatized brains don’t function really well. I needed space, time, and some therapeutic input to be able to think clearly.

In looking over the list I think I’d like to squeak in a #11: Don’t make your needs small and certainly don’t let anyone else make your needs small. Scream from the rooftops what you need. Those around you will either rise to the occasion or fall by the wayside. Either outcome is fine. Those who wither or fail to show up aren’t worth your time, and those who support you and meet you where you are at are irreplaceable.

A Different Kind of Trigger

My relationship with my in-laws is complicated. For the most part they welcomed me and have been kind. We’ve had some moments, but mostly with my FIL and mostly once my MIL passed and he lost his filter and I started to see the veneer peeling back on the family picture. I harbor resentment though at the trauma their alcoholism inflicted on my husband and their abject denial of same to the present. They image-managed the heck out of their lives before I married their son. That’s a little like spitting in my scrambled eggs and trying to sell it to me as a soufflé.

I’ve written before about Handsome’s Complex PTSD. While a good bit of the genesis of his CPTSD stems from his job, an equal if not greater part stems from growing up with two functionally alcoholic parents.

My MIL was already quite ill with emphysema when I met her, but she was still mobile and somewhat self-sufficient. I saw her drink, but only at dinner and usually just one cocktail. My FIL has been sober for years and, if anything, is probably now only addicted to AA. And cigarettes. And being a controlling ass. I have often thanked heaven for the 10 hours of distance between our homes.

I was at their house one day and looking for a sheet pan in the kitchen. I opened a cabinet and out spilled several fifths of vodka. My MIL wasn’t driving at the time so that means my FIL was facilitating whatever drinking she was doing. On another occasion I picked up her 24oz water bottle to wash it. To my dismay, it was filled with vodka, not water. That was about 6 months before she died.

My MIL’s death unmoored my husband. I’ve written before about how he disassociated during her funeral to the point that he convinced himself that I wasn’t there. Then he used the resentment from me not being there to “justify” his acting out. (“My wife doesn’t love me. She couldn’t even be bothered to come to my mother’s funeral.”) The fact that I moved heaven and earth to be present and that I was there, standing beside him and holding his hand, was just lost in the recesses of his mind and replaced with resentment. All of his major acting out rolled forward from there.

Now, as I write this, my FIL is in failing health. It seems unlikely that he’ll see Christmas this year, and next to impossible to believe he’ll last a year. I can already see the toll this is taking on my husband and it’s nerve wracking.

I don’t want to make this all about me. It’s not. But my experience tells me that when the time comes and my FIL passes, my husband is going to be adrift. There will be no more parental affection to chase. No one to try endlessly to impress (to no avail). No one to be a theoretical safety net.

Handsome is not the same person he was when his mom died 8 years ago. He has experience and resources and tools to bring to bear, but the loss of a parent is no small thing. That’s particularly true when you’ve spent your life trying to connect with that parent and chasing the unconditional affection you could never exactly muster from them.

A part of me wishes that Handsome would be more angry at his dad. If not for himself, then maybe for our kids who are mostly ignored by the man. He either forgets their birthdays entirely or he remembers one child and not the other. Handsome acts as though he could care less. Maybe that’s true, but I doubt it. This is the dad whose behavior – no matter how deplorable – he excuses. The dad who told Handsome he was fat (he wasn’t) which prompted Handsome to pursue months of dieting. (FIL told my size 0 daughter the same thing during a visit. Not “wow, I’ve missed you” or “I’m so happy to see you,” but “you’ve put on a lot of weight.” Jerk.) It’s the same dad who never attended a single school event or sporting event for Handsome – even though they lived only 3 blocks from the school.

Handsome enlisted in the Marines and went into law enforcement because his dad did those things. He’s been chasing attention and approval and love from his father for decades. Getting those things from his dad has always been just out of reach. Just beyond his grasp. It’s not that Handsome hasn’t earned or deserved them. His father just has no idea how to give them freely. Once it is literally impossible to get those things from his dad, I have to wonder if the longing will stop. I suspect that it won’t.

Impact.

After Handsome’s disclosure, it was my turn to present my impact statement a few weeks later. Fun fact: I started drafting it over two years ago so it was 98% done by the time of the disclosure. I tweaked a few things afterwards, but not much.

