The Relationship Trap - Marilyn Frazer by Jay Heinlein

The Relationship Trap

The Relationship Trap Women Who Ignored the Warning Signs That Said . . . THIS GUY’S NOT FOR YOU!

Marilyn Frazer, MA

The Relationsihip Trap, by Marilyn Frazer Published by: Publisher? Address? Website? Copyright ÂŠ 2008 by Marilyn Frazer, MA All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. ISBNâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;13: Cover and Interior Design: Desktop Miracles, Inc. Printed in the United States of America

Advice given is general. Neither the author nor the publisher is engaged in providing medical, health, or legal services. Readers should consult professional counsel for specific questions. The author and publisher expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects arising from the use or application of the information contained in this book.

I gratefully dedicate this book to my husband, David Frazer, who challenged me to do my very best, my children, Steve, David and Karen, who always encouraged me in every endeavor, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Go for it, mom!â&#x20AC;? and my brother, Dr. Edward Schneider, who set such a fine example with his excellent work as an author and authority in his field. I also dedicate this book to the courageous women who were willing to bare their souls in hope that someone out there would see herself in one of these chapters and benefit from their experience and message of hope.

Contents

Preface

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Part I | Our Stories Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1. Elizabeth—Master of Deceit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. Stacy—In Love with a Married Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3. C.J.—Listen to Your Inner Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 4. Julie—The Life of the Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5. Cecelia—Living Well Is the Best Revenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 6. Frankie—Lady in Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 7. Kelly—Childhood Sweethearts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 8. Amy—Sex, Drugs, and Alcohol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 9. Maggie—Older Woman, Younger Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 10. Lexi—At Last! A Really Nice Guy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 11. Pam—Stamp It on My Forehead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 12. Rebecca—A Diamond in the Rough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 13. Samantha—Over the Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 14. Camille—Power and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Part II | Where Are They Now?

1. If I Could Live My Life All Over Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 2. Where Are They Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 3. In Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Part III | Escape the Relationship Trap

1. What is the Key to a Healthy Relationship? . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 2. Characteristics of Healthy Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 3. My Wish List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Preface | Reality Check The date is deeply etched in my mind. On a hot, humid Fourth of July I finally gathered the courage to tell my husband I wanted a divorce. It took me two years to force the words out of my mouth because the word divorce was too painful to say. I refused to compromise one more time and he refused to change or attend counseling sessions with me. “If you want to go, that’s fine. But, count me out.” Every time I tried to talk about a problem he would say, “That’s the way I am. If you don’t like it, that’s tough!” and then he would leave the room, slamming the door behind him. As a result, nothing ever was resolved and I was left with a bigger and bigger load of grievances, anger and resentments. Eventually, the load became too heavy and I didn’t want to carry it any more. I had silently cried myself to sleep once too often. I had every intention of making it an amiable divorce, but I soon learned that there is rarely such a thing as an amiable divorce. Somehow the done-unto became a very angry person and found a new job in life—making the do-er as miserable as possible. The tension slowly mounted as each day went by, until it reached the gut-wrenching level. On a scale of one to ten, the tension in the house was an eleven because he wouldn’t move out—“You want a divorce; you move out!”—and neither would I—“You want me to have the house; you move out!” So there we were, living in the same house, but not on speaking terms. Only the lawyers were talking to each other. ix

The Relationship Trap

He finally moved out on October 26th. I’ll never forget that date. I was both relieved and terribly sad. My marriage had ended. His side of the walk-in closet was suddenly empty. During the divorce proceedings, I attended a support group which was an unbelievable help in preserving my sanity. As a matter of fact, I formed lifetime friendships with four of the women in the group. After I had been divorced about a year, I went back to that counseling center and volunteered to be a facilitator for the same group. “Aren’t you depressed talking about divorce every week” my friends would ask. “On the contrary,” I would reply, “I find it very rewarding. It’s not just misery and tears. You should hear all the laughter.” Over two hundred women came and went during the four years I facilitated the group. As the women shared their stories, I found that many of them were poorly represented by their attorneys. Most of the women were living in houses they could not afford to keep, few had seen the warning signs that this would not be a good relationship, and a number of them had made the same mistake for the second time. Almost all of them were involved in bitter divorces with dim hopes of a happy future, and were looking for a job and a Realtor with a For Sale sign. Some were in la-la land, thinking their husbands would come to their senses and return home. The husbands never did. An overwhelming majority of these women thought they were happily married and were absolutely astonished when their husband asked for a divorce. Some of the husbands told them they just didn’t want to be married any more. Others had someone waiting on the sideline and wanted a divorce so they could be free to marry the other woman. Still other husbands found their biological clocks were ticking and were afraid they were missing something out there. They just wanted to have a good time without responsibilities. Most of the women were in shock. How could that be happening to them? They never saw the signs.

Preface | Reality Check

Oh, Do I Have a Story for You! Inspired by my experience with the divorce group, I decided to write a book about women who ignored the warning signs that said this guy is not for you. Therefore, I set about finding women who would be willing to bare their souls and talk about relationships which didn’t turn out well. All too often, whenever I mentioned my quest I heard, “Oh, do I have a story for you!” Most of the women had ignored, or never looked for the warning signs that said Danger! This person would not make a good partner! They entered into a relationship that lasted anywhere from a few months to half a lifetime. Now, with eyes wide open and knowing what to look for in a man, most of them realized they wasted too many years with a loser and sometimes with more than one. As these women described their experiences, I realized that on the whole, they were rather naïve when they entered their relationships. They thought they would get married and live happily ever after. It was a “given” as far as they were concerned. However, it didn’t quite work out that way. By sharing their experience, these women were able to exorcise the guilt, shame, anger, and painful memories associated with the baggage from the relationship. Often, weeks or months later, they told me they were able to see certain patterns of their own behavior of which they were previously unaware. For the first time, each of them was finally able to look objectively at the relationship. As an added benefit, they related how much better they were feeling about themselves, how much happier and lighter they felt after unburdening themselves. They are now stronger and wiser, having triumphed over adversity. I asked each of them to share what they learned from their experience and what advice they might give others. They agreed to do so, hoping it would help someone make a wiser choice and avoid the stress and heartbreak they experienced. These women hope their stories can help you, or someone you know, find a good partner for a lasting relationship. As several women said, “If my story can help just one woman, I will be very happy.”

Part I Our Stories

A relationship needs at least two people. It must be nourished with care. A relationship grows as a tree grows. First it takes root, then grows tall and spreads out, comfortable in the space it has. The less confining the space, the more it can grow. But it needs water to grow. Feed it and it will grow. Ignore it and it will die. A relationship between lovers can be precious, but only if it is nurtured. Let it always keep growing. Let it thrive and prosper and you will, too. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Marilyn Frazer

Introduction | The Relationship Trap Picture a beautiful spider web with a hungry spider waiting for a delectable unsuspecting prey to come by. The spider waits patiently. Soon an unwary victim comes along and gets caught in the web. The spider smiles and the prey is a goner. In a Relationship Trap the guy is the spider and you walk willingly into his web. A door closes behind you, trapping you in a relationship thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not healthy. Very often you close the door yourself. You might know this guy is not for you. Nevertheless, you ignore the warning signs and step right into the trap. After all, you are in love! Perhaps you knew from the start that this relationship would not go anywhere, yet you stayed because it was easier than having to start all over again. Blind dates. Singles websites. The bar scene. Ugh! Do you really want to be in a Relationship Trap? Is it better to stay with a guy whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not right for you than enter the dating scene again?

