I know exactly where you are in terms of having a poorly functioning/non-functioning xH. I know why you stayed because I did it for the same reason. On some level I was aware of the borrowed functioning and felt that if I removed myself from his equation he would fall apart and I worried that it would hurt my children, hurt him (who I had loved at one time), cause the whole "house of cards" to fall (it did) and all of that would make me a bad person, immoral (not married for life, unfeeling) etc...
My children appeared almost not to notice the divorce. It is only in recent years when he has been more and more scare yet calling on the phone to play on their emotions (I love you so much but "I'm not good for you to be around right now) that they have really suffered. They hurt for him and want to help. They want to help by living with him but then again they don't want to. It goes around and around. My 15 year old is handling it best, he was 8 when we split up. They have a friendly R but my son doesn't look for much action by xH. My 10 year old was really just a baby - only 3 at the time and as she is coming into her adolescence is mourning it as if it just happened.
Any way you slice it MJ - the piece of functioning you added to the pie just wasn't his to consume, it was yours. I know the feeling of incredulously watching this person who you loved at one time choose to fail. It is a jaw dropping experience, surreal. It is becaue of this that when I met H I told him that I was solely responsible for my children and their welfare, the same as if I had gone to a sperm bank. Anything H contributed financially or emotionally would be a lot like having a kindly Uncle not a Dad. And that has been just the way it has been. Currently, he has been promising the kids (particularly my DD10) that he is going to get a job and move here to be with her, probably get a house down the street. I think it would be nice for both of them if he did but he can't afford it, won't take the steps necessary to make it happen and I doubt if it will happen. I could be proven wrong and I hope I am.
Don't poison many of your conversations with GP with this topic. Your xH is now like the old friend you have to whom you don't lend money or make land deals with. Hopefully, there are a few fond memories and now just some tolerance. I'm sorry for the financial woes. Hold him to his part within the limits of the legal system but just don't fret too much because you know he won't/can't deliver.
'm guessing that GP would really like that description of him and how you feel with him
Oh, probably - lol. He says stuff to me like I'm the kind of woman who wears her heart of her sleeve but he won't take advantage. Which gives me a bit of a reflexive desire to tuck it back in my chest some but then I think "If that's true then I am one brave*ss bunkey to go around all vulnerable like that with my internal organs exposed" and I vow to myself to keep it hanging right out there free and open as best as I can.
I really liked the poem. I suppose that there is a difference between the malady of depression and the sin of despair. Depression being one of the weights to be carried and despair being what leads you down the path of desperation. I was feeling a little desperate about my business situation of the moment but then I had a better thought and I said to my sister/business partner "We just need to ask ourselves WWL&ED? -What would Lucy & Ethel do?- and we'll figure out a way for this episode to end on a happy note."
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Don't poison many of your conversations with GP with this topic. Your xH is now like the old friend you have to whom you don't lend money or make land deals with. Hopefully, there are a few fond memories and now just some tolerance. I'm sorry for the financial woes. Hold him to his part within the limits of the legal system but just don't fret too much because you know he won't/can't deliver.
Actually, GP had a similar but worse situation with the mother of his younger son so it's more like he's just giving me the advice he finally gave himself but with the advantage of being some years down the road from that relationship, like you and your X. Of course, your sich was/is actually worse because your kids were/are younger. The main downside for my kids is just that they might end up deprived of a bit of the extended financial adolescence that many of their peers will receive. IMO this has some benefits as well as costs so sort of a mixed blessing/curse. My son actually has a sort of manly job now which will probably give him some fallback job skills he can use in his future life so my maternal role has fallen to occasional inquiries about whether/when he might want to re-enroll in college and enrolling him as an official member of my Cookie of the Month Club. My daughter is almost certainly going to get a full-ride academic scholarship and my FIL is already giving her a monthly allowance/stipend. So really my financial problems are just short-term ones dealing with wrapping up the mess my 2bx left behind and unloading the "haunted" house in which my D and I are currently living like campers or good messy student dorm mates (she wears the same size as me in everything now so she steals all my clothes and yet I am not allowed to wear hers - lol)
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I'm the one who finally ended it and my reasons were pretty darn selfish. As far as I could see the man was a complete liability as a marital partner for the remainder of my life.
It wasn't just that he was a complete liability as a marital partner for the future... it's also that he was a liability as a partner (marital or otherwise) in the present. Would you be BUSINESS partners with your 2bx?
OTOH, I do totally get your thoughts about the moral quagmire of leaving someone because of problems of THEIRS that are related to a condition not of their choosing. What follows are philosophical musings based somewhat on my past experiences...
Sometimes people D because of personality or value incompatibilities. Both are able-bodied individuals with functioning real-world personalities, but there's a big disconnect. Like she wants babies and he adamantly does not. Or she is a church-going, candle-lighting, devout religious person, and he makes his living doing hits for the Mafia. Okay... these people go their separate ways. (Of course, some stay together and find a way to compromise.)
