Down the Bipolar Rabbit Hole

Anyone who is still reading – thanks for hanging in! I told you this would be emotional purging!!!!

M agreed to do anything I asked, so he slept in the guest room, and we went together to see our doctor the next day. M explained the blood pressure issue, and then moved on to the emotional one, including a brief overview of the email situation. Our therapist, with whom our doctor has a close professional relationship, had already spoken to him, explaining the symptoms that she had seen and her clinical evaluation. He rejected it. He is firmly convinced that M’s behavior can be completely explained by guilt and shame, as well as the stress he is under knowing that I have not forgiven him. He prescribed blood pressure medicine and a half a dose of a very mild anti-depressant. I trust him completely because he has managed to keep C in one piece for so many years, so I was actually relieved. If I have to choose between a cheating husband who has been lying for two years and someone I love having to deal with bipolar disorder, I would choose cheating every time. A cheating husband can be kicked to the curb, and everyone can move on in a healthy direction. Bipolar disorder can be a lifetime struggle for the one who has it, as well as for those who love him (or her). I asked carefully about possible side effects, and the doctor said M shouldn’t have any because the dose was so low, but at most he might feel mildly drowsy so he should take it before bed.

So, we got the prescriptions filled, went home, he took his meds, and we went to sleep. I woke up at 3:30 AM, realized that M was not in bed, and got up to investigate. He was in the kitchen with all the lights on, wildly scrubbing a pot. He had been up since 1:30, and had scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom. He was irritated, agitated, talking too fast,  unable to sit still, and insistent that he was unable to keep a coherent thought in his head. I used every method I had ever used in teaching, parenting, or as a wife, and was finally able to calm him down enough that we could both go to work, but he refused to call the doctor because “we” had insisted that he needed to take medicine. I called the nurse as soon as the office opened (who knows me by voice – remember 8 years with the medical disaster child), who agreed that something was not right, and then called me again as soon as the doctor arrived in the office. New instructions: no medicine that night, and then a half a dose the next morning. He slept without a problem, had trouble concentrating at work after the half dose, but was not agitated…and then was up at 1:30 in the morning again. By Saturday, after four days, he was more and more agitated, felt less and less able to think coherently, I agreed that he could just stop taking the medicine and contact the doctor on Monday, which he did.

This was our Spring Break, so he agreed to spend time and try to sort out the whys and whats and chaos of the emails. I pushed hard for answers – the Socratic method has always been a part of my teaching repertoire, but I’ve always used more of the gentle nurturing version. This was much more of the Paper Chase law school version. He stuck with it, tried to answer honestly, and when we went for counseling, we both felt like we were moving closer to a final resolution, and looked forward to the rest of our vacation. There was only one problem – I had managed to forget that I loved him and was not actually the prosecuting attorney, and that I had an emotional investment in the content of his answers. So, unfortunately, while he was feeling more relaxed because he had been able to answer questions without a major meltdown, I actually had a chance to stop and think about some of the things he had said.

During a moment of connection and passion, one of the most hurtful statements came flooding back. He was looking down at me with his eyes full of enough love that I actually felt adored, when I realized that he had looked at me the same way the night he came back from spending the weekend with her. During the marathon question and answer session, one of the questions I asked was why he had sex with me and claimed a reconnection that he has insisted from the beginning had allowed him to hold on to our marriage when the emails directly contradicted it, and he said that he was trying to stay out of trouble and that I would know something was wrong if we had not. Somehow, I had managed to gloss right over that statement, but it came flooding back. I tried to let it go, but I was tied in a knot, so I just tried to explain what I was feeling and ask him to explain – was he really that good an actor? Did it mean that his expressions of love now were lies? If so, why was he still here? His response – he didn’t remember the details of that night. No, I’m not kidding – he said he didn’t remember. I went from devastated to furious in about 30 seconds, pointed out that at least I was lucky enough to have reached my late 40s before someone had sex with me and didn’t remember it, and insisted that he move out immediately…and then the phone rang.

The satellite repair man, scheduled for the next day, was arriving within the hour…and I simply couldn’t face dealing with a repairman, so I fled instead. I planned to buy a comfortable but frumpy nightie, a book or two, and rent a couple of movies, and then go home after the repairman and the soon to be ex were gone. That plan didn’t work. I didn’t want a frumpy nightie, I have several books I haven’t read, and my satellite was soon to be working again, so I didn’t need movies….

So I bought a car instead.

My Escape – no pun intended

The Emails

By the next morning, I had regained my sense of balance and perspective, but was so drained (and puffy, swollen, and exhausted) that I decided to stay home. M went in to work to open up and make sure everything was in order, and then planned to come back home so that we  could work through any lingering issues. He was gone for about two hours, and returned with gifts – a donut and a flash drive. He then explained that he had lied when he told me that he had deleted all of the emails with the other woman, that he had archived a copy and that they were on the flash drive, and that he felt that part of what was causing our inability to heal was his inability to face what was in the emails. He then started a long rambling explanation that did not appear to be going anywhere but in circles I had already traveled. I finally just demanded the USB and started reading.

I thought I was prepared – I have read Morgan’s blog, as well as details from a variety of other blogs, books, articles, etc. As it turns out, no matter how much work I had done, I would never have been prepared for what was in HIS emails. I was expecting hurtful details of a sexual love affair. Parts of our relationship had been long distance, and I had received some fairly steamy letters and cards, I know him fairly well, and was braced for something along those lines only more so since this was an affair, and I knew that there had been a fair amount of phone sex, which had never occurred between us. In a hundred and fifty single-spaced pages of emails, with multiple emails a day, there was a couple of mentions of hugging and kissing, but that was all. Instead, there was page after page describing the perfect love they had beginning in 1971 and stretching through the ages, that no relationship had ever lived up to the feelings they had shared.

OK – I have to tell you that at this point, I was all over the place. The logical part of my brain attempted to go into full scale shut-down mode because THEY WERE NOT, I REPEAT NOT, LONG LOST LOVERS, so the delusion involved in those exchanges just made me feel exhausted. We had worked through that issue over and over again. M would appear to recognize, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, that he barely knew her before the affair, and then in a few months we would be right back where we started. He clung to the idea that he had always loved her, that she was his first love, because otherwise how could he have had an affair.

The wife/lover part of me was devastated beyond belief AGAIN because their first contact in 35 years was a post she made on his Facebook late at night on Wednesday, October 7th and by Saturday, October 10th, they were in a full-blown online affair, already having switched to email and phone calls and making plans to meet. Meanwhile, the next weekend – the weekend he spent with her – we had plans to spend a romantic weekend in Austin after both of us finished off professional obligations – a weekend that he had convinced me was a good idea, had completely planned, and seemed to be looking forward to, while he was planning to meet and have sex with her, perhaps the next weekend. When I had to cancel our plans, he seized the opportunity to spend the weekend with her instead.

