Christmas Day 2011 I was given the worst gift I had ever
received in my life. We had just
returned from a family Christmas trip and I was already dreading the first
Christmas Day without any of our children present. Our refrigerator had turned into a freezer while we were
gone so what little food we had was frozen solid. There was no ham roasting in the oven or friends coming to
share this most special holiday with us.
I was sad about the state of our Christmas Day but heartened when he
said he wanted to talk after he returned from church. Our relationship had been in troubled waters for a number of
years and I was hopeful that maybe the family trip had worked some magic; maybe
he was willing to really work on us; maybe this day would be the beginning of a
new relationship. It was and it wasn’t.
The worst Christmas present I ever received was my husband
of 33 years telling me he no longer wanted to live with me or be in
relationship with me. To say I was
devastated would be a huge understatement. I had drawn a line in the sand months before but hoped that
it would incentivize him towards working on our relationship rather than
ignoring it. I was the first one
to utter the word “divorce” but hoped that it would be a reality check for
him—that he would feel the urgency that I did to re-animate our dying
relationship. I still held hope
for us; I still believed in us; I still wanted “us.” I knew in my gut that he didn’t really want “us” but I
refused to admit it to my heart.
But once he uttered those words, my heart broke with the knowledge that
my gut had been right and like Alexander, my day was a “terrible, horrible, no
good, very bad day.”[1] It was the worst day of my life, or so
I thought at the time. It was the
worst gift I had ever received, or so it seemed.
His uttering those horrible words were perhaps the most
honest thing he had ever said to me or at least said in years. My gut knew his “problem with
pornography” was greater than he believed but his arguments were so
persuasive. My gut knew that his
attraction to children was sexual but his denial and rationalization made sense
in a crazy way. And to argue
against his position was to argue with his “therapist” as well and created
unbelievable discord and difficulty for days. So I silenced my gut; I disconnected from the truths it was
screaming; I ignored the knowledge that it tried to communicate to me. Until he gave me the worst gift
ever. And therein lies the
paradox: the worst gift became the
best gift because it gave me freedom to reconnect with my gut, to leave the destruction
and death of a shell of a marriage, to begin to rediscover myself, or maybe
discover myself is a better description.
I wonder if I ever truly knew who I was outside of relationship.
The worst gift ever was my exit ticket. As a
domestic violence advocate, I understand cognitively and theoretically why
women stay in destructive relationships.
We are committed to the fairy tale of our relationship—you know, the
rose-colored version that ignores the facts our gut screams to us. And in the cycle of violence, the
honeymoon phase gives victims a glimpse of their “knight in shining armor” once
again. Survivors of domestic
violence often stay in the relationship in spite of the violence just to
experience the honeymoon phase again.
It confirms their belief that the relationship is good; that their
partner is kind; that the violence is an anomaly and often that it is their
fault. While my relationship was
not violent, it was destructive but it wasn’t all bad—he wasn’t a “monster” but
rather a respected and accomplished member of his profession. He was generally kind to me but always
distant. And he had a zillion
excuses as to why our relationship wasn’t thriving. So my hope persisted even when the evidence was
overwhelming.
The worst gift gave me permission
to listen to the truth in my gut.
After Christmas Day, he vacillated once or twice in his decision, which
was confusing to me. And once or
twice, I was tempted to beg him to reconsider—after all, ours was a great “love
story,” wasn’t it? What a shame to
consign it to the divorce heap.
But I had begun listening to my gut again and I could no longer ignore
the evidence it presented to me—much like a prosecutor laying out the case
against the accused. I began
telling myself the truth about the relationship and the truth began exposing
the lies of the “rose-colored, fairy-tale” version.
The worst gift revealed
the heart of my “prince” in a way I had never seen before. While he professed to love me, I
believe he married me because he saw me as the solution to a problem he had
wrestled with for most of his life.
When I failed to solve the problem for him, I was disposable. For many years I was confused by his
intense anger towards me and the resentments he nurtured. I only saw brief glimpses of the anger
and resentments. It came out in
very passive aggressive ways but was there nonetheless. It didn’t make sense to me. And to be honest, on that Christmas
Day, I didn’t see all of this. But
my heart opened to the truth and the reality that he did not love me the way I
thought he did, that he had never been as invested in the relationship as I was
and that he had not been attracted to me in over two decades.
The worst gift gave me freedom
to walk away; no, it was more like a mandate or order to leave. As the oldest of four children in a
family that had all the dysfunctions of an alcoholic family without the
alcohol, care giving and responsibility were my middle names. I had long carried the heavier burden
of care giving in the relationship.
He needed me and I loved to be needed. I was like a first responder to an emergency—first on the
scene and last to leave. But his
gift gave me the permission I needed to walk away—to begin to focus my care
giving on myself. To finally lay
down my need to take care of him—I had outgrown it many years earlier but the
roles we had established early in our marriage were firmly entrenched. It was hard to change them and he had
little desire or motivation to do so.
These gifts hidden within the worst gift ever became
critical in the days that followed.
Without them, I may have chosen a different course of action; I may have
felt obligated to stay in a destructive marriage, to my own detriment. Two months after that terrible,
horrible, no good, very bad day, our house was raided by a task force charged
with tracking down those trading in child pornography. They arrested my partner the next day
and his employer fired him two weeks later. Without the gifts, it would have been hard to divorce him
when his life had just exploded in a very messy, serious way. All that I had been taught as a child
about denying or minimizing my own needs in order to care for others would have
kicked in. I would have felt the
social pressure to stay and “help” him through this. But the gifts revealed by that worst gift saved me and
offered me another option.
In a few weeks, I will celebrate Christmas again but this
time I will celebrate as a newly divorced woman. Last Christmas, my ex-husband gave me the gift of a new
relationship—just not in the manner I would have chosen. It will be an important mile-marker for
me; one that I want to commemorate by sharing and savoring what I have learned
thus far about the best gifts of the worst gift. There are new gifts that were birthed by this worst gift
that I will examine and cherish during this season. No longer am I living with an active sex addict; no longer
am I in a confusing relationship with a pedophile; no longer must I deny the
truths my gut knows. I can choose
my destiny now—it is no longer tied to his. I am free to be me and to learn just who I am and what my place
is on the planet. I have been
given the opportunity to turn loneliness into solitude and to embrace the
solitude. The greatest loneliness
I have ever experienced was what I experienced during my marriage. Living alone for the greater part of
this year has been a gift and one I am entirely grateful for.
Yes, there is grief as well but I am learning to embrace it
as a gift—the tears I shed are cleansing and help loosen the knots in my soul
that came from so many years of denying the truth. This is neither the road I envisioned nor the place I
thought I would be in one year ago but it is good and maybe it is even better
than what I envisioned. I am
learning to grieve and yet feel gratitude at the same time—another paradox.
[1] Viorst,
Judith. Alexander and the Terrible,
Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. 1972. Aladdin Books.
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