musings

[lynn]

Hello,

Wouldn't it be nice if there were truely a way to confirm that I am making the right decisions?

My N husband does not want to split up.  He is currently very sad.  He is struggling in many areas.  It is hard for me to watch.  He plans to move out tomorrow.  He is signing a lease on an apartment.  He said to me tonight, "I know you, lynn.    You won't be happier if we divorce, you'll be exactly the same person you are now except you'll have ruined us both financially.  How is getting rid of me going to help you find you?"  He went on to describe the enormous financial cost of a breakup.  

I don't love him.  Yet, I have supported him emotionally for many years.  He is a pretty good dad. He loves his kids and participates in their lives. He claims to love me tremendously.  He provides for us.  Works a lot.  Comes home every night.  

Yet, he has no empathy.  None.  In fact, one time when I queried him about it, he said that he felt that empathy was a sign a weakness.  I responded that he might be confusing pity with empathy.  And even after a lot of discussion, he couldn't identify what empathy ment.  

He perceives much of what I say as a threat or an attact.  Most of our arguement time is about whether or not I have said something incorrect or attacking.  I have compromised my words and opinions so much ... just to avoid the arguement repercussions.  It is exhausting. So often he twists things around so that I am the one at fault.  For many, many years I believed him.   I really thought that it was me to blame.  

Often my primary feeling is limbo.  I am waiting.  On hold.  It is hard to make decisions because everything feels wrong.

The hardest part is that I feel like an object in his life.  He cannot relate to me or anything that I am.  I believe that he respects the concept of me that he holds in his head.  In fact, I feel that he loves the "idea" of me, much more than the person me.  When he is away ( he travels quite a bit for business)  He loves me and talks to me and misses me.  But when he is home and my personality comes through, he rejects me immediately.

Because he works so much I have a great deal of time to myself.  I work and raise the kids and build my own life in the hours that he is away.  So I have not completely lost myself to this relationship.  

On the surface my life appears to be good.  My relationship is difficult but not horrid. Not compared to some of the extrodinarily difficult situations many of you have lived through.  

Presently, I feel unsure about the world and what it has to offer and if happiness or even happier is really out there.  Why is it that I can't be myself in this relationship.  Even before I was married, I had a hard time making friends and feeling close in relationships.  I have thought that I value freedom more than friendship.  Maybe what I am seeking does not exist for me.

Has anyone ended a similar type of relationship?  Was it better when you left?  What did you find on the other side?  

thank you,  lynn

p.s.
It's funny that this board is about "voicelessness"  A number of years ago, when we were in one of our extended bad times.  I used to describe myself as "mute."  I felt so unheard in my relationship that it was not even worth the effort to speak out loud.

[Anonymous]

Lynn I can see you're in for a time of a lot of soul searching and what an enormous step this is for you. I wish you well in your new life and hope you find the happiness you are seeking. I was reading through your story and am glad that he never fooled around with women and is a good dad and sounds like a hard worker and good provider. Hopefully he'll be reasonable towards you in this next phase of your life. His sadness now is the fruit from the tree that he sowed, because he's neglected you emotionally all these years and it sounds to me like you've argued and told him often enough. He will probably cry a lot and not understand why. I think if he was going to understand he would have by now. He's an emotional freezer. As cold as ice. You will probably experience doubts and fears, this is a normal part of change, especially such a big change as you are embarking on. Now you can focus on you and your happiness. There's no point to you being lonely in your marriage and no need. There's so much good information around nowdays which can help you discover who  are and what you want out of life. It sounds like you've been an accessory in this man's life for so long, that it may take a while to find yourself. That's okay. A friend of mine is married to retired merchant ships captain. All through their 4 children's growing up years and even when they were born he was away at sea. She had twins when he was at sea who didn't see till they were 4 months old. He was a seaman when she met him so she understood this when she married him. Sometimes he was at sea for 8 months at a time, before mobile phones were invented. I asked her once what is was like raising 4 small children almost as a single parent and she said to me, I was always happy even though at times I missed him terribly. She said they had three lives. She had her life, he had his life, and when he came home they had their life together. They are in retirement now and a very happy couple and she said she always knew back then that he loved her appreciated her and valued her and he listened to her and when he was home he loved her openly. That's what you haven't had and I'm surprised you've lasted this long, maybe that goes to show how strong you are. Their marriage survived tremendous distances of time and space because it was filled with love, understanding, appreciation consideration you name it. She also told me she always new that when he came home she had to keep her life in tact, friends family work social activities. She never dropped any of those things when he came home and still is actively involved in them now he's retired. And he's gotten involved in her life, not gone off to do things on his own. I think you've got plenty of living to do, and a whole unexplored adventure ahead of you once you take some time out to discover what you want. You've said you've got good memories of the years raising your children, and I'm so glad, and also he hasn't been a demon womaniser bludger bum. You've got assets, that's another positive. Lot's of positives to take forward with you as you learn from the past and create a new future for yourself.

