So why "unwoven"??
This blog will be my space for recording our family's journey through separation and divorce. I'm calling it "unwoven" because that's what I feel I'm going through right now. My soon-to-be ex-husband has been an important part of my life for 30 years. He is not simply imprinted, but is woven into the very fabric of my life, which I am now slowly unravelling.
This is not an easy thing to write about, yet it is a topic that has a familiar ring to it for so many people. I never thought I'd be one of them. After all, it was my best friend that I married 20 years ago, not someone I'd only just connected with. This was a person I trusted more than anyone, someone with whom I felt my heart would be completely safe for the rest of my life. Who knew?
A little background ...
We were married on a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend in October, 1992. While many people head south for their honeymoon, we ventured north to be amidst the gorgeous colours of a Muskoka autumn. Our first two months together were blissfully happy. As we approached our first married Christmas, however, I detected a significant shift in how my husband spoke to me - demanding, argumentative, boldly provoking responses from me to which he then reacted in an extreme way. I felt totally confused and deeply hurt. And for the next 5 years, I tried to figure out what i was doing to make him so angry with me all the time. If I could just figure it out, I would stop doing whatever it was. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that his anger and bitterness may have had nothing to do with me at all. What I now realize is that, while I would have said that I knew his character better than I knew my own (after all, he'd been my closest friend for 10 years before we got married), in fact, I never really knew him at all. The person I knew and loved was kind, generous and caring; until I lived with him, I had never seen this other side, the side that truly is much more reflective of his real character. What I now realize is that I married a person with a narcissistic personality disorder (meeting every single diagnostic criterion).
At the time, I'd been a mental health professional for more than 10 years. You'd think I would have seen the pattern in my own relationship that I had witnessed so many times with families in my practice - when I think of things I said in defence of my husband, to try to explain away his behaviour both to myself and to the very few who actually saw it for themselves; when I think back to the times when I pleaded with him to tell me what I was doing wrong to make him behave the way he was towards me; when I think of the distracted days and the sleepless nights spent trying to figure it out for myself when he refused to tell me; when I remember the feelings I had when he would say such hurtful things to me, making me feel diminished and completely inadequate; when I remember all these things, it surprises me that I did not see them for what they were - reactions to verbal abuse from someone who clearly had mental health issues. I was what they call in therapy circles an "enabler" - creating, even nurturing, an environment in which his verbal and emotional aggression could continue to flourish unchecked.
I probably would have continued on as we were forever, focusing on enjoyment of the good times we had (and we did have those, no question) and trying to downplay and ignore the bad times (of which we had far too many). The problem really took hold, however, when the nastiness extended beyond me and onto our children.
Our kids have very different personalities. Our youngest has always been the one with the more intense nature - she would have been the child who called out, "the emperor has no clothes". Our son, the oldest, has been the peacemaker all his life - he would have been the one to say "I particularly like the velvet collar, Your Excellency". Both ways of being have their positives and their negatives. Our daughter ended up having far more open conflicts with her dad, to the point where, on several occasions, he responded with such anger and intimidation that she felt afraid of him.
He'd always been a very fun dad, and the kids always loved playing with him. Things shifted for both of them when they entered adolescence. As teenagers go, we have had it easy, with two of the least "typical" teens you can imagine. But it was hard for him to handle when they began to have their own lives. With our daughter, he became particularly nasty in how he spoke to her and in the things he said, making her feel guilty for simple things like playing with her best friend next door rather than helping him in the garden, even when she came home early from her play date and went straight out to help him. Having changed into her gardening clothes, she would go outside cheerfully saying, "I'm back, Dad!", only to be met with a gruff voice from an angry face - "Too late. I'm done. You made your choice". She would come back in feeling sad and guilty that she had let him down. No matter what I would say to assure her that she had done nothing wrong, that it was great that she had spent time with her friend and very kind of her to come home early to help, none of my words could counter-balance the damage done in that one brief exchange with her dad. Especially since it was not just that one brief exchange; there were so many just like it, and worse.
