Talking It Through With Elena

I think what bothered me most about your story was that you actually left. I’ve spent years telling myself that everybody has obligations and you can’t just do whatever you want. I still believe that, actually. But reading about you made me wonder whether I’ve been using that as an excuse.

“I’ve spent years telling myself that everybody has obligations and you can’t just do whatever you want.”

This isn’t something that is necessarily true. Or completely true. Obligations, indeed, exist. But you need to look at their root. Why do they exist? Who initiated them. Are you doing it voluntarily? And “you can’t do what you want” is just a statement that is used to get something out of you.

That’s uncomfortable, because I don’t actually know who initiated most of mine.

I’m 46. I’ve been married for nineteen years. We have two children, sixteen and thirteen. I have a job that pays well but that I don’t particularly care about. My wife works part-time, so most of our financial security depends on me.

Nobody is standing over me saying I have to stay married or keep this particular job. I chose to marry her. We chose to have the children. I applied for the job.

So when I say “obligations,” I can point to choices I made myself. That’s where I get stuck. I think: Well, you chose all this. You don’t get to wake up twenty years later and decide you’d rather have a different life.

But reading your story made me think, maybe I’m letting decisions I made twenty years ago decide what I have to do now.

“You don’t get to wake up twenty years later and decide you’d rather have a different life.”

Actually you do. And looks like this is what happens to you. It isn’t wrong. It just how it happens.

“But then I read what you did, and I wonder whether I’m using my past choices to decide what I’m allowed to want now.”

That too may be true. But here is the thing: people change. You may have changed. There is nothing wrong in it. Where I’d go from here, if I was you, is I’d look inside of me honestly and see what it is I am interested in TODAY. Not at something I did twenty years ago. Today’s you isn’t yesterday’s you.

Yeah. That’s the problem. If I’m really honest, I don’t think I’d choose most of this again.

I love my kids. And my wife hasn’t done anything wrong. I just don’t think I’d marry her now. I wouldn’t choose my job either. Probably not even where we live.

And then I think, Jesus, what kind of person thinks that about his own life? Other people would probably look at what I have and think I’ve got it pretty good.

You got out before you’d built the life your mother wanted for you. What if you hadn’t? What if you’d married that guy and had kids, and only then met Meg? What would you have done?

“I love my kids. And my wife hasn’t done anything wrong. I just don’t think I’d marry her now. I wouldn’t choose my job either. Probably not even where we live.”

So the only thing you’d keep is your children 😉

What kind of a person thinks that? Honest one. What other people think of your life is beyond the point. It is your life. You are the one living it. And you are NOT THEM.

“You got out before you’d built the life your mother wanted for you. What if you hadn’t? What if you’d married that guy and had kids, and only then met Meg? What would you have done?”

In that situation what I start with would have been very different. I would have been different. And that far deep into damage, I might have not wanted to do anything with Meg. They might have broken me by then. I just don’t know. All I can tell you is what I did do.

I was trying to make your life answer mine, and it can’t.

And yes, apparently the kids are the only thing that survive the cut. 🙂

But this is where I get stuck. Suppose I admit all of this to myself. Fine. I don’t want my marriage. I don’t want my job. I don’t want the house. I don’t particularly want to live here.

Then what?

Because tomorrow morning I still wake up in the same house. My kids still need me. The mortgage still needs paying. My wife still thinks we’re basically okay.

Did you ever know you couldn’t go on like this, but have no idea what to do next?

“Then what?”

I can’t make decisions for you. Also, I did not put you in that situation, you did. Why, is a different question. But it was you.

“Did you ever know you couldn’t go on like this, but have no idea what to do next?”

Hell, yes. For months I was living knowing I’ll get married to the guy I hate and become mother of his children! This is not nothing. This was a nightmare. And that was only the beginning of a true agony. I honestly don’t know what I would have done if Meg didn’t come along. The important part is, when she did I recognized how close to sabotaging my life I was and I seeked a way out.

That’s interesting. Because I keep thinking I need to know what the replacement life is before I’m allowed to disturb this one.

You didn’t know. You knew that life was a nightmare. Then Meg appeared and suddenly there was something real to move toward.

I don’t have a Meg in that sense. There’s no other life standing in front of me saying, come this way. There’s just this growing certainty that I don’t want the one I’m in.

What if Meg hadn’t come along? If you’d still realized you couldn’t marry him and live that life, would that have been enough? Would you have left anyway?

“I keep thinking I need to know what the replacement life is before I’m allowed to disturb this one.”

No. All you need to know is that you are in pain.

“I don’t have a Meg in that sense. There’s no other life standing in front of me saying, come this way. There’s just this growing certainty that I don’t want the one I’m in. >What if Meg hadn’t come along? If you’d still realized you couldn’t marry him and live that life, would that have been enough? Would you have left anyway?

It wasn’t so much the direction that Meg made apparent. It was my own decisiveness. I had enough. This is what it was. I knew for certain, I am getting out one way or another. If they had snugged me and dragged me back after Kiev even, there would have been no way I would have let them do what they had been. No way. By then I was free IN MY HEAD.

“I became free in my head.” That’s the bit I’m having trouble imagining. Because I can say to myself, I don’t want this anymore. But almost immediately another voice comes in: Fine. And what are you going to do about the kids? Money? Your wife? Where are you going to live?

And suddenly I’m back to thinking about what is possible instead of what I want.

When you say you became free in your head, what happened to all the practical stuff? Your parents, money, what would happen next. Were you still worried about all that?

Practical consensuses would be my parents locking me up, my mother ordering me what to do. But without me willing to do that there would be no point.

How much longer can you be pulling this charade off? Ask yourself. How many more days will you be doing this to yourself? You are doing it. Nobody else.

