Callin' a thing a thing

I didn't believe my husband was going to change.  

Not this time.  And not the dozens of times before that.  I didn't trust a single word he said, because his words and his actions never matched.

It's time to "call a thing a thing", to quote Iyanla Vanzant.

My husband is passive aggressive.  He has been obstructive, procrastinating, withholding, forgetting, and under-performing for our entire marriage.  His crowning passive aggressive achievement is withholding sex, the one thing I can't do without him...although I've considered it.

He has acknowledged that he is passive aggressive, and that in order to remain married to me, he must work hard to understand the reasons for his behavior and eliminate it from our relationship.  His behavior has definitely improved, and so has our communication about it.   I really believe he's working on this.  Unfortunately, the one thing that has not changed, despite a great deal of communication, is that he still completely withholds sex.  And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it short of ending the marriage.

My husband is also an alcoholic.  He has been sober for 15 months now...the longest span in his life.  He says he's not an alcoholic anymore.  I think that's a dangerous attitude.

But the most important thing I've learned is that I cannot change him.

I can only change ME.

This article, "How to Cope with a Passive Aggressive Mate", by Deborah Khoshaba, changed how I interacted with my husband.  I read it in 2012, and despite my earlier blog posts, it helped me maintain my sanity for the last two years.  I learned that every act of passive aggressive behavior needs someone to react to it for it to be complete.  I learned how to avoid engaging and reacting, so that the behavior had no impact.  My husband was left holding an empty bag of his own misplaced emotions...and I was unscathed.  

I also recognized in reaction to my husband's alcoholism that I was co-dependent, and had been long before I met him.  Those coping skills were critical to my survival during childhood, and I used every single one of them in my marriage.  It wasn't easy, but I detached from my husband, quit trying to control every situation, and let the pieces fall where they may.  I started taking care of myself and making that my priority instead of something I thought about after everything and everyone else was taken care of.


That's the gory truth, about him and about me.  I don't know what's coming next, and I don't know how this will end.  I will diligently do what I can to make this work until it is no longer in my best interests to continue to do so.

And so, the waiting continues.  

Drop kicked by life

Check the date on the post...it hasn't been two weeks since I posted, it's been a year and two weeks.

After that last entry, I knew exactly what I needed to do.  

I needed to end my marriage.  

He needed to leave.  And I needed to quietly make arrangements for that to happen.  One of the first things I did was visit my adult daughter in a city about 2 hours away to tell her what was about to happen, and why.  

But I never got to have that conversation.

Instead, I was in a car accident that resulted in a traumatic brain injury that stole my life.


Since that day, I've lost my cognitive abilities, my independence, my career, and nearly everything that was important to me.  The last year has been a blur of pain, rehab, therapies of every sort, confusion and isolation.  I'm trapped in this nightmare existence and no one knows if I'll ever recover.  
I used to be a vibrant, independent, highly regarded career woman with limitless potential.  I excelled at anything I did, and mentored others to excellence.  Now, I'm a woman who needs to sleep 12 hours a day, cannot follow directions or travel alone, and lives in a constant fog of pain and confusion.  I can't even understand the job responsibilities I used to have, never mind perform them. I lost my job, and am considered permanently disabled.

At first, my husband responded to this by being a doting caretaker, but that grew tiresome pretty quickly.  Within a month, he took a new job out of state.  He'd go into work early in the week and stay in a hotel for a few nights before returning at the end of the week, leaving me alone to fend for myself most of the time.  Weekends, he'd go off for his race activities.  Who does that???  Who leaves a brain injured woman alone for days at a time?  I was a high risk for falling because my vestibular system was badly damaged and my vision was impaired.  I had severe migraines and took several medications (that I was always screwing up).  I forgot to eat and drink.  Most of the time, my only meal was at the outpatient rehab cafeteria.


I hadn't changed my mind about ending the marriage.  Even though I was unprepared and extremely vulnerable, I still wanted out.  After a couple of months, I suggested his new job out of state would be a good opportunity for him to move out, but he didn't.

Instead, it was a wake up call to him that even in my severely injured state, I was better off without him...and he decided to get serious about making changes.  

I didn't believe him.  I had no reason to.

Life on Jupiter

The last session was probably the most revealing hour I've ever spent.  

At the beginning, I simply kept my mouth shut and let him explain why he didn't do what he said he would do...agreed to do, even when challenged...promised he would do.  It rang hollow, and not just for me.  There was simply no valid reason for it, and there were no attempt to discuss any changes in expectations with me during that time period.  

He simply changed the rules again.

He thought it was okay to do that.

It wasn't.

I said little, but stated once again that this is a pattern:  when it comes to me, he breaks his promises, or half-asses whatever he agreed to.  I'm Charlie Brown to his Lucy with the football, believing him every time that this time is different.  

