I discovered this site recently and have learned a lot by reading the posts. I am having a really hard time figuring out how to take care of myself in a healthy way right now and would appreciate any and all feedback from you. Mainly though, I would just like to not feel so alone with all of this. I've tried to condense things as much as possible, but this is still very long. I could probably fill an entire encyclopedia set with the details.
I have been married for almost 17 years to a woman (I'll call her “S”) and have been miserable from the beginning of the marriage. We both grew up in the same small midwestern town and were high-school “sweethearts.” S picked me out at a party and had a friend check the next day to see if I was interested. I basically said “Who?” since I hadn't really noticed her, but decided to give it a shot. The attraction was very strong between us right from the first date. We spent the next 5 nights going out together until her parents put a 2 date a week limit on things.
I was very happy to find someone who felt like my soulmate. I wasn't really looking for it at the time. I just wanted to have fun and take a date to all of the school dances. I was hooked right away by S's outgoing nature, since I am introverted by nature. You couldn't tell now! She loved to talk about all sorts of things including deeper issues and we seemed to agree well on most issues. She was usually the most outgoing person in the room, though never part of the popular crowd. After dating for several years, I asked her to marry me after I would graduate from university and we got engaged. We did some of those marriage couseling questionaires to make sure you knew the other person well before getting married and we agreed on almost every question. We congratulated ourselves on how compatible we were and how much we knew about each other. She was probably at my parents house more than at her parents and regularly ate dinner with my family.
There were signs that all was not well, but I was blinded by love and didn't appreciate them at the time. When I would tease S or when she would get angry she would give me the silent treatment. She would refuse to look at me and refused to say anything. I would be the one to break the silence by badgering her to start talking again. After a couple of years of this, it happened once while I was driving her home. I pulled the car over and told her that I thought her behavior was very childish and that I didn't want to continue seeing her if she was not willing to discuss problems with me like an adult. She said that she wanted to continue seeing me and the silent treatment went away for a while. Also, she had a little saying that went “What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine!” We used to laugh about that while dating. Unfortunately, she meant it a lot more than I ever imagined. These were really the only times we fought and everyone remarked on how well we got along, without the usual highschool drama. I do remember one prophetic comment an older person made that we were in for a lot of problems later if we never fought, and learned to fight, early on.
During this time S was still living at home with her parents after high-school. Her parents provided everything for her, her Car, insurance, meals, laundry, shopping, cooking, etc without requiring any rent and only an occasional chore from her. I told her I thought it would be a good idea for her to move out on her own for a bit before we got married so she could get used to being independent and doing things for herself. She said it sounded like a good idea, but couldn't disappoint her mother, who needed her. S was working full time at a local retail store and payed for her own gasoline, credit card, etc.
S made a quick stab at the local community college, but dropped out in less than a semester. She didn't discuss it with me beforehand but informed me afterwards because she thought she would disappoint me by dropping out. I felt disappointed that she didn't discuss it with me beforehand and seek my support with her decision, but I respected her decision that college was “too hard” for her right then.
One weekend she stayed with me at university. We fooled around and she got pregnant. We were already planning to get married, so from that standpoint there was no problem. Neither one of us wanted an abortion as we both loved this child as soon as we found out. We had a small whirlwind wedding with family and close friends just a few weeks later. Before the wedding, S came to me and told me she had quit her job. I was again hurt that she had made a major decision without even hinting to me that she was going to do that or discussing it with me. During the wedding planning, S disagreed with the dress her mother had picked out for her and insisted on getting the one she liked. Her mother called her “reckless” and said she didn't know her daughter anymore and emotionally withdrew from S for several years. Her mother was very unhappy that S moved to university with me.
She came to live with me in my apartment at university with my two other roommates, since I wasn't able to get out of the lease and couldn't afford to pay two rents. We had one bedroom and they shared the other. There was only one bathroom. Not a good situation at all, but we moved to a private apartment after a few months, as soon as the lease ran out.