But what if one of the parties is dysfunctional physically, mentally, or emotionally? For the "healthy" person, it's a much more difficult decision. Should I stay with an alcoholic? How do I make that decision? A depressed person can be hell to live with... but what if it's not their fault? What if they're a returning soldier with PTSD and flashbacks? Of course you understand and don't blame them, but how long can you live with a man who insists on sleeping with a knife AND a gun under his pillow and who wakes up screaming several times every night? (No, that is NOT from my personal experience.)
The man I dated before my husband was in the ICU (in another city) when I called him and broke up with him. I just couldn't go another step with him. I felt bad that I was dumping him when he was down and out, but I figured that if he was going to have a bad reaction to being dumped, I'd rather it happen when he was in the hospital than when he was back at home alone. As it was, when he got out, he pursued me for another year, but I was firm in my decision.
My husband came with a truckload of medical problems that made our life hell from time to time. He hated what this stuff did to us as much as (probably more than because of HIS guilt) I did, but what can you do. Yes he did get treatment for depression, and it helped some. Yes he had the penile implant surgery. We were still sliding down the glass mountain with 20 hospitalizations/surgeries in 10 years. But I NEVER would have left him. Never.
I read a message board back then at http://www.wellspouse.org and there you will see stories that will curl your hair. Wives (or husbands) whose spouse had a traumatic brain injury early in the marriage that completely changed their personality. The TBI person IS a stranger, sometimes with enough memory loss that you literally have no history in common anymore. They can be an angry, out-of-control stranger who curses you every time you try to help them with anything. And yet otherwise they're perfectly physically healthy and will live for decades to come. What would your moral code say about D in a case like that? Do you just put up with it? I don't know the answer... some on that board have lived with situations like this for many, many years... not knowing what to do... raising children who never knew their parent before the TBI.
Back to Mojo (and I do appreciate the round-and-round you're going through): ask yourself this-- not that the answer will make your sitch any clearer... what if your H quit jobs, lay in bed all day, criticized your housekeeping, refused affection and sex because of a traumatic brain injury? Would you feel any more or less guilty about D? (There's NO right answer... I'm just curious how it would feel to you to cast it in a different light?)
Depression can be treated, sure, so can alcoholism... Your 2bx has already found another caretaker to put up with his b.s. If I had dumped my bf back when he was drinking, I'm SURE he'd have found someone else in a heartbeat (but what would she have done when he had his heart episode?).
To sum up: I do understand your "guilt" re wondering about leaving someone over something that is not "their fault." Even if he got treatment for depression, there is no treatment for being a horse's a$$, as far as I know. Some of his dysfunctional behavior was due to depression and fourish-ness-gone-way-bad, and some of that was treatable.
IMHO it would have been MORE selfish for you to stay with him in order to avoid feelings of guilt than it was to take the brave leap of casting off the task of fixing him and leaving him alone with himself.
As you may recall, I did try being business partners with my 2bx and it didn't go very well. The sad truth was that our ability to communicate with each other was so poor that we couldn't even do business meetings with each other. We were like toddlers engaged in parallel play.
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Back to Mojo (and I do appreciate the round-and-round you're going through): ask yourself this-- not that the answer will make your sitch any clearer... what if your H quit jobs, lay in bed all day, criticized your housekeeping, refused affection and sex because of a traumatic brain injury? Would you feel any more or less guilty about D? (There's NO right answer... I'm just curious how it would feel to you to cast it in a different light?)
I suppose it would depend on the possibility for recovery. If there was no possibility for recovery then it would be as if I was married to a stranger forever on and I would feel sad but not guilty about divorcing. The other difference with my situation is the fact that I really didn't make a fully rational choice to marry my 2bx. I was in no way, shape or form anticipating marrying anyone I might be dating at age 22. I was nauseous and sleeping 12 hours a day with first trimester pregnancy hormones up the ying-yang. Also, it was a situation where I wasn't asking myself "Is this the man I want to marry?" but rather "Is this the boy who will become a man to whom I will want to be married?". It was absolutely clear to me that my 2bx wasn't fully mature but I gave him some slack because he was only 24.
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MHO it would have been MORE selfish for you to stay with him in order to avoid feelings of guilt than it was to take the brave leap of casting off the task of fixing him and leaving him alone with himself.
Well, I think it's kind of moot because I just wouldn't have been capable of staying with him much longer. In the months before we separated I was having fantasies about just living as an anonymous person in an anonymous highway rest area because it would be so restful.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
IMHO it would have been MORE selfish for you to stay with him in order to avoid feelings of guilt than it was to take the brave leap of casting off the task of fixing him and leaving him alone with himself.
Lilly.. i find that to be really stretched reasoning. Do you think perhaps it is influenced by your earlier decision to dump the guy who was in the ICU. (ie: to make _yourself_ feel better about your decision?)