As I’ve said before, he came home devastated, hysterical, and incoherent. After he calmed down, he explained that his conference had been filled with ups and downs, and he had realized how much devastation and emotional pain that he was feeling because I no longer loved him or wanted him. I was baffled because I didn’t feel that way at all, but I felt his pain and reached out, we reconnected, shared feelings, laughed, made love and fell asleep in one another’s arms. What I didn’t realize was, before he approached me, he had sent her a very long email addressed to “My Sweet Bride”, expressing his devastation at leaving her, that he didn’t know how he would live without her, but that they must end it then because he couldn’t bear to break his daughter’s heart so he was committing to his marriage. He also thanked her for leading him back to Jesus and praying over him. Yes, she had sex with another woman’s husband, a man she had not seen in 35 years, and then PRAYED over him. I am really unfamiliar with any religious faith that finds this to be acceptable behavior, and it is certainly unacceptable for evangelical Protestant denominations. After sending the email, he closed his Facebook account and turned to me, making me believe that he really had missed the closeness we had always had, but that had been missing for the last six months.

The next morning, he was already up when I got up, and he was definitely unnerved again without being able to explain why – unnerved enough that he stayed home sick. The emails showed me the reason. He couldn’t sleep and got up at 4:00 AM, read her response to his breakup email, followed by the absolute pitched fit she threw when she realized that his Facebook was gone. She then sent an email that she sent him about taking a nap the afternoon after he left her apartment and turning in bed, expecting him to be there where he belonged, wanting to know why he hadn’t called her, why she was never to have someone to love – and then recommended two books about the blessings of Jesus.  He responded with a four page “I can’t live without you” email. He told her he had reached out to me, and I had half heartedly agreed to work on our relationship, but that I had refused all overtures for attention, love or affection, and that he was doomed to live the rest of his life without a deep love just for him, someone to love him for himself – that he felt so cold and lonely from my rejection and the loss of her that he wanted to die, that he had never been able to talk to anyone the way he had been able to talk to her. So…I was working up to a full scale case of hysterics, but I kept reading.

The problem was much worse that a cheating husband and a devastated wife. The man who wrote those emails, especially the ones written in October, is someone I do not know. Of course, the M I thought I knew would never have had an affair. This was a different problem altogether. This man was involved in a “spiritual” and “deeply religious” extramarital affair (yes, I see the irony…somehow they didn’t!). The man in those emails was someone who had not just waded into the shallows of fundamentalist Christianity, but had fallen into the deep end of some sort of extremist belief that I had never even experienced before – and believe me, as a military brat, traveler, and teacher of World History and US Literature in rural Texas, I’ve heard just about every version of faith – devout and informed, bigoted and ignorant, fervent and hypocritical. The M I have known for 32 years is spiritual in a broad sense, but when he graduated from high school, he rejected the rigidity of the church he was raised in – and it is one of the most liberal Protestant denominations in the US. Many of the emails read like ravings more than love letters, and then they would be interspersed with daily updates that were less informative and less affectionate than those I exchange with friends, and those were interspersed with long historical rambles – about the history of her town, the history of our town, archaeology information, along with all types of helpful resources so that she could start an archaeology club and include more in her social studies classes – including lesson plans that I HAD WRITTEN. Yes, he sent his mistress my work. My head was spinning so fast that I am surprised that it didn’t fly off of my head!

I was beyond knowing what to do – he had bailed as soon as I opened the first email – and had provided no context for the mess I was about to fall into, so I just kept reading, and reading, and reading….and getting more and more freaked out. I called my therapist’s office when I was about half way through and explained what had happened to her admin (bless the admins of the world – constantly bombarded with TMI and called on for solutions that someone else has to provide). She called me back with an after hours appointment. M and I talked a little after I finished the emails, but he was incoherent and all I could ask was why he had continued to lie all of this time – over and over – sometimes about inconsequential things. He had no answer.

My therapist spent an hour and a half, was very supportive, put me back together, but she was also very firm. She had recommended months before that M needed to be evaluated by a psychiatrist, or failing that, at least begin the process with his regular doctor, and he had refused. In addition, although he had started to monitor his blood pressure after his physical, and it regularly ranged between 160/100 to 180/110, he had refused to make an appointment to see the doctor because “he was supposed to wait three months.” She insisted that M needed medical help as soon as possible, that it was time to look at both blood pressure and other medication.

So, on to Plan B.

Despair

So – from “please move out” through a week of counseling, and a belief that we had turned a corner, to the book incident, followed by C’s surgery, followed by individual counseling for each of us at the end of the next week – three weeks. It was a horrendous three weeks is some ways, but I thought we were both reaching clarification about some of the lingering issues.  One of the break through realizations for me was that our ups and downs had been more frequent and more severe since January, and I really thought that it was because of me – that because I had reached a breaking point last fall and asked for a divorce or at least a separation, I was now having trouble recommitting to the permanence of our relationship. The last several incidents, however, were so close together that I was able to see a pattern I had not recognized before – the blowups were not originating with me. Instead, whenever we were feeling especially close or if we had a disagreement, M’s reaction was completely over the top. We really talked about it and then discussed it individually with our therapist. Any discussion about the affair, any really positive interactions between us, or any hint of unhappiness were still putting M in a state of absolute panic – with the full fight or flight response. Since he had been dealing with those feelings of panic and guilt by avoidance for most of the last two years, and he had made a serious commitment in December to STOP avoiding, he was left with the fight response and so here we were.

The problem, of course, is that he is still in full fight or flight mode after more than 2 1/3 years. Why???? He seemed relieved to recognize the problem, had no answer about why, but we committed to working through it and discussed wearing our wedding rings again, especially since our 30th wedding anniversary was coming up at the end of the month. We had a week – just a week – of basically positive, forward progress, and then on the first Sunday morning in March, we started a followup discussion about …I don’t even know what, I really don’t, but it went downhill quickly. We both made a conscious effort to pull back and smooth it over, watched a movie, and went on with our day – which in my case meant doing my statistics homework. We were fine, everything was fine, and then in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of Statistics, I realized that half of my brain was trying to find a way to convince my daughter that she would be fine without me – I actually was trying out dialogue in my head to find the right words to make the unthinkable seem reasonable. Somehow, the part of my brain not being used by my homework had come to the conclusion that I really couldn’t stand it anymore – emotional ups and downs without rhyme or reason, a failure to address or even recognize medical issues, a lack of progress at recapturing and moving forward with our lives. Love, anger, desire, grief, hope, fear, admiration, intimacy, sympathy, panic, joy, avoidance, sadness, amusement, shame, generosity, shock, delight – all rolling through in no discernible order. When I recognized the level of despair I felt, and when I realized what that despair was leading me to consider, I fell apart and cried off and on for several hours. M did his best to comfort me, including promising me that the roller coaster ride was over when I tried to explain what was wrong, but I really could not see a way to change anything. Recognizing how I felt scared me, but also relieved pressure that I must have been suppressing.

Nothing Is Ever “Uncomplicated” with My Child

Six weeks ago my daughter called at 10:00 p.m. in the middle of our latest round of turmoil to tell me she was having intense stomach pain and didn’t know what to do. Responsible 22 year old to scared 5 year old in less than an hour. Since she currently lives three and a half hours away, I talked her through her options, convinced her to take pain meds and go to bed with a heating pad, and then call her doctor in the morning.

