Author Topic: for those grieving over a relationship...  (Read 1646 times)

Hopalong

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for those grieving over a relationship...
« on: May 21, 2007, 11:30:33 PM »
Here's Cary Tennis' column today. It seemed so relevant I decided to paste it in. I hope it helps, alla-y'all.
Love, Hops
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Dear Cary,

Last year, at the age of 36, my husband of seven years went through a full-blown "midlife" crisis triggered by his needing reading glasses. Over a period of eight months, he exhibited all the standard-issue symptoms, including buying a sports car and expensive gadgets, having regrets about missed experiences of youth, wanting more space and having an affair with his married subordinate, which he still denies. In the beginning, he talked much about the thoughts in his head -- the confusion he was experiencing. The only thing he could not talk about was our future together. We tried couples counseling without success -- I had too many questions about "us," and he had no answers.

During this time, I went through the emotional stages of grief -- denial, anger, depression and bargaining -- and in this last phase, I somehow lost myself (complete annihilation of the ego and self-esteem). Three weeks ago, we filed for a divorce and all I am left with are unanswered questions and hurt.

So, my questions are as follows:

1. Is a midlife crisis real or just a means of shirking responsibilities and ending relationships?

 2. How do I find myself again and experience the last stage of grief -- acceptance?

3. How do I stop loving him?

Midlife Crisis Widow

Dear Midlife Crisis Widow,

I think those are good questions in a general sort of way, but I cannot answer them in a general sort of way because there is nothing sort of general about what happened to you. Whatever wrenching, shattering, intimate crisis and transformation you are having trouble getting over happened between two loving, complicated individuals in a complex and intimate embrace. No one who did not know you both well, not an author of books about the stages of grief, not a psychologist, not an Internet advice columnist can tell you what order you have to have your pain in.

Nobody can change what he did or how you feel about it by giving it the right name. Nobody can fix the way you're feeling by placing you in the correct statistical cohort of women whose husbands of seven years leave them at age 36 for reasons incomprehensible and possibly manufactured or cribbed from daytime television.

Maybe that makes you feel better or maybe that makes you feel worse, but it's supposed to make you feel better. Maybe not better right away but better in the long run. Because in the long run you are going to need everything that happened between you and everything you believed, everything that glittered but turned out not to be gold, everything you were looking for in the mirror of his heart, all the plans you drew for the lake house, all the annuities you enumerated for the long pensioner's twilight.

You hear what I'm saying? You need to go through this. You come on like you can't wait to close the book and chalk it up to a syndrome. I want you to go through this, every inch of it, and know it, and learn from it, and live with it, and come out of it somebody with new strength and dignity and a quiet inner peace that comes from mature pain and angelic meditation day in and day out as long as it takes.

Maybe he lied to you and was a real shit but you were in love with him and married him and unless you were asleep during the wedding and honeymoon and seven years of cohabitation and commingling of finances and cousins and car payments this meant something and was worth something and losing it is going to hurt for a long time but not forever. That's as finely as anyone can pin it. Things are going to happen to you as you go through this, things that you don't understand and aren't ready for. All I can say is: Feel it all. Don't run from it. Don't drug yourself away from it. Don't drink yourself numb to it. Feel it and trust it and keep going. It will reward you in the end.

So how do you find yourself again and experience the "last stage of grief" and stop loving him? It happens at some unspecified moment after you pound your fists on the wall and shatter some glasses and get the second car put in your name and paint the walls and plant the plants he never liked and go out with some friends who never knew you were even married to him. Somewhere along the way after doing what you have to do in your own way in your own time, not calling it healing and not scheduling it on a white board but just bulling your way through it with the uncomprehending determination that is sometimes called faith and sometimes called the instinct for survival and sometimes called a necessary belief in a nourishing fiction, you are going to be talking on the phone or eating or opening a window or just walking dully along and you are going to notice that he's not in your head anymore, he's not shadowing you, he's not pulling you down and you don't even care anymore about what happened or how he left, in fact you hardly notice he's gone except that it is notably quieter in the area of your heart.