His demeanour became more and more negative towards her, more hurtful, and he began to berate her in front of her friends. Once, for a reason no one knows to this day, he went down to where she was playing and said to her best friend, clearly angry about something, "I'm sorry you have THAT for a best friend [nodding toward our lovely daughter]. I think you should go." Her friend left in tears, and our daughter ran to her room, inconsolable. When he found me comforting her, he snarled through his teeth at me, "just once, could you take my side". A moment later the doorbell rang, and guests arrived. His demeanour changed dramatically to his public self, the happy, gracious host, and when I arrived at the door he put his arm around my shoulder saying, "Sweetie, look who's here!" It's like the foundation under our feet was built on constantly shifting sand, and we were all expected to jump from one reality to another depending on who was present. It was crazy-making.
These damaging interactions with our daughter typically took place when I was not home, but even when I was present, it seemed there was nothing I could do to stop it. When I would speak to him about it afterwards, it only made things worse. He did not see he had done anything wrong, and said that it was my unwillingness to present a united front with him that was causing psychological damage to the kids. I told him that even if I agreed with his point, I would never ever stand with him when he spoke to her in this way. At first, she took it from him, but then began to stand up for herself. That is when the conflict really started, and he threw away what had been a very close relationship.
Our son had learned early on that if he challenged his dad, he received the same treatment as his mom and his sister, so he internalized his anger. He did what he could to "protect" his little sister - he would distract their dad away from her by "sucking up" to him. He would praise him and compliment him, wish him a great day, so as to move the attention away from his sister. He said once that he felt like the clown at a rodeo - distracting the bull so that the good guy could get away safely. This took a toll on him, though, in that he felt sickened at his own words - he said later that he often felt like punching him, but instead had to say such affectionate things to help his sister, and he was always afraid of how it must look to her (appeasing dad to secure a privileged position for himself). Sometimes, he would call me to come home from work to drive him to school and he would take his frustration out on my car door, slamming it shut, and punching it from the inside.
When he was about 14, he said that he believed something bad had to happen to him "to make dad realize he has 2 good kids and a really nice wife". He felt that since he was the favoured one, something would have to threaten his life to rattle his dad enough that he would see what he had by almost losing it. He told me he sometimes wished he could be diagnosed with a brain tumour or some form of cancer that at first seemed untreatable but then turned out to be okay, or that he could be hit by a car and in a coma for a few days. Something that would involve dad getting a call at work to say his son's life was on the line and that he had to come right away. I found this terrifying. I worried that he might try to stage something in order to have the desired effect. He asked me to see a therapist which I set up for him, then cancelled when his dad hit the roof about it. "I have never seen a single situation where a therapist has done anything other than make a bad situation worse". Not much of an endorsement for me, given that I had been a therapist for nearly 20 years. Again, how did I let his anger and nastiness stop me from doing what I knew was right? I still feel such shame about letting my son down in that moment. That is my work now, figuring that out, and practicing some self-forgiveness.
To make a long story slightly less long, things did finally reach a breaking point. I told him he had to leave. Our son showed me the scars on his leg where he had taken to cutting himself so as to release the anxiety and anger that was building up. If I had a top ten of the worst moments in my life, this would top the list. He would never have shown me his scars except that his sister told him he had to, that this would be the thing that would make me finally take action to end this awful chapter in our family life. And if I had a top ten list of shame stories, again this would be number one. The fact that our children had to reach this point, where they had to have this conversation at all, conspiring and looking for ways to finally force me to do the right thing - this is a shame that I know will take a long time, and very deep work, to resolve.
I told my husband about our son's cutting. He said I was lying. When it was confirmed, he could not deny it any longer. He asked our son if he wanted him to leave (such a burden on a 16 year old), and he replied by saying he felt he had two dads - the one everyone else saw, who was jovial and friendly, and the other (the one we saw when no one else was around), whom he described as "a little bit evil". And yes, he thought he should leave. Our daughter, when asked the same question, told him that she thought their relationship could only get better if they didn't see each other every day, so that he might forget how much she disappointed and angered him. And I told him I could no longer allow our kids to live this way and I was no longer prepared to be hurt myself. That was when he imploded. He sat catatonic on the couch for about 12 hours, barely moving, crying the whole time. What I see now, with the clarity of hindsight, is that this, too, was a manipulation. No doubt, he was hurting. But what happened that weekend was a recognition (for both of us, I believe) that his emotional aggression no longer held power over the rest of us, and that I was finally taking control of what was happening in our family. In what I now see as a last-ditch effort to retain emotional control (and frankly, it was highly successful), he told our beautiful daughter that he thought he might just take his life that weekend, and that it would be his gift to her.
