Frozen at the end of the diving board

[Palinurus]

Hello all,

I’m new here. I’m in what I’m discovering is a pretty common predicament. I reached the end of a very stretched rope in my marriage about a year and a half ago. I have tried to end things several times. The last time I said I wanted a divorce, our state went under stay-at-home orders the following day before I had a chance to prepare to actually leave. The time before that my uBPH said it would kill him for me to end things.

It really shouldn’t matter but to prevent anyone from responding in ways that might be unhelpfully gendered we are both gay men.

That was exactly a year ago. I am stuck on the edge of the diving board trying to make myself jump and knowing that the rush of air and the cool water and the freedom to swim will feel amazing.

Bags are packed and ready to go.
Important papers are out of the house.
I have multiple places to stay.
I have set up a new bank account and gotten a new debit card.
I have a lawyer on deck.
I have no logical reason to want to stay.
I just need to change my direct deposit and maybe write an explanatory letter he can use as a reference when he’s totally blindsided by me going and needs to have some data for his therapist.

That’s it. Two more things to do. and the thought of doing them and breaking the news makes me so nauseous and anxious I get paralyzed.

The basic outline of how I got here, which again seems pretty typical (this isn’t even all the greatest hits):

Whirlwind courtship long distance. I had some trepidation about how fast he wanted to define things and as he began planning to move to my city said it would be important to me that he was moving here not just for me, but because it also represented improved career opportunities. I wanted him to get his own place and see what it was like to date when our time geographically together wasn’t automatically special because it was rare.
When the time came to make the decision, he had been staying with me for a few weeks. I caved on my boundary about him getting his own place and we decided he could move in and pay rent.

As we had been getting more serious I repeatedly told him to be prepared that I need a lot of alone time, time with friends, and alone time. I also looked forward to spending connected time with him but wanted it understood that when I see someone every day I’m not going to be spending all day with them the way I do when I only see them for a long weekend every couple months.

He moved in. Things were pretty great for a couple years.
Oh wait, no. it took him a year to find a job. But then he got a pretty awesome job tailor-made for his expertise and experience. His out of state driver’s license expired. Things were cool, though. We got engaged.

Trying to organize a wedding together was a total nightmare. He viewed any delayed step as invariably leaving to a catastrophic failure of the whole enterprise. He repeatedly said things like “we failed to [do x thing that isn’t super time sensitive]” to which I typically responded “I’d prefer not to be included in that remark.”

We got through it. We had an amazing wedding. We did a great job pulling together the liturgy. We had friends and family from everywhere. It was a beautiful day. The photos are amazing.

Within weeks of the wedding, things start to change subtly. Suddenly, anything about the house that bothers him is an urgent crisis. Every time one or both of us prepare to travel, for work or fun, the weeks up to the trip become a nightmare of him saying he wishes he/we/I could cancel the trip because he’s so behind on work.

On weekends, I can no longer get him to come do things we used to like doing together like hiking or cycling, because he always ends the week behind on work. So I start doing those things on my own or running errands because being home while he moans about being behind on work while not actually doing any isn’t super fun and I like being out by myself. He starts getting upset when I do this because he “can’t work when [I’m] not at home."

He repeatedly wants to go see live music on weekdays. I usually say no because I usually need to be at work before 8 and I spend all day “on” with the people on site, without any downtime. He says he’s sad I don’t want to hang out with him. I’ve been begging him to come hiking with me on weekends. It took nine months of pleading to get one hike on a holiday weekend in.

My work starts throwing pretty regular happy hours. He comes for a while but then stops. If I go, or if I do anything but come straight home, he texts asking when I’ll be home right about when I walk in the door. Meanwhile he often comes home earlier or later than expected without bothering to tell me that he’ll be gone longer and doesn’t respond to texts when I try to check in to see if he’s OK.

The Sunday dinner my family has had almost every week for forty years becomes an item of contention. He is always “too far behind” and needs to stay home to get work done. i tell him it’s fine if he can’t always make it and that I don’t mind going by myself when he needs the work time; other spouses don’t always come either. But of course he can’t work when I’m not home. After a predictable hour of agonizing that I am also apparently required for, he decides he will come after all but now we’re running late and I’m irritated.

He asks if we can change the time or do Sunday dinner on a different day. I say “you know, it’s a longstanding family tradition and I don’t want to ask everyone else to change it because you are struggling to get work done.”

Happy hours, Sunday dinner, and any other socializing I do are no longer characterized by agony over separation but now the real issue has become alcohol. He loudly complains that in this town it is hard for people to socialize without alcohol (I occasionally point out all of the non-drinking activities I can’t get him to do, but that doesn’t get me anywhere).

He orders a book on alcoholism but hides it from me. When I happen upon it I tell him it’s totally OK with me to talk about alcohol. I drink more than my doctor would prefer and I’m amenable to viewing it through a health lens but at this point in my life I’m drinking less than I was in my twenties and feeling comfortable with my intake.
I
 start avoiding plans and losing touch with friends because he gets so upset if I go out. When I point out that my social life seems to be slowing down he darkly hints that it is alcohol, rather than his meltdown every time I want to do something without him, causing this.

