Hi everyone. I can't believe I'm coming back to this thread but all of a sudden I need some reassurance- so here I am. And sorry, but this is really, really long.
In a nutshell, I've been so happy over the last few months. I've rediscovered my confidence, I've been enjoying my DD, work, life generally- and I've even been out on a date (!). H has been in pentitent mode all that time- emailing me telling me what a bad person he is, how he'll have to live with what he did for the rest of his life, how much he regrets it etc etc. I've been clear the whole time that I'm glad he's seeking counselling and going through a process and I wish him nothing but happiness going forward. I've also been clear that I want a divorce, although I haven't yet started the process- largely because I'm worried about how it will go.
However, last week I saw him (while he was having contact with DD) and he was very insistent about how I owed it to "us" to go through joint counselling to discover the "truth" about what had happened. I was very firm and said that I didn't feel any need to do that, was happy with my own counselling, and would not be looking to have joint counselling. I basically said I'm fine, I'm done, I'm in a good place, let's work together constructively as parents but that's it. He didn't like that at all, and instantly started saying vaguely daunting things about our finances- like he thinks he contributed more than 50% to our mortgage so will be considering his options re our property. I said that he needs to be making some financial contribution to DD's maintenance- he has not contributed a penny since I left. He said "ok, but don't expect too much- I work for the government now"- the truth is, he works for a British bank and is on a 6 figure salary.
Anyway, then tonight, out of the blue, I get this email- please can someone reassure me? I feel really scared. I don't know why. But apparently now he's realised that it's all my fault, and I'm an insidious victim who trapped him and almost destroyed his self-confidence- and now he's the one that's free. This is what he says:
"Moll
I remember you telling some months back that you had had your epiphany, following which you saw our relationship in a new light. And it was that new light which led to you moving out, your accusations of years of emotional abuse, and our current estrangement.
Well, after much soul searching and work with [H's counsellor], I have had my epiphany also. I have uncovered the real truth to our relationship, which neither of us ever consciously recognised before. You may say that it's of no consequence to you now, but the questions of when did the decline start, and what caused it, remain of fundamental importance to me if I'm to make any sense of the last 7 years of my life.
We both know that the months leading up to you leaving me in August this year were extreme, but at the same time we both know that our problems pre-dated this time. The [incident where H told me I should get a nose job] in 2005 was obviously a key moment, but what caused me to behave the way I did, and say the things I said then? I have tested many different theories in my search for the truth. Some I have discussed with you, many more I have kept to myself. But unlike any of the other theories, finally I have found the one which unlocks and explains everything.
I now know that the dynamic that ultimately destroyed our relationship took root in our very first month together, when I caught the chicken pox. You reached out to me, I pushed you away. From your perspective, you were beginning to care about me and wanted to look after me, to make sure that I was ok. From my perspective, we had only just started dating, and I didn't want you to see me looking like such a sideshow freak. I was morbidly pre-occupied with the possibility that I would end up permanently and horribly disfigured. I was not in the right place either physically or mentally to be able to engage in normal social interaction. Both our actions and responses were understandable in the circumstances.
You said yourself recently that you should have broken up with me at that time. Either that, or forgiven me and moved on, in my opinion. But you did neither. Instead you did something much more insidious, setting a precedent which would repeat itself over and over again throughout the years, slowly but surely corroding our relationship. You stayed with me, but you never forgave me, nor did you ever forget the incident. I don't know how many times over the years that I apologised for my role in that particular incident, but you never got over it. Instead, you clung to your feelings of hurt and resentment, embracing them, allowing them to fester, carrying them with you throughout our relationship. You took the opportunity to set yourself up as the victim, and from that moment onwards I was unable to put a foot wrong or utter a harsh word without "victimising" you further.
The victim dynamic quickly established itself, and pretty soon a fight was never just a fight. No matter how minor the disagreement, how trivial the squabble, a witch hunt inevitably followed. Even after the smallest tiff, we would endlessly debate who was at fault, who was to blame. Any normal, healthy couple would be laughing about it the next day, and would have forgotten about it entirely within the week. Not us though, because allocation of fault was all important. Any blame which could be attributed to me supported the victim dynamic, entrenching it further into the basic framework of our relationship.
By this point I was trapped. I couldn't be angry, speak a harsh word, express myself freely or do anything else that might risk another fight and the consequences that followed. I couldn't see it at the time, but my behaviour was coming increasingly under your control. For the life of me I couldn't pinpoint its source, but a noose was tightening around my neck.
The victim dynamic even survived for months after you left me. Just look at my email below, from October this year. How quick I am to accept full responsibility for everything, apologising unreservedly for having "victimised" you yet again. And how quick I am to hold you out as entirely blameless, validating your usual role as innocent victim. Seven years of conditioning takes a lot of time and effort to undo, but I have succeeded. I am finally free, and can breathe again for the first time in a long time.