The Relationship Trap

Why not start out with the right guy in the first place, one who treats you like you are someone special, with respect, trust and honesty? You deserve someone special because you’re special, too. Why settle for less? I met someone on the plane the other day. (When you have a three-hour trip ahead of you, there’s plenty of time to talk.) She mentioned that for several years she had been living with a man who was “O.K . . . most of the time.” Every once in a while he blew up, but then he was fine for a while. He was rather jealous, she related, and demanded to know where she was at all times. “Otherwise,” she said, “he’s O.K. Besides,” she added, “I really hate to date and don’t want to start out all over again.” She never realized that she was in a Relationship Trap. Rather than start from scratch, she was willing to settle for less than she deserved. She was a successful business woman, intelligent and attractive, who deserved someone just as nice, just as special. The warning signs were there . . . the jealousy, the blow-ups, and more. She didn’t want to marry him because he lacked some of the basic things she wanted in a man, yet she had been living with him for four years, with no end in sight. “Nobody’s perfect,” she said. So she settled for a jealous abuser. She had decided that a known problem was better than the unknown out there. Follow along and read the true stories of fourteen women, each of whom was in a Relationship Trap because she ignored, or never looked for the warning signs that said, this guy’s not for you. Do any of these women resemble someone you know?

1 Elizabeth | Master of Deceit “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” —Unofficial postman’s creed

made promises to myself on how my family would be when I got married. My home would be a safe place and it would be quiet because I never felt safe in my home. I would do anything to avoid conflict. As a child in that house, I used my sense of humor as a tool to deflect the arrows that flew fast and furiously at us from my mother. I was a cute little blond-haired girl growing up in that dysfunctional home, the middle child, the one dodging all those arrows. I had a strong mother and a weak father and they were always quarreling, so I looked for a man who was not particularly forceful. He would be kind and outgoing but not gregarious and I found that someone when I was fifteen years old. His name was Evan. One of the first things that attracted me to him was that he seemed rather shy, which

The Relationship Trap

was a nice contrast to my outgoing personality. That whole idea of being with a quiet shy person fit the bill. At fifteen, I had decided I had already found the perfect match. This, by the way, was my first serious relationship. So here I was, dating a man who did not drink. I thought, wow, here’s somebody who really knows what he’s about. For all the drinking that goes on in college, here was a young man who stood his ground and said, “Don’t spike the punch, or if you spike the punch you’d better tell me it’s been spiked.” Some kids rebel when they get to college, but not my husband. So, I had a wedding reception that had no champagne toast. I remember becoming engaged one evening and going home to tell my parents. They were watching TV when I came in. I quietly announced, “There is something I want to tell you.” “Can’t it wait until the commercial?” my mother said, without looking up. “No, I don’t think it can.” “Sure it can. Just sit down and wait,” and that took care of any excitement I felt. It came as no surprise to my mom that I was marrying this man. As I recall, my mother did not particularly like him. “He’s so straightlaced that he makes me uncomfortable. It’s as though he’s judging me.” So, here’s a strong mother who decided, I really don’t like this guy and I don’t think this wedding is something I’m going to be a part of. “You know we don’t have a lot of money to spend,” my mother announced, and that was that. The fact that my motherin-law planned my wedding showed I was starting to take a back seat in my life . . . and I was only twenty-one years old. My fiancée had just graduated from college. He had strong feelings about the way things needed to look, the colors to be used, and how the church should be decorated. I absolutely acquiesced to that. Already I was not making waves. I was going to have a house where people don’t quarrel. Certainly, the woman is not the “quarreler” because that’s being a bitch. If you grow up around a bitchy mother and a quiet

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

father, and you’ve made the promise that your house is not going to be a bitchy house, then you’re not going to be bitchy. I was probably about eight or nine when I made that pledge not to be like my mother. Early in life my dad pulled me aside and gave me a bit of advice. Don’t . . . start . . . anything! Just go along. Don’t start any arguments. My mother’s ultimate punishment was silence . . . which could last for weeks on end. No one knew exactly what or who started it, but it didn’t matter, we all suffered. That’s why my father said, “Don’t make waves. Don’t create a problem, because we’ll all pay.” I’m sure by the age of eight I understood that this was the way we would always live. In fairness, I think I married to get out of that house. Marriage seemed like something I could handle. My heavens! I’ve been helping my mother take care of my family for years. When I marry, it will be just my husband and me. And, we won’t have to put up with that arguing. As my family presented one roadblock after another to my going to college, I realized I had to disassociate from them and create this perfect family in my mind. I had watched it on television so I knew it was possible, right? I could be Betty Crocker. Years later I asked my therapist, “Has anyone ever loved me?” He laughed and said, “Well, somebody must have loved you or you’d be institutionalized by now.” My dad loved me. Perhaps he saw what was happening to his daughter, but I think he had no idea how to stop it. For a long time, I thought I married my father. Looking back, I realize I didn’t marry my father; I just married the nice quiet guy, the steady fellow who was going to have a good job. Didn’t drink. Brought home the paycheck. Didn’t ask you how you spent it. That was the man I married. The years were rolling by and I was busy teaching third grade. Loved my kids. Loved teaching. But, I began to realize something I could not explain at the time . . . that I had married a man who was raised in a family where the father does not communicate. I didn’t realize that I had married someone who also had no idea how to share feelings. My husband could share ideas because he learned that in

The Relationship Trap

school. But in terms of communicating a feeling . . . I’m frustrated . . . I’m angry . . . I’m jealous, lonely . . . he absolutely had no vocabulary for it. He had never known a man who did that. Neither did I. At first I just thought, well, that’s how it is, but when I started to journal, I became conscious of a sense of loneliness. I was truly alone in this marriage. I became the keeper of the flame, so to speak, and that’s when I began to create a wide circle of friends. I entertained a lot, and we were very involved in the church . . . my mother-in-law’s church, of course. Now let’s fast forward to six years into the marriage, when my daughter was born. I had a real infertility problem so it was a great joy to find out I was pregnant. I decided to stop teaching. By that time my husband was doing very well, and he was working toward establishing his own construction company. I was supposed to take care of the family and entertain friends and he would be the wage earner. It was a very happy time. However, by the time my daughter was in first grade my husband had started his own company and we were struggling financially. Therefore, I decided a second income would be really helpful. I wasn’t looking for a career. I just wanted a job. You know, you need wall-to-wall carpeting. The relationship was now changing, and he was becoming very involved in the community. It was to his advantage to sit on this committee, that commission, and this board. He didn’t just sit on the committee; he was the chairman of the committee. He was the chairman of the commission. He was the president of the organization. More and more he was away from home. I felt as though I was a single parent. I wanted an evening when I, too, could go out. I wanted to sit on a committee. By now I had a masters degree. I could sit on a school board. My husband was an elder in a church. I could be an elder. But, no, the assumption was, and it was never spoken out loud, the more I could support my husband in his career, the better we’ll all be because it would bring business his way. The more people I get to know, on committees and commissions, the more people think of me, the more likely they will choose my company to build their project.