The next four months were spent taking care of him emotionally, followed by a separation of about 3 months, during which I'd thought the kids would see him every week. They wanted no part of that and the therapist they were seeing agreed they needed a break. He and I attended marital counselling (again), addressing exactly the same issues we'd been talking about 10 years earlier, and 3 years before that. He was visibly a wreck, and yet I heard from others the angry undertones in what he was telling them, suggesting to me that nothing was really changing. He came home mid-autumn so that we could try again one last time. For him, it was the end of a difficult time but for us, it was a loss. Loss of the lightness and the happy atmosphere that had taken over our home from the very moment he left. We spent an awful, tension-filled Christmas together and by the start of the new year, he had taken on the identity of "an alienated parent". He was now claiming that I had turned the kids against him, and that every time I refused his help in the kitchen or said I could do something myself, I was telling the kids he was totally irrelevant in our lives. In reality, I'd learned that having him help me in the kitchen led to comments over dinner with friends ("yeah, she does the cooking and I get stuck with all the cleaning"), and by this point in time, I found this newfound desire to help and be a part of things with me to be completely artificial.
By spring, I was having health issues that were directly related to stress and I saw the kids still struggling to find comfort around him. I knew we could no longer live that way.
I went to a therapist myself, saying I knew what I had to do but couldn't seem to do it. I needed to understand why I couldn't end our marriage. Was it because deep down, I knew it was not the right thing to do? Or was I afraid and if so, what was I afraid of?
This is not an easy thing to write about, yet it is a topic that has a familiar ring to it for so many people. I never thought I'd be one of them. After all, it was my best friend that I married 20 years ago, not someone I'd only just connected with. This was a person I trusted more than anyone, someone with whom I felt my heart would be completely safe for the rest of my life. Who knew?
A little background ...
We were married on a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend in October, 1992. While many people head south for their honeymoon, we ventured north to be amidst the gorgeous colours of a Muskoka autumn. Our first two months together were blissfully happy. As we approached our first married Christmas, however, I detected a significant shift in how my husband spoke to me - demanding, argumentative, boldly provoking responses from me to which he then reacted in an extreme way. I felt totally confused and deeply hurt. And for the next 5 years, I tried to figure out what i was doing to make him so angry with me all the time. If I could just figure it out, I would stop doing whatever it was. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that his anger and bitterness may have had nothing to do with me at all. What I now realize is that, while I would have said that I knew his character better than I knew my own (after all, he'd been my closest friend for 10 years before we got married), in fact, I never really knew him at all. The person I knew and loved was kind, generous and caring; until I lived with him, I had never seen this other side, the side that truly is much more reflective of his real character. What I now realize is that I married a person with a narcissistic personality disorder (meeting every single diagnostic criterion).
At the time, I'd been a mental health professional for more than 10 years. You'd think I would have seen the pattern in my own relationship that I had witnessed so many times with families in my practice - when I think of things I said in defence of my husband, to try to explain away his behaviour both to myself and to the very few who actually saw it for themselves; when I think back to the times when I pleaded with him to tell me what I was doing wrong to make him behave the way he was towards me; when I think of the distracted days and the sleepless nights spent trying to figure it out for myself when he refused to tell me; when I remember the feelings I had when he would say such hurtful things to me, making me feel diminished and completely inadequate; when I remember all these things, it surprises me that I did not see them for what they were - reactions to verbal abuse from someone who clearly had mental health issues. I was what they call in therapy circles an "enabler" - creating, even nurturing, an environment in which his verbal and emotional aggression could continue to flourish unchecked.
I probably would have continued on as we were forever, focusing on enjoyment of the good times we had (and we did have those, no question) and trying to downplay and ignore the bad times (of which we had far too many). The problem really took hold, however, when the nastiness extended beyond me and onto our children.