"selfish", is, literally, "thinking about yourself". Doing something to avoid guilt, does not make that act "selfish". Usually just the opposite. Often, (but not always) it is guilt, that causes us to act UNselfishly. If you see a beggar on the street, and you feel guilty that you have a comfortable amount of money and they dont... Does giving them some money, somehow become 'selfish'? No. Keeping the money, is the more selfish act.
If you give the money out of guilt, it doesnt make you "generous". But nor does it make you "selfish" either.
When faced with a choice between, "Do something difficult, for someone else, over the long term", or "ditch the person and put them out of your mind"... It seems fairly straightforward, that "actively doing something for someone else", is literally the less "self-centered" course of action.
Conversely, ignoring them, and going to be by yourself someone, is a choice to re-centering on yourself. ie: "self-centered". aka "selfish".
I dont see how turning your back on someone and forgetting about them, could ever be called "brave", either. It may or may not be the right thing to do. But calling it "brave", doesnt fit.
My current status: june 2006. Wife ran out and filed D. Finalized Jan 11, 2010, after 12.5 years M. 3 wonderful sons caught in the middle
This post is coming off as preachy to me and this is the sort of thing that people were talking about with you previously. There is an overtone of morality to it (your personal morality) and it's got that same parent (you)/child (Lil) flavor to it that Southern Girl was talking about.
Okay, let's admit that there is a downside to dating a man who treats you like a pet. GP implied that there would be some sort of surprise when I see him on Saturday so, of course, I had to try and get some info out of him and the man had the nerve to "JENNIFER" me. Sadly, I must admit that it worked. However, I must ask myself "Should I allow myself to be treated like a toddler monkey just because I behave like a toddler monkey?" and "Am I capable of not behaving like a toddler monkey or does the prospect of actually behaving like some sort of mature 42 year old woman who might say something like "A surprise, how pleasant. I shall calmly look forward to its revelation on Saturday." (as she looks up from her needlework or something like that ) make me feel like I might die from boredom." Anyway, I have semi-forgiven GP because later when I was making polite inquiries about the results of his yearly physical and I asked him if the doctor gave him a stress test, he cracked up and said affectionately "No, the doctor didn't give me a stress test. You're the one who gives me a stress test." which I choose to translate as "Being around a woman with your youthful Type 7 spirit will keep me young and energized like a good aerobic workout (of course, this is literally true in the sexual arena)" Plus, obviously I have to forgive him because there is going to be some kind of SURPRISE! on Saturday.
Last edited by MJontheMend; 10/26/0701:24 AM.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
It was actually all of your XH's other horrible traits that you wanted to get away from but the depression is what made you excuse some of behaviors and feel sorry for him.
Mojo, To be clear is this the right interpretation?? I really don't see his "mental issue" problems (depression and/or whatever) as the main problem. I see his selfishness, childlike behavior, inability to be a stable financial figure, cruelness, insensitivity, anger, not being a true father figure to his kids, etc. as his problem. This additional issues of depression or whatever were things you felt badly for and the reason why you excused his p!ss-poor behavior as a father and husband. At least that's how I see it.
While I rarely like the idea of divorce especially when children (whatever age) are involved, I do allow for extenuating circumstances and yours fits for me. I think you went above and beyond in making your marriage last for as long as it did. Your 2bx's behavior after the breakup certainly clinched it for me!!
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~Albert Camus
Dom, which do you think is the more difficult course:
1) Staying in a situation that is familiar, though problematic, when it's clear your partner is not holding up their end of things
or
2) Leaving the situation even though you suspect you will feel guilty about it and feel bad for your ex...
I say the LESS difficult one is #1. My evidence for this is the fact that people stay in these situations (like Mojo did) for years even though they are unhappy. Therefore, my conclusion is that it is more brave to do the more difficult thing, which is leave.
If you've ever lived with an alcoholic (which I presume you have not, just as you've never lived with a chronically ill person-- why is it you feel qualified to second-guess these situations with which you have had no personal experience? ...but I digress), you'll know that as the sober partner, you do not want to leave your alcoholic partner. You wish there were some way of making them stop drinking without taking drastic action-- any way-- but the only way is for you to remove yourself-- NOT NECESSARILY PHYSICALLY (did you get this part: not necessarily physically)-- but you cannot help the person until they decide that there is a problem. You have to save yourself. Your statement
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I dont see how turning your back on someone and forgetting about them, could ever be called "brave"
clearly reveals that you don't understand. Sometimes when someone is going down a hole, the best thing you can do is turn your back on them. You don't "forget about them"-- that is impossible. But you must stop being a crutch and a buffer between them and their problem. THIS IS A VERY HARD THING TO DO AND IT TAKES GREAT COURAGE. Ask anyone who has done it. It's scary. You're afraid of what will happen to them if you're not there to pick up the pieces. (But, as with Mojo's 2bx, usually someone like him will find another rescuer/caretaker pretty quickly.) It is very difficult to walk away.
I hope you're learning something about situations that you have not personally experienced. Stick around-- you'll probably learn more.