By the way, when this story started, my father had just died and my mother was rapidly developing what would later be diagnosed as early-onset Alzheimer disease. In the aftermath of my father’s death there was a massive rift in my extended family and family gatherings shrunk by about half. No stress there.

Every aspect of the house starts to displease him. The AC is too loud. The paint is ugly. He can’t move without bumping into furniture [none of the other residents of the house have this problem].

We finally get to work on projects that involve the mutual interest that first drew us together. It turns out I don’t enjoy collaborating with him. He has rigid ideas about “the way things must be done” that is totally incompatible with my approach and takes all the joy out of the process for me. He also doesn’t like involving other people in these projects for the part that I only like doing with other people. He wants me to work on this part of these projects. Only me. Nobody else. Unfortunately I find his catastrophic interpretation of the quality of our work unpleasant to be around and they trigger sadness and anxiety in me (the catastrophic interpretation of our work is shared by exactly nobody else).

I stop working on projects with him or set clear boundaries around which parts I will and will not work on. When I hold to those boundaries, he gets sad and feels abandoned.

[1/2]

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[Palinurus]

Here's part 2 of my novel!

Eventually he barely makes it to the office. I have to leave work one day because he calls saying he doesn’t know what to do because he is alone at home and he can’t stop screaming and crying. This is the kind of fire I am also starting to have to put out with my mother.

I find him a therapist and leave early for work to take him once a week. He still doesn’t have a driver’s license (three years later).

We move to a new, more spacious home. I hope he won’t have trouble avoiding the furniture. I am wrong. He tells me it is because the house is filled with garbage. Visitors to our house are shocked by how organized and neat it is.

I was off work the first day we wake up in the new house. He leaves for work and I lock the door behind him and start unpacking/tidying up things. Unexpectedly he comes home five minutes later and starts pounding on the door. I open it. He tells me he hasn’t got his keys. When I ask why he came back he tells me he doesn’t know what’s going on and angrily wants to know why I locked the door. I told him because he left for work and I didn’t expect him home until later and I thought he had his keys but it’s fine because a) he knocked (a little aggressively, though) and I let him in but even if I hadn’t he could use the keyless entry on the garage door. He proceeds to yell at me for several minutes about how I don’t want him around and that’s why I locked the door.

We get roommates. He starts to work from home. The roommates are OK, but they work from home too and their work impinges on his sensory sensitivities. Also they speak loudly and our house is quite open. He frequently doesn't get out of bed, gets little work done, and blames it all on the roommates or, when the roommates are out of town, his needs for the physical space to be organized more. He won’t do the organizing without me though, saying he’s afraid to make the wrong decisions but also can’t get started without me.

The second summer in the house, I go on a work trip that’s also a lot of fun. I arrange for him to join me at the end. We have a pretty nice time together.

When I get home from the trip, my mother’s mental condition has worsened. She has had a couple alarming psychotic episodes. I find myself, jetlagged, in the emergency room in the small hours. I spend the next 36 hours with my sister arranging in-home care, getting better psychiatric care, and planning with a social worker.

At the end of those 36 hours he asks me when we are going to work on [household organizational task]. I say any day but today. I’m going to need like four hours by myself to just process the last day and half. I might want a few glasses of wine. his response: “you don’t want me around. I won’t ever get my needs [around home organization project and everything else] met. I’ll just pack a bag and go stay in a motel since you don’t want me here.” Me “...”

Repeat next summer. I’ve hospitalized my mom the day before a relaxing and fun work trip. I visit her on the way up to the trip. The next day I start getting texts about a conflict husband is having with roommates that he won’t actually talk to them about. He says he can’t do it without me here. I say I’m sorry that he wishes I were home and it’s OK to wish I was home but it wouldn’t be OK for him to ask me to come home. I’ll be home in a few days. He says he won’t ask me to come home but that he “might not make it until then”. I have work to do and so I call his brother to let him know husband is in a ton of distress and I can’t answer phone/texts in work sessions. Husband decides I am cruel for telling his brother. Proceeds to tell me that I’ve broken his heart because I find joy in gardening, reading, and drinking. I tell him we need therapy.

Therapy is sort of helpful. I’ve started thinking about BPD as a possibility but in the course of therapy he gets an autism spectrum diagnosis. This accounted for some but not all of the difficulties we had. We did a bunch of work on communication and started to fight less, so that was good.

Still he tended to find something to criticize in most things I did, before he could see that the overall action had been positive and had been designed to help him [I took care of that household organizational project while he was traveling for work and before thanking me he asked why I had put the X’s there and it was the wrong place for the Xs and when I told him I wasn’t wedded to them being there and we could easily move them he decompensated and cried about how I never believed or heard him]. If I suggested that an obstacle to getting a project getting done could be overcome because I had done it in the past, because I didn’t have hard data to prove it, he took my suggestion as an invalidation not just of his concerns, but of his whole being.

