I Never Loved You

Posted on by stilllearning2b

The gaslighting doesn’t necessarily stop when the relationship ends.

 

“I never loved you.”

“I haven’t been happy for a long time.”

“You’re impossible to live with.”

 

Those were some of the words my ex chose to leave me with in the correspondence he exchanged with my mother. They were little bombs hooked to a timer set to detonate after he walked out the door.

At first, those words devastated me. Could they be true? Was I a wretch? Impossible? Unlovable? Piled on top of the rejection, they were an added kick when I was already down and out.

But then they made me angry. If he never loved me, why would act otherwise so consistently? If he hadn’t been happy for a long time, that was his responsibility to say something and change something. If I was so impossible to live with, why did he live with me for 14 of our 16 years together?

Those parting words were nothing but further fabrications. Gaslighting from a safe distance to try to tamp down any resistance. Perhaps blowtorching would be a proper term here? I’m picturing the scene from Alien:)

Perhaps part of the intent was to maim, but I believe the main goal was to rectify his own cognitive dissonance.

Because when you tell a lie frequently enough, it starts to become your truth.

 

If he believed he never loved me, it made it easier to hurt me.

If he claimed he wasn’t happy for a long time, he could blame it on the marriage.

And if he made me impossible to reside with, it made it easier to walk away.

 

Before you believe the hurtful words your ex threw your direction, make sure to see what they had to gain by them.

Waiting for the Other Shoe

Posted on by stilllearning2b

The hardest part about the way my marriage ended is trying to live without always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I mean, things are great now. Really great.

But things were great before.

Sometimes I wish that my ex had been a jerk to me. I hear about these spouses that put on a good show in public and then belittle and guilt-trip their partners behind closed doors. I read about growing tension in discussions and growing distance in the bedroom. I see couples at dinner barely containing their contempt for each other and eyeing the door for escape. Whenever I used to see or hear about those behaviors, I grew ever more grateful for my husband, who was always gentle, generous, patient and attentive towards me.

But now I feel otherwise.

Because while I was happily wrapped in his arms, he was sliding the blade of betrayal through my ribs. Between intimate conversations, he was spreading horrific tales about me to others. And apparently the attention turned towards me only lasted as long as I was in the room.

If he had been a jerk to me, it would be so much easier now. I would know what to avoid and what warned of a problem. But a covert jerk is difficult to spot.

And that’s what makes me wary about that other shoe.

My rational brain works to calm me. Brock is not my ex. He is direct and faces problems head-on instead of trying to tuck them away. He is naturally loyal and reviles deception. I grow closer to him every day and can now, with certainty, say that I trust him. Plus, he knows if he screwed me over, I’d have to write about it:)

Apart from him, I now trust myself to recognize similar patterns or behaviors that may hint at trouble brewing beneath the surface. I will never be so naive again.

But the rational brain isn’t always the one holding the reigns. And my emotional self keeps looking up, ready to dodge the flying boot.

 

 

 

Something I’ve Never Admitted (Even to Myself)

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Something I’ve never admitted (even to myself) –

 

When my ex left, I was relieved.

Not right away. At first, I felt like I was breaking apart. Each breath singed my open and bleeding heart. I felt like I was gasping for air and grasping for a hold on reality. I was fractured and frightened.

But later? Once the wounds scabbed over a bit and I began to feel confident that I would survive?

I was relieved.

It wasn’t an emotion I expected to feel. In fact, I didn’t even accept as an emotion I did feel. On every conscious level, I loved and trusted that man with every fiber of my being.

But maybe on some deeper level, I was aware I was on a sinking ship.

A craft that I trusted to be whole and intact but instead had developed some fatal breach in its hull, obscured beneath the waters of awareness.

 

I lost everything. Yet in some ways I was relieved to be free of the life I had worked so hard for.

I loved him. Yet in some ways I was relieved he was gone from my life for good.

I faced immense pain and suffering. Yet in some ways I was relieved of the anxiety that had been growing beneath.

