Women are not rehabilitation centres for damaged men. Dear woman reading this, do not ever expend your emotional/physical/mental energy on redirecting the man from the path he has chosen to walk. He has nothing to lose. You, you will lose everything about yourself. ~ tweeted by @DoreenGLM
It's such a familiar trope. Fairy tales about it, songs about it, movies about it, family lore about it. How the love and loyalty of a good woman saved a not-so-good man.
And we buy it, don't we? Intoxicated by the potential power we have to see something redeemable in someone behaving irredeemably, we buy it hook, line and sinker. After all, we've been marinating in this for a lifetime. My grandfather, the wealthy playboy tamed by my grandmother. Well, until, drunk one of many many nights, he smacked his head on concrete and died.
My father, another playboy (in a clear case of 'what you see is what you get', my dad had a boat that he literally named Playboy. It was painted on the stern), tamed by my mother until, well, until he cheated and it turned out he wasn't tamed so much as discreet.
Women are not rehabilitation centres for damaged men, writes our wise Twitter woman. And yet, that's exactly what we are, isn't it? Far too often.
Why is that? I mean, of course we're socialized to think of ourselves as rescuers, of tamers. But why, after it's abundantly clear that we not only haven't rescued anyone but that we're in danger of going under too...why do we stay? Why do we keep expending our emotional/physical/mental energy on redirecting someone from the path he has chosen to walk? Chosen! Nobody has a gun to his head.
Why did I stay with a man who chose to cheat on me, repeatedly, over years?
Well, I've written often about just how bloody exhausted I was, how wrung out. How I could barely function, let alone leave with three young children.
But that's not the whole story. It never is.
Part of it was that I believed, somewhere deep inside, that leaving would be a failure. He was sorry. He didn't want to have cheated. He wanted to be a better man. And so, on some level, I felt that I owed him the chance to prove it. That I was the rehabilitation centre for this damaged man.
My own history, watching my alcoholic mother get sober, primed me for the conviction that I knew damaged people could change.
But what I so often forgot in the story of my childhood was that my begging didn't get my mother sober. Nor did my rage or my being "perfect". She got sober when the cost of staying drunk became more than she was willing to pay. She got sober when she made the choice.
I was not her rehabilitation centre even though I tried hard to be. Even though everyone else wanted me to be.
Women often traffic in hope.
"Women marry men hoping they'll change," goes the jokey adage. "Men marry women hoping they won't."
Joking aside, I think there's a whole lot of truth in that.
Especially those of us who think we can heal damaged people.
We can't. It's a lie.
We are not rehabilitation centres for damaged men. Or women. They have nothing to lose.
But us? We have everything to lose, including ourselves.
The kickass survival site for anyone who's ever been lied to, cheated on and left for dead.
Thanks, Elle. Somehow you always know what we need to hear.
ReplyDeleteI was the anonymous poster from a week or so ago that moved the whole family to start again with a new job after DDay.
This post really hit home with me. I felt and still feel like it would be a failure for me NOT to give him a chance to make things better. That’s the main reason I didn’t leave. My question is...how can you tell the difference between being a rehab center for him and supporting him through the process of addressing everything that went wrong? What kind of boundaries are helpful? How can you tell when you’re going too far and giving too much?
He always says that he’s his true self around me and that I make him better. I hope the first part is true and I can appreciate how important that is in a relationship. But the second part just pisses me off now. I’m not someone who morally polices him and I never have. He says that I’m a kind, caring, genuinely good person and that I just bring out the best in him. Well, what about me? Does he bring out the best in me? What does that even mean? Can I be my true self around him? Who even IS that person? I have no idea.
He’s trying. I just don’t know if there’s too much damage...
Hi Erin,
DeleteI don't have the answer for you but I suspect you do. It begins with the questions you're already asking: Well, what about me? Does he bring out the best in me? What does that even mean? Can I be my true self around him? Who even IS that person?
And that's your work right now. To find the answers to those questions.
And though he says you "make him better", how does he account for cheating? It wasn't your job to stop him from cheating then and it's not your job now. It's HIS job. Yours is to answer those questions and heal from the pain of betrayal.
Love this Elle, I need to keep reminding myself of this and stop thinking my ex might be reasonable. He’s shown me so many times over he can’t be. He can drain the life out of me, if I let him. I don’t have to listen to his bullshit anymore that’s the beauty of divorce. I’m still learning this road of divorce, by no means is it easy especially when the other person is disputing it, it just makes it harder for me. I hope I continue to get stronger every time he acts like a ‘twat’ and eventually his behaviour just wont bother me. Well that’s the plan anyhow : )
ReplyDeleteThank you Elle
Xx
Good plan, Sam A!! ;)
DeleteFunny - Elle you said this to Heartfelt over on another post "I am constantly running just ahead of my daughter (anxiety, bipolar) to clear the way for her so that she doesn't have to struggle any more than she already does."
