Sage advice from Kathy. Separation. It is so hard to just cut it off. I went a full week without contact, and in that time had all of the feelings. The sadness and mourning and grief, the anger and the hurt from what I received, the sorrow and regret over the way I caused him pain, the relief and re-centering from space and life returning, the fear and anxiety of not knowing what to do with myself in this drastic change in my day to day life of the past 5 months, the compassion and forgiveness for myself and him–imperfect people who tried really hard and just could not figure it out. And as Sunday drew nearer, I wanted to know if I would be seeing him. I couldn’t just wait and let it be revealed. I wanted to know if there was a possibility that he might see things more clearly in that week of space. To see if he could see what I have come to see: that we were in a circle of interlocking scripts, we were hurting each other by simply being where we were. That there was no blame, though plenty of hurt on both sides.
As I see it now: In that first big upheaval, I had an involuntary reaction which was a change in my facial expression and physically withdrawing (becoming quiet, eyes downcast, emotional drop) when I was hurt. He saw this, did not understand what was going on, and raged at me. I knew the depth of the hurt and the severity of how this exchange broke me, broke our connection, in those moments. I needed space and took it. His initial rage had come in response to me reacting to his telling me how to communicate. (i.e., withdrawing emotionally; being hurt and reacting.) My withdrawal at first as well as my needing space afterwards hit him in his abandonment wound, he received it as rejection and loss of love, and he raged and continued to ruminate in anger for days. Though this type of exchange would happen many times in the proceeding weeks, after the first major exchange like this, it appeared we might be able to recover. This is because in the space we took for several days after, he came to understand that my withdrawal, which triggered his rage, was not about him at all. He came to understand that I was not, in fact “taking the love away” in my moment of hurt, and that my unconscious reaction to his asking me to communicate differently was about me getting poked in my pain body–the place of fearing being a caregiver who swallows all of their own feelings and experiences in order to take care of someone else in their time of need. The patterning of my childhood–to sacrifice my own needs in the service of loved ones. I got poked in my fear that that was all I was to him, a savior or a willing receiver of all of his pain, rather than an equal partner. His rage in response to me expressing my hurt validated these fears as founded in that moment. And, though I think we both saw this clearly in the come down conversations of this first fight, this clarity would not last, and this cycle is where we ended up going to, over and over again, for the next 6 weeks.
After the first episode, we came back together too quickly, when I had not yet recovered. He hadn’t either, and believed he needed me back by his side for his recovery. I knew on some level that I wasn’t ready and could not force authentic connection–this would only lead to more pain for both of us. I remember saying it will take time. I remember asking for some space. I remember asking for time together that could rebuild trust, doing things that were lighter, remembering the way we could laugh together. I remember expressing a desire to go to therapy together, borrowing Gottman books and “Hold Me Tight” from my mom. I remember telling him that I know what he is going through is really big, and that I didn’t think I had the tools to navigate his trauma without the support of a professional. I remember thinking that he didn’t have the tools to see my reactions and hurts as normal without the support of a professional. This is when I got into what he calls “relationship doctoring.” He was right in some sense. It was coming from was how desperate I was to save the relationship, to get back to where we had been, and not knowing how. He was precious to me and I knew his hurt was the root of releasing all that anger on me, but I also knew how deeply I had been hurt, and needed help in recovering. I wanted his buy-in to help build that trust and know he was invested in our recovery, too. I had heard him say, so many times, that his working through his trauma was the “only thing” that mattered, “life or death,” and therefore more important than any of our conflicts. He had said many times that my pain was not as important as his. I needed some reassurance that though that was true for him, I would not be expected to sacrifice my needs for the sake of his. At first he was opened to outside help.
