Almost 8 years ago, I quietly left my emotionally abusive ex-husband, with whom my relationship had been over, really, before it began. 19 days later, I met my new husband. For several years, it was like a fairy tale. We clicked instantly – it made me believe in love at first sight – we laughed and sighed and made everyone around us feel like they were going to vomit. But there were blips on the radar of what was coming. About every 6 months there would be a meltdown. It would only last for a few hours, but they would be turbulent and scary. Never violent, but loud and irrational. But, every relationship has problems, and 6 months of happiness on either end of a few-hour crazy spell seemed as close to perfection as this world allows.
As you correctly predicted, I’m sure, the blips began getting closer together, and things just started to seem kind-of off. Not horrible, really, just not quite right and not quite good. Our family physician diagnosed my husband with “severe clinical depression” after doing nothing more than giving him a short questionnaire (a rant for another day, I suppose), so he started antidepressants. They helped some things, and made others significantly worse.
We plugged along.
Three years ago, things got very bad. A series of events led to the externalization of the storm of emotions within my husband . . . but mostly anger. Actually, all anger. Really, for him, all negative emotions are anger.
We plugged along.
A year and a half ago, he began having inappropriate relationships. They weren’t cheating, really. Just . . . not discouraging a couple of women from trying to get him to cheat. I found out shortly after they started, and it would really have been fine, except he lied. And lied. And took smug satisfaction in the visible destruction of my psyche, because all the anger that was boiling inside him was, he believed, my fault.
Really, this only lasted a few weeks. It turned me into a crazy stalking snooping psycho-bitch, which I never thought I could be, seeing as prior to that time I had been a very non-jealous wife. I’m not proud of it. It’s quite embarrassing, in fact. I expect I could write a lot more about that (probably justifying my behavior), but I’ll save it for another story.
When he woke up from the rage-induced mania he had been racing through, he was filled with remorse. He was filled with realization that there was something really wrong with him. (This is not to say that the behavior is in any way excusable even if caused directly or indirectly by serious emotional problems. And, of course, the whole story is far from contained in the two paragraphs describing this event, and I hope you, reader, will trust me, writer, when I say that there was much more at work than revenge and selfishness.) He saw two psychiatrists and one psychologist regularly for many months, tried countless medications, dosages and medication combinations, and tried on several different diagnoses. Eventually, “bipolar spectrum disorder” was settled upon and “treated.”
He moved out.
It was always to be a temporary arrangement; something to allow him to get better without the complication of our relationship getting in the way. It was to let him do what he had to do to heal, and to let me have some reprieve from caring for and coping with a mentally ill husband.
He moved back in after little more than a month.
It was partially because of financial concerns (he worked part time at a retail job and went to school full time – basically, I was supporting two households), but primarily because we ached without each other. We were soul mates. We perhaps are soul mates, if such a thing exists. There is certainly some deep, inexplicable connection between us. It’s gotten me through a hell of a lot that I don’t think I could go through for someone I was not so irreversibly bound to.
We plugged along.
I don’t remember how or why it happened, but eventually, the reality about his psychological problems surfaced: he was severely emotionally abused as a child. It left him a shell of a person. To protect himself from the pain of abuse, he became a sort of automated system where he would read a person’s needs, and then fulfill them, regardless of his own feelings or thoughts on the matter. He never learned about himself. He is completely unaware of his own interests, desires, needs, and feelings. He was everything I desired in a man when I met him because he saw what I wanted, and became it. A relationship chameleon.
The problem with being a chameleon is that it builds a metric fuck-ton of resentment inside you. Here you are, magically becoming whatever everyone in your life needs, and nobody is meeting your needs. They can’t, even if they try, because you haven’t the foggiest idea what your needs even are. You can’t meet your own needs, either – you don’t even know what you like to do for fun. You’ve spent so much time changing your colors for those around you, blending in so you don’t inspire conflict, you don’t know what your real color is anymore. You’re completely reactionary, made of mirrors and empty inside.
Remember this next time you meet a chameleon and he seems a bit put-off. Be extra nice to him. He probably needs a hug.
This, of course, explains the every-six-month meltdowns. He had previously been unable to stay in long-term relationships because being a relationship chameleon becomes unsustainable after a time; there is too much resentment. But, I’m fucking fantastic, and he couldn’t allow himself to miss out on the perfect woman. Besides, he didn’t know he was a chameleon . . . he thought he had just been waiting for the right woman to be able to have a sustainable relationship.
It also explains the so-called “manic” behavior of pleasure-seeking without regard for consequence. You feel ignored long enough (even if you really aren’t being ignored), you run out and get un-ignored, no matter the cost.
