He’s History, You’re Not

The shrink asked me today if I’d ever had a serious relationship before my husband.  I thought about it and had to say I hadn’t, depending on how you defined serious relationship.   I certainly never had a strong connection with anyone, and I met my husband at age 41 so that’s saying a lot.  I didn’t have a lot of talent at connecting with men.   Why did I marry my ex?  Desperation, plain and simple, I even wrote an essay about it for Cosmopolitan many years ago.   I have lived to eat these words:

IN DEFENSE OF DESPERATION

(Should be called;  MARRY OUT OF DESPERATION; LIVE IN QUIET DESPERATION)

Anyone who’s ever been single and longs to be coupled has been warned that desperation is the kiss of romantic death.  Advice  articles, talk shows, and your mother keep telling you that the scent of desperation has the same effect on men that DEET has on mosquitos.  Instead of actually looking for love you’re supposed to go out and sign up for classes in marine biology, or  birdwatching or jogging or become active in politics. Do something, anything, they tell you and eventually you’ll encounter Mr. Right…. Wrong!

Every woman who’s ever pined away night after night wishing there was a man in her life knows what the problem is with this type of advice:  How can you not look desperate when you are desperate?   You’re going to look just as man-hungry birdwatching (pretending you’re interested in tufted nuthatchers while casting lustful glances at the cute guy behind the next pair of binoculars can bring on vertigo); jogging (you can break a leg trying to make conversation instead of watching for dangerous outcroppings); or working for a local politico (why do you think married politicians find it so easy to fall into bed with cute young things?  Those young things are desperate.)

What’s the solution? Give up the pretense. Just go out and admit that you’re looking for love. Desperation is not a social disease.   It’s normal and healthy to crave connection, intimacy, serious attachment, marriage.  The human race might have died out a long time ago if it weren’t for desperation.  If you complain loudly enough about much you want a man you might run across one of the hordes of desperate matchmakers out there just waiting for someone to fix up.  We all know that personal introductions are the best way to meet suitable mates.
It worked for me.  After years spent pretending not to be desperate, finally I realized that casual encounters weren’t my style.  My excess weight made me too self-conscious to start conversations with strange men and, probably for the same reason, they didn’t try to meet me.  I wound up lurking in corners at continuing ed classes hoping I didn’t look as desperate as I felt.

So I put an ad in the personals and met my husband-to-be.  Both of us were underwhelmed with each other at first.  He was much younger than me, out-of-work and so painfully shy that he barely spoke. I, like I said, was more than a scootch larger than average and wasn’t at all what he had in mind.  Our first date was a total bust.  What did we have in common?  We were desperate. It was the only thing that made us attempt a second date, and then kept us together during an extremely rocky courtship–both of us figured no one else would have us.  Eventually he got a job and over time I discovered there was a sensitive, funny, wonderful guy underneath that self-effacing demeanor.  And he discovered that outspoken, plump older women could be very sexy.

Since then I’ve noticed that all my friends who used to talk about how desperate they were to find a man, found one.  Most are pretty happy, though one or two did settle for men who were, shall-we-say, beneath them.

Alternatively, the friends who proudly declared how self-sufficient they were are still single.  On the one hand they still insist they’d like to meet a man, but on the other they say they’re perfectly happy living alone and aren’t the least bit desperate.  These women seem to have their lives organized so efficiently without a man that I can’t imagine them making room for a man in their closets, much less in their lives.   When a man does come along there’s always some fatal flaw that makes him unsuitable.  Clearly, these women aren’t desperate enough.

You’ve got to be at least a little desperate to make the kind of often-painful compromises that relationships are all about.

And you’ve got to be plenty desperate to put up with all those frogs you’re guaranteed to meet before that prince comes along, and to recognize the prince under those green warts once he does turn up.

Well no matter how much I complain about my ex and his affair partner, now his wife, at least she wasn’t my best friend I don’t have to live with the two of them.   In the 1770s in England that’s what the Dutchess of Devonshire was stuck with when her husband had an affair with her best friend and moved her into their home with her three kids. And she had to put up with it–she literally had no choice.

