Why No Divorce?!

Why No Divorce?!

“You’ve been separated for nine years?! Is there a reason you don’t want to get divorced?”

Shit. 

The reasons I was separated for nine years without seeking divorce can be summed up in some of the things my ex said to me both while we were together and while we were in the process of separating both times:

• “If you ever leave, I will sue for custody just to punish you.”
• “Get into therapy and fix yourself because you are ruining my life!”
• “The only thing wrong with me is you, you made me bipolar because you’re impossible to have a relationship with.”
• “If you consult a lawyer, I will take it as an act of war and sue you for spousal support.”
• “If you’re ever with anyone else I will punish you by suing you for back spousal support, even if it’s years from now.”
• “You destroyed me by being such a terrible person.”

Yep, we were separated once for a year and a half and then I went back for more. Not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I had no choice.  Accusations and threats which I knew were groundless kept me in line, and I didn’t want to risk having to defend myself in court if he ever actually went through with any of it. 

I believed that all of  my child’s lifelong health problems were my fault, because he told me that our child was born sick, needed surgery, and wasn’t getting better because I attracted negative energy by being such a terrible person. He told me this often, but the first time was as we were leaving the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit after our daily visit with our baby during the first couple of weeks after he was born. I was utterly destroyed by the near death of our child but not allowed to admit that I was upset or worried because that meant I was being negative and would make the baby more sick. I don’t think I have ever been as vulnerable as I was during those first few weeks. I fully believed that I was the only problem, and that if my child were born to anyone other than me it would have been better off. 

Two affairs. He had two affairs and said that they were my fault, because I was such a frigid bitch. I had no way of telling him that I might not recoil at his touch if he could find a way NOT to be a screaming asshole who treated me and his child like garbage. It is hard to be tender with someone who is consistently cruel. It is hard to be tender with someone who you have watched abuse your child to the point that family services had to get involved. It is hard to be intimate with someone you frankly want to punch in the face. 

For so long, my energy was consumed by the attempt not to appear irrational, as I was accused of that constantly. When I found out about his first affair, I wrote a lovely letter to his girlfriend apologizing to her for still sleeping with him for the duration of their relationship because I believed him when he said he wasn’t with anyone else, he just needed to get away from me because I was such an awful person and I was destroying him. I still feel that the blame lies with me, because I knew that the things he was saying and doing didn’t make any sense and I was unable to figure out a way to fix the insanity that was taking over our lives. 

After watching him spank our child and make him stand naked in the corner for having a dirty pull up (which was because of fecal incontinence due to GI diseases) I vowed I would not leave while my child was too young to tell me what was happening on days he was with Dad. After hospital visits, his Dad would say that doctors and specialists didn’t know anything and would both refuse to follow their medical advice and yell at me when I tried to do so. He was determined that he was going to “fix” our child both physically and mentally, and that the only thing keeping him from doing so by applying corporal punishment was me and my lefty bullshit. “If our child ends up in jail, it will be because you didn’t apply physical discipline and you actively prevented me from correcting his behaviour!”

Let me tell  you, grabbing a child by the back of the hair and twisting hard or smacking them upside the head will not suddenly make paralyzed sphincters functional, nor will it cure ADHD. Twisting its ear until it drops to its knees in pain won’t do the trick either. What these sorts of things will do is instill a deep sense of shame in a child, gifting them a lifetime of schemas that are impossible to undo. They will also contribute to other more serious mental health diagnoses due to trauma. 

Abuse and Mistrust, Defectiveness, Subjugation, Abandonment, Emotional Deprivation, the list of schemas goes on and on and there doesn’t seem to be enough therapy in the world to help. My child and I have these in common, although they have very different origins. The thing that keeps me awake at night is that I chose this person to have a child with in large part because I had many of the schemas that have now come full circle in my child. I chose someone who felt powerful when he kept me down. I chose someone who did harm to our child and to me, whether he intended to or not. He’s not a bad person, he is a person with serious lifelong mental health struggles, but I never doubted that he would follow through on his threats. What I can not comprehend is why I hate and blame myself for having been in that relationship when I have nothing but empathy and compassion for the person who wanted to destroy me. 

So. “You’ve been separated for nine years? Is there a reason that you don’t want to get divorced?” was the most recent iteration of decades of “What the hell are you doing with that guy?!” and there was truly no real response I could give. Threats that seem silly in hindsight kept me bound to him, even during both separations. Shame and fear that he was right and I was the cause of suffering in those around me was another big one.  Again, seems ridiculous now to my logical mind but my heart still truly fears that it’s true. Fears it to the point that I have panic attacks when my current (finally, ten years post-separation I am in a relationship) boyfriend is kind to me, because I fear that anyone who cares for me is cursed by my presence in their life. This is a heavy weight that I have carried for what feels like forever. I know logically that it isn’t true, but I often lose hope that I will ever actually believe it. I refuse to capitulate to this, because I need to believe that it is possible to have a joyful life after abuse so that when my child feels like there is no point in persevering I can feel I have done my job as a parent by leading by example.