It’s not like the movies
People ask: When he came back, did he show up on a horse, with a million roses? Does he apologize to you EVERY DAY? Does he thank God or whoever that you took him back?
Um, no. It’s not like that.
Yes, my ex is no longer my ex. We signed divorce papers in June of 2017, and in July of 2017, while he was in Hawaii with his kids, visiting his “girlfriend,” my ex responded to an email from me and asked if I would go to couples counseling with him. We never filed the papers with the court.
I’d love to tell you a great story of how he begged and begged, or sent flowers every day for months on end — people seem to need me to tell them about the penitence — like somehow that would help them understand why I would take back a man that had cheated on and then left me.
Honestly, I brought it up in therapy — “Um, should there be some type of public reckoning? Not too flashy, just something that says ‘I fucked up, I’m really sorry, but I’m not a bad person’? Maybe something like at the end of ‘Pretty Woman’ where Richard Gere shows up with roses in a limo? I mean, I’m not the only one with feelings about this.” To her credit, the therapist actually addressed the question.
I can’t explain things any better than she did.
First, REAL LIFE IS NOT A MOVIE. No matter how much we buy into the “meet cute,” or seemingly perfect romances/sex/marriages, or even the overly dramatic or comedic divorce stories that make our own seem, somehow, just wrong.
Second, the relationship that my husband and I had was over. It had failed. And it had done so because of things that both of us either had or had not done, said or had not said. He was not coming back and asking to return to that relationship, or to the pre-Al-Anon person that I had been. What we were about to embark on was not the stuff that dreams are made of — this was going to be really, really hard.
To be clear, as soon as she said this, I immediately panicked. No big public flogging disguised as romantic gesture — I could learn to live with that. Just showing up differently, ready to do the work, and to do so knowing that most of my friends and family were not exactly planning his homecoming party was, to me, a pretty brave gesture.
But the idea that my husband was coming back to a different person? Please refer back to principle #1 — real life is not a movie. I had 7 months of Al-Anon; I had awareness, I did not have recovery, and I most definitely was not a totally different person. What if I slip up?
The therapist looked at me straight in the face and said, in a South African accent that makes it sound less crass (and that I covet) “You’re going to fuck this up all the bloody time. ”
Whew! What a relief.That much I knew I could do!
But more than that,too. The therapist told us that we were going to come up against many of the pain points that we handled poorly in the past, and that if we both really wanted this, we would figure out, with her help, how to do things differently — and that was the work. To better understand ourselves, our reactions, and, ultimately, to work towards empathy for one another and true, connected intimacy.
And that’s what we’ve been doing. And we work at it. And sometimes, it’s uncomfortable, sometimes it’s incredibly painful. And we’ve taken things slow. We aren’t living together. I’m not involved with his family nor he with mine. I don’t spend time with my step-kids, though I have seen them. But we make each other laugh. We’ve started to have the same thought at the same time again. I missed those things.
We have a great therapist. But Al-Anon has also been hugely helpful in our communication and understanding of each other. My husband has started going with me to meetings once a week. It’s been powerful for me to see how he’s been affected by it. I like that he understands the slogans — I love that he ascribes to some of them.
I’m aware that my choice to return to my marriage makes some people uncomfortable — and some people are genuinely concerned for me. But I also know, at the end of the day, everybody needs to live their own lives. Has my husband sincerely apologized to me? Yes. Do I believe he is genuinely remorseful? Yes. Do I think that his actions took a personal toll on him that he would like not to repeat? Yes. Am I 100% sure nothing like this will ever happen again? No. But I am choosing to trust the person I love and the man that showed up in July of 2017 — a different, better man than the one that left on December 31, 2016.