Due to COVID, while our disclosure was done in-person in our CSAT’s office, my impact statement was presented to Handsome (read out loud by me) in the front seat of a Ford F-250 Super Duty parked in a local park while our CSAT participated by Zoom. It was far from ideal, but we made it work.

Handsome had been pretty agitated the day or two beforehand. I’m sure it was hard to know he was going to be gutted for an hour. I was reasonably calm, except that I was worried that Handsome might spiral emotionally afterwards. I was concerned that he’d fall into hopelessness. At some point I had a choice to either soften my words to be more palatable, or be honest. I chose honesty. I chose to give my feelings and emotions all the space they needed, especially my anger. I so rarely let my rage out, but I did so in my impact statement. I didn’t do it with yelling or cursing or name calling. I let the YEARS I had to draft it work in my favor.

Our CSAT is usually pretty chill, but she was in tears through much of it. Handsome was in tears multiple times as well. I hit a lot of nerves. Hard. I covered the impacts to me emotionally, physically, socially, financially, and the impacts to my job and to our children.

For a good bit of the last three years, my pain has taken a back seat in therapy. We spent a ton of time focused on Handsome, as we needed to, but that left little time for me. All my feelings that went unsaid, all the things I stuffed down just to be able to function, all the words that had bubbled up only to find they had nowhere to go… they all had a voice in my statement. It was 14 single-spaced pages of gut-wrenching truth. My truth, at least.

I wrote about things we have talked about, like how violated I felt that he brought Angel Baby to our home. I wrote about things that were seemingly off-limits before, such as his blatant disregard for my health and the physical safety of our family. I asked rhetorically how gaslit and abused I had to be to not buy myself a single article of clothing for almost three YEARS because of his raging rants about money. I addressed how foolish I feel now that I know where all of his money was going. I described the hurt of the birthdays and Christmases where I bought my own gifts for the kids to give me because he couldn’t be bothered. I told him I had no intention of dragging him kicking and screaming towards a better marriage.

Perhaps the title of this post should have been “The Unburdening” because that is exactly how I felt. If his disclosure was freeing then presenting my impact statement was like taking flight. I took off my heavy cloak of shame and anger so that I could soar.

In the end, it honestly didn’t matter to me how he took it. It didn’t matter whether he heard all the words or whether he agreed or disagreed. I couldn’t control any of that and didn’t care to do so. I felt better. It helped heal me, and a healthier me is a better mom and daughter and friend, and probably a better wife. That matters to me, and by those measures it was a success.

Onward!

A Long Time Coming: Disclosure

Long-time readers know that there have been a few false starts on the way to my husband doing a full therapeutic disclosure. The closest we came was last May or June when it was essentially fully drafted but his buddy from rehab convinced him it was a bad idea.

Prior to that I mostly had 2+ years of staggered disclosures. My husband did A LOT of things during his acting out. I knew just about everything, but it was still more of a Rubik’s cube than a simple puzzle. I didn’t have a good sense as to how various pieces fit together. It was like having almost all of the pages of a book, but none of the pages are numbered, or in order, and you don’t know what you’re missing.

I know that some people can move forward and heal absent a full disclosure. I couldn’t. At some point it became less about what my husband was going to say and more about the fact that he refused to say it. The pain was less centered around what he did, and acutely focused on the fact that he knew it would help me (and us) heal and yet he couldn’t bring himself to show up for me the way that I needed. It felt disrespectful, dismissive, and selfish. When he finally (FINALLY!) moved forward with the disclosure in January it was literally like a ton of weight was lifted off my chest.

The disclosure took place three years and one month after DDay #1.

Yes, it hurt to hear specifics of how my life was undermined and blown apart without my knowledge, but it was also freeing. The pages of the book that told the story of our marriage were finally being put in order. A few of the pages I was missing were added. Questions that arose were addressed. It was hard to hear, and yet so necessary for me.

I know some disclosures take an hour or two. We were at our CSAT’s office for over 5 hours. He had a lot to read through. I had a lot of questions. There was no Earth shattering new information for the most part, except for one thing.

Our CSAT believed that it would be helpful to me for Handsome to walk through the history of how his addiction developed and how it appeared in his prior relationships. (In other words, she wanted him to clearly show that his addiction had nothing to do with me because it had been going on in various forms throughout his life.) During that part of the disclosure I learned that Handsome blew up his first marriage with the Flame. I didn’t know that. I thought she came into the picture after that marriage ended.