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

One day the governor appointed him to what I considered to be the ultimate committee of committees. When I met the governor at a party I said, “You know, if it weren’t for people like you, I’d have four children. I always wanted four children, but I only have one because my husband is never home.” He laughed, “You know, Elizabeth, I’ve been accused of a lot of things, but I’ve never been told people are going childless because of me.” Then I looked at him seriously and said, “If you appoint him to one more committee, commission, study group, whatever, I’m coming after you personally . . . to beat you up.” I had no sooner made this declaration, which he found very funny and everyone who was listening was laughing, then I read in the paper the next day that my husband had been named the chairman of still another important committee. “Evan, I thought you and I agreed that you were on enough committees.” “Really, Elizabeth, it is not a problem because I’ll have a large staff to help me. All I have to do is show up. I don’t have to take minutes. I won’t have to create the agenda, etc.” Nevertheless, I saw it as a betrayal. I went so far as to say to the governor that evening, “Don’t you dare assign him one more responsibility in this community.” My family plans were being thwarted by my volunteering husband. I was absolutely livid when I read it in the paper. I cut it out and taped it to the bathroom mirror. He came home late that night and I was already asleep. The next morning he threw the paper at me, “What is this about?” “Say it isn’t so.” I could barely hold back the anger. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t do this.” “It isn’t a big deal. It won’t take a lot of time.” It was then that I realized that other things took priority over my needs. I understood that Evan needed a sense of power, and he thrives on it to this

The Relationship Trap

day. He liked being recognized in groups of people. He liked people calling to him from across the room. When our daughter went off to school, no other children had come along, and I began to see that my life was going to be a single mom raising a single child. Well, I decided I was not going to just sit home, and ultimately, I ended up with quite a career of my own as the head of human resources of a large company. Since my husband was so totally focused on what he was doing, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think he really cared that I now had a job. As long as our daughter was well cared for, we got to church on time, and we were very visible, he was content. Fast forward to when our daughter was about twelve years old. My husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s company was doing quite well, and he was very involved in the Associated General Contractors of America. He made it a point of attending the AGC national convention every year. I never joined him. Usually, I only had two weeks off from work, and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t particularly care to spend it at a convention. I felt that his career had already totally consumed my life because he was not just working eight hours a day, he was working twelve hours a day. There were all those meetings to attend in the evening because he built schools. He built churches, and the church elders building committees meet in the evenings. At the conventions he was meeting people from other states. There were a lot of regional meetings as well, and my husband started introducing me to women designers with whom he had worked. They were very interesting professional women and I liked them a lot. Some of them had children and they were trying to juggle the same things I was juggling. We had a certain camaraderie. As a matter of fact, several of them had become quite good friends. They would come to town and stay in our home. We would go shopping together. We even went away for weekends together. Lani and I went to Palm Springs together. We did the galleries, we hiked, we took pictures, and we became good friends. Only later did I find out that these were his lovers.

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

It had been going on since my daughter was about seven and I began to have a career of my own. These women and their families would fly in and join us for family vacations. All the while, I had no idea that the wife of this couple and my husband were having an affair. I knew her husband. I knew her children. They were in our family vacation photos. They were in our home for Thanksgiving dinners. They were there for birthday parties. I have pictures of my husband’s lovers in more family pictures than you can ever imagine. How could they have the nerve to be in my home and look me in the eye while they were having an affair with my husband? He was that sure of himself that he would bring them into my home. They never blinked . . . and he never blinked. Ultimately, I thought I must have been the stupidest turnip on the truck. I think there were times when several affairs were going on simultaneously. I doubt if any of them knew about the others. When some of the affairs were over, for whatever reason, two of the women later told me, “ . . . ultimately Elizabeth, you became the more important person to me. I realized that he didn’t really care about me. He never cared about me. But ironically,” they added, “I grew so fond of you. You were so open, loving, warm, welcoming to me. I never had a friend who was as smart as you, as funny, self-assured, and accomplished as you . . . ” and totally in the dark that you were married to a cheater. I never picked up on the clues. For example, I would often go to one particular professional dining club. My company provided me with a professional membership there so that I could entertain major clients or prospective clients, or I could arrange for the CEO to meet with someone. I remember arriving at the club one day and the maître d’ said to me, “Oh, Mrs. Johnson. I saw the Johnson reservation and, well, I assumed it was for your husband.” “Well, what’s the problem?” I didn’t pick up on the odd expression on his face. “Well, Mr. Johnson is already here.”

The Relationship Trap

“O.K., so find another table for a Johnson.” He was acting very strangely as if he was suggesting he didn’t want to put us close to each other. My husband was entertaining a woman at lunch. Well, you know what? I was entertaining a man at lunch, so I didn’t give it any thought. When I look back on it now, I think the maître d’ recognized that this was the same woman my husband had entertained for lunch many times, and he was seeing a relationship, while I assumed it was a professional meeting. When he saw me walk in he probably thought, Oh, my gosh! The wife is here! But what came out of his mouth was, “Oh, Mrs. Johnson, I thought the reservation was for your husband.” So I didn’t see it at all. In fact, I went over to Evan’s table and greeted them both. I didn’t know the other woman. She was a school superintendent, so it didn’t strike me as odd. My husband built schools. There was another time when I should have picked up on it. There was a woman who had been in the governor’s office, and I knew she was one of his administrative assistants. Here I was married to a guy who had been on every commission, study group, and so forth that the governor had ever appointed. I only knew her as the person who answered the phone at the governor’s office. One day she had a birthday party and we were invited. Evan felt it was important to go. Not only that, but he said, “We need to bring a really nice gift because it’s her fortieth birthday.” Well, I was annoyed. “I don’t even know this woman. How much do you want to spend on somebody we hardly know?” “Come on, Elizabeth! She works in the governor’s office. I want something nice because it’s her fortieth birthday.” He kept on saying it’s her fortieth birthday. Well, nobody did anything nice for my fortieth birthday. I never got any sterling silver candlesticks. Suddenly we needed to have something really nice. I kept thinking, it’s her fortieth birthday. So what? Well . . . now I know!

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

The way she greeted him when we arrived at the party, with such familiarity . . . I thought . . . whew! You really know this woman well. She introduced him, “You all know Evan.” It was like he was the other honored guest in the room . . . like . . . we have the birthday girl . . . and we have my husband . . . and then we have . . . oh, yes, and your name is . . . um . . . Elizabeth. And I thought, whew, what is this about? And so I asked him in the car going home, “How is it you know her so well?” “Oh, I really don’t know her that well.” “Oh, no? From my observation, you were the other honored guest tonight.” “Oh,” he said, “you’re being ridiculous,” and he brushed it off. “She’s making a big deal because, you know, I’m the head of this commission and I’m a personal friend of the governor. You know how his staff is. They’re all very outgoing.” Whew! Wait a minute. There’s more to this than that, I thought. Ultimately, she divorced her husband and he told me about all her problems. She had a lot of health problems and he was very concerned. What doctors did I know who she could see? It struck me as odd. Why should I be looking for a doctor for her? Now I was beginning to pay closer attention at parties. I suspected I was married to a flirt. He was charming and funny. He was successful. People would say, “Oh! I saw that new school that you’re building on the corner of this street and that and it is just fabulous!” “How does it feel to be doing the hospital’s new addition?” “I heard you just got a new contract . . . read it in the paper.” “ . . . the new university building! Wow!” But, they were equally nice to me, and they were my friends, too. If you asked me to be specific, I couldn’t be. It was a feeling. It was a noticing. I think the noticing was gravitating toward women in a room. I often found him in the kitchen with the hostess. They would be talking about how she could remodel the kitchen. But, it wasn’t the host and the hostess and the builder; it was just the hostess and the builder.