But soon, he became impatient. He was (and still is) in crisis, he said, and needed me back to opened hearted and available before I was ready. As he said last night, he didn’t want “Kirsten shaped meat” to listen to him, he wanted me. But me was cautious, wary, hurt and uncertain of her safety. And his way of asking for more of me than I was ready to give, hurt me more. It felt like he was making light of how much his rage and diminishment of my experience had broken our trust. It felt like he was allowed to be human (rage), but I was not (slow recovery, withdrawal and self protection). I felt compassion for his time of need, but slowly, this pattern was building resentment in me. Calling me sensitive and strange for being so effected by his rage. He still doesn’t understand why I’m so “traumatized” by it. He still wants and needs me to understand how deeply I hurt him in this phase, though he also says, he can’t understand why I was so hurt by him. He was and is still asking me for the same thing he has been unable to give.
So, instead of being able to see and stand strong in my need for emotional safety, instead of being able to express that without blame or judgment, I ended up unskillfully pushing down my own hurt and trying to be there for him. This false presence hurt him. After it all, he said many times, I was “beating him up for weeks.” In my experience of this same situation, every time he called me out and said something like “where are you?” I was the one feeling hurt. In my mind and experience, I was giving everything I could, and still it wasn’t enough. I began to believe that I wasn’t allowed to feel. I began to feel resentment that I wasn’t allowed the space to have my hurt from the rage and anger I received, as well as the hurt from the diminishment of my own experience. I began to fear that anything I would say or even any physical interaction I had with him could potentially become something he would track, blame me for, and cite forevermore as another example of how selfish I was.
I wasn’t allowed to have space to rebuild trust over time, though I asked for it. When I asked for it, he would respond with things like “Can’t you cut me a break? You know I’m so close to The Rage because of what I’m dealing with right now. Can’t you see that? How would it be for you if your mother died, and I couldn’t be there for you?” I tried giving him a metaphor of me hypothetically cheating on him (the worst sin/betrayal he could imagine) out of emotionally driven poor choices in the midst of something like the death of my mother (my own crisis of a similar level that he thought up). This seemed the closest parallel I could find to him raging at me in the midst of his crisis, leading to my hurt. I was trying to help him connect with how much I was hurt, that I was capable of hurting, and that I was not wrong to be hurt and in need pf recovery time, even though he is in crisis and wanted me right back beside him. I was trying to help him understand that even in crisis, everyone on all sides continues to be human and still need compassion and kindness. He agreed that my proposed scenario would hurt him deeply; “I don’t think I would stay with you,” but he thought it wasn’t a good example. “Not the same,” he said. He just could not understand why I was so hurt. And he couldn’t hear me or see me through his own hurt. Through all of this, as I was trying to heal, I was told repeatedly that he couldn’t keep “waiting on a string” for me. So instead of standing strong and standing up in my need for safety and trust, I just kept trying to be there for him and kept falling short.
Why was I doing this to myself? Why was I allowing myself to be an “emotional slave?” At the time, I thought I was giving him what he was asking for. At the time, I was tangled up in my conditioning around self-sacrifice for family. Robert even said to me in reference to my family history and how it’s played out in this relationship, “you’ve got a touch of co-dependence.” The shape of his pain and his needs brought it out in me, full force. At the time, I thought if I could just say the right thing, be the right way, prove to him somehow that I loved him, he would get it. He would see my hurt and at some point allow it to be there.
I was miserable. He was miserable. This lack of full presence on my part was inadvertently hitting him in his abandonment wound, over and over again. His expression of that triggered defensiveness and reactivity in me, and I felt more hurt with each plea he made. My humanness and needing things showed up as withdrawal and distance at times. His suffering from this experience was absolutely real. He experienced this as me not caring about him, diminishing him, ignoring him, making light of major breakthroughs and important moments he was going through. And anytime he framed it that way, it wounded me further. I’d think, “How could he ever think I would not care about him? How could he ever think I would want to hurt him? How could he ever think I would want him ‘begging me for affection and love’ or ‘following me around like a cunt’ as he said, ‘groveling,’ ‘accepting his punishment,’ for how he hurt me,” and on and on. And we were in an interlocking script of hurt.
