“I Thought Nothing Could Break Us”
(His response when asked, “what did you think I was saying?”)

A few months back, I asked my future ex-husband, “what did you think I meant when I said ‘I can’t keep doing this’ or when I tearfully admitted, ‘I’m drowning’?”
After a few moments, he sadly acquiesced, “I really thought there was nothing that could break us. I… I didn’t listen. I couldn’t hear you. There will never be anyone who regrets that more than me.”
I don’t know if there is anything he could have said that would have been such equal, painful, parts validating and heartbreaking. I cried for many an hour afterwards, looking out at the steel grey Puget Sound. Watching wave patterns, shipments going out, cruise ships coming in. Letting my breath return to normal. Eventually I went to bed early to rest my weary heart and mind.
In our case, unfortunately, it wasn’t a simple scenario of him finally realizing that he had missed the memo. Me happily being heard, and being able to ask, “how can we go forward, together?” How I wished it could have been.
I think for many it could be. And that’s why my number one lesson that I share with the people who ask, and boy do they ask; “what went wrong? What would you tell us?”
Don’t ever stop really listening to one another.
Because I was still in love with him when I was pleading to be heard. And he was still in love with me when he stubbornly chose to disregard.
Unfortunately in our situation, by the time he could hear me…. That was no longer true. I wasn’t in love with him anymore. My continuous need to protect myself from him and his impacts on my life had sealed my heart away from trusting him. And you cannot be in love someone if you don’t trust them.
My future ex- husband suffered a brain injury 10+ years ago. In 2005. He had been deteriorating for a long while. So much so that the person that I fell in love with and last trusted…last felt safe with… I hadn’t connected with him for nearly four years.
Thus, when a few months back he finally heard me, it was too late. The person admitting this had broken my trust so many times that my heart had healed over. And the person I’d fallen in love with and last felt safe with was changed. Sadly, things had been irrevocably broken.
For anyone who’s experienced brain injuries in those close to them can tell you, those injuries change you in profound, non linear, and unpredictable ways. They rob the person of their ability to count on themselves, because it changes how that person reacts to the world around them. That’s not to say you can’t flourish and develop new healthy expectations about yourself. But it takes work and a lot of help.
That person I’d fallen for, our last connections together were unfortunately constituted by locking horns. Me pushing that things were seriously going wrong, sliding off course, and needed medical attention. He very strongly, and in his mind- nobly, resisted my involvement (1) and also my insistence we escalate it with his doctors (2). He was lucid and present enough to argue with me at the time.
So those last days were spent fighting about my need to “mother” him, my “not trusting” him. His narrative about why I wanted to come to doctors appointments and to let our friends/family in on what was happening.
Me trying to convince him that it wasn’t so. They were me trying over many years to find a safe way to approach a subject that desperately needed addressing. Because it wasn’t just our relationship suffocating; it was his being. I could see it. He might have been able to, too. Maybe it was too scary to admit.
In the end it cost him me. And, I’ll never stop hurting for us both.
So, my advice? Listen to one another.

Set up checks and balances to make sure you’re really doing so. It’s so easy to slip into trusting that nothing can break you. That you are really hearing each other all the time naturally, despite this incredibly noisy life. But that’s not true. Not for any of us.
*Photo at top: one of the iconic works of my favorite artists. A Few Small Nips. Frida Kahlo. 1935. My photo from a recent trip to Budapest where this was on display.*