The first day she came to live with me, I came back from classes and S was sitting curled up on the sofa staring at the television. I could tell something was wrong by her body language and how she would not look at me. I asked what was wrong and she said “Nothing.” I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her and she shrugged it off and said “I don't want to be touched right now.” I asked again what was wrong and she replied very angrily “There's nothing wrong, I don't want to talk about it!” The whole time she would not look at me. I told her that I would be there for her and I was sure this was difficult for her. I told her that I loved her and wanted to do anything I could to help her. I told her that I would be the strong one and support her and that when she was ready to talk or needed a hug to just let me know and that I would give her the space she needed in the meantime. After all, she had gone from being the pampered baby of her parents to wife, mother, independent adult, and roommate of people she didn't get to choose in just a few short weeks. That would be enough to freak anyone out! To make a long story short, though, she didn't come back to ask me to talk with her or comfort her physically with a hug or holding hands. Not over the course of the next 16 years.
At first when she moved in, she wanted me to completely take care of her, do all the chores, work part time, etc. all while I was taking a full classload. After about a week I told her that I needed some help and that she needed to contribute to our relationship too. She agreed to start doing the wash and to start grocery shopping and cooking some meals with my help. Except for two months during the pregnancy, she had horrible morning sickness all day long. She was ten pounds lighter when she had the baby than when she became pregnant! This had to be the worst trauma time of her entire life. She felt physically ill, her mother withdrew from her emotionally, she was living in a difficult environment for several months and had to learn to do all the things to live as an independent adult.
I tried to be as understanding as I could be, but as time went on I was getting increasingly depressed and frustrated. Of course, there was very minimal sex, but also things like an arm around the shoulder, holding hands, hugging etc. was also not allowed by her. When I tried to do these things or comfort her, she accused me of just wanting sex. I felt very hurt, because I cared about her very deeply and felt unable to help her. When I talked, S went along with what I said, but didn't follow through with the commitments she made. When I asked what was wrong, she just said she would try harder to follow through. It became apparent after a while, that she was simply saying whatever she thought she needed to to keep peace, and had no intention of actually keeping these commiments. She told me that her mother had raised her that the man was the head of the house and it was the woman's duty to go along with whatever he said. Not that she actually did that, but I told her that I did NOT want that kind of relationship, that I wanted her as my equal and partner. She said that she knew that, but felt that she had to follow what her mother said. Funny, but I never did really see her do that. The only concession she seemed to make to that approach was to withhold her feelings and thoughts and simply agree with whatever I said. It was so bad that I had to make sure that she gave her opinion first so I could trust wether she was telling the truth or not.
After the delivery, S developed symptoms that have eventually been diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by elminating other, similar conditions. She has been in pain for many years and takes a lot of tylenol to combat it. At first she moped around with a “Why me?” attitude and made little attempt to get out. I noticed that the CFS pain seemed to be much worse when she was stressed and hopeless and much better when she was up and moving and active. I still believe that a lot of of this is controlled by her emotions and mood. When I suggested this to her she accused me of not believeing that she was in pain or that there was actually anything wrong with her.
I made all kinds of excuses for the problems over the next several years, including the changes and stresses of the beginning of our marriage, and also added that after the baby is born, after the baby sleeps through the night, money was tight, I didn't spend enough time with her due to work and class, etc. I told myself that when all these stresses went away, our close relationship would return. Where S had been the most outgoing person around before, she now found it extremely difficult to make any friends and became a homebody. This was also made worse by that fact that we only had one car that I drove to school. She sometimes dropped me off and picked me up, but found it too hard to do most of the time with the baby.
I began to notice what I called the Dance of Death about this time. Everytime I took a step toward S to help or support her, she would get more distant from me. When I stopped, she stopped. When I retreated in pain and hurt, she would then start pursuing me and ask why I was so distant and blame me for being unavailable. I would then think she was ready and take a step towards her, starting the whole thing again.
