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State of the Deni - super awful
Oct. 6th, 2018 05:59 pmThe post I opted not to make on Facebook for fear of repercussions
I'm depressed.
I don't understand how he could do this to me, and then turn around and act indignant and angry that I'm "making it about me." Like, WTF? Of course it's about me.
My entire life has been turned upside down. I have been told, on numerous occasions, that a relationship with me is "not worth it".
He has indicated that my mental illness is too much to bear. It's actually generally been viewed by all the doctors I've seen as relatively mild, and, according to every therapist I see, pretty well managed. That treatment is mainly an issue of the right meds - though my last bout of depression was a doozy.- and I tried for a year to get a medication adjustment before I got one.
His therapist girlfriend kept offering to get her boss- who I know was also talked to about her perspective on our troubles- to write me a prescription from AZ. I kept politely declining because that's wildly inappropriate and probably illegal.
I begged him not to leave just as I had finally, after years of trying, accessed a more appropriate treatment plan and drug regimen. To give it a few months.
He told me I might relapse, or stop taking my drugs (my medication compliance has always been impeccable, and my attitude toward medication has never been even remotely adversarial so this fear seems unfounded).
He told me I had always avoided treatment (an accusation so mind bogglingly distant from what I HAVE done that I can only assume it came from an outside source.) and we'd be back at square one.
He told me he didn't think I could get better and stay better. He has told me he "wishes [I] could see how many people think [I'm] unreasonable."
He will claim he never said these things. He has already claimed it to me. I told him that's what I understood (it seemed pretty stark and clear to me) and if we could understand each other as poorly as we seemed to be, then maybe help fixing our communication could solve the majority of his complaints.
I have apologized over and over again. Wracked my brains for more and more things wrong with me to address in my own issues and flaws, and weathered angry verbal assaults every time I tried to assert a boundary (usually the same boundary - you don't get to unilaterally go back on an agreement with me without a conversation first because you've decided doing something else is more appealing. If you agree to something, you don't get to drop an "I've decided to do this other thing" on me at the last minute - or in retrospect.) Which, incidentally, was the boundary that led to most of our conflict early in the year.
I've spent years winding up comforting him when I brought a concern to him about something he said or did, and I did that because I knew he had intense anxiety around "being in trouble" I knew this was his baggage to bear and I knew it was hard for him, too. He did some CBT and it actually got a lot better. Until it started getting worse again. And then I gently suggested a CBT refresher and he agreed. More recently, he has decided he didn't need it. I suspect he was being coached that I was leading him to think he was the problem. I won't say I was perfect, but I will say that that particular issue was largely his baggage.
When I finally started standing up and saying: "hey, I get to bring it up when your words or actions have hurt me without hearing all the things that are wrong with me in response" - that we could talk about his beefs with me when they were happening, not when I had an issue I was trying to have addressed, the things he started telling me I *would do if he ever brought issues to me became more and more outlandish and I started saying: "do you really think I would do that? That would be seriously fucked up! Don't you know me better than that?" And then he accused me of being abusive and toxic, as if those accusations of what I *would do were in any way reflective of my own values or our history and then he dropped me like a hot fucking potato.
And now he treats almost every thing I say with suspicion and defense and applies the worst possible motivations to it, regardless of how many times I try to explain my intent and I'm left completely crushed and questioning my own self knowledge.
Am I flawed? Yes. I'll even cop to very flawed. Did we desperately need help with a spiralling dynamic? Once it started spiralling, yes. And I wanted help then. Just not help from the woman he was fucking. That is crazy inappropriate and imbalanced and so clearly part of the problem in the first place. He has refused to try to work things out with me to salvage our relationship. He says he has tried enough. I suspect he's being coached not to agree to therapy because couples therapy is inappropriate in sitations of unbalanced power. I remain boggled as to what power I have over him. When I've asked him, he seems unable or unwilling to answer.
When I have tried to work my shit out with my friends, tried to tell people what's happening to me and what I am going through, I am met with angry accusations of dragging his name through the mud. Of poisoning his friendships. I was sworn at for calling Piet in hysterics. He claims he hasn't talked to anyone, and when I suggested that maybe he should, he has responded that he has talked to loads of people.
He claims he will go to therapy with me with the goal of parting amicably, but when I actually told him to go ahead and book the therapist we agreed on he balked, saying I would talk about what I wanted and he didn't want that.
He is bending over backwards to be extra loving at the kids - which is great, but then he is making implications about my parenting (i.e. asking Isaac if he'd had anything other than pop to drink over a two day period, as if I have any kind of history of letting my kids drink only pop.) and then, when the teenagers act like teenagers, he rages at me about "coddling" them and says things like: "this is why I want my own place."