You have my best wishes

Guest

[Portia]

Hello Lynn, you said this:

Why is it that I can't be myself in this relationship. Even before I was married, I had a hard time making friends and feeling close in relationships. I have thought that I value freedom more than friendship. Maybe what I am seeking does not exist for me.

Good questions and observations for yourself, completely apart from your marriage. The phrase “value freedom more than friendship” speaks to me because I used to do it, and still do to an extent. I guess once you have the time you’ll start looking at yourself and asking why you are as you are; and how that came about. Time to yourself is necessary sometimes.

I wonder, has there been strong emotion in your marriage? Anger, blazing rows, lots of tears, recriminations, moments of heart-swelling joy, lots of laughter? P

[lynn]

Hi Portia,  Thank you for your comments.  You asked, "I wonder, has there been strong emotion in your marriage? Anger, blazing rows, lots of tears, recriminations, moments of heart-swelling joy, lots of laughter?"

The answer is yes and no.  I  have tried to keep things at an even level most of the time.  When the kids were little, I wanted so much to have a happy family.  Dinner with conversation and interest.  It was easy for me to compromise in order for things to be smooth emotionally.  I thought I was making a happy home.

My N is emotionally all over the board.  He is frequently paranoid.  He swings from great confidence to complete insecurity.  The foundation of our life is always shifting, shifting, shifting.  He thinks constantly.  All day all night.  He plans and re plans.  He works constantly because he is so worried.

To circle back to your question, there has been powerful negative emotion.  Anger.  Arguements.  Accusations.  Name calling.  

But there are not times of joy, laughter, warmth. He does not share anything with me emotionally.  I can not remember any great warm, happy moments.  Certainly no shared heart-swelling joy, or lots of laughter moments.  It is as though no matter what is happening in my life... good or bad.... there is something happening in his life which is more important.

When we disagree, there is not a point that we come together and find common understanding... so the bad times kind of fade into neutral times. And the new measure for happy or good eventually becomes "the absence of bad."

Why do you ask?  lynn

[lynn]

portia,

I thought of one more thing... You said that you used to value freedom over friendship.  What is it like for you now?  How have you changed?  How have your values changed?  What have you learned?

lynn

[seeker]

Hi Lynn, Portia, Guest & all

Freedom v. friendship is a big issue for me as well.  For as long as I can remember, I felt rejected for being me.  I'm very much a loner and am still under the impression that this is a condition I need to learn to accept.  It is my position in the family to be the "good girl", "invisible", "don't be a problem", "you have nothing I want/nothing to offer unless you are serving me" etc.  

I have only realized now just how much of an impact this conditioning has had on my life.  In addition, and this is the big eye-opener for me, it was imperative that I remain a loner or I would be swallowed up by other people's expectations and demands, the obligations of friendship.  I would feel stifled, erased.  I would have to bow to another's will as it was always one way with my parents, esp. my dad.  My mom tends to martyr herself.  She did mom things for us, and would sometimes listen to our problems, but she really didn't validate or support.  Just listen.  It created a lot of doubt in my head.

The kicker is I then beat myself up by wondering if I am selfish for not wanting or being unable to give to a friend.  Only recently have I observed a few others nearby struggling with the same thing and realizing I am not defective, but human.

Of course my parents would be shocked by these assertions, even my H (a great listener, how did I find him?   ) argues this point with me.  My dad loves me as much as it is possible for him to do so.  But he's unavailable and NOT sacrificing in any way.  I will credit my dad with making appearances at key public moments willingly, but having a private two-way conversation is impossible.  It's tiring to do all the listening and makes me feel like a potted plant.

This is a key issue in my life and one I'm still trying to figure out.  It makes me feel very ambivalent about my family, you know, not bad but not great either.  I think this is the common point and why I am splatting all over your thread, Lynn!  

Anyway, thanks for letting me spill.  I look forward to reading everyone's thoughts about the balancing.  And good luck to you Lynn.  It sounds like there are many gray areas in the communication arena and that makes it all the more foggy!  Best, Seeker

[Anonymous]

He said to me tonight, "I know you, lynn.    You won't be happier if we divorce, you'll be exactly the same person you are now except you'll have ruined us both financially.  How is getting rid of me going to help you find you?"  He went on to describe the enormous financial cost of a breakup.

He sounds manipulative here. My impression is this marriage is extremely miserable for you. That's a legitimate reason to separate from him.

bunny

[lynn]

Seeker, portia, bunny,  Your thoughts and support are valuable to me.  I am not a particularly emotive writer and it is a challenge from me to make my written words match up well with my feelings.   I appreciate that you find my meaning.  