As mortifyingly embarrassing as it is to point out, she was a 17 year old high school student at the time. Handsome was 27. 😳 WTF?!?!? Knowing that my husband was once “that guy”… the awkward and creepily out of place adult date at a prom … was always cringe inducing and wildly uncomfortable for me. Finding out that relationship started as an affair?? There are no words. I was flabbergasted.

Our CSAT pointed out that at that time – thirty years ago, and closer in proximity to his trauma-filled childhood – Handsome probably only had the emotional maturity of a teen. True… very true until recently… but still… yuck.

As distressing as it was, it was still “good information” as they say. I didn’t really see the cycles in Handsome’s acting out or understand how early in his life he started his destructive behavior. I also had no idea of the extent of the Flame’s home wrecking resume or that she was Handsome’s go-to side ho for decades. It explains a lot.

Our disclosure was a long, long time coming, but as I walked out of the CSAT’s office that evening I felt … free. I had just heard hours of really terrible stuff, things no one should ever have to hear from their spouse, and yet my relief was palpable. I was really looking forward to the future for the first time in a long time.

Rock Bottom…?

After Handsome’s break from Doc#2, I found myself back at our Summer home for a few weeks in late September and early October. Even though I had the kids and work and other usual busy things, it was peaceful. Blissful, in fact. Zero drama. Handsome, who was back at home, would call daily and he sounded… fine.

I wanted him to be motivated to action by the break from Doc#2. I wanted him to have a game plan to move forward. I was looking for some self awareness that maybe he wasn’t doing as well as he thought. What I heard from him was not those things. I heard some indifference. I also heard some relief that he had one less appointment each week. That made me angry.

His game plan, if you could call it that, was to simply continue working with his somatic experiencing (SE) therapist and attend marriage counseling with me. The issue with that is that the SE therapy was never intended to be his sole individual therapy. It was intended to help him work on his family of origin trauma. Nothing more. The therapist has no background in sex addiction. She doesn’t hold herself out as specializing in mood or personality disorders. The areas where Handsome needs the most work would simply go untouched.

That didn’t work for me and I knew it wouldn’t bode well for our kids, so I extended my stay in Massachusetts through Thanksgiving. The kids were doing school online, and my office was fully virtual, so I didn’t need to be home. Handsome did join us for the holiday, but he still had no intent to do anything any differently than he had been doing. Nonetheless, I think he realized on some level that I could stay there forever if I wanted to. I didn’t have to come home.

Our CSAT is very careful to maintain neutrality with us, so when she called me out of the blue one day after Thanksgiving I was surprised. In a nutshell, she told me that Handsome was never going to budge or make any changes if the status quo didn’t get shaken up. She had reached the point where she didn’t feel like she could be helpful to us if Handsome couldn’t find his way to doing the disclosure, securing more suitable treatment, and generally committing to actually work on the marriage recovery (as opposed to just participating with her for an hour each week). I read between the lines and said “If you need to fire us too, I understand, but I’d ask you to take us back if it prompts him to get his head out of his ass.” She agreed.

And so, a couple of weeks later, after trying and failing to cajole some movement out of Handsome, she fired us too. I think it was a week before Christmas. I knew it was coming but it was still unsettling. It felt like a lifeline was cut.

Handsome was stunned. I think he sincerely believed he could just keep treading water forever. He knew it meant that I would leave with the kids again, but permanently this time. After a few days of some deflection, he seemed to have an epiphany. He came home from work and found me and told me that he did not want to loose his family and that he would do the disclosure and everything expected of him. And then he actually started to do the work.

Similar cycles have happened before, but this felt different. There was humility in his voice and earnestness in his actions. To put it bluntly, he finally realized that he was the problem and he decided to do something about it.

How was that different from any other time he seemed to recommit? In retrospect, he never fully bought in to seeing himself as the source of the problem. (The issue wasn’t with his refusal to do the hard work. The therapists and I were just unreasonable.) Getting canned by two therapists he relied on shifted that perspective. He was finally able to take a real look at himself and say “Okay, it’s not everyone else. It’s me. I’m the problem.”