The Relationship Trap

“Now I have an herb garden outside,” she was saying to him, “and so it would be nice to have . . . ” “Oh, really,” he said, “now where’s the herb garden?” Then the two of them went outside to see the herb garden. Excuse me? You’re now leaving the party? All of your other guests are being left behind because you’re going to show the builder the herb garden. But I’m not invited to go along. There’s a part of me that goes, hmmm, but I’m also the wife of the builder . . . and I know how many people corner him and ask, “Can we take that wall out? Would the roof fall down?” I mean, I’ve sat in on enough of those dinner table conversations that it doesn’t strike me as odd. I guess if you’re married to a doctor, you get used to people saying, “You know, there’s this mole on my shoulder that I’m really thinking maybe somebody ought to take a look at,” and in the middle of the cocktail party they show all of us the mole. We all get to see it. Often, when these women would meet me, they would say, “Wow! I sure heard a lot about you. Your husband is so proud of you. He just thinks you walk on water and I have been dying to meet you because, you know what? There isn’t a wife on earth who’s as great as you.” So I was totally thrown off by all the compliments I was getting from other women about how my husband says, of the two of you, you’re the more creative, you’re better at making people feel welcome, you’re the smarter one, you’re the better parent. These messages were brought to me on such a regular basis that I began to think here’s a man who’s so in love with me and I . . . I don’t think I’m in love with him any more . . . .and I went into therapy. I asked the therapist, “How is it that one person could be so in love and the other person doesn’t feel anything at all?” My husband was waving my credentials at everybody. It wasn’t men who came up to me and said, your husband thinks you walk on water; it was women who said that to me. How could I suspect a man who loved his wife as much as he proclaimed? Nevertheless, I had invited my husband to the therapy sessions because the whole thing with the business consuming so much of his time and my feeling like a single parent had really become quite a wedge between us. I

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

didn’t want to hear about his projects any more. I pushed away his whole professional life. Let’s work on this as a couple because this is getting to be a real thing with me. He met with the therapist alone for two sessions and then we came together as a couple. The therapist summed it all up, “Well, here’s what I’m hearing: Evan, you’re very happily married. You really love this woman. You want to make her happy and you think by providing her with a nice home, a comfortable life, a place in society . . . that’s your way of loving.” “Right.” “Well, Elizabeth, can you see how he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t? If he goes out and provides you with this life, the only way he can do it is to pour himself into his work. This is his way of loving you. Can you see that?” “Yes, intellectually, I can see that, but my heart doesn’t feel loved.” It was useless. This therapist sided with him in the way he loved. She played right into his hands. “This man adores you. You just need to stop being jealous of his profession . . . and enjoy all the riches that come with having a successful husband.” I felt this was ridiculous. “I guess I’m just not remembering what my job is here, which is to be the charming, smart, clever, funny person who stands beside the successful, fill-in-the-blank husband.” There were women in town and out of town, many of whom I knew. I had friends who told me later that he would come by their house in the middle of the day and say things like, “I was in the neighborhood doing an inspection of the new office building, the clinic,” the whatever I’m building. Builders do go out and inspect the job in the middle of the day. “I was just in the neighborhood and came by.” “Oh, well, come on in,” would be the cheery response. And then he would make sexual advances. I’ll never know how many because some may have quietly disappeared when they discovered I found out about his infidelity. Ultimately, I learned for certain that something was going on from one of our babysitters, Missy, who had since grown up and married.

The Relationship Trap

The two of us would have lunch together from time to time, and one day she said to me, “I think my husband’s having an affair.” “Wow, Missy! What makes you think so?” “Well, the telephone conversations that end abruptly . . . ” she went on to name some very specific instances. I just listened. Then she said, “Have you ever suspected that Evan might be fooling around?” I was taken aback. “I guess the kind thing would be to say to you, oh, yeah, you know how men are. But, no, I have to be honest with you, I never have suspected anything.” Then she grew very quiet, and I thought, well, she’s thinking, gosh, then Elizabeth’s doing something right and I’m doing something wrong. So she’s not worried about a husband who will stray and I am. Missy said nothing to me during the rest of lunch. Not a word. Instead of addressing my marriage, I addressed hers. I hesitated to compare marriages because clearly mine was on firm footing and hers was crumbling. In the parking lot after lunch, Missy said to me, “When I was your babysitter, your husband came on to me,” and with slow, deliberate words, added, “so don’t think your marriage is any safer than mine.” It was like she hit me with a board. “And what does that mean, when my husband came on to you?” “He took me home in the car after you guys came back from an event. I was having trouble with a boyfriend who had actually come by your house that night while you were gone. We had a horrible argument and we broke up. So I started crying. He pulled off on a side street, and at first he was comforting, ‘Now, now. Listen, one boyfriend is gone. Another one will be around the corner. By Monday you’ll have another boyfriend because you are a very pretty girl and you are smart. You won’t have any trouble getting boyfriends.’ Then the next thing I knew, he was hugging me. ‘Now you don’t want to cry over that stupid jerk. He doesn’t appreciate a good girlfriend.’ And then his hands were all over me . . . and I was screaming, ‘Stop it! Stop it!’” Well, I was home in a flash. It was Saturday, and the builder was in his home office. I confronted him with Missy’s story, and he said, “In . . . her . . .

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

dreams! An older man says honey you’ll have another boyfriend on Monday. He pats her on the back and gives her a hug and that’s sexual misconduct?” “Well, why did she tell me these things? Missy isn’t my babysitter any more. This was ten years ago. And she still remembered it like it was yesterday.” This girl was traumatized about what happened to her, and for ten years she felt guilty about it. Indignantly, he threw his arms up in the air, “I don’t know what she’s about. I don’t listen to little twits who ten years later . . . and if this is what I get after twenty-five years of marriage . . . that you would listen to that! What does that say about this marriage? I can’t believe it. The babysitter! Really!” So I said nothing to anyone. I had to either choose to believe her and leave him, or choose to believe him and stay. I chose to stay, but I did believe her. Then I really started to pay attention. A year later, almost to the day, we were at a convention. Now I was going to conventions. One of the designers, who had been in my home many times and was in many of my vacation pictures, took me to lunch. We ordered drinks and then settled down to enjoy our lunch. I said, “Lani, I have something really heavy on my heart. I want to run it by you because you know Evan real well. I’ve been given information and I don’t know whether to believe it or not. It just doesn’t fit the profile,” the words came out slowly and painfully, “but this woman has no reason to say things to me just to be hurtful.” And I told Lani about the babysitter, who has now grown up to be a beautiful young woman in this community. I didn’t want anyone to guess who she was. I felt it was safe telling someone who lived out of town. She listened quietly and then said, “Well, what difference does it make if it’s true or not?” Somewhat taken aback, I could only say, “What! If he was all over an eighteen year old ten years ago, I have to wonder how many eighteen year olds he’s been after since then . . . or twenty-eight year olds . . . or thirtyeight year olds.”

The Relationship Trap

“So let’s say it’s true. Let’s say he’s running around. Now what?” “He’s gone! He’s gone! Out of my life. I’m not putting up with that.” “O.K. Then I think I’ll tell you. We had an affair for fifteen years.” Shock number two. Hit by another board. “Waiter! Check please.” We never ate lunch. She drove me back to my hotel, and as I got out of the car and walked toward the lobby, . . . now, mind you, when she was in my home, I had lunches for her, I had dinner parties where she’s met my friends . . . Lani rolled down the window and said, “Why don’t you call Sandy when you get home.” “Sandy?” “Yeah, I think that might prove I’m not the only fish in the sea. So you can be mad at me, but, . . . ” the words burned a hole my heart, “there’s ten more you’re going to be mad at when you find out. And furthermore, I’ll just tell you right now, he was fooling around with Sandy long before he met me, and the only reason Sandy and I are no longer friends is that I stole him away from her.” I couldn’t breathe. That must be what it feels like when you get shot. You can’t catch your breath and you think you’re going to faint. We went to a big banquet that evening. It was the night Frank Sinatra died. Something in me died that night, too. I watched. I watched with eyes I had never watched with before . . . and I saw it . . . for the first time. There was no doubt in my mind the number of women in that room he had affairs with. The familiarity of their body language was just shocking to me. I couldn’t eat. I just sat there, and if you would have looked at me, you would have thought I had had a stroke. I don’t think I spoke. I don’t think I blinked. I think I was just catatonic . . . because now it was everywhere. It was all around me. Well, who comes by to say hello, but dear old Sandy.