And I still want him back. I mean, not this new, angry, paranoid Nick. But my best friend. This all feels so sudden and unreal.
He will be furious about this post. Someone who is reading (and I know who you are, by the way) will send him screen shots, even though he is blocked, and he will read them, even though I have expressed that I believe that to be an invasion of my privacy, and he will tell me, again, that my "behaviour" will "make things go poorly" for me. He will accuse me of dragging his name through the mud. He will make clear that he sees no point to my sharing of this info other than that specific goal. He will try, again, to silence me. To make me feel like I can't talk to my friends in what is the largest emotional crisis I've ever felt. He will accuse me of "playing the victim" and of manipulating all of you. I don't think those are my goals, but I question pretty much everything I know about myself these days.
I will be accused of spitefully trying to harm his girlfriend's family. I do feel spiteful. I also fail to understand how my family's harm could possibly be seen as acceptable under those terms of engagement. I'm exhausted of different rules applying. I have not lied about a licensed therapist who is sleeping with my husband offering to arrange a remote prescription or about her providing relationship counselling to a man she was sleeping with, or about her cheating on her partner. If her family is harmed, that is a result of her choices, not mine, just as I am reminded that I am "being held accountable" for my actions (or in many cases, my potential actions.) That the harm to myself and my family is based on my behaviour alone. I am reminded that holding me accountable is to my family's net benefit. Am I disclosing out of spite? Partly. And partly out of a desperate need to feel understood and heard and to not feel crazy anymore. And if I'm completely honest with myself? Partly because I am still making excuses for him. Because holding someone else accountable for his behaviour hurts less than thinking he would do this to me himself.
I know many of you consider him a friend, too. I do assert that none of this is like him at all. I believe he has been manipulated, I believe he is suffering his own mental health crisis and that he needs empathy. I have been asking mutual friends to approach him with empathy since the beginning of this, and I ask that again now. My intention isn't to scorch the earth, but I am confused and in pain. I am unable to talk to him about my pain and confusion without being treated to anger and accusation.
I know what he hoped was one of those "we are parting amicably to pursue disparate goals" posts. But that simply isn't true. I feel hurt and betrayed and heartbroken and I have spent months trying to get to understanding and acceptance, but I don't understand and I don't feel like anything is okay.
I'm depressed.
I don't understand how he could do this to me, and then turn around and act indignant and angry that I'm "making it about me." Like, WTF? Of course it's about me.
My entire life has been turned upside down. I have been told, on numerous occasions, that a relationship with me is "not worth it".
He has indicated that my mental illness is too much to bear. It's actually generally been viewed by all the doctors I've seen as relatively mild, and, according to every therapist I see, pretty well managed. That treatment is mainly an issue of the right meds - though my last bout of depression was a doozy.- and I tried for a year to get a medication adjustment before I got one.
His therapist girlfriend kept offering to get her boss- who I know was also talked to about her perspective on our troubles- to write me a prescription from AZ. I kept politely declining because that's wildly inappropriate and probably illegal.
I begged him not to leave just as I had finally, after years of trying, accessed a more appropriate treatment plan and drug regimen. To give it a few months.
He told me I might relapse, or stop taking my drugs (my medication compliance has always been impeccable, and my attitude toward medication has never been even remotely adversarial so this fear seems unfounded).
He told me I had always avoided treatment (an accusation so mind bogglingly distant from what I HAVE done that I can only assume it came from an outside source.) and we'd be back at square one.
He told me he didn't think I could get better and stay better. He has told me he "wishes [I] could see how many people think [I'm] unreasonable."
He will claim he never said these things. He has already claimed it to me. I told him that's what I understood (it seemed pretty stark and clear to me) and if we could understand each other as poorly as we seemed to be, then maybe help fixing our communication could solve the majority of his complaints.
I have apologized over and over again. Wracked my brains for more and more things wrong with me to address in my own issues and flaws, and weathered angry verbal assaults every time I tried to assert a boundary (usually the same boundary - you don't get to unilaterally go back on an agreement with me without a conversation first because you've decided doing something else is more appealing. If you agree to something, you don't get to drop an "I've decided to do this other thing" on me at the last minute - or in retrospect.) Which, incidentally, was the boundary that led to most of our conflict early in the year.
I've spent years winding up comforting him when I brought a concern to him about something he said or did, and I did that because I knew he had intense anxiety around "being in trouble" I knew this was his baggage to bear and I knew it was hard for him, too. He did some CBT and it actually got a lot better. Until it started getting worse again. And then I gently suggested a CBT refresher and he agreed. More recently, he has decided he didn't need it. I suspect he was being coached that I was leading him to think he was the problem. I won't say I was perfect, but I will say that that particular issue was largely his baggage.