ReplyDeleteI find myself doing this with my children ALL the time! And WH used to tell me that I just needed to let them fail.
Fast forward - I find myself doing this with him now and have for the past 17 months.
It was a freeing moment today saying to him that it was time for me to step back and stop pushing him to want to figure it out.
Now ... to simply stick to it. :)
I feel like I came to this in a backwards way. Before dday actually for years I tried everything. I suggested therapy, date nights, time apart, etc. I was in the best shape of my life, excelling career wise, doing everything in the house, being mom of the year, volunteering. I have talked before about how my husband went on an extended guys trip. I think it was 10-14 days. It was the longest he had been gone by far. I remember never understanding why things were off. And I knew I was doing well. I remember one day it was summer time, I had a tan and I was in excellent shape. I decided I am going to walk back and forth through the bathroom naked. And nothing he did not even notice me. At the time I honestly thought is he gay since I had confronted him very directly asking if there were other women. And also my husband's 10 year affairs were sporadic so things would seem normal at times then off again. Anyways he went on that long trip and that was the happiest I had been in almost ten years. The kids were happy. I realized then that it was him and not me. I guess in a way I am glad I realized before dday since I had gotten to a dark spot of believing his gas lighting about me being the problem and had a plan to commit suicide.
ReplyDeleteOnce dday hit I had already gone through this. For me it was more about how do I balance my recovery and how do I express what I need and must have to move forward. Thanks Elle again for a great post!
Goodness Elle, you family story sounds like my H's family story. My H's grandfather was literally a prince (from an now defunct monarchy) who was pals with Hugh Hefner. And my H's mother was the caretaker of her father (literally rescuing him and his friends while they were drunk and partying in a country that suddenly had a coup) and tried to be that of her husband (a peacocky, clinically narcissistic, bisexual, cheating, classical musician).. . yeah, this family has some crazy stuff going on. So that was what my H's model of women was. My mom is also a bit of a caretaker but she also openly resisted my father so complaint, rebellion and resistance was always out in the open in our house. Plus we were a household of women so no one ever took my father's demands seriously. I think over time, as I sensed my husband taking advantage of my capacity to take care of things, I resisted, complained and rebelled. However, in his mind that meant I didn't love him and he was a victim. Like his mother, I was supposed to suck it up and take care of him and his problems, sacrifice myself to achieve his dreams. For awhile I believed that if only I did something different, it would change. Or if I told him what he should change, he would. I think I ended up taking his agency away from him by doing that. Now that he isn't in my daily life, he has to find his agency. This separation has been so great for me. I am so much happier and can focus on what is important to me. I don't know what to do next but so far, I know I can't sacrifice the parts of my self that I had been for so long.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone is watching the Amazon series "The Romanoffs" (it's terrible, actually), episode 2 was incredibly cathartic and vindicating--it speaks to what Elle says here. Parts of it, even some of the dialogue felt like it was taken right out of my life. It was incredibly clarifying to see it on screen.
Wow. Sounds like, if you want to put pen to paper, you have the making of one helluva memoir. ;)
DeleteSo glad the separation is making you happier and giving you such clarity. Deal with tomorrow tomorrow.
This is a really pertinent topic for me at this point and I’ll like advice from you ladies as I have no-one to share the full extent of the betrayal saga with. D-day 1 almost five years ago Jan 14, d-day 2 9 months later, emotional affair but I’ve also discovered porn use throughout years including 5000 euros spent bet 2001 and 2004 when we had three small children and were saving for moving home, also deception re investments, inc some of my money. Then when we were struggling with reconciliation, one year ago now I discovered more lunches and coffees with single women. Since then he’s been to a good counsellor and been working through books and techniques to deal with his resentment, defensiveness and intimacy issues, addictive nature etc. However he’d asked me for ‘time’ to get himself together so he could be the man he needed to be for the relationship. However this meant often putting aside my needs for him to sit with my pain (he wasn’t able yet as courselling wasn’t progressed, he had huge stresses and work pressure (we now have a huge debt due to cash flow problems in his start up venture. (He is set to change jobs though, will know tomorrow if he has got job in steady company.)