Her OB/GYN squeezed her in the next morning, did an exam followed by a sonogram. As usual, when she is involved, nothing is ever straightforward, and the sonogram showed that her left ovary was twice the size of her right and the area around her ovary was “cloudy”. She had an MRI, and then went back to the doctor. She had cysts and a “nodule” on her left ovary, as well as cloudy areas – either fluid in her abdomen from a cyst that had burst or endometriosis. End result – exploratory laparoscopy scheduled for March 9 – the Friday before spring break. We arranged to be off (remember, this is the girl we almost lost when she had a tonsillectomy and hemorrhaged – not once or twice but three times last summer), and then got another phone call. Her doctor had talked to the radiologist, clarified some issues, and moved the surgery to Friday, February 24th, which meant that the surgery was the next week – thank goodness, since she had Googled “nodule and ovary” and was freaking out about cancer, endometriosis, loss of fertility at 22, or maybe death. Still, as the saying goes, “she put on her big girl panties” and only missed work for doctors’ appointments and tests, and arranged to take off only the day of her surgery, with her return to work dependent on the results of the surgery.

M and I put our differences away, presented a unified and loving front, and arrived at her house the evening before the surgery. Even with the pain she was in, she had worked to clean and arrange the house she shares with her boyfriend. While she really has grown up a lot in the last year, she was definitely glad that we were there and was very “huggy” and “leany”  – since she was a little girl, she has needed physical contact if she is sick or scared – and she was both. The boyfriend was doing his best, but he was also scared, so he seemed glad we were there too. The next morning was fairly smooth because her surgery wasn’t until  11:30, so we didn’t have to leave the house until 9:00. She handled everything like a pro – checked herself in and went off to be prepped by herself, and then we spent half an hour with her before they came to get her. Once she was prepped for surgery, we were called back, and when the anesthesiologist was came to talk to her, she explained clearly about her anesthesia issue, and we were assured that they would come and get me if she had a problem. The anesthesiologist also promised to call us himself if the surgery took more than 1 1/2 hours.

In less than 45 minutes we looked up and her doctor was standing there, telling us that the surgery had gone really well, that she saw no sign of endometriosis, but she had removed several cysts from her left ovary and as well as two large cysts from the left fallopian tube. Apparently, the scar tissue caused by a rupture can weigh the tube down and pull it out of place, affecting fertility. So – no endometriosis, no tumor, no emergencies in surgery!!!! Less than an hour later, a nurse showed up to get me. I had talked to the boyfriend and told him that I was ceding my place to him, but the nurse insisted that she wanted me. I checked on her, she was fully awake and calm – and just wanted to know what the doctor had told us. After spending a few moments with her, I turned her over to her love and in less than an hour she was ready to go home – YAY!!

Meanwhile, M and I had a squabble in the waiting room because he went out to the car and got headphones and then plugged into funny videos on his iPad – and proceeded to laugh like a hyena in a surgical waiting area – a large area completely filled with people. I was nervous and edgy and even though I knew that he was trying to cope with his own stress level, I almost came unstuck. In fact, after hinting several times, I was insistent that he consider the inappropriateness of laughing loudly and constantly in a place that people are stressed and worried and  STOP it. It turns out that FOX News was making him nuts – after the first 15 minutes I had stopped wishing that it was CNN or off and had just tuned it out. I understand that the noise was on his last nerve, but that is not an excuse to make others tense.

After we took C back to her house, things started to go further downhill. I tried deferring to the boy, but he made it plain that he had no intention of “catering” to C. In fact, he didn’t seem interested in her at all, and although he stayed in the living room, he seemed to be avoiding physical contact with her, didn’t check to see if she was OK or needed anything, and avoided talking to her by burying himself in work, although he could split his focus enough to watch TV. By the end of the night, I was uncomfortable and more than a little freaked out. We had decided to  leave Saturday morning if her surgery was without incident, and she did not need to stay in the hospital overnight. By Friday night, M and I both were questioning whether D would actually step up and take care of her, or if we needed to stay until at least Sunday afternoon or if perhaps one of us needed to stay longer.

By Saturday morning, C was also questioning whether or not she was going to have any help or not from D, since he disappeared back into their room right after they got up,  where he cleaned, vacuumed and rearranged the room, and then started on his office – without checking on whether she needed anything or not. This is the first time he has cleaned since, they moved in, so it wasn’t like he was just following the Saturday morning routine. C needed food and there really wasn’t any, and D didn’t indicate he had a plan for breakfast, so M searched online and went and picked up a variety of breakfast edibles, but by about 9:30 I was so angry that I was falling apart and had a good cry in the shower.

C, meanwhile, had clarified with D why he was pulling the disappearing act, and he seemed shocked that she thought he wasn’t going to take care of her – he was cleaning so the room would be more comfortable for her. He also had hurt feelings because she had asked for me instead of him when she came out from under the anesthesia. It turns out that she did not ask for me, the nurse just came and got me because I was the one who was supposed to be in the recovery room if she had trouble with the anesthesia during or at the end of her surgery. He was also scared to death because she had three holes in her – one of which had started bleeding again.

We took a deep breath and left her in his hands, and she stayed home and went back to work on Tuesday. On Thursday, she was back in her doctor’s office because she was in a lot of pain and was having trouble coping without pain meds, but couldn’t work if she took them. Her understanding was that if she DID NOT have endometriosis, she should have been fine to go back to work on Monday, and relatively pain free by the end of the week – and she was neither. It turned out that the surgical findings and procedure had not been as uncomplicated as we thought. When her doctor talked about the surgery, she had mentioned a bowel issue had probably been contributing to C’s pre-surgical pain. She has IBS, and we assumed that was the “bowel problem”. Nope – turns out the surgeon discovered that a sizable section of Em’s bowel on the left side was connected to the abdominal wall by adhesions which had to be removed because strain on them could cause a bowel rupture and possible peritonitis, followed by a lengthy hospital stay or possible death. In order to remove the adhesions, as well as the removal of the tubal cysts, her insides were moved around and that was what was causing the pain. Once she knew what was wrong, she has been able to handle her pain level and stay at work, although even now, almost six weeks later, she is still easily exhausted.

To sum up, C had surgery for one problem that she actually didn’t need, but while her surgeon was poking around, she discovered two other problems which could have had much more serious consequences if left untreated. Her boyfriend of two years freaks out about her propensity for medical disaster, and reacts like she is being a hypochondriac OR that it is too serious for him to handle and he wants to run away. When she was little we thought she would eventually grow out of these periodic medical incidents, but as she worked her way through high school and college, we have just accepted that they are a part of who she is – a part of her physical makeup. She has been tested and examined and taken medicine and vitamins and homeopathic remedies. She knows what she has to eat, and how much sleep she needs, and can usually tell when something is wrong. We have just accepted that she will have continual health issues, that she is learning to manage them well, and that she will ask for help if she needs it. J and I have worried, however, about two things connected to her health. 1) Will she be able to hold a steady job? and 2) Will the man she loves be able to handle colds that turn into pneumonia, rashes that might be lupus, menstrual craps that turn out to be cysts requiring surgery, childhood diseases that lead to appendicitis, etc…. The answer to the 1st question appears to be yes. She has been at her job for 7 months, while dealing with three respiratory infections, a torn ligament in her shoulder, and this last surgery without taking more sick leave or vacation than she is allowed, and her boss and coworkers feel like she is doing a good job. The answer to the 2nd question appears to be uncertain.  I’m starting to feel less joyful that I’m gaining a son and more like I  might turn into a mother-in-law  like Endora from Bewitched – if a wedding ever happens, which does not appear to be the case.

