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.