Our kids have very different personalities. Our youngest has always been the one with the more intense nature - she would have been the child who called out, "the emperor has no clothes". Our son, the oldest, has been the peacemaker all his life - he would have been the one to say "I particularly like the velvet collar, Your Excellency". Both ways of being have their positives and their negatives. Our daughter ended up having far more open conflicts with her dad, to the point where, on several occasions, he responded with such anger and intimidation that she felt afraid of him.
He'd always been a very fun dad, and the kids always loved playing with him. Things shifted for both of them when they entered adolescence. As teenagers go, we have had it easy, with two of the least "typical" teens you can imagine. But it was hard for him to handle when they began to have their own lives. With our daughter, he became particularly nasty in how he spoke to her and in the things he said, making her feel guilty for simple things like playing with her best friend next door rather than helping him in the garden, even when she came home early from her play date and went straight out to help him. Having changed into her gardening clothes, she would go outside cheerfully saying, "I'm back, Dad!", only to be met with a gruff voice from an angry face - "Too late. I'm done. You made your choice". She would come back in feeling sad and guilty that she had let him down. No matter what I would say to assure her that she had done nothing wrong, that it was great that she had spent time with her friend and very kind of her to come home early to help, none of my words could counter-balance the damage done in that one brief exchange with her dad. Especially since it was not just that one brief exchange; there were so many just like it, and worse.
His demeanour became more and more negative towards her, more hurtful, and he began to berate her in front of her friends. Once, for a reason no one knows to this day, he went down to where she was playing and said to her best friend, clearly angry about something, "I'm sorry you have THAT for a best friend [nodding toward our lovely daughter]. I think you should go." Her friend left in tears, and our daughter ran to her room, inconsolable. When he found me comforting her, he snarled through his teeth at me, "just once, could you take my side". A moment later the doorbell rang, and guests arrived. His demeanour changed dramatically to his public self, the happy, gracious host, and when I arrived at the door he put his arm around my shoulder saying, "Sweetie, look who's here!" It's like the foundation under our feet was built on constantly shifting sand, and we were all expected to jump from one reality to another depending on who was present. It was crazy-making.
These damaging interactions with our daughter typically took place when I was not home, but even when I was present, it seemed there was nothing I could do to stop it. When I would speak to him about it afterwards, it only made things worse. He did not see he had done anything wrong, and said that it was my unwillingness to present a united front with him that was causing psychological damage to the kids. I told him that even if I agreed with his point, I would never ever stand with him when he spoke to her in this way. At first, she took it from him, but then began to stand up for herself. That is when the conflict really started, and he threw away what had been a very close relationship.
Our son had learned early on that if he challenged his dad, he received the same treatment as his mom and his sister, so he internalized his anger. He did what he could to "protect" his little sister - he would distract their dad away from her by "sucking up" to him. He would praise him and compliment him, wish him a great day, so as to move the attention away from his sister. He said once that he felt like the clown at a rodeo - distracting the bull so that the good guy could get away safely. This took a toll on him, though, in that he felt sickened at his own words - he said later that he often felt like punching him, but instead had to say such affectionate things to help his sister, and he was always afraid of how it must look to her (appeasing dad to secure a privileged position for himself). Sometimes, he would call me to come home from work to drive him to school and he would take his frustration out on my car door, slamming it shut, and punching it from the inside.
When he was about 14, he said that he believed something bad had to happen to him "to make dad realize he has 2 good kids and a really nice wife". He felt that since he was the favoured one, something would have to threaten his life to rattle his dad enough that he would see what he had by almost losing it. He told me he sometimes wished he could be diagnosed with a brain tumour or some form of cancer that at first seemed untreatable but then turned out to be okay, or that he could be hit by a car and in a coma for a few days. Something that would involve dad getting a call at work to say his son's life was on the line and that he had to come right away. I found this terrifying. I worried that he might try to stage something in order to have the desired effect. He asked me to see a therapist which I set up for him, then cancelled when his dad hit the roof about it. "I have never seen a single situation where a therapist has done anything other than make a bad situation worse". Not much of an endorsement for me, given that I had been a therapist for nearly 20 years. Again, how did I let his anger and nastiness stop me from doing what I knew was right? I still feel such shame about letting my son down in that moment. That is my work now, figuring that out, and practicing some self-forgiveness.