And the Story Goes On – Valentine’s Day

My State of Mind

As I said earlier, I didn’t just stop posting in January, I stopped writing altogether. I would open a page and then just be unable to face actually organizing my thoughts enough to put them into words. I was just unable to face the confusion and renewed hurt. I have actually missed more work in the last two months over this mess than at anytime in the last two and a half years. I’m just tired. My therapist was insistent at my appointment last week that I start writing again, and I decided that if I was going to write, I might as well share it with a community that has some similar experiences. Please forgive the verbal vomit. If anyone has any insight, please jump in and pass it on to me.

After the disaster that was Sunday and Monday morning, I went to work at 8:00 and worked until 9:00 p.m., since it was my turn at the Ask-A-Librarian desk. I was busy all day with work and with statistics homework, which I didn’t finish until almost midnight, so J and I had no time to talk. I have discovered that a real downside for me in concentrating on statistics is that it must use a part of my brain that I usually ignore, because while I am concentrating on the math, the rest of my brain is in overdrive without my even being aware of it. By the time I finished my coursework, emailed it off to my professor, and took a few moments to relax before I went to bed, I realized that I wanted out. I wanted out of the confusion, I wanted out of the turmoil, I wanted out of not knowing what was going to happen next. I didn’t want a divorce, I wanted off the roller coaster – at least for long enough to catch my breath.

Elephant in the Room

Or An 800 lb Gorilla If You Prefer

 

 

 

 

 

So far, I haven’t mentioned the elephant or 800 lb gorilla (or whatever your preferred metaphor is) in the room. Several months ago, our therapist talked to both of us about M having bipolar disorder. He did a little reading and rejected it immediately – quibbling about symptoms, avoiding discussions, and mostly rejecting the diagnosis because he rejected possible treatments. Since he agreed to lifestyle changes and committed to continuing therapy, I let it go and our therapist agreed to help him work on issues around the gorilla – negative thoughts, handling stress, dealing with issues openly. The lying related to the STD testing indicated that none of that was working.

Valentine’s Flowers – The Work Version

The next morning, with coffee, I asked M for a separation – not permanently, but just to be able to catch my breath and recenter and for him to be able to figure out what he really wanted and to find a clear spot within himself where we could really work on our marriage. Guess what I forgot….it was Valentine’s Day. And because the big romantic gesture has never been his strong suit, M had decided to go all out…and instead I asked him to move out. VERY BAD TIMING!

I didn’t hear from him during the day, left work early and went home, still heard nothing about his plans for a place to stay, or whether he had picked up clothes and the other things he would need, but just decided that I really had no right to expect that, so I had pizza for dinner, watched a little TV, and felt fairly calm. And then I realized around 8:30 that I had not heard from my daughter, which was a little weird, because she usually calls on her way home from work. I searched for the phone and found it hidden in a chair with a dead battery, and discovered that my cell phone was dead too – so I plugged in everything so I would be reconnected with the outside world…and then J arrived home with a vase of Valentine’s flowers and candy. He had arranged for them to be delivered to my work, and when I didn’t call to say thank you, he had called the florist, they freaked out and delivered them to him, and he brought them to me. He had made no plans about where to stay, had not eaten, and so we agreed he could stay in the spare room until we figured out our next step.When I got to work the next morning, I found an identical vase of flowers waiting for me there.

Fast forward – counseling for us, counseling for him, counseling for us again on the next Saturday, reconnection, an agreement to put all thought of a separation on hold, positive discussions and progress, and voilà, he came up with a copy of his STD test results – which occurred on the same day that I went to see the doctor about the very bad infection. At that point, his production of the STD results muddied the water rather than clarifying it, since I could not understand why he had not just produced them sooner and saved a lot of drama and pain. I let it go because we seemed to be moving in a positive direction. That only lasted until Sunday  then on Sunday afternoon I asked him to find the marriage counseling books he had purchased and that we had read and discussed WHILE HE WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFFAIR ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF HIS AFFAIR PARTNER. I honestly was not trying to start a fight, I have been trying to put together a bibliography of the books, articles, blogs, etc. that I have found most useful during this disaster, and while I find the idea that his mistress recommended books intended to help him heal his marriage at the same time that they were exchanging passionate emails and having phone sex to be beyond ironic (and incredibly nauseating), the books themselves were by reputable therapists and full of good advice that we had actually used, and so they needed to be on the list. Plus, he had hidden them after he confessed, and although I had asked him for them before, he had always stalled and evaded. As a part of his pledge to be open and honest, retrieving the books seemed like a fairly non-threatening way to begin. I did not expect what happened. He freaked out and it started to look like a replay of the Sunday before – yelling, hurtful words, accusations….It seemed like there must be something in the books that he didn’t want me to see…had she actually sent them? Did they have some sort of inscription? Before I reacted and the whole thing blew up, I was able to catch myself, stay calm enough to call a halt and redirect the discussion – to express curiosity at the reaction rather than anger or pain. It turns out that even thinking about the books created panic in him, and touching them brought back a flood of angst that he really couldn’t deal with. He retrieved the books he had collected during the affair, and I discovered that there were more than I had seen – five on marriage and several on religion and the Bible.

At his request, I removed them from the house and then didn’t know what to do with them. While I am usually not superstitious, the irony behind their purchase and use, and the amount of negative energy and angst connected to them, made me doubtful about just passing them on, but I also do not believe in destroying books, especially books that some one in similar circumstances might find useful. Two friends from work came up with a solution. One of them smudged them with sage smoke and the other sprinkled them with holy water that her priest had used to bless her new house. While I do not belong to either tradition that uses these rituals, just the support of my friends, and their laughter at my dilemma, did make me feel better – and free to pass the material on to my therapist who has a lending library of resources.

So, not such a disaster, but definitely an issue that we planned to follow up in counseling. Why the panic associated with the affair? It was over two and a half years ago – why is he having so much more difficulty with it than I am?

And then there was C….

A New Year and A New Approach

Sometimes life and the blogging world converge in weird ways. I started a comment to Not Over It, which turned instead into two posts of my own, dealing with values and ethics, that really started me on the road to re-evaluation of my situation, and then Looking for Buddha Again posted several really thought provoking comments on my No Secrets Please Part 2. Not Over It’s post about not telling family, my self examination, and LFBA’s comments have all coalesced, and I think I’m finding a way to actually dig myself out of the recurring funk I have been in.