She had fallen in love with a handsome young man herself, had an affair with him, but the Duke told her that if she didn’t break it off he’d take her children away from her and she’d never see them again. Men could do that in those days–especially if they were royalty. Plus, she was pregnant by her lover and had to give up the baby.

She was trapped. Women had no options. So she gave up the lover, lived with the Duke and his lover, her former best friend, and made believe everything was ok. The movie had a reasonably happy ending, but in real life the Dutchess went downhill, became a compulsive gambler, hounded the Duke to pay her debts, and died young. The Duke married his lover of course.

Sure made me glad I wasn’t around back then. And those dresses. Omigod! 6 layers including corsets, bustles, wigs, stockings etc. I would have died.

I was in the front row this year, under the enormous tent that our synagogue puts up for High Holy Day services.  There are over a thousand people singing, swaying and praying.  It’s like a Jewish tent revival.  There’s something about the power of prayer that raises a lot of energy, especially if so many people are doing it in the same place.  I found myself crying, once again, as I do every year when we sing Avinu Malkenu, the prayer for redemption.  Since we sing it in Hebrew, which I don’t understand, the words aren’t as important as the music, and the sound of a thousand people singing it in unison, standing up, with their arms around each other.

This year I prayed for peace of mind and healing, for myself, for my daughter, even for my ex and his wife.  They were all sitting near me in the tent during the N’eilah service, which is the ending of the holiday.  My daughter and her stepmother were sitting at the end of one row and my ex and his mother were sitting behind them.  I got up and went over to them to wish them a Happy New Year.  My daughter looked happy to see me, her stepmother looked stunned but she forced herself to respond politely, my ex mother in law looked really furious at me and didn’t say a word.  My ex was polite.   I have to congratulate myself for making the effort—it took real effort but this is the holiday for forgiveness, for healing old wounds, for starting over.     I believe we Jews are the only religion to spend a whole week on forgiveness, atonement, letting go of regrets, starting over.    By the end of Yom Kippur, after praying for hours to forgive, let go the hurts of the past, I actually felt good enough to go up to them in sincerity and wish them all well.

What helped was talking to my friend Avigail in between the morning and evening services.  She’s a Jewish scholar and went through her own very messy divorce.    Ten years later she was still obsessing about her ex, what a lying loser he was who never did one thing he’d promised to do, plus he turned two of her children against her and tried to turn the other one against her too.  I got tired of hearing her complaints and I’m sure everyone else did too.   Recently she stopped talking about him.  I asked her about it and she said she finally stopped blaming him.  It’s blame that gets you stuck in the past.  The essence of letting go of the hurts of the past is to recognize that the people who hurt you are NEVER going to change, they are who they are and that’s that, and you have to keep recognizing that reality, over and over.

I would add false hope to that equation. I am still hoping that somehow they are going to recognize the error of their ways.    I wasn’t hoping for an apology, but I was hoping that my ex and his wife would realize that they were harming my daughter with their treatment of me, that they would come to their senses and try to behave like menches (good people in Yiddish).   That is NOT going to happen, not now, probably not ever.

Avigail also pointed out that I need to accept that I didn’t have what it took to care for my emotionally disturbed daughter, that I just couldn’t do it, and they picked up the slack.  I needed them to support me in parenting her in order to be able to do it, but that’s just not going to happen.   They see my inadequacy as purposeful, they will NEVER, NEVER accept that it’s not my fault.     The more I tell myself they will NEVER change, the easier it gets.

Avigail also pointed out that my daughter chose to reject me as well.  <ouch> She may be a child, but she didn’t have to choose them, she could have chosen me.  Avigail had 3 kids.  Her sons listened to their father, her daughter stuck with her.   Her daughter must have been under pressure to go along with her brothers but she resisted.  There is no fault implied here.  My daughter did what she needed to do to survive, and that’s perfectly understandable.  She is an extremely angry kid—for good reason– and I don’t deal well with anger, anyone’s anger.  I shrink back when anyone gets angry at me.   Ironically I picked an angry man to marry—maybe not so ironic, my father was angry.   Both my ex and his wife are angry—the wife is even angrier than he is—she goes on tirades and he’s afraid of her, according to my daughter anyway.  So maybe she belongs with them. They can handle her anger–I can’t.  Can I accept that this year?  I’m going to try.

