When Our Marriage and Family Dreams Die

I invested in life dreams with my (now)ex-husband. I lost almost all of them. The only thing I got was that my sons came out of their father’s “unveiling” knowing that I was the parent they could count on. I was the parent who would never put them in harm’s way or blame them for my own deceit as their father had. It was a tragic and sad “win” for me. But not a life dream.

I dreamed of memories made and treasured until my last breath. I dreamed of a life partnership where we nurtured our children, each other, and invested in the lives of others, too. I dreamed of shared jokes and moments of celebration. I dreamed of our careful financial living leading to a retirement not of luxury, but of simple security and joy. I dreamed of friendships we would share and enjoy long into retirement. I dreamed of knowing that after all the challenges of his mother to undermine our relationship, we would emerge stronger and loyal to each other. I dreamed of remembering together all the people we had loved and supported through thick and then in our lives as ministers—whether they liked us or not! I dreamed of our vows and promises standing out through everything.

Letting those dreams go and watching them walk into the woods like a wounded animal seeking the company of trees in their dying—that’s not easy. Many of the women I talk to and many of the women who read my blogs desperately while giving other “relationship recovery and maintenance” coaches and counsellors their money, also find it difficult.

I lost three decades of my most productive years for career-building and establishing financial security for me and my children. I gave those years away for nothing, and I will never get them back. There are two sons I carried, birthed, nursed and for whom I acted as primary caregiver (protecting and nurturing a secret life takes up a lot of  husband/father time). I did not claim any compensation or share of his pensions for that work. I was afraid our colleagues would see me as punishing him. They did that anyway and he let them think I had taken most of our money. So, that was my stupid, too.  

I endured three decades of his mother’s abuse and criticism, and when I sought friendly and professional support I was told I was “too this” and “too that”. I eventually learned from my ex, in a moment of mistaken truth-telling, that his mother was his covert abuser from a young age. He was a victim of covert incest. My role (for him) was to redirect her abuse and control tactics onto me, and give him a break. It also made it seem like they were in this “problem-solving about Diane” together with the old emotional intimacy of covert incest.

But, in the misogyny of “modern” counselling, the strong woman must always be blamed for what others do to them. If we dare to be strong and hold a point of view we will pay for that. We are shamed for presenting as victims, even when we are. Shamed and blamed. I stopped asking for help and just tried to manage it as best I could. It seems very hard for mental health professionals to allow strong women to be legitimate victims. They would rather put them in charge of “relationship recovery and maintenance” than engage the evidence of domestic abuse. We all know that’s an area of therapeutic enterprise that has no money in it. 

I was abandoned. I was alone in the hell of it and alone in the aftermath. Except for my best friend. Luckily she hung in there even though she was ready to give up many times. And if she did, she still took my calls and re-invested in keeping me alive. We were born a week apart and were raised in each other’s company from the beginning. I sometimes wonder if that’s the only reason we made it through this together.

It’s not unusual to feel alone when you are in an abusive relationship. The daily lies and gaslighting and blameshifting and personal criticism and acts of utter contempt leave you completely ungrounded and untethered to safety. You try to work. You try to have relationships. You try to participate in life. You try to bring your resources to the table to share with others. But you are also an abused person the entire time. And it makes a difference. Even if you only want to talk about how exhausting it is to keep trying, that’s enough.

And one day, when you are able to form the words in your mind and the truth in your spirit, you realize he took all those precious dreams and built a nightmare out of them.

A colleague posted the following on her FB page. I read it over and over and over. And then I knew I had to share it with you, my readers.

Here is what I know about dreams: Dreams can make us live, but they can also leave a hole inside us when they die. Some of them come true. But it’s the ones that don’t come true, the ones that go down in flames, that can kill us. But here is the secret: If we embrace them and take them into our holy room, if we sit and learn what they have to teach us, they may just help us live.

—Dee Dee Risher, The Soulmaking Room (Upper Room Books, 2016)

I went to that holy room. I resented it, but I went. Because I was not going to let him and his mother ruin the rest of my life, too. Here’s some of what went on in that room where I drew close to my sacred wounds and learned they didn’t have the power to ruin my whole life after all.

But it wasn’t easy. It was just true. And after all the lies, I just wasn’t going to swallow another one from anyone.

I had to do a lot of grieving of the three decades worth of dreams that were gone. The only man I ever saw in any room had never loved me for any more than my usefulness to protecting his secret life. My heart was broken. Friendships changed. Colleagues did the usual thing, which is to save the male minister and encourage the wife to go quietly. My financial security was gone and I had to find a new way to secure a safe place in this world for me and my children. My spirit was broken. Because of PTSD I was working hard to recover some abilities I had lost, but I did not know what I would be able to do. My mind was broken. I began to understand so many of my physical problems as directly related to three decades of stress and abuse. I needed immediate medical attention. But in some cases the damage was done. I could only manage the outcomes. My body was broken.