I don’t know exactly how to explain my experience through all of this without it seeming hyperbolic or dramatic. I have lived with an emotionally incomplete man for years. I have gone to great lengths to nurture him. I have wracked my brain, and that of my friends, family, and therapist (p.s., I love you, Dr. Maxwell), to find the best ways to support him. I’ve measured my every word, it seems, to prevent hurting him, making him worse, or tapping into the undercurrent of rage within him. I’ve done more than my fair share around the house when he was going through depressive states, and I’ve panicked at what may happen when he was going through pseudo-manics. I have not had my needs met much. I’ve spent hours and hours talking him through irrationalities. I’ve made appointments because he wouldn’t, I’ve been in charge of medication, I’ve had to call home many, many mornings to make sure he was out of bed. I’ve endured so many conversations where I was seen as The Enemy, someone out to get him, even though all I’ve ever wanted was to help. I’ve been called selfish even though I’ve given the better part of the last 8 years of my life to trying to help him get better.
I’ve also seen glimpses of the most wonderful man, in the few moments of clarity and openness he’s been able to share with me, just to have him stolen away again a few hours or days later. A man I could, and would, give anything to spend my life with. I’ve been loved like few people in the world seem to be loved. I’ve been needed, appreciated, comforted, safe, admired, desired in the most beautiful ways.
Except I guess I can’t give anything to spend my life with that man inside the chameleon. Glimpses of him are too few and far between. I’m emotionally exhausted. I’m out of hope. I’ve been dangling from the end of a very long rope for three years. I’ve been giving everything I have and receiving very little in return.
I can’t plug along anymore.
He is moving out again. After the most recent meltdown, we both independently came to the same conclusion. I can’t do this anymore, and he doesn’t feel like he can do this to me anymore. He is finally in therapy to address the root cause of his problems – the abuse he endured as a child – and the therapy is intensive and requires dredging up every old injury of his past. Things will get worse before they get better. And I have nothing left. He said to me last night, “I feel like I am destroying something beautiful, a monster crushing a flower, and I can’t make it stop.” (Note: I am apparently the beautiful flower in this scenario.) He’s right. This relationship is destroying me. And if I am present, if I am expected to support him through this therapy, it will consume me entirely.
It feels incredibly ironic (and like I am an incredible hag) that it is when he needs me the most – or I feel like he does, at least – that I am unable to be there for him.
You know, this is actually the very, very short version of this story. I have not given myself the nickname “Blatherskite” for no reason.
I’ve felt my heart break countless times during this relationship, and I’m always surprised that it’s able to break just as painfully each subsequent time. I thought scar tissue wasn’t supposed to have nerve endings, or something.
For now, I’m numb. But I have moments . . . tonight at Lowe’s, trying to buy paint samples for the bedroom I will soon sleep alone in, and the couple in front of me in the checkout line was being almost comically affectionate. I had to check out quickly so I could rush to the car and sit bawling in the parking lot.
When I left my ex-husband, I felt two things: fear of change, and relief. There is no relief here. I am angry that I have seriously busted my ass to make this relationship work, to be the person my husband needed, to support him and help him so he could someday be what he calls a “whole person,” healed from the abuse, and that it didn’t matter. I am filled with despair that I am finding myself alone, and it isn’t my fault. I am sorry that I couldn’t be the person I needed to be in this relationship. I’m angry that I can’t be angry at my husband for this pain . . . it isn’t his fault, either. I am worried for my children, though slightly less worried than I might normally be because they loved Daddy’s old apartment and have encouraged him to move out again often (as long as it’s to an apartment complex with a pool). I am embittered that life is so cruelly unfair. And I am heartbroken.
You know, I was wrong, or I might have lied because it’s a hard thing to admit to myself: there is relief. It has been a really long time since my home felt like a safe place for me, where I was allowed to just be. It will be nice to have that back.
But it keeps resounding, racing from my mind to my heart and back again: I have so little control over anything in my own life. I tried so hard to do everything right. And it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. None of it gave me a husband who could fully love and nurture me. None of it healed him. None of it has helped us progress, really, from where we were three years ago. I’ve changed, sure, and I suppose it’s probably for the better. That’s great and everything, but I would honestly prefer to have not changed and to get to live with that guy inside the chameleon skin.
This is, again, intended to be a temporary separation . . . but a complete one. And it will last for at least a year; anything less than that will not be enough time for either of us to do much healing.
As cold as it felt in my marriage sometimes, I’m afraid it will be so much colder outside it.
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