Well, locked up my last thread, so I am going to start this one by reposting my summary - those of you who already know me can skip right to the second post.
My story: I'm 46, H 42, married 18 yrs. together 20, 3 kids S16 D12 S11. Backstory - night before our wedding old girlfriend seduces H. He spends next six months mooning over her and wondering if he made right choice. I know nothing until I find his journals six months into the marriage. Try to throw him out but he pleads. Eventually after I move to another city to continue my education he decides to recommit to marriage. We are happy, start family, life is good.
8 years ago I develop overactive thyroid, become spacy, loss of athletic capabilities, fatigue, gain 20 lbs.,etc. For various reasons pursue somewhat ineffective course of treatment until 3 years ago, disease flares up and am too fatigued and confused to continue working. Give up and take drugs for it (which have small risk of fatal disease). Numbers look normal but I never feel normal. After two years on drugs, make decision to kill off thyroid with radioactive iodine, become severely low thyroid after, takes 6 months to get thyroid replacement dose adjusted to proper level. Start feeling normal Nov. 2002.
H initiates MC 2 years ago. We go weekly but sessions seem focused on all his dissatisfactions with me and our mutual childhood abandonment issues (my father died, his mother left family in MLC). Things get worse.
Nov. 2002 - I'm finally starting to feel better. I find Michele's book. 2 days later H drops the bomb, ILYBINILWY. Spend November and December DBing madly. Because of improvement in thyroid condition am now able to work out and lose 20 lbs.H gradually warms up to me sexually, still no ILY's.
Dec. 29 - H wakes up early to "journal" then go surfing. Actually says ILY for first time as he leaves. Then I find his journal writings on the computer and discover: he started an affair one week after saying ILYBINILWY with a girl he had just met a couple weeks before. While we were on ski vacation before Christmas and having a great time together, he was still getting up and writing fantasies about happy second marriage with OW. H is planning separation. Kids find out, H comes home to tears and devastation all around. H tells me affair ended Thanksgiving weekend and OW moved out of town 2 weeks ago.
Dec. 30 - I announce to the board my intention to climb Mt. Whitney - to give me a goal to focus on outside the marriage and to celebrate my return to physical health.
January 2003 - H becomes very depressed after affair is discovered and seeks immediate psych visit - started on Prozac and individual counseling. Spends first three weeks of January very depressed - my concern for him overrides all else.
Last week in January, H still plans to move out Feb. 15, but starts to argue with me about child custody arrangements. I offer extremely generous visitation and buy myself a new bed because I don't want to sleep in old one with his memories when he's gone. Arrange for Feb 13th delivery.
Last weekend in January I go out of town on business trip with him for 2 days - seems a little better. H has insight with counselor about "longing", about how keeping one toe out the door in our marriage in case that "perfect" woman came along was a defense mechanism against the possibility of me abandoning him.
Next weekend - H actually feels happy! Is prozac kicking in or are insights from individual therapy kicking in? Unbeknownst to me, OW has been calling and emailing him throughout this past month. He is still drawn to the fantasy but starting to recognize her manipulative and self-centered side.
Second week of February - H informs apartment manager he is not moving in. Buys me red roses for Valentine's day and writes me a beautiful poem. Tells me ILY for Valentine's Day. We sleep together in my new bed. We go camping that weekend with kids and have a marvelous time.
Rest of Feb. - OW is still contacting H although he has asked her (not very forcefully) to stop. H finally tells me all this. Things between us are improving. He decides to write her a definitive "Don't contact me anymore" email but dawdles over it for over a week. I finally lose my patience just as he's coming to peace with the whole thing and letting go. We work it out. Go away on business trip together and ride hot air balloon over the desert.
March - I get my permits to climb Mt. Whitney. H is going to be my guide. We're both excited. I love him and he loves me. R is better than ever. He appreciates my strength and unconditional love when he was so confused. I know I wouldn't be here if not for Michele's books and the love and support of everyone here on the board.
June – we climb Mt. Whitney together! Our love is strong, although there are still issues to work through, but we are learning how to be more productive in how we deal with them.
Well -that's it. Unfortunately my original postings all got erased one day by accident, so I had to start using a different account, but I used to post as toughenoughforlove. I think most of February is in the Valentine’s Day – is it a massacre? thread.
Post Game Analysis What I did right: Act As IF - glass of wine, dancing in the kitchen to Tom Petty with beautiful meal prepared every night when H returned home - tried to stop reacting to his moods and just be in good mood myself.
Notes - kept index card with note in pocket - 180, act as if, do something different
Beginner's mind - let go of preconceived notions and tried to approach everything with a "why not?" attitude. This was also a 180 for me.
Validate, validate, validate - thank you Soup. Tried not to present my side but just validate what H was saying. Hardest thing I did but one of the most important.