I graduated, got a job out of state and moved. Her mother was so upset about this and taking her granddaughter, that they left in the middle of the night without telling us when they had been staying with us. Well, we had moved to a nice house and started making friends with the neighbors. The baby was older and slept through the night. I had a good job, made good money and only had to work 40 hours a week rather than the 60-80 I had done at university. Almost all of the previous excuses and external stresses were gone. But still when I brought up any issue, no matter how small it seemed to me, she said “That didn't happen!” I thought OK, she has her own viewpoint and experience so I asked her what her impression of the event or issue was. She said “I don't know, but that didn't happen.” This happened whenever I tried to talk about us or feelings. I thought that maybe she felt I was too angry and so I tried to reassure her by keeping my voice low and even and telling her that I wasn't perfect and didn't expect her to be, that I wasn't out to get her, but wanted to discuss changes that would allows us both to be happier. None of that seemed to help. In fact, she always claimed to have no memory of me ever offering to be supportive, or talking calmly, but only as angry and frustrated. There was definitely that too, since I couldn't figure out what was wrong, why S reacted with such hostility to me and what, if anything, I could do to improve the situation.
Well my fantasies that it was just the external stresses and situations that had caused the problems between us were shattered. I didn't know what else to do but keep trying to talk it out with S. I tried being rational and demonstrating that the events I wanted to talk about had happened by pointing out the obvious consequences from thoese events. Of course in hindsight, being rational only made things even worse, since she had emotionally held beliefs, not rational ones. Without being able to find out what was wrong, I began to feel more and more helpless and ineffective as a person, though I didn't seem to have these kinds of problems with anyone else.
All of that pent up anger inside S had to go somewhere and it usually came out passive-aggresively. For example, she would often promise to do something, but not do it and procrastinate getting it done until I had to step in to take care of it so it didn't affect me. If I reminded her to cash the checks at the bank, she wouldn't, just to show that she was in control and didn't have to listen to me. It got so bad that I really cut back on saying anything to here for fear of how she would use it against me. This was by far the most common way she expressed herself and destroyed most of the trust that I have lost in her.
During this time, I started to notice that when either family came to visit, S would take the opportunity to make snide comments about me in front of our guests and blame me for problems and sigh about how bad I made things for her. I asked her to stop doing this privately, but she denied that any such thing had ever happened and couldn't even imagine what event I could be blowing out of proportion to think it was. After several years of this, when she did this to me in front of my family in a resaurant, I gave it back to her and chewed here out loudly in front of my family and the rest of the diners. She was mortified in front of other witnesses and that was the last time she did it, though she expressed fear after that of having guests and another conforntation. She never did admit to remebering doing any of those things. In her experience, I was the nut case, because I would suddenly respond to things she had no memory or experience of.
While S had always spent all the money, and I mean all the money, around this time she started to make bigger and bigger charges on the credit cards. When I confronted her and asked her to stop, she simply denied that any such thing had ever taken place and wondered what was wrong with me. I did check and all the charges were with her card at local shops that were here favorite spots. She had come into the marriage with credit card debt, which I paid off when we got married. We had to put things on the credit cards to make it through university before I had a full time job. Once I started working, we started paying those cards down and made significant progress. However, with her new spending, the balance on our credit cards eventually hit over $82,000! To be fair, some portion of that was to pay for my therapy, since we no longer had the cash, since we had to pay a sky-rocketing credit card bill each month. She simply denied that it was happening and refused to look at the credit card bill when I showed it to her. I was afraid that she could divorce me and get all the money if I kept the money from her and took her off the credit cards. That seems ridiculous to me now, but I was already headed toward other problems. I finally told her that I would divorce her immediately, no questions asked, if she charged anything like that ever again. She hasn't charged like that since I stood up to her. Also, I have always had to fight her to have savings of any kind, including retirement and 401k. She wants to be able to spend as much as she wants and has only grudgingly ever worked with me to try to figure out how to pay for everything.
After several years there I got another job several hours away and we relocated. The loss of my social support combined with the stress of living with someone so angry and hostile, while trying to understand and improve the situation was too much for me. I began to believe S that the things I remembered seeing and hearing didn't actually happen and that I had hallucinated them. I felt that I could no longer trust any of my experiences, feelings or thoughts since they conflicted so badly with S's absolute, unquestioning confidence. This turned to self-blame and took me from long standing dysthymia (sp?) that I had been unaware of, to full blown depression a year later. I was in therapy for major depression for 7 years, including individual and group. I took Zoloft 5 of those 7 years, which completely killed my sex drive. That was actually a relief to me, since I felt I no longer had to ask S for sex every night so I could try to catch the 1 night every 2-6 months where she was willing. I found out recently, that when I brought the long gaps between intimacy up in the couples counseling, she had started a calendar and marked each time we had sex. She was convinced that my experience was wrong and she wanted to prove to herself that her feelings (not memories) were correct that it was much more often that what I had said. I told her I was very hurt that she had kept a calendar of how long between sex and used that as a guide to how often she decided to “give in” instead of working on bridging the distance between us.