The emotional turmoil I have lived in for the last two years has not been healthy – and I am starting to show the effects of stress. This semester – September through December – I have had two viruses, strep throat, and a serious cold – it feels like my immune system has moved to another zip code. And then came the recent breast cancer recurrence scare, which only confirmed my determination to NOT LIVE THIS WAY ANYMORE.  After the processing I did writing the two “Secrets” blog entries, and then the time I have spent thinking about LFBA’s advice and the questions he asked, I have reached the following conclusions, which I shared with my therapist, who has been seeing J individually and also seeing us together. She was surprised, even shocked, but confirmed that I am moving in the right direction:

• J was suffering from an illness and really needed professional help before the affair – it and the aftermath were symptoms rather than the actual problem. His clear understanding of the threads of his life had been disintegrating for months before the affair, and whether the stress caused an old fashioned “nervous breakdown” or a manic episode indicating an underlying condition, he was actually not in control of himself during the initial affair episode. My husband is not a serial philanderer or at risk for another affair. While the infidelity devastated me, I really did understand quickly and clearly the amount of pain and confusion that he was in before, during, and after the affair, and I was able to forgive it.
• I have not, however, been able to understand or forgive the lying – the lying to me, the lying to himself, the lying to the OW, and his unwillingness or even inability to sort out what was truth, what were lies, and how he really felt. I have been completely unable to understand how anyone could accept that much emotional confusion in his own head, and why he would not just sit down examine his feelings and explain the truth to me so that we could move on. I have, however, come to realize that his actions actually caused much more damage and pain to him that they did to me. He actually destroyed his sense of self – of who he really is and how he sees himself. His behaviors after the initial weekend of sex have all been attempts to somehow hang on to his sense of himself as a decent guy with a strong moral center. This has led to some very peculiar behavior and serious cognitive dissonance on his part.  All clarifications of events, truth, the timeline, and the emotions surrounding the affair have been as a result of incessant pushing on my part, and I have resented his unwillingness to help me. I now realize that, rather than simply being too selfish to tell the truth and help me, he was and actually still is in too much pain in this area to be able to help himself, let alone me.
• As LBFA has noted, honesty is the center of my ethical structure.  The affair from the 1^st public Facebook message until final breakup call was only 6 weeks, but the deliberate lying went on for more than 1 ½ years, and little unexpected truth bombs are still bursting out unexpectedly. As a result, I have been unable to settle, unable to be at peace permanently, unable to stay out of a funk for more than a couple of weeks at a time, unable to trust my husband’s word consistently. I think that the constant discovery of new lies, and my confusion and disbelief at each new confession, even though I knew something wasn’t right, is why I have felt like I haven’t been living by my own moral code – I am usually very intuitive, even with people I don’t know well, so the idea that I consistently have been surprised and devastated by the person I have loved and trusted for 30 years indicates that I was refusing to recognize the truth that was staring me in the face – I was accepting dishonesty and refusing to recognize it because I just couldn’t believe it. I really have to look at that, and figure out why it happened.
• Once I realized the depth of my husband’s pain and confusion, as the person closest to him, I was the appropriate person to comfort and help him. Much of our healing has been the result of pushing on my part and the fact that he loved me enough to allow me to push him – pushing for truth, pushing into therapy, pushing into marriage counseling, pushing into health testing. I am exhausted, plus I have realized that I have come very close to crossing the line between caring partner and panicked parent – leading to that need for control that LFBA mentioned, which has never been a part of our relationship. He is more emotionally and physically healthy than he has been in a long time – happier at home, happier at work, taking better care of his health. So – the healthy thing for me now is to recognize the he is an adult with an established medical and emotion health support network – and that he is responsible for his own health and behavior.
• In thinking about the difficulty I have been having in dealing with my own family during this time, I realized that for twenty eight years, my husband and our relationship have always served as a wall between me and my family’s lifestyle – not physically, but emotionally. My husband’s affair and the lying and confusion that resulted from it put me back in that place where I couldn’t stop behavior that was against all of my values, but I couldn’t distance myself from it either.  As a result, I have distanced myself from my family. I can’t deal with chaos and disappointment and disgust and devastation at home without it tapping those same emotions generated by my family and their actions. I need to work this out and handle it myself – my husband is not responsible for my relationship with my family, and our relationship and coping mechanisms should be our own – separate from my family crap.
• LFBA is right about the role of guilt. I feel guilty for recognizing the pain and confusion J was feeling, but not its depth, and not reaching out to him. I have also really struggled with the realization that for months prior to the affair, I recognized behaviors that were not acceptable – anger, irritability, unreasonable behavior, self centeredness – and instead of calling him on it and setting clear limits,  I ignored or excused  – and worse, encouraged my daughter to do the same to avoid a fuss. He feels guilty about so many things that it would be a whole post in itself.

Bottom line: My husband and I love one another very much, we enjoy spending time together, we have a shared vision for our future, and we have rediscovered passion that had become dampened during the child rearing years. Each iteration of confession about the affair has brought me closer to the truth, but has also increased my pain level, and still my gut level reaction every time has been to sooth my husband’s pain over these same confessions. At the same time, he has stepped very far outside his comfort zone, agreeing to counseling, having very uncomfortable conversations, working hard to assure me of his love.

So, my goals for 2012:

• Overcome my insecurities and accept that my husband’s affair was about him and not about me.
• Find a way to accept that I more or less know the basic truth and just accept that new information will periodically bubble up, without letting it devastate me.
• Re-examine my values and sense of ethics, and recommit to living my life by those that still have value, while also working to be less rigid with those who are closest to me.

Most importantly, I am going to work to just be happy that my husband remembered that he loved me before it was too late – and that I was able to reach out to him instead of burning his belongings in the middle of the driveway. We have come a long way towards healing in 2011, and 2012 will be much better.

I wish peace and love to all of you who have made me think, provided support and encouragement, and generally made it possible for me to continue to function during the last year.

What A Month – Christmas

Lucky's 1st Christmas

I knew this Christmas would be different because of Lucky, our 1 year old Golden Retriever. In August, one morning on our way to work, we came over a hill and a beautiful Golden Retriever was laying in the middle of the road. My husband honked, but the dog wouldn’t move and we had to actually drive off the road to get around him. As we went slowly by, he raised his head and looked us straight in the eyes and lifted one front paw – obviously broken. Short version of the story: he let J pick him up and put him in my lap, so we rescued him from our busy country road and took him to our vet. After a hellish hour, there was no question that he was ours, and we agreed to be responsible for the repair of his leg. The first examination revealed a second, much worse break of a back leg, and then a later examination revealed that his other front paw was also broken. The third broken leg was not discovered until after the rear leg had been repaired with plates, a rod, and an outside stabilizer bar, and by then not only we, but every member of the vet’s staff loved him completely. Four operations and a couple of months later, we had to agree to have his rear leg removed because it just wouldn’t heal. Even when he was in tremendous pain, he was playful, friendly, and energetic. He walked out of the vet’s the day after the amputation, and has not looked back. Not only is he sweet and loving, he is CRAZY in that way that only almost grown puppies can be! He runs faster on 3 legs than two of our other dogs can on four.  He hauls logs around the yard, he pesters the cats, wrestles the dogs, hauls the rugs around, has eaten two of my shoes, a pair of pants, and a credit card (I am now famous at the Bank of America!), goes up and down steps without hesitation, and has tried more than once to swim in the water feature on the front deck. We love him, are training him, but we were pretty sure that if he could get next to the tree, not only would he cart off the ornaments, but at some point he would have decided that the tree itself was a big stick that he was supposed to haul off. No other ornament could be below 4 ft because it too would have been fair game as his newest toy. In addition, we live in a small cabin in the woods, our pets are inside/outside pets, and between the three of us, we have 4 dogs and 4 cats – all rescues, including a 65 lb 9 year old black Lab, a 108 lb 3 year old Golden Retriever, a 5 year old 55 lb Doberman mix, two 13 year old Tabby cats, a 10 year old Flame Point Siamese, and a two year old Russian Blue. The pets have always done well together in the past, but we couldn’t predict the results of the addition of a 3 legged, 70 lb Golden Retriever puppy. Result: short tree, with access blocked by the couch.

