Opening the Door to Disease and Financial Ruin
On January 18th my spouse of 23 years announced to our marriage therapist that he wanted to separate and move out. He said he wanted to still see me twice a week and have sex. I immediately objected saying if you are married you are in otherwise you are out. The therapists asked me to consider. I maintained my stance saying that he does not revere me or consider me precious if he wants to move out. She pressed saying that couples do all sorts of different arrangements and it works out just fine. I recalled reading about such arrangements in the Wall Street Journal and again said I would not consider it. We made another appointment a week from then. I continued objecting saying it would destroy me. He complained that everything was always on my terms and that my protest was just another example.
My husband and I got home and he went to the bedroom pumping up his pillow preparing to share our marital bed. I stared at him in shock! I said that if he wanted to move out it would not be okay to share a bed with me. I wonder now if I had let him stay in the bed if he would still be there? I suggested that he go to a hotel. We were still 8 weeks from lockdown in California and Covid-19 hadn’t yet hit the papers. He moved to the guest room. The next morning he asked me if I knew any mediators. I suggested he ask his friends. He protested saying he had no friends. I said he had one less friend. I said by moving out he would open the door to disease and financial ruin. I had no idea that a disease of biblical proportions and financial ruin along the lines of the Great Depression was bearing down on us!
We returned to therapy the next week. The therapist asked me to reconsider my stance I and reluctantly agreed. I asked if the marriage would be open and my husband said he had not thought that far ahead! He said he was lost and wasted the last 10 years of his life with me. That he was turning 50 and didn’t have anything to look forward to. That he couldn’t see the future. I recalled that when our son left for the Navy leaving our last child of 16 at home, he said that he lost his child to my country and regretting raising children in America. He said it was him not me. So I asked why then couldn’t he take a one year sabbatical and travel around the world with a backpack? Or, live in his home country, Israel, six months a year to be near his widowed mother? The therapist urged him to reconsider and said that he showed the signs of a mid-life crisis. We made another appointment.
We both weren’t sleeping. I would get up at 4am and start to paint rooms. I would hear him listening to news on his phone through the guest room door. One morning I asked if I could cuddle and he said yes. I cried all night on his shoulder. He went to visit my daughter in Vancouver. When he got back he didn’t share an itinerary. At 2am I started to worry. Turns out he had a bad car battery. He didn’t answer his phone. I looked up what seemed like the right time of a flight and it had landed hours ago. When he arrived I let him know how worried I was and he chalked it up to another reason he didn’t want to answer to anyone or have anyone know where he was! Apparently, he viewed me as hysterical rather than in love and worried about his mental health.
He said he would do a trial of 3 months and I agreed so long as I had a start date. I needed a date because I knew he would drag it out if I didn’t. I also had another condition that I was surprise he accepted. I asked him to wear the wedding ring he never wore. He had complained that his finger hurt in this labor intensive job with a ring on. He agreed to wear the ring. My reasoning for asking him was two-fold. One, I wanted to know that he was committed to our marriage during this trial. Two, I wanted all the women in the world to see that ring and stay away! This was February 1st when we started to see new articles about China and Covid-19.
At our next appointment the therapist said he was depressed and need to address it or he would just end up with another ruined relationship in the same bad place again. She said that the things he originally loved about me were now the things he hated like my energy and resourcefulness. I signed up to work on my issues as we all have those. I promised I would try and be less than the full woman I am and give him more space. I had already started 3 hours of therapy a week but he didn’t. I wondered how much more space I could give him given he had vacationed with a co worker of mine in Columbia in November and refused to go to Patagonia with me and my daughter in December. His brother later commented to me that I gave him so much space the marriage failed. We made another appointment.
I went on a work trip and when I returned I asked for hug. He said that he just couldn’t. That he didn’t have anything to give me. That he was in a dark, terrible place. The next day he texted me saying that he felt nothing at all and needed help. He said he would try and find a therapist for himself. I said if he couldn’t even hug me he needed to move out. Would he still be here if I hadn’t said that? At our next session he apologized that he didn’t stick to his promise to move out and said he would. This was February 15th. He moved to an AirBnB behind his friend’s house. Now China was in full lock down including my co worker.