What really is different now is the increasing use of gaslighting. He now denies things he's said or done, or refers to conversations that never happened.  I'd believe I was losing my mind if I haven't already been through this before in my life with someone far more skilled than he at spinning the truth.

Here is the real truth:  He isn't trustworthy with me, in stark contrast to every other area of his life.  At work, he is the golden child...the rainmaker...who delivers far about everyone's expectations.  In competitions, he consistently pushes himself to improve on his already top percentile performances. And at school, he's a 4.0 GPA Dean's List student.

So who is that guy in our marriage who can't be counted on to do even the smallest things he himself agrees are reasonable?

A really good question, isn't it?  And one the therapist asked as well.  His response says it all:

"I don't recognize that person you're talking about."

...and then, somewhere deep inside me, something broke into a million pieces.

The bottom line

It's now several weeks later.  Much has happened, and much is still the same.

We did return to therapy...and as predicted, he was not prepared with the list assignment given in the previous session in December.  I believe I made myself clear when I said I was done with the foot-dragging, obstruction, and lies.  The next week he did show up prepared.

We started working from those lists, first with how we hurt each other.  All my items in that list formed a theme:  his behaviors prevent me from getting what I want and need.  His item was that I didn't prioritize him.

I've come to understand that he is refusing to deal with conflict, and punishing me instead in many different ways.  Breaking promises.  Half-assing things I need him to do.  Doing things I want, but making sure I never get exactly what I want.  Disappearing emotionally and physically into drunken oblivion.  Withholding sex, and/or making sure that I am not satisfied.

It's all the same thing:  he ensures that I NEVER, EVER, get what I want.

That's NOT okay.  My expectations are entirely reasonable.  

I swear by all that I hold dear that I will never again allow it to happen.
  
I will not be punished for his inability to deal with his own emotions. 
I will not be punished for having reasonable needs and expectations.  
I will not accept or work around his obstructive behavior.
I will not bear the consequences of his behavior.
I will not be denied the things I need.
I will not keep his secrets and live his lies.
I will not waste another minute of my life waiting for him to change.

From now on, it's about me.

I will get what I deserve.

Ninety nine dollars

...and I still got none.

Ninety nine dollars.  That's the amount of the reimbursement check from our health insurance company for therapist #3.  That's about all it was worth.

In other news, I asked if we were done trying to change things in our marriage.  This eventually led to him scheduling another appointment with therapist #4 for March 9th.  I really wonder why he did that.  It's not as if he's following through with anything we started.  As for me, I'll be prepared with my assignments completed. 

I have no expectation that anything will ever be different.

Talk is cheap and lies are expensive

Incredibly, no progress has been made since my last entry nearly two months ago.  He cancelled the last appointment, and has not rescheduled it. 

All the progress we made has now been lost.  There is never any mention of the homework we have.  There's no physical intimacy...nothing beyond platonic affection.  He'll make comments occasionally, but the words without actions are meaningless.

And the drinking is back.  He keeps changing the rules about when and how he can drink.  There's really no point in knowing what his rules are.  They are useless lies he tells himself to justify doing whatever he wants.

In the meantime, I've taken my life back.  I'm pursuing my own self interests now.  I've given up enabling his. 

Unless there is a radical change that prompts him to become accountable for himself in our relationship, he has blown his last chance.

I'm done.

Back in the box

In the last session we took the first step in discussing the anger I have.  It went pretty much as I predicted it would.  As soon as the issue is brought up, he emotionally disconnects and only deals with it on an intellectual level.  When pressed, he was able to acknowledge that he did hurt me many times and that it was never his intention. 

I sat there looking at his face and waited for it.

So did the therapist.  She prompted him...an acknowledgement is only the first step. 

...crickets...

So she turned to me and asked what I needed to hear.  I told her that he has never apologized for anything...and I needed to hear that he is sorry for hurting me. 

There was more acknowledgement of hurting me, and a declaration that of course he was sorry about it.  But he still did not say the words until prompted again.

"I'm sorry for hurting you."

It was good to finally hear it, but it did not make it all better.  It's easy to give a blanket apology when you don't have to be confronted with the actual behavior you're apologizing for.  I can't just let it all go and pretend everything is fine now. And I refuse to build on a foundation of shit.

It's about to get ugly.

In addition to our usual intimacy homework, our homework is to each write three lists:  a list of the ways he hurt me, a list of the ways I hurt him, and a list of the ways we hurt ourself. 

Even starting to think about that first list is overwhelming.  Opening that box of pain a tiny bit was enough to ruin the rest of the weekend, give me nightmares, and make me want to flee.  There's so much stuff in there to deal with, and it all feels awful. 

It's impossible to work on intimacy and confront pain at the same time.  So our agreement with each other is to wait until after this weekend to work on those lists.  Until then, the pain gets locked away again.  After 10 years, one more week won't matter.