I saw my daughter (let’s call her Dorothy as I do in my book) last Wednesday in Alice, her therapist’s, office for a half hour. She taught me how to play some silly game and I acted interested. Alice played too and Dorothy directed more conversation to her than to me. I got to give her a little hug and a little back massage while we were playing. I was just dying to hold her and tell her how much I loved her but I didn’t. I just went along with the program, which was to play the game and act animated. She was adorable, very competitive, won the game as usual. She wins every game. I haven’t won a game against her in years–she even wins at Scrabble which is amazing since words are my business. Have I told you how brilliant she is.

When Dorothy left the room I broke down and started weeping. I felt absolutely terrible. What kind of relationship is it to see your daughter for a half hour–and the next time will be two weeks from now. I’m in total despair about it but I’m also totally helpless.
Alice told me to hang in there and try to re establish a relationship with her slowly. I told her I didn’t think I could ever have regular visits with her as long as her stepmother had such an iron grip on her and Alice agreed. She didn’t know the answer either.

Dorothy is coping at school but barely. She’s been doing some acting out lately. It’s very hard for her to restrain herself. She spins out of control really easily and I know I can’t contain her, so here I am on the sidelines of her life, where I’ll undoubtedly remain until she gets older or more normal or a miracle happens and her father and stepmother decide to support me in parenting her. Till then, I’ll be playing Scrabble with her for a half hour every two weeks.    I feel like she died and comes back to life for a half hour occasionally where I get to see her from a distance.   It sucks.  Big time.

In the shower this morning I had a flash of insight. What is it about the shower that provides insight? I’ve been working on the theme of regret and trying to think of exactly what is it that enables us to overcome regret.
What provides relief, is, I believe, just ONE thing: self-forgiveness. I see this with everyone I know who harbors regrets, including me, they are terribly hard on themselves. To let regret go you have to forgive yourself and to do that you need to understand the roots of that particular regret, i.e. why you had it, what it meant to you, why you needed to do that at that time, how it lead to the next thing in your life–or didn’t. Once you forgive yourself you can forgive whoever else in your life needs forgiving (for me, my ex)

For instance I was once a compulsive eater-I was obsessed with food and beat myself up every time I over ate. This obsession took up a good deal of time in my life and often took over my life. If I was on a diet, my mood was determined by the scales-how much did I weigh that morning, had I gained or lost. If I’d eaten that extra slice of cheesecake I was consumed with remorse, I felt like a failure, a bad person. If I’d lost weight I was gleeful, the whole day I felt confident and good about myself. I knew this behavior was counter-productive, in fact I was in a compulsive eating group where we talked about it all the time but no matter what I did I still heard that nasty voice in my head saying, “You have no self control, look at what you just ate, you’re a fat slob, you’ll never be worth anything.” My weight just kept skyrocketing until I weighed over 250 pounds. At that point I felt I had to do something about it so I had gastric bypass surgery. I agonized over whether or not to have it for an entire year, terrified of surgery, frightened that I would die under the knife, or have horrible complications like so many people did.

I had the surgery, it was successful, there were no unexpected complications. The only problem was that I lost weight very slowly. I read on my internet forum about people who were losing a size a month it seemed, and I was inching along. I started blaming myself again-agonizing over every bite I put in my mouth, that voice in my head wouldn’t stop. One day, and I remember this moment with total clarity, like you remember the moment before a car accident-it was spring, I sat down on the deck outside my office, facing the woods and said to myself, “I just went through this incredible trauma to my body, I was brave enough to face major surgery to change my life, I went through a long recovery. I didn’t do this so I could spend the rest of my life agonizing about every bite I put in my mouth —I just refuse to keep beating myself up no matter how much weight I lose or don’t lose.

And that was it. Food ceased being a major issue in my life. I lost a good amount of weight, gained some back, but I don’t worry about it anymore. It was over. That battle was behind me.

I would like to do the same thing with the other demons that plague me in my life-like the regret about my marriage and my daughter. If I can accept myself for being fat, I can accept other mistakes I’ve made. I just have to work on it.