Over time I took to sulking after every fight for as long as I could possibly sustain it. These sulking episodes became an integral part of my coping mechanism. I needed to withdraw for as long as possible to be able to face the deluge of emotions that threatened to overwhelm me after each fight. Such was my conditioning, that I would feel tremendously guilty for having caused your inevitably distraught state, for having "victimised" you once again. And on top of the guilt, came an ominous feeling of dread, deep down in the pit of my stomach. I dreaded the inevitable post-mortem and allocation of blame process, for subconsciously I knew that if I was to blame at all, that it would be added to the list and potentially used against me for years to come. I could apologise but I wasn't likely to be forgiven. I could forget but you never would.
Every couple must necessarily face a certain amount of difficulties and challenges - fighting, anger, niggling, disappointments, imperfections, all are a natural and inevitable part of two people sharing their lives together. But I never felt like you accepted that. Any sharp word from me, any inconsiderate behaviour, any blip at all, no matter how trivial, was cataclysmic it seemed, each incident in itself had the potential to permanently and irreversibly destroy our relationship.
But now I realise that it wasn't any particular incident which threatened our relationship. The strain on our relationship had nothing to do with any specific episode. It was, in fact, the accumulation of incidents over time that was the problem. Because you never forgot any of them. You clung to each of them, collecting them in the same way that I collect marine antiques. You kept a catalogue in your head, nurturing and feeding the feelings of resentment you've felt towards me right from the very start of our relationship. I was frequently amazed that you could recount incidents from years ago with such clarity, when I could barely remember them. I had moved on from them, as and when they occurred. You hadn't. No incident was forgotten, some even made it into your special diary, memorialised for eternity.
That bloodyfucking diary of yours! Not only did you keep a diary, but you told me about it, ensuring that I knew of its existence. And, on top of that, you left it out in the open, on display, in our bedroom. I think that subconsciously you wanted me to read it, to absorb the guilt that lay in wait for me within - why else did something so intimate and personal of yours reside permanently on top of my chest of drawers for me to walk past at least 10 times a day. I opened it once and quickly scanned a few pages. The small extracts I managed to read made me sick. So totally skewed. But more crucially, it didn't look like a normal diary to me. Normal diaries record ups and downs, highs and lows. Yours recorded just lows, all caused by me - you weren't keeping a diary as such, but rather building a case against me. Where were you recording all the great things I did for you, all the wonderful times we had together? Nowhere that I knew of. By contrast, I kept a running photo portfolio of self portraits of the two of us together all over the world, a record of lots and lots of happy days we shared, that I often browsed through with great fondness and affection. The juxtaposition between the poisoned diary you kept, and the photo portfolio I kept, perhaps best represents the fundamental difference in our respective attitudes and approaches to our relationship.
Another particularly telling incident occurred earlier this year, when you solemnly handed me yet another list of each and every major mistake I'd made over the years. A veritable catalogue of perceived abuses and offences that you thought you'd suffered at my hands. Some of them I struggled to remember, but still I accepted and apologised unreservedly for my role in each and every incident on the list. Look at my email below - I was still apologising to you for all these things just a few weeks ago! It was a real landmark moment. Despite the most sincere and unreserved of apologies from me, you remained unappeased. You wanted more, but I had done all I could do. You made it clear that it remained my problem to fix, and mine alone, but in truth there was nothing more I could possibly do. We were stuck, crippled by the constraints of the problematic dynamic we'd built together which somehow dictated that whatever was wrong with our relationship was all my fault, and all my responsibility to fix. We never tackled our problems together, never shared the responsibility. Throughout our relationship we had only ever focused on one part of a two-part equation, ie my actions, my shortcomings, blaming me, my responsibilities. We largely ignored the second part of the equation, ie your actions, your shortcomings, your contribution to the faulty dynamic which we shared. And in reality, you needed help in accepting my apologies, you needed help in forgetting all these incidents, you needed help in putting the past behind you, and you needed help in unravelling your victim complex.
I used to have dozens of pet names for you. One of them was "the keeper of the records", which I jokingly used from time to time in a specific context. I can't help but think now though, that that particular term of affection subconsciously reflected something much more significant to me, something much more sinister in the context of our relationship.
The incidents themselves were never the problem. There were relatively few major ones - if anything we didn't have enough fights, rarely expressing ourselves freely and openly to each other. Instead, it was the catalogue of incidents that you kept, and the relentless re-examination of them, that was the problem. With no forgiving, no forgetting, and no moving on, the list never shortened. It could only expand over the years. And, inevitably, our relationship suffocated under the strain.
