Since it's almost Christmas, I'm reposting an oldie but goodie. Happy Holidays.
Present
“You have to know true despair before you’re willing to risk everything to make a change.”
--Joe, 700 lb bariatric patient.
I remember what it was like to have low self esteem. I remember being
the kid everyone in school pointed at, laughed at, talked about, said
ugly things to, hit, kicked. I remember being screamed at by a whole
busload of kids and the bus driver didn’t say a word. I remember not
having a single friend from the age of seven to the age of twelve. Then
I’d go home and have a mother screaming and yelling at me as well.
When this is your life at such a young age, you believe it’s all you.
No one else is being treated like this. There must be something really
wrong with you, for everyone in your life to treat you this way. On TV,
parents apologize for being wrong, for acting cross. You know it isn’t
real life. They explain, too, that kids who bully other kids are the
ones who have the problem. You know that isn’t real life, either.
Fast-forward twenty, thirty, or forty years, and someone who’s had this
kind of childhood is now maybe your lover. You’ve been together for a
while, you know the person’s marriage is a nightmare, and yet…they’re
not leaving. They told you they would, and you believed them. You know
you love this man or woman. You know you’re going to treat them better
than the person they’re with. They tell you all about the marriage, and
you know they’re not lying.
And yet, you’re hearing things like,
“But…my daughter,” (who’s all of thirty years old.) “But…I can’t hurt
this person I’ve been married to for X number of years,” (never mind all
the things they did that caused hurt. And still do.) “But…everyone
will be angry. Everyone will look at me funny.” (How does that stack up
next to how miserable the person is?) All this fear. Fear of upsetting
other people…fear of moving forward in life, even when a marriage is so
difficult they know they should.
I remember, as a teenager, being
basically scared to live life. My mother had low-functioning borderline
personality disorder and was scared to drive. Driving down the road
with her was an adventure, with her yelling and screaming the entire
trip about how dangerous the other drivers were, making hand signals at
the person in the next lane. For any trip into the big city, she would
need someone else to drive her. Any weird noise the car made, she was
sure something terrible was about to happen. And she was scared for me
to drive, scared to be in the car with me driving, and wouldn’t help me
practice.
I caught it. I remember being fifteen and taking
driver’s ed in school, and feeling about it exactly the way she did. I
saw the same dangerous world.
Not only that, but learning to drive at my
house was dangerous for another reason. My stepfather was willing to
help me practice for my driver’s test, and my mother was jealous.
My stepfather would only teach me in his truck, and it was not a small
pickup. It was intimidating to drive that huge thing. It was even more
intimidating when my mother cut her eyes across at my stepfather and
snapped, “You never offered to teach ME to drive the truck!” Then even
when he did offer, she said no.
There was wayyy too much tension in that
house over getting a simple driver’s license.
When you think something’s deeply wrong with you anyway, it feels even worse.
Some people who have this deep sense of being fundamentally flawed and
wrong as a person, like my mother, just never find the courage to move
forward in life, to tackle difficult problems with other people, or
emotional difficulties in themselves, and learn new and
different ways to see and live life, and make progress.
It goes
something like this: “I am so deeply flawed that no one could ever
really love me, and I feel deeply ashamed. But, even though I think
this is the reason my parents and other children always treated me so
badly, I don’t know that for sure. People have said a lot of ugly
things to me, but it’s not as if some doctor or therapist has ever
handed down some fatal judgement that made it an actual fact. But I’m
afraid that it really is, even so. And I feel so bad about myself, and
I’m so scared that my deepest fear is really true, that I can’t stand to
hear even one bad thing about myself from another person at all. I
can’t stand to hurt anyone, to disappoint anyone, for anyone to be angry
at me, so no matter how bad a situation I’m in or how much I’m hurting,
I can’t risk hearing anything from anyone else that’s less than
positive about me. I need approval at all times, from everyone, because
I’m so afraid my worst fear about myself is true."
So, no matter how bad the marriage is, how
much the person is avoiding conflict with their spouse by getting their
needs met with you, or how much the person wants to be with you…it isn’t
going to happen.
Not every affair happens because of this
underlying dynamic, but if it sounds like the reason you’re still
waiting for your lover to leave, then you need to leave them, and here’s
why:
Want to know what got me into that truck anyway? What got
me off to college, what got me through a demanding professional program,
and what got me into reading self-help and therapy to deal with my
problems? DESPERATION.
I KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO ME IF I DIDN’T.
I realized that if I didn’t get into that truck and fucking learn to
drive, if I didn’t go to school and learn to support myself, if I didn’t
get myself into help and look honestly at what was wrong with me and
how to deal with it, I would end my life just like my mother: Dependent
on other people to pay her way and drive her around, no real power in
her relationship, no sense of accomplishment in her life, complaining
and complaining and with nothing ever changing. Miserable unhappiness
with no end in sight.
If I didn’t do my work, that was lying in
wait for me, and things were so bad I just couldn’t accept that. The
fear of horrible alternatives drove me to do what I needed to do, no
matter how bad I felt or how scared I was. That meant that if I found out there really was something bad I was or had done, I was just going to have to listen and change it. I was just going to have to stand facing it and knowing it for sure, after all.
And you know what I found out?? There really wasn't anything bad about me at all. I had made some mistakes, but I came by them honestly, and I didn't need to hate myself. It didn't mean I was a bad person. It just meant I had mislearned a few things, and now that I knew better, I could do better. And that I could learn better, and I could do better, made me feel a lot better about myself. And I could appreciate all the good things about me there really are.
If your married lover
needs to make major changes in his or her life, they never will as long
as you are there to listen, to give hugs, kisses, and moral support, and oh, not to
mention: sex.
You are the person making their unbearable
situation bearable.
Without you, they might actually feel enough pain
and desperation in their marriage to face the things that are wrong, in
their heart and in their life, no matter how hard it is or how bad it
feels. No matter how scared they are. YOU are the person keeping him or her from looking at the
reality: Unless and until I make changes, the eventual outcome of this marriage
will mean what kind of pain for my life? How will things turn out if I
don’t make the changes I need to make?
That person needs, and you do, too, to honestly face the truth of their life.
Get out of that person’s life, and they might just become desperate enough to do it.
Sometimes, even if it might be the last gift you will give them, the word "No" is the most loving gift you will ever give them.
It doesn't mean you can never see the person again. It just means that you demand the healthiest behavior from them, and you don't settle for less. You may be the only person in their life who will insist on this. And health makes changes that need to be made, and if it's having trouble, it works on the reasons why. It doesn't cop out in an affair for seven years, tearing everyone involved apart and delaying any real progress for as long as they're two-timing people. Health solves problems, it doesn't avoid them. When that person can make some fundamentally healthy change, you can welcome that person back again.
Merry Christmas.
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