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

She greeted me with a warm smile, “Elizabeth, it’s nice to see you again.” Watching the expression on her face, I said, “I had lunch today with Lani.” Her smile remained, but her eyes lost their sparkle, “Oh, really. Well, we aren’t speaking.” “Oh, really? I didn’t know that. I always thought you two were really good friends.” “We were.” “My gosh! What happened?” “Oh, it’s a long story.” My heart was pounding so hard. How could I be so brazen to actually question this woman in front of him? Oh, he was good. He never blinked. When she walked away, I said, “What do you suppose that was about?” “I don’t know. They used to be best friends.” “Yeah, in fact, one of them introduced me to the other.” Then he noticed I wasn’t eating and inquired, “Do you have a migraine?” “Yes, I do.” “Do we need to leave early?” “Yes, I think so.” We did not stay for the dancing or the presentation of awards. When I got to the hotel I went straight to the bathroom, turned on the water, got into the shower, and cried and cried. I stuffed a washcloth in my mouth so he wouldn’t hear me sobbing because the sobs were coming from such a place, such depths. I had never heard a sound like that come out of me. It was an animal sound. When I walked out of the bathroom, he was propped up on the bed watching TV. He said to me, “Hey! Frank Sinatra died.” “Oh, that’s not the big news tonight,” I said, my words dripping with ice. “What do you mean?” “Oh, there’s bigger news than that.” “What?” “Turn off the TV and I’ll tell you.”

The Relationship Trap

So I sat down in the wingback chair across from him and said, ‘This is the night I’m leaving you. That tops Frank Sinatra!” “What on earth are you talking about?” “Well, gee, I don’t know where to start. Let’s see. I could start with Lani. That affair lasted fifteen years.” “Who told you that?” “Oh, she did. And, let’s see. You were a little bit confused as to why Lani and Sandy aren’t friends any more. Well, I can tell you why.” “You know. This is all just bullshit.” “No. That’s what you told me a year ago when Missy, our old babysitter, said you were inappropriate with her. It’s always the women who are misunderstanding your intentions. You give a woman a hug, she thinks you’re coming on to her . . . for fifteen years. That’s a lot of hugging and that’s a lot of misunderstanding. Let me tell you something. I know what this room cost, and what I have to say to you, the people on either side of these walls don’t want to hear. So I’m going to leave, now . . . before I start screaming because once I start screaming I’m never going to stop . . . and they’re going to call security . . . and you’re going to be led out of here in handcuffs. So, I’m gone!” “I can explain . . . ” “Save it! Just save it! I’m going up to talk to Lani.” When I said that, the blood just drained out of his face. “Oh, so there’s Sandy, Lani, Missy the babysitter . . . I’ll tell you what. You give me the rest of the names and I won’t start screaming and security won’t come and ask us to pipe down. O.K.?” I aimed each word like a knife, straight at his heart. “I’m going to sit here quietly while you give me their names . . . and when you stop talking I’ll start screaming. So, do you want to start, or should I?” And he started giving me names. They were women I knew, women I didn’t know, women who lived here, women who lived everywhere, from Honolulu, Los Angeles, Houston, New York, most of whom I knew at one time or another. Many of them came to our home and stayed with us. We went on family vacations together.

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

I quickly and deliberately packed my things and went straight home. He wanted to come home with me, but I said, “Oh, no. You stay here at the convention and enjoy yourself. After all, you’re surrounded by all your . . . friends. I’m sure they’re all delighted to see you.” When I got home I called Jan. Now Jan was a very good friend of mine. When I told her what happened, she told me that Evan came on to her, too. He arrived at her front door one day, because he just happened to be in the neighborhood. Naturally, she invited him in. Jan was married, had two children, and she was my close friend. We went on vacations together. Anyway, when he came on to her, Jan said to him, “Get out of my house and don’t ever come back again . . . unless you have Elizabeth with you, because I love her more than you do.” “That’s not true, Jan.” “Oh, yes it is, Evan. You have no respect for me. You have no respect for my husband. You have no respect for the friendship we have forged over the last fifteen years. You have no respect for my children. You do not love Elizabeth. You do not love your daughter. You love you. Get out of my house.” “Calm down, Jan. Just calm down.” “Calm down, my ass! Evan, you’re in my home. And you’re making sexual advances. And my husband is your friend. Your wife is my friend. I love her more than you do!” Jan, added, “O.K., I’ll tell you what I know and what I’ve known for ten years. Elizabeth, you don’t pay attention at parties. He kisses everyone and he hugs them all.” “You’re right, Jan, he does.” “My husband doesn’t do that. He stays at my side. Your husband never stays at your side at a party. Why, he’s all over the room.” “True.” “All right. I threw him out of my house and I was so tempted to tell you, but I thought, maybe it’s just . . . me. Maybe I did something. Maybe I flirted with him too much at a party. Maybe I said something suggestive and he

The Relationship Trap

thought I meant drop over sometime. So I thought I was the guilty party, that I had somehow led him to believe I was interested in him.” She added, “I suppose you want to know what happened between Sandy and me.” “Yes, Jan, I suppose I do.” “Well, remember the day we all went to lunch?” “Uh, huh.” “Well, when you left to go to the bathroom, I leaned across the table and said, “Sandy, something very embarrassing happened to me with Evan not long ago. He came to my house and he suggested we go into the bedroom.” I was waiting for Sandy’s chin to hit the table. Instead, she said, “Really? And does that make you special?” “No. It makes me humiliated. I’m embarrassed. I don’t know whether to tell Elizabeth.” “Well,” said Sandy, throwing her parting shot at me, “let me just put it this way, honey, you’re not the only one he’s invited into the bedroom.” It was her way of saying honey, it’s going on all around you. It’s happening here at home, it’s happening out of town, it’s happening everywhere. “So,” Jan said, “I’m not your problem.” “No, you’re my friend.” “True.” “Wait. Let me correct that. You were my friend. No, no, no. You were never my friend.” “Oh, Elizabeth, that’s not true. I really like you. I like you a lot . . . but . . . I have a feeling I’m never going to hear from you again.” “Oh. You can count on that.” Another call I placed when I first got home was to Missy, to apologize and say, “I shot the messenger.” She said, “I knew you would. I knew that day at lunch I’d never see you again. It’s why I couldn’t think of anything to say because I knew what I was saying to you was goodbye. You’ve been such a good friend to me and had learned how to combine career and family, community and church. I was in

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

awe of you. And yet I was the keeper of this great secret. I got to the point where I admired you so much that I couldn’t be still any longer. I knew if I told you, I’d never see you again. I knew you would choose him over me. And who wouldn’t? Why would you kiss it all away because ten years ago your husband was inappropriate with me?” I felt abused by my husband, abused by my friends. It was coming from every direction. I couldn’t trust anyone any more. The next person I called after learning the truth about Evan was a friend of mine who is a lesbian. I said, “Lisa, can I come over?” “You sound like you’re crying.” “I am crying.” “Then why don’t I come over there?” “No, I need to get out of this house. I’m coming over there.” “Really, Elizabeth,” she pleaded, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You sound like you’re too upset to drive.” But I hung up before she could say another word, jumped into the car, and drove over. She saw me walk up the path to her door, and when she tried to open the screen door, I put my arm up so she couldn’t open it. “Are you coming in, Elizabeth, or are you not coming in?” she asked. “Well, Lisa, just answer a question for me first.” “Sure.” “You have or have not slept with my husband?” “I beg your pardon? That doesn’t happen to be my sexual preference, as you know.” “It’s a simple question. Yes or no? Just answer the question.” “Oh, my God ! What are you saying?” and she opened the screen door. I walked in saying, “Lisa, you are the only woman in this whole city who I trust, and I only trust you because . . . you know . . . ,” and I laughed, “your sexual preference. Otherwise, you would be suspect, too.” Well, Lisa started ranting and raving, “We should castrate all of them!”