To make a long story slightly less long, things did finally reach a breaking point. I told him he had to leave. Our son showed me the scars on his leg where he had taken to cutting himself so as to release the anxiety and anger that was building up. If I had a top ten of the worst moments in my life, this would top the list. He would never have shown me his scars except that his sister told him he had to, that this would be the thing that would make me finally take action to end this awful chapter in our family life. And if I had a top ten list of shame stories, again this would be number one. The fact that our children had to reach this point, where they had to have this conversation at all, conspiring and looking for ways to finally force me to do the right thing - this is a shame that I know will take a long time, and very deep work, to resolve.
I told my husband about our son's cutting. He said I was lying. When it was confirmed, he could not deny it any longer. He asked our son if he wanted him to leave (such a burden on a 16 year old), and he replied by saying he felt he had two dads - the one everyone else saw, who was jovial and friendly, and the other (the one we saw when no one else was around), whom he described as "a little bit evil". And yes, he thought he should leave. Our daughter, when asked the same question, told him that she thought their relationship could only get better if they didn't see each other every day, so that he might forget how much she disappointed and angered him. And I told him I could no longer allow our kids to live this way and I was no longer prepared to be hurt myself. That was when he imploded. He sat catatonic on the couch for about 12 hours, barely moving, crying the whole time. What I see now, with the clarity of hindsight, is that this, too, was a manipulation. No doubt, he was hurting. But what happened that weekend was a recognition (for both of us, I believe) that his emotional aggression no longer held power over the rest of us, and that I was finally taking control of what was happening in our family. In what I now see as a last-ditch effort to retain emotional control (and frankly, it was highly successful), he told our beautiful daughter that he thought he might just take his life that weekend, and that it would be his gift to her.
The next four months were spent taking care of him emotionally, followed by a separation of about 3 months, during which I'd thought the kids would see him every week. They wanted no part of that and the therapist they were seeing agreed they needed a break. He and I attended marital counselling (again), addressing exactly the same issues we'd been talking about 10 years earlier, and 3 years before that. He was visibly a wreck, and yet I heard from others the angry undertones in what he was telling them, suggesting to me that nothing was really changing. He came home mid-autumn so that we could try again one last time. For him, it was the end of a difficult time but for us, it was a loss. Loss of the lightness and the happy atmosphere that had taken over our home from the very moment he left. We spent an awful, tension-filled Christmas together and by the start of the new year, he had taken on the identity of "an alienated parent". He was now claiming that I had turned the kids against him, and that every time I refused his help in the kitchen or said I could do something myself, I was telling the kids he was totally irrelevant in our lives. In reality, I'd learned that having him help me in the kitchen led to comments over dinner with friends ("yeah, she does the cooking and I get stuck with all the cleaning"), and by this point in time, I found this newfound desire to help and be a part of things with me to be completely artificial.
By spring, I was having health issues that were directly related to stress and I saw the kids still struggling to find comfort around him. I knew we could no longer live that way.
I went to a therapist myself, saying I knew what I had to do but couldn't seem to do it. I needed to understand why I couldn't end our marriage. Was it because deep down, I knew it was not the right thing to do? Or was I afraid and if so, what was I afraid of?
What was I so afraid of?
I knew it was the right thing to do. I'd known it for a long time, but felt completely trapped. When he told our daughter that he was thinking of ending his life and that it would be for her, he also shared with her how he would do it. He told her he would drive the wrong way on a major highway, make it look like an accident. For the next 6 months, it was what she pictured when she went to bed every night. Not a big transport truck hitting him, where the driver would not be hurt. And not just the horrific picture in her mind of her father being killed in such a way. No, she pictured him being hit by a car with two parents in the front and two small children in the back, and every night she would picture in her mind every variation on what might happen inside that car. What a terrible burden for a 14 year old to bear. As much as I didn't want him to do anything to himself because I wanted him to be safe and live a long life, I also knew I couldn't risk him harming himself, for her sake.
So, the reason I couldn't do it was not because deep down I doubted the fact that it was the right decision.