I knew that this Christmas would be different for another reason as well. My daughter is in a serious relationship, and I have always known that we would end up sharing her at holidays – it’s the only fair thing to do. Sharing seemed more than acceptable when my daughter brought her boyfriend home for the entire Christmas holiday last year, and at Thanksgiving when they came and stayed for the entire holiday. And then came this Christmas, when my daughter called and said “Mom, we’re going to D’s mom’s for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, and then to you for Christmas dinner. Ha! Sharing didn’t seem like such a great idea then…but I’m a grownup and so is J, and so we adjusted. We were both swamped with end of semester stuff, and both had really bad colds, so we moved VERY slowly into preparation mode…so by the evening of the 22nd, we had a small tree in a stand on the patio ready for lights, and a plan for slowly finishing preparations through early Christmas day – decorating on the 23rd, cleaning on the 24th, and wrapping and cooking on the 25th. And then on the evening of the 22nd, she called to announce that they had changed their minds and were coming to us first – after work on the 23rd. A house has never been cleaned and decorated and presents wrapped in such a short period of time in my entire life!!

Christmas Eve went well -New Years Eve shopping for my daughter and I, naps for the guys, followed by a special dinner and laughter with family and friends. The presents all went over well, the dogs enjoyed all the paper remnants, and we had a lovely Christmas morning breakfast.  The kids left for D’s family for Christmas lunch and dinner, leaving us with their pets. SO far, Em’s elderly cat is enjoying spending a little time outside, and her 108 lb Golden Retriever is getting some much needed exercise, running around the one acre yard barking at all of the wildlife and digging holes all over. She is the alpha dog, and has been since she arrived on our doorstep at 10 weeks old – none of our pets and none of the neighborhood dogs have questioned it. Her assurance is having an impact on Lucky, since she wears him out by staying busy, and puts him calmly in his place when he becomes a maniac. On a final note, my husband gave me a T-shirt with the slogan below – do you think I could get away with wearing it to work at the Ask – A – Librarian desk on a Saturday?

Overall – my holiday has been a success. I hope yours has been too!

No Secrets Please

So, we’ve reached the stage in therapy where we are looking at how our past baggage is affecting our current problem. J’s family was solidly upper middle class and almost Leave It To Beaverish, although he has realized that while he saw his parents fight, he never saw them make-up or work out differences – the problems just went away. He also recognizes that when there are serious emotional issues between us, he wants to run  away because he doesn’t know what else to do.

I, on the other hand,  come from a very loving extended family with solid middle class roots, but one that contains ever kind of dysfunction you can name. Every family interaction contained the possibility of chaos, but everyone ignored it and hoped for the best, using equal parts secrecy, a refusal to recognize or acknowledge truth, and the sure discovery/revelation of truth in the most embarrassing place and time possible. A few examples?