In my therapy, I learned that I had many issues from growing up in an emotionally unavailable, emotionally neglectful, and angry home with my parents. It just seemed totally normal to me. I was amazed when others reacted so strongly to my story in group. It didn't seem worth mentioning when there are so many people out there who are physically, and sexually abused as children. What seemed really strange to me were people who grew up in a loving home where the parents talked with their children.
My mother always seemed to be angry, so I learned to avoid her. My dad was pretty much non-present whether he was physically home or not. I basically learned that tolerating an angry, emotionally unsupportive environment was “normal.” I coped with this by becoming an “adult child” and taking on a lot of responsibility for myself. I learned to put my own Christmas presents together and read directions to learn how to play new games. My parents never once expressed that they were glad I was there or was an important member of the family. At home, it was OK to talk about facts, but nobody every talked about their feelings or explained anything having to do with emotions, getting along with others, how to fix relationship problems, or how to have a good relationship. Basically, both my parents were depressed, with my dad the classic shutdown case and my mom the angry, jittery type. I obviously had a lot of factors pushing me toward unhealthy relationships and depression.
Once I began to regain connection with my feelings, I asked S to start joint counseling. We each had a therapist to be on our side and balance power and all four of us met together for the joint therapy. During this period S would snort and roll her eyes dimissively when I talked, both in and out of the therapy. When the therapists saw this, they both told her it was inappropriate and wrong to do this. S only lasted 4-5 sessions before she claimed that she did not need to go anymore since her therapist “told her” she was “perfectly fine and didn't need therapy.” During this period when I was in in therapy, I primarily concentrated on working my own issues, since I really didn't have the energy to take on anything else. S took every opportunitiy to kick me while I was down during this period and repeatedly told me how she was “perfectly fine and could have a good relationship with anybody, just like that. You are the one who brought all of the problems into our marriage!” I told her that I believed we both had issues that we brought into this relationship. She just snorted and rolled her eyes.
It was also during this time that she told our daughter that she didn't feel safe talking with me and that it was OK for my daughter to not talk with if she didn't feel safe either. Well, of course that put the idea in my daughters head and there has been a lot of emotional distance between my daughter and I for a long time. (I'm making up for that now!) Recently, when this came out in counseling, S did take the initiative to talk to my daughter, explain that she was not right to do that and suggest that it would be OK for my daughter to start talking with me again. I believe that his came about because she has always prided herself on “putting her daughter first” except when it comes to working things out with her husband. Also, I believe she was embarassed in front of an authoritative witness, the counselor. Now that I think about it, I 'd bet the reason S finally agreed to see this counselor is that she's an older woman and can fulfil the authoritative mother role for S.
There were other ways in which S always tried to work things out for my daughter with me instead of allowing us to work it out ourselves so we could build a strong relationship. S saw herself as our daughter's saviour, since I was obviously such a dangerous, demented person. I'll just mention at this point that I don't do drugs, am not an alcoholic, and have never ever hit anyone, nor will I ever do any of these things. Being depressed and over-controlled does have some advantages at last!
I feel that I made it through recovery for depression despite my wife, rather than bacause of, or without her. When I left therapy, I continued to work on some loose-end issues for a while and then dived back into trying to work on my relationship with S. She told me she thought there was something wrong with me for continuing to bring up the same issues over and over again. I never had a chance for any closure on these issues with her since she denied they ever happened, let alone have any chance for healing or growing closer together. I tried to impart some of the things I learned from my counseling. She was unwilling to go along with mirroring back what each other said to make sure that the message was received correctly. Interestly, this is one of the things she claims to have mastered in more recent counseling. During this time I begged her to go to any knid of counseling or therapy at all and find the kind of help I had found. She claimed that it would be too expensive, even though I assured her I would do whatever it took to pay for it.