You weren't alone in having your self confidence eroded - I lost mine too. I lost the joy in my heart. I lost all sense of myself, and turned into a different person - angry, sullen, confused, unhappy. I lost contact with many of my friends. I gradually started to exhibit classic signs of someone increasingly unable to cope. I took to drinking way too much, and stuck dogmatically to a fixed routine including going to the gym during three very particular time slots a week, hanging out the washing in a very particular way, and numerous other telltale behaviours. It's ironic, and telling, that you told me quite recently how my friends and family, who all know me for the easy going and warm-hearted person that I am, didn't know the real me. Only you alone knew me as angry and uptight.
I never told you this but it wasn't too long before I took to spending some lunchtimes sitting quietly in churches around the City, in despair, in turmoil, confused, desperately praying for the feelings of guilt, claustrophia and suffocation to be lifted from me. Once, when I thought that I was alone, I cried and cried, and got the fright of my life when I suddenly felt an arm gently snake itself around my shoulders. The priest had spotted me from the shadows, and came to comfort me. I fled, back to work, never to return to that particular church. But there are dozens of other churches in the City, as I've discovered over the years.
We both know that by the time [H told me I needed a nose job], I had developed a major projection problem. A few years of shouldering the accumulated burden of our victim dynamic all alone had taken their toll on me, and I could no longer hide it on the plane trip back to London.
But projection is a symptom of an underlying primary problem. Projection is actually a psychological defence, and not a problem in itself. And by October 2005, with my ability to cope in our seriously problematic relationship dynamic slipping away from me, my subconscious stepped in and constructed its own, admittedly highly peculiar, coping mechanism.
Just the other night you asked me why I didnt see a counsellor at the end of 2005. Yet another example of the misguided, underlying assumption that we both wrongly shared for years and years that everything was always my fault alone, and always my responsibility alone to fix. No wonder I resisted your attempts to cajole me into counselling for so long - despite my state of general confusion, I still knew at some level that our problems were not mine alone to shoulder.
You can't have everything
I remember you telling me about the female [colleague] who told you once that you can't have it all - career, child and husband. You have to compromise a little bit on all three, or drop something altogether. Your choice was easily made though - you can be the perfect [career person]; you can be the perfect mother, creating the perfect baby that [DD] is; but you can't have the perfect relationship, with only ups and no downs, only peaks and no troughs, only laughs and no tears, only joys and no struggles. It is natural and inevitable that couples utter a harsh words at each other, express some frustration at the other's behaviour, have their moments from time to time. But you never allowed us any such imperfections, and with your long list of my seven year history of faults and shortcomings to hand, it was our relationship that you dropped.
Emotional abuse
Not guilty. I've done a lot of research into emotional abuse, and I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not an emotional abuser. The idea is ridiculous, a farce, an insult, but more significantly in the overall context of our relationship, a convenient way for you to be able to continue to blame all problems on me, justify the estrangement and maintain the victim dynamic. I know that, together with Biddy, you have invested a lot into developing and perfecting the theory, but you have been barking up the wrong tree, wasting your time, money and effort. The reality of our relationship was entirely different. Your theory of emotional abuse at my hands is a fabrication. A delusion. It never happened. Such has been my conditioning over the years though, that when you first delivered your fiction to me that Sunday lunchtime at the pub a few months back, my first instinct was to take it all on board and apologise repeatedly. How absurd! It's nothing more than a clumsy and amateur attempt to classify all our issues, the last 7 years of our lives, into a conveniently pre-packaged and labelled box. But above all, it's so completely and utterly wrong.
In closing
You have made it perfectly clear to me that our relationship is over. I accept that now.
You have made it perfectly clear to me that you are not interested in counselling or any other attempts to resolve our issues. I accept that now. I have learnt, the long and painful way, that resolution with you is impossible - you simply do not forgive, nor do you forget, nor do you put things behind you and move on.
You have made it perfectly clear to me that the breakdown of our relationship is all my fault, and that you are blameless. That notion may have survived in our relationship for years and years, but I now see it for what it is - pure nonsense. I simply refuse to accept that.
Don't get me wrong - I am not blaming you for all our problems, nor evading responsibility for my own shortcomings of which there are many. I fully accept responsibility for my own role in all our problems over the years. But the reality is that every relationship is comprised of two people. Both contribute to its dynamic, both share responsibility for charting its course. And in our case, we both contributed to the dynamic which ultimately brought about the collapse of our relationship.
The key difference between the two of us is that I acknowledge and accept my role, apologise for it where appropriate, and until now, have been prepared to work together to address and overcome our issues. On the other hand, you refuse to acknowledge and accept your own role. Now, as always, you steadfastly cling to the fabrication that you are blameless, and that everything is completely my fault. And, as I realise now, better late than never, you will never genuinely forgive me, nor genuinely forget anything.
Bring on the divorce, I say, and better days ahead.
H"