• Around the age of 8, I realized, although I didn’t know what it meant, that my parents had swapped partners with the neighbors, since we were spending a holiday with my mom and the husband of a neighbor at his family’s home, while my dad remained at home with the neighbor. His family was very nice to my sister (aged 6) and I, but the confusion and disapproval was palpable. Both of my parents had other affairs while I was growing up, were obvious about it, and never explained or appeared to be experiencing the sort of devastation I have dealt with for the last year. They did, however, periodically have an impact on my life, since my some of my neighborhood friends in junior high were not allowed to spend time at my house because their parents knew my mom had a “friend” spending the night while my dad was overseas in the Air Force.  I, meanwhile, submerged myself in Zane Grey’s and Barbara Cartland’s and Agatha Christie’s – and the women were sweet and pure and the men where experienced but honorable and true, and people had a code of behavior. While reading helped me cope, my parents’ behavior from childhood until I left for college demanded certain survival behaviors – the ignoring of unacceptable behavior, the implicit agreement to the need for secrecy, and the understanding that such matters were not open for questions or discussion.
• My dad’s mom was bipolar (untreated) and her behavior, especially with her own children, was unpredictable. One Christmas vacation while my sister(8) and cousin(7) and I(10) were staying at my dad’s parents, my dad and his mom got into an argument on the phone, he drove eight hours to pick us up and she threw all of our stuff out in the driveway, while he collected it – both screaming the whole time. This type of interaction happened every few years, and they would not speak for months, until eventually, for no apparent reason, they would go back to normal without even acknowledging there had been a problem. No matter what her relationship was with my dad, I always remained a favorite and still received phone calls, letters, and presents. My sister – not so much.  Even as a child I realized that this was unfair, but didn’t really know what to do about it. No one ever suggested that their behavior was unacceptable, or that they needed to sit down and have an honest conversation about their relationship. Result: my dad is 71, his mom died in 2004, and he still veers wildly between disillusion verging on hatred, and nostalgia and love.
• My dad’s younger brother stole his identity and left him (us) with a pile of debts when I was about 12, but it didn’t cause more than a temporary rift because they never talked about it, my dad managed to straighten it out without financial ruin for us or jail time for him, and after all, that was just who my uncle was – since he did the same thing to both his other brothers and my grandparents. He also remarried his high school sweetheart three (3!!) times. She was a beautiful, educated, self-supporting professional woman, so how he managed to persuade her to keep trying again has always been totally beyond me. Sometimes, even at 11 or 12, it seems like I was the only person in my family who remembered his actual behavior rather than his charm. For 40 years, whenever someone has referred to “poor Bobby”, my response in my head (and sometimes out loud) has been “poor Bobby my ass!”
• My mom’s dad picked fights with everyone – for entertainment. He loved to argue, but didn’t read or watch the news, so the arguments were always personal. If he provoked someone, he was happy, but family he came in contact with ended up angry, hurt, confused…or sometimes homicidal. He set arbitrary rules, and then canceled them suddenly. My mom was allowed to date, but her middle sister was not at the same age – so she climbed out her window and did what she wanted. He would take books away from my youngest aunt and make her dig holes and then fill them back in – just to make sure she was busy. After my middle aunt married, he would arrive at her farm and wake her and her husband up because he felt that as farmers, they were not getting up early enough to do their jobs properly. My mom always refused to argue with him, and if he continued to push she just went home – even if that meant leaving Oregon for Texas. He was a petty tyrant, but could also be a lot of fun. I generally, even when little, did the fun stuff – motorcycles, the beach, the riding lawn mower, the three-story trapeze swing in his shop – and then curled up with a book and ignored the rest.
• My mom’s mom and my dad’s dad were both much more stable and rational than their spouses, but they also enabled/controlled/ covered up the erratic nature of their spouses’ behavior – which meant they were never held accountable, and their behavior never improved.
• My mother’s youngest sister is less than five years older than me and has always been one of my favorite people. She is the one who explained sex to me, lent me clothes and gave me music when I was in junior high and high school, and invited me to spend the night when she got married and had her own home. She also gave me a preview of what a truly unhappy marriage can be. Her husband made her feel inadequate, unattractive, and unwanted, and had a series of affairs that started just after they married, including one with my sister. She told me that she knew she wanted out in less than a year, but even with all of this, she waited for 7 years to get divorced because she was embarrassed and because she didn’t want to disappoint my grandparents. Meanwhile, my grandparents hated him and really felt like the world would have been a better place is she had ditched him immediately. A little honesty here could have saved everyone a lot of anguish.
•  When my sister and I were little, my parents’ will left responsibility for my sister to my mom’s parents and for me to my dad’s parents. We didn’t really think about it when we were little, but I have had adult friends express  horror at an arrangement that split us up. Practically speaking, my sister has been a hellion from 2 until 49 – adorable, active, mischievous, moody,  always stretching limits, and a little loose with the truth and taking responsibility. My parents were convinced that my dad’s parents wouldn’t survive my sister, while I spent most of my vacations with them and adjusted smoothly to their lifestyle and my grandmother’s moods. The problem was the reverse with my mom’s parents – they weren’t sure I would survive my grandfather. Even as a child, I didn’t engage in provocations to argue with him, and read instead. By middle school, I enjoyed occasional vacations there but I always arrived with a strict set of guidelines from my mom – no physical punishment, no punishment for or restriction on reading, and strangely, no forcing to eat food my mom found unacceptable – like boiled okra.
• My dad periodically had temper fits throughout my childhood and still does occasionally today, which usually leave his audience hurt or bewildered rather than angry. The next time he saw whoever, he generally acted like nothing had ever happened…which inevitably led to questions about his behavior – but never to him, always to someone else – and by high school that someone was me. How do you explain the unexplainable – and why should anyone need to explain someone else’s behavior?? In high school and during his military career, he led an intense, adventure filled life, but since his retirement he has become less active, more bipolar, and seems to have developed a somewhat fuzzy relationship with the truth. Best illustration – when I was about 11, my dad, both granddads and all my uncles went deer hunting. In Texas, people plant oats outside a deer stand, get the deer used to eating in that area, and when hunting season opens, they sit in the stand and shoot the deer (hunting?). In Oregon, hunting involves camping in the back country and tracking deer through the woods and up and in the mountains. During this trip, my dad got separated from the group, and spent the night hiking in the dark through the woods attempting to stay ahead of a bear. His dad and my uncles spent the night tracking him – and the bear – rescuing one and running the other one off at daybreak. The whole family came home early, filled with the story and while it sounds like a  fish story, everyone told the same story, the details never changed or got more dramatic, and the excitement and adrenaline were still pouring off of them. One truth I have learned since then is that men active in wild settings end up having improbable and dramatic adventures. This story is , however, no longer enough for my dad. Sometime in the last 15 or so years, he has managed to convince himself that he was being tracked by a Sasquatch, yes seriously, a Sasquatch. He is not pulling a joke, he really believes it.
• My mom is warm, loving, creative, and generally very practical, and most of the stability in my childhood came from her. My friends in high school congregated at my house – there was always plenty of food, plenty of music, and an extra bed or two or six and plenty of friendly but unobtrusive supervision. Before we could drive, she would haul us around, once we had a license, she would lend us her car. HS friends who have reconnected with me on Facebook always ask about my mom – they loved her. She does, however, have her own quirks. She believes the most random things with every fiber of her being – including that the pyramids were constructed by aliens. She can be very critical (my dad insulated me from that); she is an ostrich and just ignores anything that she doesn’t want to handle, and she tries to avoid strong emotions, including dealing with illness, death, or funerals. I didn’t have a curfew because my mom knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be and would call and ask if plans changed.
• By my senior year in high school, my family really began to disintegrate, as my dad showed more and more symptoms of bipolar disorder – moody, sleeping much of the time he was at home or staying up  late into the night, buying things beyond our budget. He was having migraines and angina attacks, knew something was wrong, was seen by several doctors, and prescribed a variety of medicines which only made him worse since the bipolar problem went undiagnosed and he was treated for depression and stress. My sister started acting out, accumulating wilder and wilder friends. She never seemed to have any idea of consequences, or that showing responsibility would earn her more freedom. She always ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and had a pattern of planning to go one place, ending up in another, and then getting caught. My last two summers of high school were nightmares because the whole house would fill up with her friends before I was even awake, and then disappear before my parents got home. I place a high value on calm, peace, and a somewhat controlled environment – I wanted to be able to get up, drink some tea and read a little, take a shower and start my day – all impossible with guys I didn’t know filling my living room and kitchen. Finally, during spring break of her sophomore and my senior year, she went to spend the night with a friend, who had told her parents she was spending the night with someone else, and so on – 5 girls spending the night at the lake with other friends. Unfortunately, the dad of one of the girls had a heart attack, her mom tried to collect her, and the entire thing came unraveled.  When they returned from the lake, and went to drop off the first girl, they saw their parents’ cars all in a group and freaked. Some faced the music, others stalled, and my sister disappeared. We didn’t know where she was for a week. My parents were close friends with the police chief and his wife, so the chief pulled every card he had. She turned up at her college boyfriend’s apartment – and stayed there. Yes, my parents let my sixteen year old sister move to a college town 4 hours away. If she got sick or needed something, she would show up in the middle of the night, and I would wake up to find several guys sleeping on the family room on the floor.
• When I left for college, my dad retired and my parents moved to Oregon, my sister’s boyfriend graduated from technical college, wanted to move back to the little east Texas town he was from, and so they got married. A wild 19 year old with drug issues married a wild 16 year old with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and moved to a tiny town 20 miles from my college. I ended up as de facto parent. I was the only relative at her wedding, took her to the doctor when she was sick, and tried to support her through one of the worst marriages I have ever seen. He cheated on her within 6 months of the wedding, and she responded in kind. There was a lot of yelling and hitting on both sides, but somehow they managed to stay married for 12 years and produced 2 children. Their house was constant chaos,I never knew who would be coming or going, what they would be doing, and I never felt safe there, especially at night.

Result of my upbringing? By the end of my first year of college, I had made some concrete decisions about how I intended to live my life, and have managed to live by them for most of the last 30 years:

• Most importantly, see the people in my life for who they really are – love them, value the good in them, recognize the unacceptable and set clear limits, including eliminating destructive relationships.
• I was determined to live a STABLE life – no comings and goings, no drugs, no random sexual behavior.
• No ignoring or fudging or excusing inappropriate behavior – refuse to accept it, accept an apology and move on if one is offered, or walk away if the behavior doesn’t change.
• Work hard to recognize and tell the absolute truth as nicely as possible ALWAYS. I have broken that rule only a few times since I turned 18, and always when the truth would have hurt an innocent person much more that the guilty person the lie actually protected.
• I have approached my own life with the  attitude that if I don’t want to admit to it and I don’t want it discovered, I shouldn’t do it – and I take the same attitude towards those I am close to – no secrets, no lies. I don’t mean that I feel the need to shout all of my business from the rooftops, but no  lies.
• If I make a mistake or hurt someone or damage a relationship, I make every effort to take responsibility, admit it, and apologize for my mistakes. I expect the important people in my life to behave the same way. No ignoring, no fading away, no pretending.
• I don’t expect other people to clean up my emotional messes – no matter how hard it is, I try to meet conflict head  on and fix it. No ignoring, no fading away, no pretending.