Starting about two years ago, I began to find myself feeling increasing rage with her when trying to discuss anything. I would sometimes just start screaming and swearing at her, way out of proportion to the issue. I was and am afraid of feeling so out of control and that's not how I want to resolve issues. I don't expect that behavior to be successful or help, but just to cause even more problems. It was around this time that I began to think seriously about divorce.
Last Christmas we were back visiting our families for the holidays and S's mother called to say that they were having her brother and his family to stay over rather than have us stay as planned. Her brother had been estranged from the family for some time. He was adopted and had gone off to live with his biological parents for a while, moved back, got married, had an affair, got divorced and alienated his parents in the process. This rift with her mother caused S enormous distress and she almost couldn't function at all that day. My daughter and I told her that we would support whatever decision she made about seeing her family and going to visit. The next day after several phone calls, she reconciled with her mother we went to visit.
A few days later I lay awake all night with thoughts racing through my head and wasn't sure why. The main thought I had was “No matter what I do or don't do, no matter what I say or don't say, how come it doesn't matter?” over and over. I just couldn't comprehend it. Finally, it hit me “No matter what I do or not, or say or not, it doesn't matter.” It was a fact and I simply accepted it instead of denying it and fighting against it. I realized that what had prompted this revelation for me is that S was far more upset over a fairly minor tiff with her mother than she had ever been with our whole horrible marriage. Her relationship with her mother was obviously far more important to her than our marriage had ever been. Shortly after returning home, I told her that my needs were continuing to go unmet with no way I could see for me to have a positive impact on the situation. I asked if she had any positive feelings towards me whatsoever that a relation ship could be built on. She thought for a while and replied that no, she couldn't find any good feelings for me. I told her that I didn't see anything else to do but get a divorce. Despite having no respect for me or positive feelings towards me she said that she wasn't happy with the situation, but didn't want it to end. I pointed out to her that she still got to live off my money, but I got nothing at all in return from her and was unwilling to continue such a lopsided relationship.
We told my daughter about the divorce together, and I have never felt lower in all my life, not even in depression. I consider it my number one job to help my daughter learn to be a happy healthy person and protect her, and here I was the one who was causing her such deep hurt. On top of everything else, I harbor a huge amount of anger towards S for driving things to this point.
When we told family and friends who had seen us together, they all said that they were not surprised and had seen it coming. For a long time we had not been close in any way, and I was surprised by how obvious it was to others.
S's main concern and source of anger towards me as we talked about plans and dividing over the next week or so was all about money. This included comments like “What do you care, you'll have a lot of money?” and “Must be nice to have all the financial power?” in a sarcastic hateful tone. I just let it roll off my back, I no longer had to care about she felt, what she thought, what experience of mine she would deny or what nasty, passive-agressive thing she was planning to do to me next. I don't remember ever feeling so free and happy. Besides, she was drastically minimizing the amount of effort and time I had put in to reach become an skilled and valuable employee.
My father-in-law called and asked why I wasn't willing to go to counseling. I was surprised and told him that I had been begging S to go to counseling of any kind for years, and that she had always refused in the past. He told me that that's not the story he got from S, and I told him that I did not want to badmouth S to him. S had mentioned counseling when we talked about divorce, but I reponded by saying “Do you really think that would do any good at this point?” It never even entered my mind that she could be serious about it. I figured she was just feeling me out to find if I was serious about divorce this time or just another time of me saying I couldn't take it anymore, but staying and continuing to try anyway. I went back and asked if she was serious about the counseling and she said that she was.
She had a flyer for an Imago couples retreat she got from one of the divorce lawyers she saw and after reading the Getting the Love You Want book behind it, I agreed to give it a try. BTW, this was the exact same retreat I had asked her to go to years before after she left the couples therapy, but she didn't remember that. Go figure.
At the retreat, there was a moment where I believe that she saw me as a human being for the first time in her life and cried. At the end, each couple stood in front and told each other what the learned and changes they were willing to make. I told here that I was putting away the exit of Divorce and wanted to work things out with her. We both cried and hugged, which was the first physical contact we had in about two years.
