Well so I’m getting a divorce. We have been together for 15 years/married for 9 years and 51 weeks when I finally had enough. Long story short – it devolved into her alcoholism and narcissism over the course of like 8 years. I’m an alcoholic too but I am now sober and clear headed. I knew it was over when she left marriage counseling in a huff after replying to the therapist’s question, ”what are you willing to do for your marriage?” with “nothing.”
She is still drinking. Still on the attack. Still weaponizing the kids, 13 and 9. She is kind of spiraling right now. When I decided I didn’t have to be available for her to yell at for hours on end she lost her mind. Called my family, my work, made it hard for me to focus at work, threatened to call the cops, called my freaking gym just to make it difficult for me to go as I would have the kids and one isn’t 13 yet, so my daughter can’t even just hang out much less work out. My wife has lost all sense of boundaries and is not really working regular hours. She’s dealing with some legitimate health problems – as soon as I left she decided to take her health seriously and they just discovered some ovarian cysts – so now I have to be prepared to be the asshole who left his wife just before she got cancer, even if that is just worst case scenario. My kids understand. My daughter is ride or die team mom, which I love, but it’s super confusing for her to observe her mother behave so blatantly malicious and without regard or remorse. My son is turning into an angry young man. He, like me, just wants peace and harmony. It’s super hard and I’m working on getting them into therapy, which I’ve begun to take more seriously myself. There are days they get along and days I see them displaying learned behavior that is either me at my drunken worst or her at hers. I’m trying to teach them otherwise.
My final takeaway is two-fold. And heartbreaking. 1) This is the first time in my life where I can definitively say that my own optimism has hurt me. My brother said something like “you’ve got to quit thinking you know better than everyone else”. I don’t. I told him this isn’t ego this is optimism. His reply was “well how’s that working out for you?” Pretty bad. Pretty no good very bad. 2) No matter what – A person does not get to allow themselves to be run by their emotions. No matter how bad you feel, you have control and autonomy over your actions, attitude, and behavior. You can choose how you act, all the time. Even when you feel hurt or wounded or angry or hungry or horny or happy YOU CHOOSE YOUR BEHAVIOR. This turned into catharsis for me. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Anyway. Any advice appreciated.