The Relationship Trap

“Wait a minute, Lisa! This isn’t your problem. This is my problem.” She did a fifteen minute ranting, pacing back and forth in her living room, “all those sons-of-bitches . . . ” “Now, Lisa, just sit down. We need to talk.” I went there feeling I didn’t have a single soul I could talk to except her. I had no one I could trust. It took a long time before I finally learned to trust women again. I was the woman who had it all. How could a husband cheat on me? Evan went to a therapist briefly. I think he believed if he went to therapy he could win me back. His therapist asked to see me once. The first thing he said to me when I walked into the room was, “Do you believe that Jack Kennedy loved his wife?” “Yeah. I think he did.” “And do you think that Bill Clinton loves Hillary?” “Yeah, he probably does.” “These women are bright, attractive, accomplished, and admired . . . .and both of their husbands cheated on them.” “Uh, huh . . . and your point is what?” “You’re married to Bill Clinton. You’re married to Jack Kennedy. It has nothing to do with you. And it had nothing to do with Jackie. And it has nothing to do with Hillary. It’s really important that you know that.” “Well, I pretty much know that.” “But, you need to hear it from a man. It’s not about you. It’s all about him. So if you’ve been beating yourself up thinking you should have been prettier, smarter, a little more understanding, more fill-in-the-blank, it still wouldn’t have been enough. For some men, there is no woman who is enough . . . because the person he doesn’t love is himself. He’s looking for love in all the wrong places. He thinks he finds it in sex because he has sex and love mixed up. To him, intimacy is to get into bed. Tell me, what is intimacy to you, Elizabeth?” “It’s a look across a crowded room. It’s an eyebrow raised across the dinner table. It’s knowing that we’re together, even when there are a hundred other people in the room; I’m with you. That’s intimacy.”

Elizabeth | Master of Deceit

“I hope you find a man who understands that . . . because you’re married to a man who hasn’t a clue as to what intimacy is. Not the first clue. Your husband sat in my office and sobbed and told me how he loved you, how you were the wife every man would kill to have. But it wasn’t enough. He had to have all of these others going on simultaneously. You know, if he were an African chieftain, he would have eighty wives and you would be the number one wife. I tell you, the man adores you, but he has all these concubines on the side. Your husband said to me, ‘I never loved any other woman in my entire life, except the one I married.’ Elizabeth, I’ve only known you for fifty minutes, but I know you’ve never known love. And that’s what I wish for you . . . that before you leave this earth somebody will love you.” I thought I had found it in my partner, but the emptiness remains. For months Evan pleaded with me to forgive him and be assured that he could be monogamous. I don’t think he can be because it’s an addiction, and unless you’re willing to go through the tough therapy it takes to beat an addiction, the addiction has you. I still don’t understand him, but I learned about me. Somehow I was not enough . . . always. When I was a girl, I was not enough. When I was a young woman, I was not enough. Then I had a career and a professional reputation and now I’m a business owner. I have finally determined that I’m enough. I don’t have to be funny. I don’t have to be clever. I don’t have to be a good cook. I don’t even care if you like my house or not. I really don’t care if you like me or not! I’m enough . . . just the way I am. And way too good for him. Postscript I just celebrated my birthday, and he sent the loveliest bouquet of flowers I have ever seen in my life. I don’t know what it cost and I don’t ever want to know. However, it occurred to me when I looked at the card that I have now become the other woman! Evan has been living with someone for the past year. She’s home, making his dinner, cleaning his house, being his companion . . . and he has me on the side. Do you know what the card said? Happy birthday

The Relationship Trap

to the most loving, generous woman I have ever met. It amuses me to be the other woman. I feel as though I’ve come full circle.

— Elizabeth’s Advice to You — 1. First of all, never assume the problem is you. It’s not about you, it’s about. I think women assume when there’s a problem in a marriage, that it’s something they’ve done, not done, should have done, or overdid. 2. Secondly, trust your intuition. I think women are naturally intuitive, but we don’t trust our intuition. Our gut is overruled by our head . . . because our gut tells us what we don’t want to know. For example, I think my birthday party observation, where my husband seemed to be the other major guest in the room, was my intuition telling me clearly, a relationship between those two people existed outside of a professional one. But my head overruled it saying he wouldn’t do that to you. You know he loves you madly because everyone tells you so. Maybe if so many people didn’t tell me how much he loved me, perhaps I would have picked up on it sooner and not dismissed it. 3. Also, ladies, when your husband is spending too much time at the office, he’s not at the office. So many board meetings are at night. When he got home at midnight from a board meeting, I had no way of knowing what the agenda looked like. I was not a cheater, so I didn’t think like cheaters think.

When your husband is spending too much time at the office, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not at the office!

2 Stacy | In Love with a Married Man Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t compromise yourself. You are all youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Janis Joplin

met Stacy several years ago while on vacation at Club Med in Cancun, Mexico. She was there with a friend, and we met when the hostess sat them at my table. We dined together several times over the next few days, and slowly I learned about Stacy and how heartbroken she was because she had the misfortune to fall in love with a married man. She came to Club Med hoping to pick up the pieces and get on with her life. She touched my heart and I hope she will touch yours as well. I have not seen her since, do not know her last name or where to contact her, but here is her story and her advice as best as I can remember. How could I help falling in love with him? He was everything I wanted in a man. He was literally tall, dark, and handsome, and I know he loved me as much as I loved him. Unfortunately, being Catholic he felt he could never divorce his wife. I think she knew about us, but she never said anything to 29

The Relationship Trap

him. I had the feeling that as long as he never asked for a divorce she was satisfied. They couldn’t have had much of a life together. Kevin and I were so much alike, and from what he told me about her, they were complete opposites. She came from a big Irish family, and Kevin was the only Italian in a sea of Irishmen. She went to church every Sunday, and while she prayed for his soul, he was with me. We even went on vacations together and made quite a pair. My life was Kevin and I lived for the moments when we were together. It was as if we were married, we were so comfortable with each other. Several times I asked him if he would ever divorce her, and each time he said no. Absolutely no. It would kill her. After a couple of years, I stopped asking and never brought it up again. Sometimes I hoped she would die so we could finally be together, and then I’d be ashamed of such thoughts. Somehow the years went by. I was madly in love. He was the most wonderful man I could ever hope to find . . . loving, thoughtful . . . he never forgot my birthday . . . always sent the largest bouquet of flowers . . . must have cost a fortune. Always bought me a present for every birthday, Christmas, our “anniversaries”. You see this bracelet? He bought it for me for my thirtieth birthday. When I turned thirty-five he took me to New York City for three whole days. We saw two Broadway shows, we huddled together on a cold boat ride around Manhattan (it was November), ate in the best restaurants, and made love morning and night. I still remember exactly what our hotel room looked like. We were so happy. It was as if we were on our honeymoon. For our twentieth anniversary we went to the Bahamas and had four glorious days together. I even won $450 at the casino. I thought, surely I was the luckiest girl in the world. But my luck didn’t last very long. Exactly a year and a day later, my whole world fell apart. He came over to my apartment for dinner, and after dessert he told me that he had not been feeling well and had been to see a doctor. The result of the tests showed that he had pancreatic cancer and had only a few months to live. If he had exploded a bomb in my face, the impact wouldn’t have been greater. I

