My own personal Squanto

My blogger friend, SJ, has been dealing with a situation similar to one I dealt with about 3 years ago: the break-up of my marriage. Reading her posts and thinking about her has of course brought back memories of that time in my life when the rug was pulled out from under me. Below is a piece I wrote several months after my husband left me. I offer it to you now, gentle readers, in the spirit of Thanksgiving – believe it or not.

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It’s funny, I’m not sure how long it’s been since he walked out the door with his clothes in grocery bags. Was it July, or August? I’m really not sure. I could look at my checkbook and tell instantly, I guess. See where his writing stops and mine begins. See the last entry for gas bought with the ATM card at that station near his office, the last check written to the hardware store. Time passes differently for me now, and I feel differently about its passage. Days and night stretch out in front of me, as full or as empty of chores and errands as I wish them to be. If I do not wish them to be full, very little happens. The dogs need food, that needs to be done, and I must go to work every day, but very little else seems to depend on whether or not my old schedule is met. And so at times I test this premise, wrap myself up in a blanket and sit out in the back yard in the lounge chair, staring straight ahead. Go ahead and test me, Mr. Time, I can take it. I can sit like this for hours while dishes lie dirty and dry cleaning remains unclaimed and balls of dog fur and dust roll across the floor like tumbleweeds.

He would have been happy, probably, to see me surrender some rigidity. Funny then, that this surrender comes too late, that it was triggered by the event that also made it moot.

As I sit in my chair, I ask myself the same question that I imagine so many others in my situation ask: How Did I Not See It Coming?

A year ago, we were happy and normal, I thought. After ten years, we still had great times together. I could still absolutely break him up, put him on the floor, laughing, wiping his eyes. And he could still make my stomach feel funny and my hands tremble if he put his arms around me in that way he did sometimes. Sure, we struggled, over the years, with our sex life, with the boredom and the complacency, but we always managed to find a way back to each other, to connect again. People tell me that we were absolutely the very last people on earth that they thought would break up, get divorced. I remember, I thought so too. I would imagine sometimes, what medical infirmities would eventually plague us in our old age, and how we would cope with them. Would he need a colostomy bag someday, like that old guy next door? Or what if I needed one? Would he still want to have sex with me if I did? Is his forgetfulness a sign of future senility? Should I be buying him vitamins or an herbal supplement? Stuff like that. The kind of stuff you think about when you expect to spend the rest of your life with someone.

No, there was no shortage of accoutrement for a lifetime commitment: insurance policies, mortgages, major appliances, wills. Seven years my junior, he moved in with me almost immediately after we started dating, and a couple of years later, he proposed. Having suffered a brief and painful marriage in my twenties, I was content to remain unwed, but when he proposed, I realized I wanted it too. It felt good to say yes to this idea of permanence. He was twenty-five when we met, twenty-nine when we married, and thirty-five when he left.

One night, about a year ago, he announced that he was unhappy, and that he knew I was too. Why not just end it, he said.

I’m searching for a word to express the magnitude of the shock I felt upon this announcement. I remember, my jaw dropped open. I remember thinking as I watched his lips move, as he went on about our unhappiness, that there might be some misunderstanding, that I must be misunderstanding something. It felt unreal. Time slowed. My brain raced. I felt the sensation of walls tumbling down all around me. I was out of my mind, out of my body, cut loose from everything. It was the worst moment of my life, and it wouldn’t end. It just went on and on and on.

It came down to this: he couldn’t believe I wasn’t unhappy, and I couldn’t believe he thought I was.

I begged for couples therapy, for another shot, and he finally gave in. Our therapist pronounced a “profound lack of communication” at work.

Well, yeah.

Although until my spouse’s little eye opener, I would have said that we communicated just fine.

The therapist wanted individual sessions. He went twice, I think, and then he stopped. He would promise to go, and then not, or he would avoid calling the therapist, whose phone messages went from polite to stern to plaintive. Meanwhile, I would go every week, and say things like “he seems happier,” or “I’m trying to really listen to what he’s saying,” plus, I’m being REALLY POSITIVE about our future, and tiptoeing around his moods, and analyzing every word out of his mouth, and trying really hard to look sexy without looking like I’m trying to look sexy. Sometimes, when he left the house, I would sink to the floor and cry, out of exhaustion and despair.

Some weeks later, he pronounced himself “cured” and asked that we speak of it no more. I was relieved. Our counselor was troubled by this, and said that if he wouldn’t come to session, how could he expect to be helped? So when the therapist called a month later to see how we were doing, my statement that we were still together was met with surprise on his part. I was insulted, and still certain that we would survive. C’mon, it was us. We loved each other. This was the man who stood on stage at our wedding reception and sang “Thunder Road” to me as a wedding present. The whole song. Sang it to me while I laughed and cried simultaneously. Who else on earth could make me feel so goofy & gloriously alive? And who else could make him feel the same?

Months passed, and one day I got a replay of the “I’m not happy, I want out” speech, only this time, I saw it coming. I had gradually become aware that he was not cured, that he was miserable and conflicted, and it was then that I put together my meager scraps of understanding and realized why he never went to session: he didn’t want to sit and lie for an hour every week. He didn’t want to tell lies about trying to make it work. And he couldn’t tell the truth, apparently, either, because that was even worse.

The truth: He wanted out. He just did. He wanted off the hook. He just did. I don’t know why, I don’t know why. He just did. Whatever it was he got from me, it meant less than his freedom, less than the weight of permanence being lifted from his head, less than being able to walk out the door with those grocery bags full of clothes.

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I came across this piece about a week ago, and after re-reading it, my first reaction was to wince at the amount of pain fairly dripping off the page. My second reaction was to recognize that my understanding of the events has increased over the last 3 years in inverse proportion to the degree to which I give a shit about the events. Isn’t that always the way?

Thirdly, I really can’t believe how much happier I am now. And I think that’s because I’m a strong person, and I have great friends and family to rely upon as well, and I’m really pretty good at finding a way to be happy. But I got to give no small measure of credit for my happiness to my man Spooney, because he is wicked awesome, and because he makes me laugh at things I had forgotten to notice years ago, and because he loves me with his heart wide open, and I marvel at that.

So, thanks.