The therapist helped me sort through my fears, and there were several aside from his potential self-harm. I was afraid that I couldn't manage financially. I was afraid that the kids would have trouble adjusting to our new family situation, and that it would take a toll on their excellent school achievement and on their own relationships. I was afraid of the sadness I felt sure would fall upon me. I was afraid of how much I would miss him, and our life together - the dear friends, the family occasions, sharing the events of the day. And at the heart of the matter, I was afraid of his anger. I'd experienced enough nastiness from him when I wasn't breaking up our family, so I was extremely anxious about how his anger would manifest itself and how intense it might be when I made the decision to end the relationship. And with good reason, it turned out.
Ever since I started keeping a diary at age 13, journalling has been one way of sorting through my feelings and making sense of difficult times. This blog is my new journal. I now have a lot of work to do in order to understand how I failed to see the truth about my marriage - that I was living with someone who is intensely narcissistic with a mean streak a mile wide, that I was enabling his nasty behaviour, that I could see how my kids were being treated and the impact it was having on them, yet kept them in the situation for far too long. I knew that in public, he presented as a very different person than the man we lived with - if we'd separated when the kids were younger, there would have been no obvious reason for anything but shared custody. But since his anger was not specifically with me, I knew I could not put them into a situation where they would spend half of their time alone with him. Having worked in the system myself for so many years, how could I not find a way out of that trap? How was it that I could be a therapist and be a successful communicator in so many other areas of my life, and yet in my most intimate relationship completely unable to find and speak effectively with my authentic voice. Even now, long after our physical separation, how is it that he can still hurt me, and with such regularity and intensity?
As I move into the next phase of my life, I need to help our children heal from the damage done during this important time in theirs, and I hope to have sorted at least some of this out before I find myself in a new relationship (for my sake, and for any potential partner). As Sarah MacLaughlin says in her lovely song, "Stupid" ... sleep has left me alone/ to carry the weight of unravelling where we went wrong/ it's all I can do to hang on/ to keep me from falling into old familiar shoes.
Hence, "unwoven".
So, the reason I couldn't do it was not because deep down I doubted the fact that it was the right decision.
The therapist helped me sort through my fears, and there were several aside from his potential self-harm. I was afraid that I couldn't manage financially. I was afraid that the kids would have trouble adjusting to our new family situation, and that it would take a toll on their excellent school achievement and on their own relationships. I was afraid of the sadness I felt sure would fall upon me. I was afraid of how much I would miss him, and our life together - the dear friends, the family occasions, sharing the events of the day. And at the heart of the matter, I was afraid of his anger. I'd experienced enough nastiness from him when I wasn't breaking up our family, so I was extremely anxious about how his anger would manifest itself and how intense it might be when I made the decision to end the relationship. And with good reason, it turned out.
Ever since I started keeping a diary at age 13, journalling has been one way of sorting through my feelings and making sense of difficult times. This blog is my new journal. I now have a lot of work to do in order to understand how I failed to see the truth about my marriage - that I was living with someone who is intensely narcissistic with a mean streak a mile wide, that I was enabling his nasty behaviour, that I could see how my kids were being treated and the impact it was having on them, yet kept them in the situation for far too long. I knew that in public, he presented as a very different person than the man we lived with - if we'd separated when the kids were younger, there would have been no obvious reason for anything but shared custody. But since his anger was not specifically with me, I knew I could not put them into a situation where they would spend half of their time alone with him. Having worked in the system myself for so many years, how could I not find a way out of that trap? How was it that I could be a therapist and be a successful communicator in so many other areas of my life, and yet in my most intimate relationship completely unable to find and speak effectively with my authentic voice. Even now, long after our physical separation, how is it that he can still hurt me, and with such regularity and intensity?
As I move into the next phase of my life, I need to help our children heal from the damage done during this important time in theirs, and I hope to have sorted at least some of this out before I find myself in a new relationship (for my sake, and for any potential partner). As Sarah MacLaughlin says in her lovely song, "Stupid" ... sleep has left me alone/ to carry the weight of unravelling where we went wrong/ it's all I can do to hang on/ to keep me from falling into old familiar shoes.
Hence, "unwoven".