Into Extinction – Day 96 ( Abuse and Love)

I met an old friend on the street yesterday.  I hadn’t seen this individual in about 8 years and a lot can happen in 8 years.  The pause and the conversation had me thinking of those things that had happened and eventually the conversation turned towards my family.  He asked how my wife and the children were.  I told him I was divorced.  “Oh” he said.  Sadness in his eyes.  Interesting, I was thinking, he was treating this like someone had died.   Before I would have loved to regal him with what had happened leading up to my divorce but I no longer feel the need to do this.  I have no interest in dumping my emotional garbage on someone else.  Well onto today’s topic. 

 

Your next relationship or mine as the case may be.  I highly recommend therapy.  Um, not for the person that will be dating you but for you (might be a good idea – but it’s your date).  Because if you, like me, came from a incredible mess that left you an emotional cripple I think it’s important to not make the same mistake again.  If you have not internalized what you learned from the marriage, you will make the same mistakes again.  I repeat, you will make the same mistakes again.  Here is what I learned:

1.     Yelling and screaming at the drop of a hat is not love.  Living with my ex everything she wants ended up with a fight and I lost.  As mentioned in previous postings, I simply gave up and let her win at everything, it made life easier for me, but then again, I didn’t want to live anymore – not much of a choice.

2.     Love is not a tug-of-war.  There shouldn’t be winners and losers – love just is being with the other person.

3.     Love is not about setting up a series of rules for the other person.  My ex had a series of activities she wanted me to do to show how much I loved her.  I must have been insane when I agreed to this and at the time I realized if I finished these tasks (similar to what Hercules did in the story called The Labors of Hercules) I thought the love would be better than ever.  Turns out with each task I completed, there were 2 new fresh ones to take its place.

4.     Love isn’t a test.  She really enjoyed setting up situations to prove I loved her.  It took me a while to realize what was going on.  I confronted her one day and she said “I just want to know you will love me forever.”  My advice, every test you setup actually builds up resentment and pushes the two of you further apart.

5.     Love isn’t about changing the other person to be more perfect in your eyes.  She often said that’s what she does for me.  Point out my imperfections; help me set a plan in place so I can be better.  The more she did this, the less I was me.  I like my imperfections thank you very much.

6.     You can’t live inside someone else.  As we went along in our marriage, I realized she wanted to share 100% of everything.  It made me very uncomfortable.  I didn’t want to share everything, I couldn’t and I don’t know any rational human being that could – it’s not possible.  We all need our own space to grow and pursue things that only interest us – this is healthy.

7.     At the extreme sadistically end; she encouraged me to hit her.  No, I am not kidding nor did I make this up nor do I even like to talk about this subject.  She thought if I could hit her; I would be more in touch with my emotions.  This thought of hitting someone else was incredulous.  It wasn’t something in me and I never want it to be.  Where do people come up these ideas?

8.     It’s not all your fault or mine – it can’t be.  In the final months of our marriage I asked her, “Did you make any mistakes?”  I watched her sitting on our bed and thinking about it for 15 minutes – I kid you not.  She couldn’t come with single instance where she was to blame.  I wasn’t really looking for blame in her; I was curious as to where she thought the fault was.  This was one of the most eye-opening experiences for me.  

9.     You can’t always help the other person.  I realized in the final months of my marriage that this was completely beyond my experience.  Whatever psychosis or psychological problems she had – was certainly beyond my capabilities.  Once I admitted that, I realized this would never get better and it would get magnificently worse.

10.                         Even your patience would run out.  I never thought my patience would end.  I could put up with anything.  Turns out I was so wrong on such a large scale it has backfired on me probably forever.  What I mean is, I took in so much verbal abuse, emotional blackmail and threats, the well (of patience) dried up completely.  When it was gone so was I.  When your well of patience is gone, you have no patience for anything anymore.  I am not even sure to this day whether I will ever have patience for anyone and that’s not fair to the people around me.

 

So my advice to you, if you don’t spend the time to examine all the reasons your marriage or relationship went South on you; you will repeat these mistakes again.   I am going to suggest professional help again,  Not because I think you or I are crazy its just that a professional can help you gain insight you may never have.  The list I presented above just come from nowhere, I did go to therapy and I realized something.  Because I grew up in an abusive house, I equated abuse with love.  Think about it.