 

Maybe the relief was just my brain’s way of trying to wrest some control over the tsunami barreling down at me. Maybe the relief came from facing my biggest fear and still standing after the confrontation. Maybe I was relieved that the worst I could imagine was over and it could only get better from there. Perhaps it was the relief felt upon waking from a nightmare, the sweaty sheets revealing the anguish released during the night. Maybe it was like the relief felt after a good cry, emotions spent and endorphins moving in. Maybe it was the release of tension that I didn’t realize was building. Perhaps the relief came in an acceptance. A letting go after working so long to hold to him. Or maybe it was my intuition, discounted for so long, finally breaking through.

Who knows why I felt a release? I do know that I felt ashamed for feeling relieved. Guilty, as though I was somehow feeling something wrong. 

The truth is that emotions are messy and complicated. What we dismiss as irrational is often anchored in some truth, even if we cannot tease out the connections.

Relief is more than something we feel upon release, it is also a special type of carving that removes the unwanted material to create a dimensional image upon a backdrop.

I think the relief I felt was the removal of the unwanted falsehoods, letting my life and my self stand out yet again.

 

Just Because It Happened To You, Does Not Mean It Happened Because of You

Posted on by stilllearning2b
rejection

Rejection always hurts.

From the lack of an invite to a classmate’s party to the failure of a job offer, we feel the pain of being dismissed.

And when that rejection slip comes from our partner?

Let’s just say the pain is searing. Unescapable.

fMRI results have shown that the agony of rejection follows the same neural pathways as physical pain.  It is real. And it can be devastating.

We all have an innate drive to want to be accepted. To be recognized and wanted. As social creatures, we have evolved to need the group and to fear being ostracized.

The worst feeling in the world is not to be seen and hated. It is to be invisible and discarded.

When rejection from relative strangers occurs, we often rationalize the reasons:

“I wasn’t invited to the party because she is a stuck-up snob.”

“They didn’t accept my proposal because they’re short-sighted morons.”

“He didn’t call me back because he lost my number.”

“I was passed over for the job because I am over-qualified.”

It’s easy to perform this ego-preserving mental choreography when we do not intimately know the rejector and the rejector does not fully know us. We can depersonalize the experience, shifting the reasons for the refusal to the other person while protecting our own sense of self and worth.

photo 1-68

But when the rejection comes from the one that knows you best?

The one that promised he or she would always be there?

The one with whom you felt safe exposing your deepest fears and greatest vulnerabilities?

It’s personal.

I felt like I was discarded like so much garbage. No longer able to provide utility or beauty. Lacking in key features as I was replaced with a newer model. I trusted this man, had valued his opinions for years. So when he indicated I wasn’t enough, it was easy to believe him.

I think my desperate quest to label him was not only coming from a need to understand why, but also from a need to prove that his judgement was somehow faulty. That I was rejected because of something in him rather than something in me.

It’s so difficult not to internalize intimate rejection.

We all too easily assume that because it happened to us, it must have happened because of us. Sometimes we’re just collateral damage.

We take rejection by our partners personally.

He or she turns down a proposal of sex? It must because of the five extra pounds you’re carrying.

He or she is withdrawn? You must have said or done something to make him or her angry.

He or she requests time alone? It must be because you’re not wanted.

Yet much of the time, what we perceive as a personal attack has more to do with our partners than ourselves.

Perhaps sex was refused because of pressures at work.

Maybe the withdrawing was due to a sense of being overwhelmed.

And the alone time may just be a need to breathe.

Don’t let one person determine your value.

One of the biggest problems of internalizing rejection within a relationship is that it lays the groundwork for the marriage-destroying pursuer-distancer dance. The more the rejected partner feels abandoned, the more he or she desperately pursues attention and affection. The more the distancer feels hounded, the more he or she retreats and withdraws.

It’s a common pattern. And often a deadly one, slowly starving the marriage of trust and intimacy. If you feel rejected, it’s easy to respond with a frantic attempt to be wanted. 

And when the rejection comes at the end of a marriage?

It’s all too easy to respond the same way. Looking for worth and validation from anyone that will provide it. And holding on too tightly will suffocate any relationship.