At some point he asked me to turn on location sharing on my phone so that “he wouldn’t call or text while I was driving.” I said I’d just not pick up the phone but caved and did it. 3 days later I told him I found having it on creepy and since he never left the house I didn’t need his location on my phone.

At this point it’s been 8 years since he’s had a driver’s license but when I plan to leave town with my car for the annual work trip, he tells me he feels “trapped” without a car and that his therapist suggested I ride with a friend so the car can be there. I asked if his therapist knew he didn’t have a license and he said she did. He has also spent most of the year without a housekey or wallet. He just leaves the door unlocked when he leaves the house.

A friend with considerable expertise offered to help us with [other household project related to interest that drew us together]. I was delighted but when I mentioned it to husband he told me he wanted it to be something we worked on together and connected over. Two years later it’s still not even close to halfway done.

Last summer I notice location sharing has been turned on on my phone. I have not turned it on. I confront him about it and he denies it saying he “doesn’t even know how to use it”.
I’m skipping a lot because this is super long already and I’m running out of steam. Last few things. He routinely thinks my whole family hates him and excludes him. He never reaches out to them directly, except to lie to my sister about my alcohol consumption, which he later denies. They don’t exclude him but he doesn’t take any initiative to engage them. Then he says they don’t ask him about his needs in planning family trips or family traditions. Then he subtly tries to position me in opposition to family members. There’s a lot of testing and a lot of over-the-top reactions to disagreements.

He was incredibly shocked when, talking about whether we should stay together, I said something about knowing whatever happened I would be fine. He said, “I feel like you’re saying you think you’d be OK if we weren’t married or you were without me.” I said “I’d be very sad if we split up because I love you and we’ve spent the last nine years together but I know for certain I would be OK in time.” He looked at me like I had just stabbed him.
We were discussing differentiation and attachment the other night. He tells me he doesn’t understand what psychological framework the idea of differentiation comes from because it never came up in the psych classes he took in college. I try really hard to find a nice way of saying it’s psych 101. He says he’s just never heard of it. I mention it’s in the Imago materials and books we used. He just flatly denies that it is (I checked, it is).

Oh, he got a driver’s license. It only took nine years. I had to do a bunch of the legwork. He’s used it like twice in six months.

Anyway, like I said, that’s the short version. I know it makes no difference how I take the next step. He will take it as confirmation that he is unloveable and destined to be abandoned and that I am cruel and never really loved him and that it’s all the fault of (roommates, my sister, me, the environment, the “garbage” filling our house, alcohol, his work) and he’ll threaten or intimate self-harm. I get all of this and I’m still stuck and have been for so long.

Everyone who has observed us as a couple remarks on how kind, generous and patient I am. The feedback I get from him about who I am is not consistent with the feedback I get from any other person in my life. I trust myself and my reality more than I did a year ago, but man it’s been tough.

The rest of my life, apart from my mom’s illness, some cognitive impairment in a close elderly relative, and some job stress, is really awesome. I have great friends and colleagues. My career is thriving. I’m having a lot of success but I don’t feel like I’m fully enjoying it as long as I stay.

Anyway if you made it this far...thanks. I think, as I get closer to moving on, I needed to put all this together in one place and share it with some folks who might recognize their own situation here or have some encouragement or advice.

-Palinurus

[PeteWitsend]

...
I just need to change my direct deposit and maybe write an explanatory letter he can use as a reference when he’s totally blindsided by me going and needs to have some data for his therapist.

That’s it. Two more things to do. and the thought of doing them and breaking the news makes me so nauseous and anxious I get paralyzed.
...

Well... welcome, Palinurus.

I read your posts and have a couple thoughts...

Are you sure the "Bettering a Relationship or Reversing a Breakup" section is the right place for you?  I can't tell if you're looking for advice on how to leave, or reconsidering whether you want to. 

As to whether to write a letter why you're leaving, I'll share a little advice I received: write the letter for yourself, and decide when emotions are calmer whether you still want to send it. 

When it comes to pwBPD, know that they don't always take things at face value like the rest of us do; a letter like that might (to him) mean you could come back, or are just looking for a fight.  They can't accept you're leaving, and certainly can't and won't accept any responsibility for pushing you away, so you'll probably find out that a "goodbye" letter goes over just as well as if you stood there and tried to say it to them.

Also... be wary of what goes in the letter; if you are leaving and filing for divorce, you don't want to admit or say anything that can be used against you.

A simple note that you left, and maybe that you wish him well might be the best course of action.   

[Palinurus]

Thanks so much. Your perspective on the letter is definitely helpful. I posted this in detaching but it got moved to bettering on the admin side. I’ve had the policy explained to me and I get it. I reposted a simpler version in detaching.

But yeah, him not perceiving things the way I or others do is familiar. I’m starting to reconcile myself to the likelihood that no matter how thoughtfully and intentionally I do this he will react the same way. I’m going to sit with all of this for a bit while I figure out next steps.

Thanks again,
Palinurus