Was there anything left of me that could still dream about anything? 

The answer is a resounding “YES!” 

As I worked with my psychologist I learned to use the word abuse. She didn’t give me that word. I gave it to myself. She had to learn that frame in this unusual situation. I traced the misogyny running through my life from the get-go. I understood what had happened to me, how hard I resisted and tried to protect myself. I saw how desperately I had tried to be a “good girl.” I became aware of how hard I was working all the time to overcome obstacles and sometimes, downright sabotage. I gave myself credit for the remarkable things I achieved under such a covertly oppressive assault. I decided that I was going take all those resources I gave away to those who only wanted to use me, and give them to myself, in case something miraculous might happen. And it did.

Not right then. It took a few years of grieving, understanding who he really was, learning what he had actually done in his secret life that was worth everything to him, letting things go that I couldn’t do any longer, working to to recover other things and adapting my life accordingly, switching doctors and being properly treated for things like hypothyroid, arthritis, and gluten-intolerance. I had suffered for 15 years from these afflictions with a young female doctor who didn’t even write down my symptoms, but did prescribe Prozac—which I tried for a month and never bothered with again. The right Synthroid dose, some time-release acetaminophen with occasional naproxen, natural eggshell membrane capsules, and removing gluten from my diet meant that I was not a dishrag, no longer used a cane to walk, ended the rashes, stopped the digestive tyrannies, constant blinding headaches, and I dropped two sizes without changing anything else. I began to remember myself. I was still there. All it took was the courage enough to go in and rescue myself. I arrested my physical decline but sometimes things are just changed that cannot be changed back.

And one day when I made some lunch for my best friend, and we were laughing together her laughter suddenly turned to tears and she cried and cried. I asked what was wrong. And all she could say was, “you’ve been gone for such a long time, and now you’re here again.” 

It’s still a struggle sometimes to avoid being triggered and to recover when I go off the cliff. But those times are fewer, and the time to recover gets less and less. I’m in recovery year eleven. The main point here is that I could not dream past these basic recovery needs, and you can’t either. You need to grieve. You need to get well again. You need to help yourself with more compassion than you knew you had for yourself, so you can learn what abilities you can recover, how much you will recover, and what might take more time or never return. You need to do your best and then accept yourself and love yourself as if your life depends upon it, because it does. You may need to find a different kind of financial security where the bar may be lower and your life may be simpler that before. I loved my two bed townhouse and if I have to go back there again, I know I can be happy there. 

You must give yourself everything you were giving away for nothing. You will be generous again with others, I promise. Goodness like the goodness that is in you comes from a well with no bottom. You can be generous with yourself and have everything you need to be generous with others. That goodness never runs out. You will be healthy and far more effective in making a positive difference in life. As you move into looking after your needs (not his, but yours) you position yourself to discover that you can still dream. And in time, you learn those new dreams can come true.  

There are many reasons and excuses that woman have for staying, once they have realized their precious dreams are dead. But let’s just understand a few things about that:

1.     Letting your dreams go didn’t kill them. He killed them by using them to harm you and your children.

2.     If your dreams die, it does not mean you never get to have any more. There isn’t a limit. You can have as many dreams as it takes to inspire and direct your life.

3.     It does mean that your new dreams will not be the same as the ones that died. It’s a different time with different circumstances with a different “you.” Different is another grief moment for most of us, but it’s also a gift to unwrap.

4.     Your new dreams can have elements of old dreams. Don’t start out assuming you can’t have anything from your other dreams. You just have to loosen the reigns a bit so that you recognize it when it happens.

So, where is your holy room? Have you opened that door? Will you accept your life is sacred and your wounds are sacred, too? Can you imagine they are also ripe with the possibility of new life? Will you do that work? Will you let a new dream be yours?

It’s a different dream, all right. And not much about getting there will be easy. But as I’ve written before, it’s your life. The only one you get. Go back where he left you beaten and taken for dead by the side of the road. Don’t walk by on the other side. Be your own Good Samaritan. It’s never too late to live your life with truth and integrity and joy and freedom and respect and love.  Never too late.

I still have a sorrow that I will always have, but it no longer owns me. The joy that has come into my life and the new “me” I’ve learned to love are precious and worth all the work to get there. You can, too. Is it time?

with you,

Diane.