ReplyDeletePart 2
ReplyDeleteSo he is the damaged man you talk about, he knows it, has admitted to it. I’ve done a lot of work on meditation, building my own confidence. But we have a long term history of him undermining me and making out that I am a problem, of not being emotionally available, of – mostly – being defensive and unhelpful when I am triggered. Now a year later he dealt badly with three trigger instances in close proximity, even though I didn’t go mad (at first) just said I was finding some particular situations difficult. He blanked. (He says he needs to sit at that moment with his own defensiveness and fears and not say something he regrets but it means he blanks me at the moment I need his tenderness and interaction. His counsellor has been trying to calm him when faced with, for him, emotionally difficult conversations. One technique he was using was to tell himself he wasn’t responsible for other peoples moods or feelings. However IT WAS NOT A GOOD TIME TO SAY “I’m not responsible for your feelings” when he had just blanked me after a trigger and when the feelings were related to his actions. He then went on to suggest all sorts of gaslighting style things like it was me who wasn’t taking into account the times he had been supportive, that I was ‘pushing him away’ because I didn’t accept his hug after the blanking. Im not saying he has not been kind or done nothing in this past year since the last (repeated) betrayal and he is working on attitudes with his counsellor. But I have been severely affected here and, although I can heal myself within myself, how can the relationship between us heal if he has not yet reached the point where he can truly emphathize with me, have compassions for me rather than feel I’m trying to berate him. He admits he doesn’t really feel that way but says these things ‘in the moment’ but it’s the moment he could show me he really cares about helping me through the affects of his actions. There is so much long term damage now and now there is also a huge passage of time since last year and since the orginal d-day when he still has not learned to trust me and accept that I am not trying to play tricks on him. He knows what is wrong but can’t/won’t change this key thing of coming together with me in my pain. He is great in so many other ways but I feel like I’m in a hall of mirrors. Its so hard because the family has been through so much this year and for yearx, and some things are beginning to settle down. The last thing we need is to announce a breakup. At the moment I have barriers within the relationship but it still ekes away at my stamina and confidence and sense of self to be dealing with this all the time. (And my eldest son put me through a gaslighting scenario this morning where he sat me down, very aggressively to discuss his problem with me and my issues (I was being firm about something that any parent would be) .I recently met up with my sister and some friends and was surprised that they found me funny and how well we all get on. It just shows how I’m being made into something I’m not by the situation around me at home. I am still losing myself. Any advice please?
FOH,
DeleteAre you also in therapy? It sounds as though your husband, literally, isn't emotionally capable of responding/supporting you when you're triggered. I heard Iyanla Van Zant do a podcast recently and was struck by her saying that when we're deciding whether to trust someone, we have to consider whether they're capable of what we need from them. Is he unwilling? (Doesn't sound like it) Is he incapable? (That sounds more like it.)
So...where does that leave you? Well, it leaves you either having to decide that you've invested enough time in this and it's time to leave (and that's a decision that needs to be based on what's best for you, not the extended family). Or, that you're willing to give him time to catch up to you. And, in the meantime, get support via therapy so that you aren't expecting bheaviour of him that he's not capable of.
I'm not letting him off the hook. I'm not for a second saying that what he's doing is right or okay. I'm only saying that it sounds as though he has a LOT of stuff to work through, that he's got some serious damage to remedy and that you're asking someone with a broken leg to go for a jog.
I know how painful it is and how alone you must feel. And then to have your son pull teenage gaslighting shit on you (welcome to the club. My head is still spinning from my 17-year-old's verbal gymnastics last night in order to justify behaviour that I am NOT okay with).
So that's where it's crucial that you stayed centred and clear on boundaries. Which are simply: What you will and will not tolerate in order to keep yourself emotionally and physically safe.
Your son? Doesn't get a pass.
But your husband? Well, that's not so clear cut. He doesn't get a permanent pass but perhaps, since he seems genuinely like he's trying to learn better, you can talk to him about how painful it is when he can't step up. Can you have a code word that doesn't trigger all his shame stuff? Can you call a friend? Can you write it all down to talk about with him when emotions aren't running so high?
As for all the stuff he's done, you've got a LOT of reasons to be pissed off. He pulled some really awful stuff.
But...at a certain point, you're going to have to release yourself and him from that. It's hard, I know, especially when he's disappointed you yet again. I still have a script in the back of my head my husband has done something stupid that says "And on top of forgetting to put gas in the car, he cheated with his horrible assistant!!!"
So yeah...nothing about this is easy. And the pain doesn't just go away with time. But it does diminish when we're truly taking care of ourselves in a way that allows resentment to dissipate and that gives others total responsibility for THEIR stuff and we take responsibility for our stuff.
I suspect the time will come when he can show up for you in a way that you need. I hope it comes soon enough for you but nobody would blame you for saying "enough" right now.