As part of this process we take turns talking on alternate days. The process is where one person talks and the other mirrors to make sure that they got it right. When the talker is done, the listener repeats it all again and says what about it makes sense to them to validate it and then gives their understanding of the talkers feelings about the subject. At first I was very hopeful, since S was stretching by trying to talk about things and listen to me. After a while, I began to feel more and more used, since S claimed she was now doing everything right and I should be grateful, and that I was holding HER back by talking about how my needs were still not getting met. You see, I had another of those unreasonable expectations, that if we were able to talk about things, we would be able to work our issues out. After all that worked great for me with everyone else in my life.
In fact, I now believe that my mere presence triggers her to be distant and unapproachable. This works at home and also at counseling, anywhere, really. If I'm in the room, she needs to view me as being just like her mother, out to merge with her and use her and she has to protect herself. I believe that she does this because as much as she hates the kind of relationship she had with her mother, it is the only thing she knows and can believe is possible.
As time has gone on, S has found ways to do this process to the letter of the law, but without compassion or empathy that I can see. Where the idea of divorce left me feeling free and hopeful, I have been feeling more and more used and angry. S does just enough to claim that she is doing it just right, but that there must still be something wrong with me that I am not grateful and all our problems are not solved. She still makes all the same claims I have heard since day one, that she is fine, she knows what my needs are, she can meet my needs, and she wants to do it, but that I am somehow always keeping her from actually doing it. When I ask for more than just her word on these things, to hear what lead her to find the empathy, develop the understanding or master the skills she had been lacking before, she has no answer and just shakes her head about how I hold her back from being to treat me with respect or take action to meet my needs.
She now claims that she wants more physical contact like hugs, hand-holding, and love pats. However, she is unable to explain why this change came, or whether she will ever be able to have a healthy sexual relationship. She absolutely refuses to talk about sex, what the problems were and are for her, and what she feels she would need to be able to ever engage in sexual activity. I don't trust this and am not willing to jump in on this until I know it's not another attempt to control me. She has an invisible line between physical contact and sexual contact, but can't tell me where it is. I'm tired of being criticised for crossing the line that I didn't know was there and still don't have any idea where it is.
Each time we talk now, I simply feel used and grow angrier each time. The last time we talked I told her flat out that I did not take her word for anything and that I had to see the actions or at the very least hear the specific experiences which have lead her to now be willing and able to treat me better and meet my needs. Her excuse is that she's always felt this way and nothing is really different, that I'm still stopping her. I'm afraid that she may be right that nothing has changed. That doesn't give me any hope, though.
As time goes on, I have been thinking more and more about divorce. She points out my commitment to her to close that exit and the retreat and wants a written commitment to keep divorce closed no matter what. I agree that it would be breaking my word to do that at this point, but I am so low and hopeless, I don't really care anymore. I feel that she will use the “no matter what” of that agreement to do whatever she feels like, but will still hold me to meet comittments. I strongly suspect that she knew she would be unwilling or unable to do what was necessary to really work out issues between us, but was willing to go through the motions to prolong the income from me and to get me in a position where she can claim that I'm the bad guy, breaking his word. I am so tired of feeling manipulated and controlled by S, even though I know it and choose not to go along with it.
At this point I just don't care anymore. I don't care if I really did hallucinate my entire life up to this point and have all kinds of social, mental, and emotional problems remaining. I do not deserve to be treated the way that S has always treated me. I deserve at least the hope of finding someone out there who sees value in me and is willing to work together to create a good relationship where we both are equally valid and get our needs met. I can no longer find it in myself to even pretend that I trust or like S or have hope that we can ever work out our problems. Of course, as in the past, the closer to hopelessness I get, the more optimistic and promising she claims to feel, continuing the Dance of Death. I just dread that continuing and never stopping until one of us dies of old age.