What I want seems to be exactly what he wants too. To be seen. To be understood. To find reconciliation and peace between us. To be seen as the imperfect human I am, to be forgiven for it, and to not be blamed or made wrong/bad for the way my hurt shows up in the world, among other imperfections. To not be identified with the way I hurt him as the whole of who I am. Not to be seen as fallen from grace for being imperfect; a “bad” one who wanted to diminish him and knock him down and make him suffer. As he said, “no one I would call a friend would do.” I never for a moment wanted that. I was certainly unskillful, and I want to be seen as such–unskillfully tangled in my conditioning, and trying so hard to be better. Failing at times, but still trying. Still caring. Just as he does not want to be seen as a “villain” and “abuser” and “frozen at the worst moment” of his life. Just as he does not want to be remembered in one dimension, or to have those times that he hurt me to encompass all that he is and was to me. Just as he recently retold me the story of his dissociation and how he is a “remarkable person,” and how in that retelling, I could feel with compassion how deeply he didn’t want me to forget that in the middle of my hurt. Just as he sent me what he wrote about the healing ceremony for Marykevin, and all the beautiful things those gathered there saw in him–I felt him wanting me to remember who he is, despite my hurt. I remember. I see his pain. I know he is more than his pain. Through all of this, knowing this is what has kept me here. Not wanting to continue the hurt is why I’m still engaged in this conversation now. Seeing the whole person he is and accepting his imperfections and flaws is why I still care. Knowing that writing him off as just the deep dark part of him that I saw, would hurt me, not only him. Closing our hearts to anyone only hurts us. But boundaries are so challenging in this situation. How to draw boundaries while still having compassion?
Robert reminds me that we are never responsible for anyone else’s pain. He advises to respond with compassion for someone’s hurt, see that their hurt is real, but stand strong in knowing we are not responsible for their pain. My co-dependent tendencies make this so difficult. My heart recoiling in hurt, shame, and anger when he demands me to “reconcile” makes this so difficult. The way he insists on my heart needing to be reopened and to feel the way I hurt him make this so difficult. The way each time I try to connect, he says some new wounding thing, makes it so difficult. “You treated me the way no friend or anyone who cares for me ever would.” I want to say to this, “Have you ever treated any of those friends the way you treated me? The way you continue to treat me? Have you ever hurt them the way you hurt me? Do you speak to them with the same contempt, criticism, blame, and anger?” He seems to be saying over and over again that all he can see when he looks at me is how I hurt him, and that he has no idea or ownership of the way his own behavior was a part of it. And I can’t stand it. And I need to accept it. I need to let him go. I cannot change him. He is on his own journey.
When I look at him now, and honestly through all of this, I have always seen more than just the way he hurt me. That is why I kept trying so hard. Does he know that? At some point, I am going to need to let go of trying to win back his kindness, win back him seeing me as a whole person. I miss his kindness, but he might not be able to share that with me anymore. Maybe part of the problem was that before any of this, he saw me as an “Angel” with a unique and impossibly “great, big, beautiful heart.” In truth, this is part of everyone, and of course, that’s also not the whole of me. The whole of me is imperfect, broken in some parts, reactive at times, on a journey an wanting to grow. Part of the problem is that I liked being seen that way, and part of me wants to be seen that way again. I need to embrace my humanity and that I really should not be seen/strive to be seen like that by anyone. It’s not realistic, and trying to maintain that leads to a world of hurt, like we have seen here. Love is seeing all of it, warts and all, and having compassion and forgiveness for another person’s shortcomings. Love is patient and kind.
I’m not one to quote the bible, but…
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
When we hurt someone, how do we apologize for our part with sincerity and kindness, without becoming responsible for their suffering?
This is so hard. May my heart remain opened. May this serve my awakening. May he be happy. May I be happy. May we both find healing, forgiveness, and peace.
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