OK, I’m completely aware that I’m not perfect, and that attempting to live by the “no lies, no secrets, take responsibility for your own actions, behave like a grown up” motto has made me a little  judgmental, especially with my own family and friends, although much more accepting with those not directly involved in my life. My need to be honest and receive honesty in return occasionally makes others a little uncomfortable, since I am unexpectedly direct sometimes. I have really tried to live by the behaviors that I value – I have only had sex with my husband (although I didn’t expect him to be the only one, it has just worked out that way), I have never done any illegal drugs (perhaps because my introduction to pot was not someone passing me a joint at a party, but the discovery of my brother-in-law sitting at my sister’s dining room table, splitting a large green garbage bag full of pot into small baggies, and the later discovery that he had borrowed my car, stuffed those same baggies under the front seat, and then forgot to remove them when he returned the car, so I was driving around town and left my car with the flashers on in the driveway of my dorm WITH A POUND OF POT IN INDIVIDUAL SERVINGS in it.

After two bouts of very thorough therapy in the last twenty years, I also know that I have a strong co-dependent streak that I think actually comes from the determination to face truth – I don’t cover up others behavior, but I have a strong desire that sometimes feels like a responsibility to help them fix themselves…. Both therapists have assured me that I need to work on the co-dependency, but I am actually very well adjusted for anyone, let alone for someone who was raised in my family. I chose my husband because he was in touch with and open about his feelings, honest about his past, and clear about his behavior. And for over twenty five years, I stuck to my life rules and my image of him. I thought we were happily married, and then along came his affair…and all of my beliefs and interactions were turned upside down.

How about you – has your family of origin affected your present?

Life Wordle

Punishment

 

 

I thought that the next post I wrote would be about birthdays, d-day anniversaries, survival and reconnection. That post is for another day.

I have a blogging friend, Not Over It,  who has spent a year trying to put her marriage back together after finding out about her husband’s six year affair. He has decided she is torturing him by being hurt and their marriage counselor appears to think that she should be over it by now – that her devastation is her way of punishing her husband. That whole idea makes me furious enough that I would like to punch both her husband and her therapist (and I’ve never actually punched anyone!)

Then yesterday morning at work, I got a phone call from my husband, who said in a very serious voice, “Thank you for not hurting me!” My baffled response was “What?” When he opened his iPad, a news item popped up about a woman’s response to the discovery that her husband had been unfaithful –“Inappropriate Relationship May Have Been Motive for the Attack”. Apparently, a woman in California drugged her husband, tied him to the bed, cut off his penis, fed it to the garbage disposal, and then called 911. When the police arrived, she unrepentantly insisted “He deserved it.”

Or how about the Houston woman who followed her husband to a hotel, confronted his mistress, and then ran over him three times in the parking lot, and left the car parked on top of him, informing police that it was an “accident”.

Or the woman who emailed a detailed and lurid description of her husband’s affair – with evidence – to all of his coworkers  including his bosses – and the affair violated a morals clause in his contract.

Or the man who found out his wife was cheating on Thanksgiving Day and called to tell the OM’s wife. Not getting her, he left a detailed message…which played out loud in the middle of the taking of the Thanksgiving portrait that included 3 generations of family. I believe that this one was actually an accident – who still has an answering machine that plays out loud as the message is recorded??

Or this:

I don’t actually know if the sign is real or photo shopped, but you can tell that Stephen’s life has taken a turn he is NOT going to enjoy!!

OK – these are examples of punishment. Overwhelmed with grief or sadness after an affair is not a punishment for someone else – it is an emotional disaster for the one feeling it.

Punishment is knowing that your husband, lover, and best friend has turned to someone else – that they forgot who you were, that they believed they loved someone else, that they warped their view of the past you shared in order to justify their actions. Punishment is suffering endlessly through no fault of your own – but searching endlessly to figure out how you caused it. Punishment is attempting to maintain a façade of normalcy at work, in social gatherings, with family – to keep up with responsibilities when all you want to do is curl up in a ball under the covers (or in some cases under my desk). Punishment is attempting to swallow your own pain and confusion to help someone you love deal with their own conflicted emotions.

I really don’t believe that a marriage can be fully restored to health and happiness after infidelity if the wound it causes isn’t drained and fully healed for both spouses. It just festers and causes problems in other areas – emotional distance, immersion in activities that exclude one another, swallowed bitterness that pops out at inopportune moments. A close friend and her husband have had sex twice in the last nine years – no physical reason, just a lack of interest in sex on his part. She is an attractive red head with big blue eyes and a nice figure, a bouncy, loving personality, and she has tried everything – lingerie, counseling, emotional involvement with someone else, which he put a stop to because he loves her and knows that she loves him more than anyone else. He is not, however, interested in sex and is not willing to discuss the issue. So, she spent most of her forties, moving into her fifties with a husband but NO sex life. I’m sorry, but women in my family generally live into their eighties or nineties, and I intend to have a passionate love life for the entirety of my life!

My best friend takes every vacation with her sister and leaves her husband at home. Sometimes their kids go and sometimes they stay at home with their dads, but the dads are not invited. If I am exploring New England or New York, or spending a week at the beach, or going to Harry Potter World or Disney World, I want my lover and best friend with me. I couldn’t spend the money for a cruise, or a long weekend at a B & B in the Texas Hill Country, or a week at a spa because that takes money from family activities. I want to share the enjoyable moments of my life with the most important person in my life.

On the other hand, I do actually have a life and friends and engage in activities that don’t interest, and therefore don’t involve my husband. Another close friend’s husband had an affair 20 years ago while she was taking care of her dying mother, homeschooling, and doing the bookkeeping for his business. The entire small town knew about it before she did, and it was blatant enough that women began calling to tell her what was going on. She was a very young, very Catholic stay at home mom with three little girls, and she insisted that it end, and then swallowed it, never discussed it again, held her head high, and constructed a very calm, deeply loving façade that she has maintained this entire time. He has always acted very loving and very attentive, but as they have aged and perhaps more importantly as their children have aged and gradually left home, his attentiveness has turned to hovering and a complete unwillingness to let her out of his sight. In the last six months, her youngest daughter got married and moved out of state, and her middle daughter and grandson moved out and to the other side of the country. He is ten years older than she is, looks ten years older than that, and she doesn’t look nearly her age.  If she actually does go anywhere – including a girls only birthday lunch or a wedding shower – he calls three or four times to make sure she is there and that she doesn’t need him to come and get her. She is starting to feel smothered and resentful, and I think he is desperately afraid she will find someone else if he lets her out of his sight! Unresolved issues??

I just do not see how ignoring a deep wound helps heal it. Any thoughts??