Worked on myself - appearance, fitness, conscious living - at least other people were saying I was beautiful even when H wasn't yet! Didn't do it for H, but athletic companionship very important to him, my willingness to try new sports was something he really liked.
Loving detachment - got out of my defensive posture and let H's problems be HIS problems, not mine. Quit believing it was all about my flaws. Realized I could not control what he did, could only control my actions.
Act, don't react - tried to break cycle of reacting without conscious thinking first.
Emotional aikido - when I finally stopped fighting H on the separation is when he started to rethink it.
Sex - in this situation I refused to let our sex life die. May not work in every sitch but was important factor in ours.
Focused on baby steps.
WHAT I DID WRONG: Too much pursuing in the beginning. Fought the separation in the beginning - didn't respect H's need for space. Started to get into a little competitive space last week about the OW when I was getting impatient about the email; H really needs to see me as better than her and she is not worth my energy. Worried too much about things that never ended up happening - don't borrow trouble.
BOOKS THAT HELPED DR The Five Love Languages by Chapman A Year of Living Consciously by Gay Hendricks
ADVANTAGES I HAD Coincidental return to physical health at just the right time. H willing to see psych finally for his depression and start Prozac. H finally having insight into his own issues and able to see it wasn't about my imperfections. This board and its incredible support. Affair was already "theoretically" over when I discovered it. OW had moved out of town before I discovered A. H is basically a good guy whose needs weren't being met and had a crisis because of it. H's friends supported me and pushed H in right direction. I found Michele's book right before the bomb dropped. H lucked in to a pro-marriage individual counselor.
I mention these last things only so that those of you whose situations are not turning around as quickly will see that I had a lot of fortunate coincidences on my side. Patience and Discipline needs to be your motto.
Okay, well as most of you know from my last thread, we have recently discovered that D13 is anorexic and bulimic. We saw the therapist for the first time yesterday. She seems great and i am relieved that she doesn't view everything from a purely psychological point of view, she seems to have a handle on the biological stuff as well. She feels there is a definite OCD component with my D and recommended we get her started on SSRIs - since my H has done fabulously on Prozac for his depression, we will start with that. She also recommended starting her on birth control pills for hormone replacement. She still has her periods but they have gotten a little irregular and are probably anovulatory - your have to be concerned about preserving her bone density (and this is my child who has already broken 5 or 6 bones in the years past!).
D seemed to do okay with the therapy, and even ate more spontaneously after we got home than she has in a week. She is struggling with a lot of stomach pain, though, when she eats - because nothing works properly after a while when you've been abusing your body this way.
Off topic - we rented Radio to watch with the kids last night - what a fabulously uplifting movie - highly recommend it. Cuba Gooding Jr. is spectacular in it.
Oh - and in case you hadn't noticed - had to cancel my fabulous girl's ski weekend with SIL and her friends - was totally necessary, but boy, I was SO looking forward to a girl's weekend after the stresses of this last year!!
I am so thankful really that we have always had good R's with our kids, and that our marriage is stable now. I shudder to think what it might have been like to deal with this if H and I were divorced now. And she is such a great kid - certainly if any family has a chance of beating this disease, it's ours.
Never posted to you before, but often read your threads...
I, too, was an anorexic at about the same age as your daughter is now. I got down to 75 lbs...nobody knew what it was back then. My periods stopped and it took a few years of BCP's to get them back.
My anorexia started when we moved from one city to another during my 8th grade school year....I was a popular cheerleader with lots of friends, and I was uprooted and moved off for my mom's job (she was a single parent)... I now know looking back on it that this was my way of CONTROLLING something in my life...
Also, as a side note, it is believed that OCD and Anorexia are different manisfestations of the same disease...and lo and behold, I did also develop OCD in my 30's..( I am 42 now)...yuck. I control it now with anti-depressants.
Is there something in your daughter's life that she feels out of control of???either overt or hidden?
Hope she gets well soon...it is a dark place to be in.
It really seems as though the initial drive for my D was an obsessive drive to attain "flat abs". When situps alone didn't achieve that, she turned to an ED. In retrospect, she has also been a bit obsessive about other aspects of her appearance - never seemed out of the ordinary for a teen girl, but I can see now that her difficulty making decisions and constantly asking us for our input on what she should wear, how she should style her hair, etc. was probably a manifestation of the obsessiveness.
D has great friends, great R with me and my H, is a great student, athlete, and musician (with very UNpushy parents ). It would be easy to point to H and my marital woes as a trigger but therapist thinks the OCD stuff started before that, and I can see that is true. Really seems as though the only thing out of control in her life is the ED.
There is definitely an association between OCD and AN, interestingly also some reported cases of OCD and/or AN triggered by immune reactions to strep infections, so definitely a big biological component. There is a strong history of autoimmune disease in my family. Also a lot of depression (mostly untreated) in my H's family, and possibly my brothers as well.
What do you think were the most important factors in your own recovery from anorexia?