Why have I stayed? A lot of reasons. Fear. I told myself that this was my last hope at a good relationship. Thank God, I no longer believe that one. Fear that no-one would believe me, since S is much more socially adept and liked than I am. Fear that if I left, S would start to take these things out on our daughter. I still have those two to some degree, but feel like I could deal with them if they happened. The Love that I had for the person I thought I was marrying. I now realize that the person I thought I was marrying never existed and was just a false front S put up to lure me in. When she had me, that went away and the real thing came out. A lot of stubborness and making excuses why things hadn't worked out yet. These are mostly gone now. Unwillingness to admit failure. I have failed in some spectacular ways written here, but no longer fear that this means I am unworthy of love and caring. I'm sure there are more that I haven't even realized yet.
Recently I did some core transformation work in counseling. This helped me tremendously. I feel much more connected to everyone and everything, including God, by listening to those little voices inside my head, honoring their intent to help and protect me, and working with them to find a better way to keep me safe while allowing tmore needs to get met. It's quite a moving experience that I highly recommend. This closer connection has allowed me to give this relationship and everything in my life up to God. I wasn't expecting it and didn't plan but was just ready for it, I guess. I'm obviously Codependent, I have stayed in a very unhealthy relationship for a long time convinced that I can make a difference, when the other person has no intention of changing. I plan to start going to CODA meetings after the holidays and start a 12-step program. I could really use the understanding and support, as well as the challenge to keep me making progress in my life.
I have managed to learn more about S over the past several months. Actually, I have learned more over the last several months than the previous 16 years. Her mother emotionally incested her. I have seen some call it covert incest. There was no sex or physical abuse. S was the chosen one and mother's emotional partner, instead of her daughter. Her mother made her sit down and figure the finances and how they would pay all of the bills since money was so tight. This was at 8-10 years old! Her mother repeated things over and over to her. She told her that she was the only thing keeping her alive and that she wouldn't be able to live without her. S was repsonsible for her mother's life! Her mother refused to see anything less than perfection in S and was very disapproving if she ever expressed her own thoughts or feelings. S learned that she had to anticipate her mothers moods and take care of her feelings, since her mother claimed she was unable to do so herself. She constantly talked with S about all the problems she was having with people at church and how bad and dangerous people are. S learned to listen to the same repeated stories that never seemed to change and to suppress herself to anticipate and meet all of her mother's emotional needs. Her mother was a huge martyr and would lay guilt trips on S every chance she got. Even when S got something special, she learned that meant you had a debt and an obligation to the giver that you had to fulfil. There was never anything given freely, even love, there was always a string of obligation attached. Nothing was ever given to her just because S was a good, deserving human being, only as a tactic to create more obligation and control.
It makes sense to me that S would hate hearing the same things over and over again from me. That she would supress her awareness and feelings to keep the peace. That she would be able to give to others and see that as good but be afraid of the perceived obligation that would come from receiving good things from me. That she would be afraid of being merged or overwhelmed if I get too close and keeps a safe distance with the Dance of Death. That she would be unable to see the inherent human worth of me, because her mother did not see or admit it to her. That she would use denial as a way to try to avoid conflict, since her mother would rather not be aware of anything she didn't like, so S learned to do so as well. That she would be unable to successfully resolve problems, because she has no practice at it and no trust in talking to work things out. That she would see me as an object to be used to meet her needs since that's what her mother did to her. That she would see me as a bully come to swallow her up, since that's what her mother did.
I am afraid that S picked up so many and such strong Narcissitic traits that she will never be able to break free of that trap. That she will not be able to remember that I am a feeling human being, not an object to be used to meet her needs however she sees fit. That she will not be able to break her fear of intimacy and get rid of the Dance of Death. That she will never be able to have a healthy sexual and physical reltionship. That she will never be aware enough of her words and actions both while and after they occur, to have a relationship based in reality. That she will not be able to break free of denial and change her behavior, because she has already convinced herself that she has done so. That she will always blame me for problems so she can still look at herself as the perfect helper that her mother forced her to pretend to be. That she will never be able to see a relationship between equals, but always feel she has to fight for the powerful “one-up” position to avoid being the victim, the only two positions she knows. That S will never be able to realize that I am not “just like her mother” but see me as I am. That she will never trust that I am not a monster out to gobble her up, but someone who wants to be happy and help her.
Wow, I'm impressed if you read the whole thing. I've tried to be as objective as I can right now, but you get the idea. Thanks for reading this, drop a reply if you feel so moved.