Stacy | In Love with a Married Man

literally felt faint. How could he have waited all through dinner to tell me? I knew he hadn’t been feeling all that well, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the big C word. “Are they sure? Please tell me this is all a joke.” “I wish I could, Stacy. With all my heart I wish I could tell you it’ll be all right and with just a little chemo and a bald head they could cure it, but . . . .” Suddenly he couldn’t speak and I saw the tears in his eyes. “I thought we would be together forever.” “Did you get a second opinion?” I remember my hands were trembling. “Yes, and he confirmed the first diagnosis. Oh, Stacy, it was like a death sentence.” I’ll never forget his next words. “I can’t bear the thought of leaving you.” “What will I do without you? Kevin, how can I go on? You’re my whole life.” I felt like I was in a soap opera. This couldn’t be happening. I will always remember that night. We sat on the sofa, arms around each other . . . and we just cried. After that night, I only saw him twice before he went into the hospital. Usually his wife was with him and I wouldn’t dare walk into his room. Once I sneaked into his room for some brief stolen moments and just sat there holding his hand. He could barely speak. Another time a nurse came in and startled me. I quickly pulled my hand away. She asked who I was and I made up something. I don’t remember. She had a look in her eye that said, yeah, right. The last time I went to the hospital I saw his wife in his room and walked quickly by and stood down the hall wondering what to do. I decided to wait a while and come back. When I passed his room again, she was still there. It was cold and rainy, and I remember driving home so frustrated and angry that I screamed unprintable words at him, his wife, and God. I never had a chance to say goodbye. He died a few days later. Six months later, my friend talked me into coming to Club Med with her. Everybody said I needed to get away and start thinking about a new life. My life was over. I didn’t need a new one. The love of my life was gone. For months, I felt sorry for myself. I was depressed and mad at the world. Why me?

The Relationship Trap

Finally, my friend sat me down and lectured me long and hard. She told me what I didn’t want to hear. It finally sank in. What did I do? I gave twenty of the best years of my life to this man, and what did I have to show for it? Nothing. I couldn’t even go to his funeral. I lost my best friend, the love of my life. His wife went to the funeral. She got the insurance. I got nothing. What did I have to show for twenty years of loving him? A few pieces of jewelry, some photos, and a collection of empty flower vases. Why did I stay with him so long? Why didn’t someone hit me over the head and make me realize that I was wasting precious time with him? I guess they did, but their words hit deaf ears. Yes, he loved me. Yes he was handsome, with those dark eyes . . . but I could penetrate them . . . and underneath was his gentle soul. I was like melted butter when I was with him. He’ll always be the one great love in my life, but it’s over. He’s very, very dead. I’ll never love anyone else like I loved him, but I’m still alive, and I have to get on with my life . . . somehow. My friend brought me to Club Med hoping I could meet someone else. Well, it didn’t happen. Perhaps I’ll find someone else one day, someone who is single and wants a forty-year-old woman who probably won’t have kids because she’s not a kid any more. I have a lot of beautiful memories, but I lost twenty years of my life and the chance to be married with a family of my own.

— Stacy’s Advice to You — *My advice to someone out there who is secretly seeing a married man is to take a good look at the clock. Don’t waste time on someone who is unavailable and will never be yours. Even if you’re madly in love with him, leave him. Find someone else to love. Don’t waste those precious years on a married man. You can never get them back. *Note: This advice is based on Stacy’s experience, what she told me long ago and what I think she would say now.

The first rule of dating is: Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go out with a married man. Period.

3 C. J. | Listen to Your Inner Voice Remember. Marriage is the number one cause of divorce. —Red Skelton

hen you look at C.J. you see a very attractive blonde woman in her early forties. She has a soft voice that has a sensuous quality, and when she speaks, each thought flows like sheer poetry. She is 5'7" tall and has a lovely figure. They say beauty is only skin-deep, but this woman is beautiful inside, as well as outside. What you do not see are all the scars on her heart. I was first married when I was nineteen. Much too young, I’m afraid. It didn’t take long before we grew apart. We never should have gotten married in the first place because we didn’t have much in common. However, one good thing came out of the marriage—we did have a daughter. In my twenties I became much wiser and married again, this time to a very nice man named Joel. Unfortunately, not long after we were married, he was involved in a major automobile accident and received a severe skull 35

The Relationship Trap

fracture that affected his mental abilities. It became a violent situation and so, seven years after the accident, with no hope of recovery, it became necessary to divorce him. It broke everyone’s heart, but I had no choice. He had become psychotic and delusional. I had been trying to make this marriage work with a man who was not mentally able to do so, and I was fighting a losing battle. At the same time, I was raising his son and my daughter and also building a career because I was worried about our financial future. I was exhausted. After the accident, Joel developed three personalities, and one of them was violent. At the same time, he began spending an incredible amount of money. There were eighteen cars, three houses, and two airplanes in five years. I had keys to cars I didn’t even know I had. There was screaming, yelling, flying off the handle. For example, if someone cut in front of him in traffic, he would scream and yell, and that would go on for a week. We all walked on eggshells around him. And then there were times when he would be incoherent. His eyes would glaze over. He was definitely a man who was in need of serious medical attention, but he refused to get it. He was very good at maintaining a façade in his business and with other people, but at home he felt safe enough to unleash everything that was going on in his head. One time, he told me during a lucid moment that he felt as if his brain was split in two. It was so sad because he and I were well suited and would have still been married had it not been for the severe skull fracture. So, I endured seven years of not knowing where I stood from one moment to the next. It was a relationship made of quicksand. One night Joel lost his temper and went into one of his rages. He had his son pinned to the floor and was going after him. Whenever this would happen, I would try to intervene and rescue the boy. That night I got between them and convinced Joel to leave the boy alone. Then I led Joel into the bedroom and tried to calm him down. It seemed to be a pattern . . . intervene and calm him down. That night he had one of his few lucid moments. He looked at me and said, “You should really be afraid of me,” and I realized I was.

C. J. | Listen to Your Inner Voice

I tried to help him. A few of his friends understood what was going on, and I enlisted their help, too. We tried to get him to see a doctor. Joel was a pilot, and I spoke to the doctor at the flight school to see if he would not renew his pilot’s license and recommend further medical tests. Joel would have medical appointments and then break them. He had an automobile accident one time, a minor accident where the lady he rear-ended called the police because she was so frightened . . . of him. I was trying to deal with him the best I could. The neurosurgeon told me that he had abnormal brain waves and that I would see a progression of recuperation, but it would not be linear. I would think perhaps everything would be O.K. . . . and then it wasn’t . . . then it was . . . and then wasn’t. It was a roller coaster ride for all of us. Nevertheless, I always had hope. Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? But, the hope went away that night . . . when I heard the man I had married and loved warn me about himself. It was then that I realized he was trying to tell me that there would be a time when he would not be able to control himself any more. Finally, I felt I had no choice. Although I loved him very much, I left. Then the restraining orders started, he went into a rage, and we went through a very bitter divorce. It was a relief not to be in that house any more and putting up with the yelling and all sorts of verbal abuse. I could breathe again. But I had lost a lot of myself trying to deal with the problems that were associated with his illness. During all those terrible years, I didn’t really know what I wanted, what I needed, because I had put all of that on hold. It didn’t do any good to tell him what I wanted. For example, we went to a lovely restaurant one evening. He talked at dinner about buying a half-million dollar ranch and then berated me because I was five dollars over on the grocery budget. I remember that night specifically. I went into the restroom of the restaurant and threw up. Oh, he could get you that upset! One time, he took my car, which had 8,000 miles on it, and went to put gas in it. When I came home, not only was

The Relationship Trap

one of our other cars gone, but the car he took for gas was gone, too. In its place was a brand new one. So my efforts to try and get us financially sound in case he could no longer work were for naught. The more I made and the more I tried to put away, the more he spent. He was very intelligent . . . he had an I.Q. of 165 . . . very charming, a nice handsome man, very cultured, and all that went by the wayside. Whatever I lost, he lost so much more. He lost his mind. After going through all that, I needed the gentle care of a counselor or someone who was very close to me. I had kept it a secret for so long. I had isolated us, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to work if anyone knew how bad it really was. I probably should have pulled myself out of the dating scene and should not have made any kind of emotional commitment for several years after the divorce, while I recuperated and found the way back to my center. I should have sought help, but I didn’t. Instead, I entered into another very bad relationship. There were warning signs. Now that I look back, they were there. But I wanted to ignore them. One evening I was preparing dinner, and I should have known better, I used an old knife and ended up with my hand sliced open, instead of the potato. I wound up in the emergency room and a surgeon was called. Six months after that incident, we started going out. His name was Owen and we went out two or three times and then I broke up with him. I just said, “I don’t think this will work.” But, somehow I started seeing him again. There was almost a dark, haunting look about him, a provocative look that I found so attractive. Owen was tall, slender, and very nice looking. He portrayed himself as being a very down to earth type of person who liked to dance and was the youngest of three children. He told me he was his mother’s baby boy. His mother lived in another state. He worked his way through medical school. That was his self-portrait.