When I finally started standing up and saying: "hey, I get to bring it up when your words or actions have hurt me without hearing all the things that are wrong with me in response" - that we could talk about his beefs with me when they were happening, not when I had an issue I was trying to have addressed, the things he started telling me I *would do if he ever brought issues to me became more and more outlandish and I started saying: "do you really think I would do that? That would be seriously fucked up! Don't you know me better than that?" And then he accused me of being abusive and toxic, as if those accusations of what I *would do were in any way reflective of my own values or our history and then he dropped me like a hot fucking potato.
And now he treats almost every thing I say with suspicion and defense and applies the worst possible motivations to it, regardless of how many times I try to explain my intent and I'm left completely crushed and questioning my own self knowledge.
Am I flawed? Yes. I'll even cop to very flawed. Did we desperately need help with a spiralling dynamic? Once it started spiralling, yes. And I wanted help then. Just not help from the woman he was fucking. That is crazy inappropriate and imbalanced and so clearly part of the problem in the first place. He has refused to try to work things out with me to salvage our relationship. He says he has tried enough. I suspect he's being coached not to agree to therapy because couples therapy is inappropriate in sitations of unbalanced power. I remain boggled as to what power I have over him. When I've asked him, he seems unable or unwilling to answer.
When I have tried to work my shit out with my friends, tried to tell people what's happening to me and what I am going through, I am met with angry accusations of dragging his name through the mud. Of poisoning his friendships. I was sworn at for calling Piet in hysterics. He claims he hasn't talked to anyone, and when I suggested that maybe he should, he has responded that he has talked to loads of people.
He claims he will go to therapy with me with the goal of parting amicably, but when I actually told him to go ahead and book the therapist we agreed on he balked, saying I would talk about what I wanted and he didn't want that.
He is bending over backwards to be extra loving at the kids - which is great, but then he is making implications about my parenting (i.e. asking Isaac if he'd had anything other than pop to drink over a two day period, as if I have any kind of history of letting my kids drink only pop.) and then, when the teenagers act like teenagers, he rages at me about "coddling" them and says things like: "this is why I want my own place."
And I still want him back. I mean, not this new, angry, paranoid Nick. But my best friend. This all feels so sudden and unreal.
He will be furious about this post. Someone who is reading (and I know who you are, by the way) will send him screen shots, even though he is blocked, and he will read them, even though I have expressed that I believe that to be an invasion of my privacy, and he will tell me, again, that my "behaviour" will "make things go poorly" for me. He will accuse me of dragging his name through the mud. He will make clear that he sees no point to my sharing of this info other than that specific goal. He will try, again, to silence me. To make me feel like I can't talk to my friends in what is the largest emotional crisis I've ever felt. He will accuse me of "playing the victim" and of manipulating all of you. I don't think those are my goals, but I question pretty much everything I know about myself these days.
I will be accused of spitefully trying to harm his girlfriend's family. I do feel spiteful. I also fail to understand how my family's harm could possibly be seen as acceptable under those terms of engagement. I'm exhausted of different rules applying. I have not lied about a licensed therapist who is sleeping with my husband offering to arrange a remote prescription or about her providing relationship counselling to a man she was sleeping with, or about her cheating on her partner. If her family is harmed, that is a result of her choices, not mine, just as I am reminded that I am "being held accountable" for my actions (or in many cases, my potential actions.) That the harm to myself and my family is based on my behaviour alone. I am reminded that holding me accountable is to my family's net benefit. Am I disclosing out of spite? Partly. And partly out of a desperate need to feel understood and heard and to not feel crazy anymore. And if I'm completely honest with myself? Partly because I am still making excuses for him. Because holding someone else accountable for his behaviour hurts less than thinking he would do this to me himself.
I know many of you consider him a friend, too. I do assert that none of this is like him at all. I believe he has been manipulated, I believe he is suffering his own mental health crisis and that he needs empathy. I have been asking mutual friends to approach him with empathy since the beginning of this, and I ask that again now. My intention isn't to scorch the earth, but I am confused and in pain. I am unable to talk to him about my pain and confusion without being treated to anger and accusation.
I know what he hoped was one of those "we are parting amicably to pursue disparate goals" posts. But that simply isn't true. I feel hurt and betrayed and heartbroken and I have spent months trying to get to understanding and acceptance, but I don't understand and I don't feel like anything is okay.