Something like that, I believe, is what will happen for you in due time, and you will receive it as a gift; you will see that this was not some shitty accident on the way to an appointment with life but life itself, your life, your fate, with bloody scratches from your own fingernails dragged heavily across its back.
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

hurting

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Re: for those grieving over a relationship...
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2007, 06:39:02 AM »
Nice article! Thanks for sharing.  The feelings of loss, and the pain of a loved one leaving are crushing to me.  These kind of acts leave deep wounds and it will take alot of meditation, therapy, support, before one's self esteem can move forward.  In this path there is a lesson... hopefully of becoming a better human being.

Hurt

WRITE

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Re: for those grieving over a relationship...
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2007, 03:23:15 PM »
this meant something and was worth something and losing it is going to hurt for a long time but not forever. That's as finely as anyone can pin it.

exactly.

Good piece.

I have never stopped lovign ex, though I have to say once the scales fell from my eyes I don't like him a lot of the time and in particular I don't know how I lived with such negativity. I guess it helped manage my bipolar mania  :) but gee, he's like a joy-extractor.....

this was not some shitty accident on the way to an appointment with life but life itself, your life, your fate, with bloody scratches from your own fingernails dragged heavily across its back.

if there's one thing I wish I had done differently it is- I would have let go of the 'hope' sooner; either accepted him and the marriage for what it was or just given up on it.

It was the trying to fix what wasn't mine to mend which left blood under my fingernails....


WRITE

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Re: for those grieving over a relationship...
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2007, 05:59:04 PM »
I wish I had spent more of my life doing things that were productive instead of playing games with him--

and that's where I am now CB, I am makign a great life for me and if I make room for a man it will be for love and companionship and fun- not me trying to solve all his problems and re-parent him.

What on earth was I thinking back then....?????

Brigid

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Re: for those grieving over a relationship...
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2007, 09:36:11 AM »
CB,

Quote
I wish I had spent more of my life doing things that were productive instead of playing games with him-

I have these same regrets and wish I had seen the light much sooner than I did.  When I shared lunch with my ex and 2 kids last Saturday after my son's college graduation (which was the first time we had had a meal together or even a conversation that lasted longer than 10 minutes for 3 1/2 years), and listened to him yak on for nearly 2 hours, being the child that he is, always wanting to be the center of attention, I realized how much I don't miss that.  I was so glad that I no longer have to be his mother and feel responsible for his inappropriate behaviors and remarks.

Hops,
I really liked the article and the advice that was provided.  Everything he said is so true and in order to get over it, you do have to go through it--not under, around or over--but through it, in order to process all the various stages of grief and anger so you can finally get to resolution and acceptance.  It is the only way to move on and once again be happy.

I just have to say though that when did 36 become mid-life??  What the heck?  I'm 56 and I consider myself just past mid-life.  Since when at 36 do you feel that life has passed you by and you cannot do the things you always wanted to do?  I really think that in her case the ex was having the affair, which brought about the purchase of the sports car and other changes of behavior.  He probably also bought new underwear and clothes, spent more time with his appearance, and changed his sexual behaviors.  All the classic signs of an affair.

I think when an h or w has an affair, we want to attach something to it that makes it not about the other partner.  I tried to use that mid-life crisis excuse with my ex too (which age-wise would have been a bit more appropriate), but I don't know that such a thing really exists.  We all go through mid-life questioning and examining and perhaps exhibit behaviors which are out of character, but having an affair is just bad behavior which is totally selfish and cruel.

Thanks for sharing the article, though.  It really is wonderful advice for anyone who is grieving the loss of a relationship.

Brigid

axa

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Re: for those grieving over a relationship...
« Reply #5 on: May 24, 2007, 01:08:13 PM »
oh how I regret every minute I spent with the creep.  And boy was I a nice Momma............NEVER AGAIN

Write,

You have no idea how many times I ask myself was I on drugs or something... How I stayed in that mess for so long.......... XN and family are crazy people and I was in the middle trying to make everything "normal".  THEY DON'T DO NORMAL.  I knew that early on wish I had ran as fast as I could then.

axa