Regarding friendship vs freedom, Seeker said

it was imperative that I remain a loner or I would be swallowed up by other people's expectations and demands, the obligations of friendship

I understand how you feel.  Being a loner is one way that I have set boundries in my life.  One way that I sustained an independent me.  I don't have a lot of good role models in my life who showed me how to be a friend.  It often seems that there is something that I am missing.  A mistake in my wiring.

I don't yet know how to deal with the question. I would like to be able to be a better role model for my kids.  

(bunny, thank you for your insightful observation.)  

your friend, lynn

[Anonymous]

Hi Lynn

I wish I had been brave enough and smart enough to do what you are doing now. A few years ago the rows with my husband got to be so awful that I strarted to walk on eggshells to keep it nice for our kids and suppressed all my needs, in my head and heart and it built up like a pressure cooker. He's much bigger than me I'm 5'2 " and 52 kgs and he's 5'11" and 98kgs and one day he was screaming at me in the backyard because his mobile phone was ringing and he was skimming the pool and couldn't answer it. I was inside cooking with loud children running around being noisy and I didn't hear it. I got such a shock when he screamed at me through the kitchen window why didn't I answer the phone and bring it out to him. He'd missed an important call and screamed for the neighbours to hear how I was useless. I overreacted and threw his mobile phone at him and it landed in the pool. He went totally nuts and started screaming at the top of his voice the worst names imaginable and then came inside and bashed me with the kids watching. This wasn't the first time. Then when he went back outside to the pool trying to get his mobile phone out I called the police. He didn't know I had. When they arrived shortly after the kids were still in shock I had red marks up arms and on face and back. They put a DVO order in place for 12 months and he had to go to anger therapy. He was so good at manipulating me and manipulating my emotions that any time in the future that he threatened and sometimes hit me I would drag out that DV and say I was going to call the police. He'd say things like if you do I'll lose my job, I'll go to jail, I'm the only one who can bring in the money, the house will have to be sold, where will you and the kids be then. You'll ruin us financially if you call the police. This worked on me for a couple of years and I never called them, I kept having the DVO extended even though I wasn't using it. I know I was stupid but this is what I did. I swallowed the crap and worried about the finances with little kids, this played on my mind. I kept walking on eggshells. The constant repitition of a lie from him about the finances had lodged in my brain as truth, he'd done a good job and it made me feel guilty to think if I called the police I would destroy my children's home, future and financial viability. Then one day the truth dislodged the lie, partly because I had a good therapist who kept telling me he's lying, he's manipulating you, and I was fed up with him and me in the same sick dance. I realised, he won't lose his job, he's too cunning. I just new in a particular situation that I had to use the protection of the police for my kids sake, and that I had to call the police so I did. He was so freaked out and had to go through the court system for violating DV. He didn't go to jail, although he did cop a criminal record for violating a DVO, 2 year good behaviour, a restraining order and Child protection got involved because the kids had been subjected to DV. He didn't lose his job, I didn't lose the house, and he's still producing financially just as well as he was before. What he was using was a smoke screen for years. Powerless ghosts of fear and anxiety my therapist calls them. Once confronted these ghosts disappear. You're not going to ruin you both financially, and his comments about you still being the same are a ploy. He's afraid.  He knows you are not the same person you were last month let alone last year. No matter what happens you'll keep growing changing and learning. He's wrong.  Wishing you a happy future
Guest.

[lynn]

Dear guest,

Your story gives me strength and hope.  Thank you for taking the time to tell it.  I am glad that you are in a better place.  What is life like for you now?  Are you still married?  How are your kids?

I know about walking on eggshells.  It's so wierd to think about the things we have done to keep our families in tact.  The deals we've made with ourselves to keep it all going.  I wonder why it is so difficult to see the smoke screen?

lynn

[Anonymous]

Hi Lynn, he moved in to the  garden cottage out the back of the pool. He doesn't have akey to the house anymore and we've seperated our finances and I got a pretty good deal and he still supports us exactly the same. I still take care of all the bill paying and his income still goes into a joint account that I manage. I haven't suffered at all financially and my situation is so much better. He's gone to another anger management course voluntarily with a large organisation that is group therapy for men with anger. It was a 12 month course with 16 men in the group who had DVO's on them. He is a different person now to the one who went in. And the group had also has a once a month informal night where spouses and ex-spouses or significant others could attend and meet each other and share and get to know each other and discuss their spouses progress with the moderators. This was so therapeutic that I ended up enrolling in one of their other courses for victims of DV and learning how to recognise and break the cycle of abuse. That was areal turning point in my life. When he was first forced into the 1st program he hated it, and said he didn't belong with those misfits blah blah. After 6 months he started to see himself in others there and saw how he justified his own behaviour. After the first 12 months he started reading other material and now says he thinks this should be a compulsory subject taught to boys in schools. He had to watch video's which showed battered women's corpses, or in intensive care. He was shaken some times and had to journal for every weekly meeting about his anger patterns that week and then go through them at the weekly meeting which went for 4 hours. If he missed 2 meeting in arow he was out and if he didn't journal he was out and if he missed more than  meetings in the 12 months he was out. I still don't want to re-unite with him as husband and wife but I do still love certain aspects of him. He can be very funny. I'm so involved a whole new life though I don't think I'll ever go back. I've experienced this liberation feeling and do I want to risk it. I don't think so.