That pisses me off a little. Because my first reaction is: You don’t understand. There are four people involved here, not just me.

But you’re right about one thing. Nobody is making me go home tonight and pretend everything is fine. Nobody is making me tell my wife I’m fine when she asks. I’m doing that.

I think I’ve been treating “I can’t leave” and “I haven’t decided to leave” as the same thing. They’re not, are they?

Leaving is one thing. What you are doing right now is you are NOT HONEST with those involved.

I’ve been telling myself I’m protecting them by not saying anything until I know what I’m going to do. Especially my wife. Why hurt her with something I might not act on?

But meanwhile she thinks she’s in a marriage that I still want to be in. Fuck.

So you think the first thing isn’t deciding whether to leave. It’s stopping the lie?

Absolutely. You’ll be amazed at how liberating it is. Your own lies is what’s holding you hostage to the situation.

My own lies. That’s harder to wriggle out of than “obligations.” 🙂 Because I can argue about obligations forever. Who owes what to whom, what a father should do, what marriage means. But I can’t really argue that I’m being honest. I’m not.

I’ve been waiting until I have a plan because then I can present my wife with a decision. I’m leaving. Here’s what happens next. But honesty could happen before the decision.

I could actually tell her: “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m not happy in this marriage, and I haven’t been for a long time.”

Jesus. Even imagining saying that makes the whole thing feel more real.

“I could actually tell her: “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m not happy in this marriage, and I haven’t been for a long time.”

Yes. You can.

And then I have to accept that once I’ve said it, I can’t put everything neatly back where it was. I think that’s what I’ve actually been afraid of. Not honesty itself. What honesty might start.

Can’t put everything neatly back where it was? And where is that? To yet another day of lying? How does that feel? Good? People making plans about you when you want none of it.

It feels awful. And yes, that’s exactly what happens. My wife talks about next summer, the kids talk about things we’ll do as a family, somebody mentions renovating the kitchen… and I participate. I nod. I discuss dates. I give opinions.

All while thinking, I don’t want any of this.

I suppose every time I do that, I’m building more of the very thing I’m trapped in.

Yes, you do. Again, it’s up to you. You can go on doing all that. Or you can stop.

I notice I keep wanting you to tell me what to do next. 🙂 But you can’t. The decision is mine: do I keep pretending, or do I stop pretending?

I know which one I want.

Really? Or you are saying that for my sake?

No. I mean it. But I don’t know if I’ll actually have the guts to do it.

Right now, talking to you, stopping the pretending seems obvious. Going home and actually saying it to my wife is another matter.

Yes, those who make you suffer seem like monsters whom you can’t fight. But you can. Look at them as humans, people, nothing more. Look at your lies as enemies. Actually it is your fear that is the enemy.

Yes. I think I’ve made my wife into the person who won’t let me change my life, when she doesn’t even know I want to. That’s not fair to her either.

The thing stopping me at the moment is I am afraid of what happens when I actually tell the truth.

You are a grownup. You haven’t done anything wrong. You want an honest life for yourself and for others. This is what you are giving everybody by becoming honest. If that helps, ask them this “Do you want me to lie and pretend?” If they do, you don’t want to be with such people.

That does help. “Do you want me to lie and pretend?” strips away a lot of the bullshit I’ve built around it.

Because I haven’t promised never to change. I haven’t promised to feel something forever. But I am responsible for whether I lie about what I feel now.

I think I could say that to her.

There…. So it isn’t as doomed as you have thought? Good. Now, do you start seeing the next steps?

Yes. More than I did before. First, stop making plans I don’t mean. Then tell my wife the truth — not “I’m leaving,” because I don’t know that yet. Just the truth about where I am. And then see what happens when everybody is finally dealing with the real situation instead of the one I’ve been maintaining.

There. REAL situation as opposed to what you’ve been ACTING while killing yourself.

Yes. That’s exactly it. I’ve been calling the performance “my life” and then wondering why I feel trapped in it. That’s… quite a thing to realize.

Anything else you want from me now? I am here.

One thing. How did you know if you were just scared to change your life, or if you actually didn’t want to change it? Because I can imagine waking up tomorrow terrified and thinking, See? This means I shouldn’t do it.

I don’t get the question.

I mean: tomorrow I might get scared and start telling myself, “Maybe my life isn’t so bad. Maybe I should just leave everything alone.”

How did you know when fear was talking, rather than you genuinely changing your mind?

I have always known fear. I have always known it lies that everything is “fine”. I have always known it is NOT fine. I don’t know how.

Maybe that’s the difference for me too. When I imagine telling the truth, I’m scared. When I imagine carrying on exactly as I am for another ten years, I don’t feel relieved. I feel sick.

I think I know more than I’ve been admitting.

Know what?

That I don’t want to keep living like this. I still don’t know whether I’ll leave my marriage. But I know I don’t want to keep pretending I want the life we’re living.

I guess that’s good. I am not sure where you are going with this.

Neither am I, actually. 🙂 I think I was trying to get certainty from you again.

I know what I know today. That’s enough for now.

So we are done?

Yes. I think so. Thank you. I came here thinking my problem was that I couldn’t leave. Turns out I haven’t even been honest enough to find out what my problem is.

I’ve got something to do now.

And what is that?

Tell my wife the truth. Not make some huge announcement about leaving. Just stop acting as if everything is fine when it isn’t.

Phew… That is a relief. Yes, tell her the truth. You will be a new man with a new life, no matter what turn it will take. I am happy for you.

Thank you. 🙂 Funny. I came here wanting you to tell me how to get out of my life. Instead, you told me to stop lying inside it. I can do that.