Responsibility
In recent days I've dreamed several heated confrontations between my ex-husband and myself. Conversations that turn accusatory and crescendo in angry shouts and waving fists.
I know enough "dream theory" to understand that dreams are about "me," and so I am betting that this recent spate of somnolent struggles are about internal stuff that I'm still hanging onto.
Let me see if I can do this definitively --
I left my marriage. I took the actions that led to that outcome. I made the choices and made the decisions and took the turns that brought me inexorably to that point, and I was not unaware of what I was doing.
It was not that I did not hope I could save the marriage somehow, but I knew, with reasonable certainty, that the likelihood was that I would end up losing it along the way. The fact was that I'd come to a point where I'd decided that I would no longer live in denial of who I most deeply was; would no longer live in a marriage that did not meet my most basic needs; would no longer live as "parent" rather than "wife" and "lover."
Through the years leading up to the final move to be with Master and T, I spent much of my free time IM'ing and on the phone with Master and very little of it with my husband. I avoided him if I could. Our life together grew less and less intimate, and much of that was my fault. I simply drew away from him and toward what I wanted. I knew what I was doing was harmful to our relationship, but after years of denying my own needs, I hadn't the character to resist it anymore. I chose for myself.
It is true that in the final year or two of our marriage, he became increasingly "strange," but it is also true that I pushed him away from me and isolated him -- cut him off. A man who spent his adult lifetime depending on me suddenly found that I was no longer "there." No wonder he turned up looking "strange." The increasing weirdness was, to some large degree, probably driven by my withdrawal.
I don't regret the choices. Would make them again. Needed to make them for myself. However, until now, I've not owned the simple fact that I had a marriage that I chose to leave, and that in doing that, I hurt a good and tender man. That is also a reality.
swan Link
posted by Sue @ 6:56 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I was so glad to see you publicly complimenting your (ex? not sure if you're divorced) husband, that was a really good and useful thing to do. A real wave of gladness went right through me. I wonder if he knows that you said this?
Malcolm -- I don't know if he reads here. He may. Again, I don't write what I write here for him or for anyone else, and this one in particular, is for me not him. What he felt or feels about any of it -- all of that belongs to him. I don't dislike the man. I love the history we had, love the children we bore together, love the growing I did in the years we shared. The truth is that we simply were badly matched, and took way too long to say that honestly. It might have been, that if we'd understood about "poly" as a young couple, we might have built a structure that would have supported us in learning to acutally love each other well. As it was, we'd have done less harm to ourselves and each other if we'd cut and run earlier.
searabbit -- Bless you for your "understanding." It is "quiet" that I am working toward now. My heart knows that the 28 years invested in that marriage were more than enough. Still, society lays heavy burdens on the one who leaves -- especially when there is nothing to point to as a reason for leaving except that it was necessary in order to "be whole." Part of the work of making the decision to leave was "grieving" and I did plenty of that, so that, when it was officially over, I didn't really feel the sort of sorrow that so many people talk about after a divorce. I'd already been through that ahead of time. I know that the genesis of the "harm" done here lies in decisions made when I was very young and didn't know what sort of ramifications those choices would have for either of us. Somehow though, laying the blame for the train wreck at the feet of my 19 year old self doesn't seem quite fair either. The truth is that there was a point when the choice was to go on living in a marriage that was increasingly dysfunctional, and within which I was less and less willing to maintain my committments, or choose to end it. Ultimately, the choice to make a clean ending seemed more honest to me. Not a perfect solution, but the best I could do.
swan
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