Time to Start Feeding Myself
January 27, 2012
"You have a right to be loved!" Emily said to me. "You have a right to be happy!"
I knew she was right, and I knew these things all along. It's just so easy to not see it when you're immersed in a bad marriage.
Emily, my therapist has been helping me put a lot of my feelings into a better perspective.
In my 21 years of marriage to Lisa I never saw myself as being held down. I thought I was in the charge of our relationship. And maybe I was to a degree. But I can see now that she had been leveraging my guilt to keep me from growing as a human being.
I doubt that she was doing this purposely, and doubt that she was crafting every move she made. But subconsciously, she felt other people were competing for my attention, and voiced her displeasure as I spent too much time away from her.
"I'm your wife, you're supposed to spend more time with me!" she sometimes said.
"No fair, you get to go to all these places while I have to stay home!"
"You're the one who decided to get a dog, you should have to be the one to take it to the vet!"
And when I finally did file for divorce from her, people began telling me stories of what she said about me, behind my back. Things that should have been kept in confidence. Things that berated me. She made me sound like a fool.
I can't admit to being a perfect husband, sure I had my moments of anger. But I kept myself absolutely loyal to her for at least 21 years, and was her caregiver throughout her cancer, kidney failure, gall bladder, heart disease, and a variety of other illnesses she dealt with. I bought her the dream home she wanted, made her part owner of a successful Internet company.
So my therapist Emily gave me the reassurance I needed to hear that leaving my wife was no reason to feel guilty.
That I had done everything I could with what I had.
And now it's time to start feeding myself.