Your worth can only come from within. And no rejection can ever take that away.

Rejection is about opinion, not fact.

When someone we love suddenly makes claims that we are substandard, we often believe them. Take their assertions as facts. Truth.

When they are actually opinion.

Opinion that may easily be influenced by other factors.

When I first read the suicide note that my ex sent to his other wife and my mother, I felt worthless. He spent full paragraphs discussing how impossible I was followed  by more paragraphs singing the other wife’s praises.

Of course he did. By demonizing me, he justified his actions. By discounting me, he secured his own value. And by praising her, he stood a chance of winning her back.

I was rejected because he could not continue to hide the truth.

I was rejected because he needed an escape.

I was rejected because he convinced himself that I had already rejected him.

I was rejected because of his opinions. And I no longer care what he thinks.

It’s a delicate ego dance learning to sift through the facts of the rejection to see if there is some truth to be learned.

Cheaters and deceivers often try to place the burden of the blame for their actions at the feet of their spouse. They act out of selfishness and greed and then claim that “you made me do it.” Yet nobody ever makes anyone else do something. Their choices are theirs alone.

Still, sometimes there is a bigger picture. Nothing you did or didn’t do make your partner act a certain way. But that doesn’t mean you have nothing to learn.

There is a difference between taking the blame for someone else’s actions and accepting responsibility for your own.

One man’s trash is another person’s treasure.

Just because one person took you out to the curb, doesn’t mean you have to stay there.

Reject their opinion of you and form your own.

Someone will see you for the treasure you are.

Tells – The Truth Always Finds a Way Out

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Last night, we watched the movie Rounders, a drama where Matt Damon and Edward Norton portray high-stakes poker players. It was intriguing to disappear into that risky and shadowy world from the mundane security of the couch. My pulse was racing enough just watching someone lose $25,000 in a matter of seconds; I certainly didn’t feel a need to experience it myself.

I know very little about the mechanics of poker, but I do know a few things about psychology. And, as you may know, poker is often more about what the players think you have in your hand rather than the actual cards you hold. The winner is often the person who can see through others’ misdirections while projecting his or her illusion seamlessly.

I think my ex would have made a very good poker player.

For all I know, maybe he was. Perhaps that’s what happened to the money. But even if he never touched a deck of cards, he was still approaching life like a game. He was attracted to risks. He seemed to enjoy being able to manipulate people with his stories and actions. He had an amazing ability to read people and steer them in the direction he wanted.

And, like many poker players, he was almost brought down by his tell.

In the game, a “tell” is a subconscious sign that reveals when a player is stressed or bluffing. It can be a certain eye movement, a twitching of a finger or, as in the case of the movie, even reaching for an Oreo. Players work to restrain or hide their tells.

Because the truth is fighting to come out.

My ex met his other wife at a bar in a Vegas hotel, where they were both staying for work. According to her, they stayed up late that first night, flirting and drinking in the public spaces. He was wooing her with fabrications, telling stories of a manufactured persona woven from the lives of our friends. I guess at some point, the stress of the lies grew too great because he passed out cold on the casino floor.

Interestingly, in his statement to the police months later, he claimed that at that moment, he lost “conscienceness,” misplacing his ability to tell right from wrong. It was the only truth he wrote upon that paper.

The paramedics were called and his vitals taken. His blood pressure was as inflated as his lies.

Because the truth was fighting to come out.

For the last several months of our marriage, he visited doctor upon doctor trying to reign in his ever-soaring hypertension. No pill was strong enough; the pressure kept mounting.

Along with the lies.

The doctors declared his problem was idiopathic, arising from unknown origins. What they failed to realize is that the cause was buried in his psychology rather than his physiology. They were looking in the wrong place.

If I known I was married to a poker player, perhaps I would have recognized his hypertension for what it was. A tell.

Because the truth always finds a way out.

 

Side note – When I saw him a couple years ago, one of the only things I was curious about was his blood pressure. I figured it would be a clue as to the kind of life he was living.