Guest

[Anonymous]

Oh and Lynn another thing that affected him when he went to the anger management course was that in one session they had a visitor who was a guy who had been violent with his wife a lot and he pushed her one time too many and she fell and hit her head on something, a coffee table I think and she died. He did time in jail for her manslaughter. They had a couple of small children who went into foster care while he was in jail. He had a lot of time in jail to think and learn and learnt about anger. He didn't get his kids back automatically when he got out of jail, he had to be able prove to the courts that he'd changed. Meeting this man and hearing his honesty and  what he'd done to the wife he loved and how he'd robbed his children of their mother because he was an emotional incompetent hit my husband hard. This was I think the turning point for him in beginning to take responsibility for his own anger and to stop blaming others. My children are benefitting from his change.

Guest

[Anonymous]

It's so wierd to think about the things we have done to keep our families in tact. The deals we've made with ourselves to keep it all going. I wonder why it is so difficult to see the smoke screen?

because its not all bad and there's that huge history of a shared life.

The pressures to stay seem enormous at first.

My h says I am always unhappy and I'll never change too, I smile at that now. its taken me years to see that I am actually a strong loving capable person, and that's what everyone but he and my father see in me.

Good book to read is Patricia Evans The Verbally Abusive Relationship to see how those words get twisted and what 'crazymaking' does to you over time.

I feel no anger towards my h now, we are together for the children who know nothing of our personal problems. There's been other changes and I don't want life to be continual turmoil, but when I feel we can all cope well as a separated family I shall file.

Good luck, even if you aren't ready to leave yet empower yourself with knowledge and self-esteem. Keep telling yourself its your life, they're your choices.

[Anonymous]

I hear what you say, thanks, it isn't easy sometimes is it. I remember reading here one lady said she stayed till her kids were grown up because she knew her husabnd would get some type of access and she didn't feel confident about if he had access that he'd treat the kids well, so she stayed till they were older and in the meantime she stayed and acted and lived as a buffer and focussed on her children and creating a good life for them. Then she seperated and and she said she sometimes wonders if she did the right thing and I think the right thing for you her what she did, because she tried to do the very best she could and she did put herself second in my opinion. I'm sort of doing the same thing I suppose. I have control of access my husband has because we live this way, he's stupid enough to leave dirty mags lying around if I didn't get on his case or drive with them in the car under the influence if I didn't have the control I have. It's too late to get his access denied later if he has a car crash and kills one of my kids, or they pick up a dirty mag at a vulnerable age. I'm the one who got into the relationship and had children to him and I'm the one who chose him to be the father of my children. I have a responsibility to protect them and am sure I'm doing a very good job, but it can be better and I keep searching for new and improved ways, till they're older and at early teens they'll probably choose who they want to live with which isn't to far away. I'm not too worried about that because as a person he's trying to be a better father and take more responsibility for his attitudes and actions. But it has been a very hard road, and I'm definitely going to buy that book.

Thanks

Guest

[Karin guest]

Hi Lynn and Guest,
First, thank you Guest for remembering me and my plight (the one who stayed). I also see the similarities in yours and Lynn's stories with mine, apart from the bit about the improvements in your H, Guest. Mine just got worse and worse.
Lynn, how old are your children if you don't mind me asking? I ask that because my H was also a caring, loving father while our 3 were small. He would take them to parks and places that they enjoyed and played with them. They all say that they also enjoyed their childhood with him. But, as they each began to mature (around 13-14) and began to exercise some individuality and test their own ideas with him, the problems started. I can't speak for him but my interpretation was that he couldn't handle the threats to his authority, he felt insecure with them not taking his words as gospel and he wasn't at the centre of their universe anymore. Big problem for an N. I had those problems with him as well of course.
We've been apart (officially) now for over a year but it's still not really over yet with a court case looming. He is one of those who tries to control through money. I'm not interested in saving $xxx on capital gains taxes if we sell this and that this financial year blah, blah. I just want it over with.
Good luck to you both, in the end you'll do what's right for yourself and your kids even if you have doubts all along the way.
Cheers, Karin.