My XH sent me a check in the mail about 5 months post-bomb because he wanted to give some money towards vet bills. He wrote a note with the check: "I'm sorry that I had to become the worst person that you could conceive of in order to become the best person I could be. You don't deserve this. I am shocked at my own behavior. But it is what it is and I won't insult you by saying anything more about it."
Let that sink in, Tad.
The best person my XH could be was an adulterer who abandoned me? "it is what it is?"
THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS. There is no explanation. This stuff is in them from childhood. The MLCers have such similarities in terms of backgrounds. They are ticking time bombs. We ignore the signs because we love them so much. OR, we can't see the signs because they are such masters at hiding their true selves. I hope, I HOPE, that most of them get right somewhere down the road, for their own sake. But there is nothing you or I can do to hasten their recovery. They have to want it. BADLY.
Look I just read a book by Rachel Hadas, a memoir called Strange Relation. It's about her husband, who was once an accomplished composer and professor at Columbia who got some rare combo of types of dementia. She went from being his long-time love to his caregiver for years, till she could no longer handle him. He had gone completely quiet. He was, for all intents and purposes, "gone" to her, yet living in their house. She had to put him in a facility. He's never "coming back." There is nothing that can be done.
I met her at a reading of her work and told her that one thing she said really spoke to me as the ex-spouse of an MLCer. She said that the worst thing she felt when she "lost" her husband to this disease was that she had CHOSEN her fate, in that she one day a long time ago CHOSE a life with him. That the life she chose eventually became her prison, because what could she do when he could no longer remember her or the life they had? Abandon him? Or stay locked in this prison with him?
Eventually she chose to let him go. He's in a facility and she is getting her life without him back. She grieves SO deeply. But she had to let him go. The dynamic was destroying her.
The reason I'm relating this story to you is this: if you stay in this place where you are trying to break the code to the puzzle of why, if you stay in her drama, and if you do not get past it all, you are locking yourself in prison WITH HER. Have you seen Inception? In the midst of my crossroads, I saw that movie. It was a real eye opener for me. Watch it, you'll see what I mean.
Eric keeps talking to you about choice, which is exactly what he helped me with, and it IS about choice. You can choose to stop fighting what's going on. Accept that you will likely be divorced. Accept that you will be without her. Stop fighting it. Then move from there.
I forget where I read this the other day but I read that most of our pain comes from our failure to just simply accept our current situation. If we accept it, we stop fighting it, and our pain will lessen drastically.
Every time you see yourself slipping, visualize that you are in the doorway of a cell, and that cell door is shutting you in with her and her insanity. Push the door open and walk out. Leave her the "key" so she can get out WHEN SHE WANTS TO. But you need to walk out.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