The CSAT firing us turned out to be the best Christmas gift we could have been given. It made it clear that our marriage was really at rock bottom. Not because we were fighting. We weren’t. Not because we didn’t love one another. We did and we do. Our marriage was in trouble because Handsome decided not to meet our needs to heal. He wasn’t prevented from meeting them or unable to meet them. He had simply chosen not to put the effort in that was needed. His cherry-picking of being willing to do some things and not others had failed. Once he realized that and actually owned it, he could choose to course-correct and fix it. And he did.

Do No Harm

I’ve written about this relatively new path of stability Handsome and I are on. It’s great, but I feel like I – we, really- walked through fire to get here. It’s important to me that other partners who may be newer to this journey know that progress, if it comes at all, does so in a dance that often seems like two steps forward for every three steps back. Healing isn’t linear. Not individually, and not as a couple. In this post and the next few I’ll address some of the steps backwards, and then forwards, we took to get here.

Handsome’s therapist, Doc #2, basically fired him as a patient in mid- September. It completely blindsided Handsome. And me. (It apparently wasn’t a complete firing. His parting words were “Call me when you have something to talk about.”)

You run through a checklist in your mind about whether insurance was an issue (nope, great coverage), or cancellations (also no, only one in over 50+ visits a year), or anything else that might have prompted the move. Handsome was left wondering why someone else in his life decided he wasn’t worth the time or effort. He felt abandoned. He was hurt.

I’ve had months to ponder that decision and I have to say that I still don’t fully understand it. Perhaps I never will until I get to speak to the Doc again at some point. Our CSAT and Doc#2 are professionally acquainted and have multiple clients in common. I’ve heard through her that the Doc grew frustrated with Handsome’s lack of progress, particularly after the disclosure process imploded last summer.

Fair enough. I can understand that to a degree, but what therapist doesn’t expect any regression in their patients? This is a practitioner who specializes in process additions. Handsome has been sober for over 3 years, but what if he had relapsed? Would Doc#2 have booted him out of therapy? That’s a frightening thought to me as a partner. I’m sure it’s a horrifying fear for Handsome.

Doc#2 is the one who diagnosed Handsome with borderline personality disorder. That all good/ all bad thinking that alternately led Handsome to work crazy hard on the disclosure or totally give up on it is a hallmark trait of BPD. Maybe Handsome was more than he wanted to handle? I don’t know.

Doc#2 added insult to injury in early January. To prepare for his disclosure, and at the urging of our CSAT, Handsome swallowed his pride and reached out to Doc#2 to ask for help and to get back on his schedule. Doc#2 said “great” and scheduled an appointment for about 10 days later. Handsome waited patiently and worked on the disclosure. The morning of the appointment Doc#2 called Handsome and cancelled, telling him that he was overbooked and likely couldn’t fit him in for 2-3 months. All over again, Handsome was hurt, his fear of abandonment was triggered, and he really had to fight to stay centered and focused.

What therapist does that to a patient with mental health issues? And take Handsome out of the equation for a moment… how are you “partner sensitive” if you don’t see how these actions might negatively impact the partner too?

It’s easy for me to write here to vent about all the things Handsome does “wrong” but the fact is that there are many things he has done right. He is lightyears ahead of where he was in December of 2017. Can he still be a self-centered dolt? Absolutely, but it happens far, far less than it used to. His rage is mostly gone. He strives to show empathy. (It still doesn’t come naturally to him, but he tries to be intentional about it… when it occurs to him to do so. It’s still a big improvement and he does work on it.) I’m not a mental health professional but even I can recognize that his reluctance on the disclosure stemmed from his fear of abandonment. (“If I tell her everything she couldn’t possibly love me and she’ll leave.”) I was incredibly frustrated by his reluctance, but I was never surprised by it. Certainly his therapist shouldn’t have been surprised by it either.

Our CSAT advised Handsome to try to schedule at least one final session with Doc#2, basically for the purpose of confronting him about how he felt abandoned. I’m pretty sure that Handsome would have preferred chewing glass during a colonoscopy to making that phone call to Doc#2, but he made it. They actually met twice. Handsome reported that their first session was wildly uncomfortable, but the second session was incredibly helpful on an issue of importance. It likely saved their relationship. Handsome will no longer be seeing Doc#2 weekly but they have mutually agreed to work together intermittently as issues arise.

If you’re keeping score at home, as of early last Fall Handsome had stopped 12-step, refused to do the disclosure, and gotten himself fired from his therapist. There was one more big shoe to drop though before 2020 would come to a close…