you may now listen to this chapter for free on youtube: love letter to my ex-wife
In the first moments of becoming a father, my entire soul changed it’s trajectory. I was so creative:me focused. Now, I would be creative:them focused. Or, in the case of our first, him:focused. I’m just now pulling up my head at sixty, back to me:focused. Recovery is about paying attention to yourself, your own problems, and letting go of the problems of others. Releasing the alcoholic. Learning to put yourself and your health (physical, spiritual, and mental) first.
Live and let live, means just that. My wife had her own family history, her own tragedies and dramas of emotional blackmail and horror. I will no longer take her inventory. I’m tired of taking my son’s inventory as well. It’s time to let them both go. Give them back to their own higher power. Their discovery of their own path to god, salvation, recovery, is up to them. I can give advice (when asked), but mostly I can stay in my own lane. It’s all there in the serenity prayer.
God, grant me the serenity,
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
As our lives were becoming unmanageable, due to 9-11, unemployment, economic hardships, and deeper emotional overwhelm with our second child, the bubble of love bliss was in full swing, and Daddy was told to get back in the workforce and get that big money again. Baby needs a brand new bag. Then babies need new shoes all the damn time. And a new backpack set for each of them each August as the heat of summer melted our reason, and everyone planned and hoped for their kid’s successful return to school. How, 23 years after he was born, am I back in that movie, with some of the same characters? No. No. No. This is not my path forward.
I wanted to work harder, love harder, play harder, but my wife got triggered by her own family of origin bullshit. I’ll let her sleeping dog lie without further detail. But I made more money. I hired a nanny who had cooking and cleaning skills. I did my best with the chores and attachment parenting lessons we were consuming as time allowed. And it seems like a blink of an eye, 9 and 7, the ages of my two kids when 70% of my time was removed from their lives. My influence. My optimistic approach to life. What’s the opposite of that? Okay, now double that. Cynicism to nihilism.
“Good morning, my name is John, and I’m a grateful al-anon.”
What they need, what she needed then, was a support network, a plan, a roadmap. What she got was a husband who was doing double-time, driving to work in a nearby city, an hour away, when traffic was light. Trying t o maintain my own creative life. And be the most engaged father I could be. She was staying home for the first 3 – 5 years, that was the plan. Until both kids were getting on the bus. We agreed to that. It would come back in the divorce negotiation as “primary caregiver” was bandied about as a reason for her to get the custodial parent role and me to get the deadbeat dad designation just a few years later. And in the thunderclap of the 2009 economic collapse, I was part of a huge reduction in force at Dell. Over half my large global marketing team was let go.
“It’s okay, though,” I said. “I’m getting six months of severance with health care and I’ll still get my bonus.”
A year later she would go visit a lawyer to get her options. Then she moved on to those plans. She builds the spreadsheet scenarios. He gets the house. We get the house. We sell the house. This is before she accidentally mentions this idea in couples therapy. Lights out.
Just three years earlier we seemed to be in a renaissance of some sort. I had good health insurance, a tiny company with a downtown office, and it was time to get a vasectomy on their nickel. It was a moonshot. Sex had become an issue. A passive issue. Me actively trying to find the best way to initiate, she refusing and getting madder the more I tried creative approaches. It wasn’t how I was asking for sex, it was that I was asking for sex. So, vaz! M akes sense, right?
There was a moment. As part of the fix, the man is required to ejaculate 30 times before being retested at the doctor’s office for viable sperm. Suddenly, my wife sprung into action. She was amazing. The goal was 30. She found ways to join me in the shower for a quickie for me. Sex lit up. “Woo hoo.” We checked off the report card and I went in for my graduation. We were cleared for unprotected sex again.
And, nothing. Back to the freeze-out. In and out of the bedroom. She was angry. Building cash flow formulas. And complaining in couples therapy about my depression, my unemployment, my help around the house. Always me. I was the problem. I was the reason she was unhappy. That part was obvious.
Except.
Happiness is an inside job. So is sadness. Lying. Cheating. Withdrawing.
“Do you think I’m going to walk out the front door of the house and you’re suddenly going to be a happy person?” I asked at some point during the last two months when I was staying in the house until the kids were done with 3rd and 5th grade. “We should wait until school is out,” I said.
It was only the school counselor who convinced her that torpedoing our kids in the last weeks of school was a bad idea.
But here’s the love letter part. I was still madly in love with my angry, bitter, and frigid wife. I was trying to cheer her up, as I shepherded the kids to dinners, and sporting events, and tried to be Dad. It was a blur of heartache and Ambien dreaming for me. It was the only way I survived. Good sleep. Maybe too good. Too pleasurable. In the final week in the house, I was already Ambiened, I needed a glass of water, and in passing my wife in the narrow hallway, I reached out and hugged her.
Horrified.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay.”
It was never okay anymore. Ever. I lost everything I love.
the one and the zero: > next | index
checkout the playlist for all audible chapters