C. J. | Listen to Your Inner Voice

His wife had died in an automobile accident, and he had a difficult time getting over that because she was so young. Her children, who had been living with them, went to live with their father. Owen spiraled downwards and went into a depression after she died. I was thirty-three when we met. Owen was five years older. We liked to do the same things. At least I thought he did. I had horses at the time—that was my salvation—and he wanted to ride. He said he had ridden before. He liked going to Mexico and so did I. He had a good sense of humor and liked having a good time. However, what I didn’t realize was just how much he drank. He told me he never drank while he was on call. He drank whiskey. No beer or wine. Owen had been a fighter pilot in Vietnam. His best friends, his family, the people who had known him for a long time, all lived out of town. Here was a man who was telling me what a bad state he was in after his wife’s accident and how tough it was to get over it. His house was a disaster, but he told me he didn’t want to redo his house until a woman came into his life who could participate in the decorating. It was a very depressing picture, and so the nurturer in me came out. I went out with him for two years, and it was only after we married that I finally met his friends and family. The first indication I had that this picture of him was not necessarily as he had painted it came from a fighter pilot friend of his. He took me aside and said, “You know, Owen flew back seat,” which didn’t make any sense at all because he was a physician when he went in. And why would they put him in a navigator’s position, especially if he was a fighter pilot? Owen told me he was not supposed to wear a dog tag because if he had been shot down or captured they didn’t want the fact that he was a physician to be known. But he wasn’t a pilot. Eventually I found out that he was just flying back seat with the squadron commander or some other guys on certain routine missions. It wasn’t a big deal. He was a flight surgeon. They would take him up because he was fun to be with. He went because he wanted to be with the guys.

The Relationship Trap

That was the first thing I discovered that wasn’t true. The second one occurred when I met his mother. I noticed the lack of interaction between the two of them. They hadn’t seen each other for a long time, and they simply walked past each other. This was the guy who was supposed to be his mama’s baby boy. Owen told my grandmother that his mother taught him to dance. When my grandmother met his mother, she said, “Oh, it was so special of you to teach Owen to dance.” His mother replied, “I did what?” Because he was away from all the people who knew the truth about him, he had painted another picture. By the time I learned all this, I was already married. When I first met his family, they were not all that forthcoming. I had been pretty numb for a long time, but my intuition had finally started to come alive. What were the other clues? Oh, there were innumerable ones. Most of them were subtle ones that made me say to myself, that doesn’t make any sense. The more aware I became, the more I learned, the worse he got because he knew I was uncovering things. For example, one Tuesday night before we were married, I had been to aerobics and I dropped by his house afterwards. I caught him sitting in his den in the dark, staring. Just staring. It bothered me . . . that he would sit in the dark and stare. Everything was blamed on the death of his former wife. Later I found out that he wasn’t part of her care-giving when she had a serious operation. He told me he was. A girlfriend, Marla, flew up from Atlanta and took care of her. Two years into the marriage I finally got to meet Marla, and she filled me in on what really happened. “What she put up with!” Marla confided. “I can’t believe she stayed.” Yet he told me they had a wonderful marriage. It was perfect. His family told me she was the worst mother they ever saw in their life. She would leave the kids by themselves . . . when they were only two and three years old. It went on and on. Certain things started to come to light from people who had no axe to grind—people who were trying to tell me the truth.

C. J. | Listen to Your Inner Voice

The biggest eye-opener came one night when his older brother came to visit us. At that time, the doctor and I had been married for about four or five years. By that time, I had participated in renovating the house, trying to make things better. I was trying to fix it, so to speak. I’m a fixer. I’m getting out of that, but I’ll get to that later. My husband had been married once before, to the daughter of the dean of the medical school. She was instrumental in getting him into medical school. I asked his brother why Owen and his wife divorced. “I don’t know,” he said. “She was a very nice person.” I said, “Well, Owen told me she took everything when she left.” “Why shouldn’t she? She was supporting him.” Then I realized that when I met him all the furniture, everything in the house, was his deceased wife’s from a former marriage. I felt like an arrow went through my chest. Oh, no! Owen was very good at creating a façade. My grandmother was an excellent judge of character, and even she was fooled. However, what I will say is, I was having odd reactions to him. There were times when I would call him a son-of-a-bitch and didn’t know why I was reacting to him in such a negative way. I would blame it on myself, as women do to explain it away. I found out later . . . his friends had the same reaction! They’d just say, “I don’t know why I put up with that son-of-a-bitch,” and want to walk away. They’d walk away for months. I felt like I wanted to get away, too. To win them back, he tended to make people feel sorry for him. It’s a “poor me” kind of thing. That’s how he manipulated people. I couldn’t understand what was happening. Sometimes I even had a physical reaction to him. There would be a tightening in my chest and then son-of-a-bitch would come out of my mouth. I would feel a certain anxiety when I was around him. This physical reaction to him should have been a warning sign.

The Relationship Trap

Once, there was a woman who was dating my friend Jack. (My husband didn’t know either of them.) Well, she walked into the room, took one look at him, and backed up. She told Jack, “He is bad news.” When another friend met him, she said to me, “There’s an amazing dark side to him.” They saw it. Why didn’t I? I think we women have an instinctual nature that we suppress by saying oh, they didn’t really mean that. But, what if they did? I believe society wants us to override our instinctual nature in many cases. I was reacting from some primal place and didn’t know why. After we had been married a while, he started to show who he really was because he couldn’t control it any more. I truly believe that I saw evil. I saw that his relationship with his mother indicated a resentment of women. He really didn’t want to be around women. He wanted to be around guys. Owen wanted to be known as a man’s man. I even suspect he might have been bisexual. I even noticed some homosexual overtures toward some of his friends. Men seldom touch each other. Sometimes they’ll pat each other on the back or give each other a hug, but I saw him grab a guy’s leg, and I saw the look on the guy’s face come flying back at him . . . that it was inappropriate. I saw him one time sit on the sofa with a guy that I knew he had a great deal of affection for, and normally guys will sit on one side of the sofa with the other guy on the far side of the sofa, but my husband kept moving toward this other guy until he had him pressed against the arm of the sofa . . . putting his arm around him . . . later going to the restaurant bathroom with him. Women go to the bathroom together. Guys don’t. He went to the bathroom with him and he had just gone to the bathroom five minutes before. The friend’s female companion and I just looked at each other in disbelief. Owen’s brother came to me and told me he believed my husband was a problem drinker. I asked, “How do you know when someone’s an alcoholic?” Well, I learned.

C. J. | Listen to Your Inner Voice

He had to have his whiskey every night. While we were married, he sometimes went against what he had told me about not drinking when on call. He was drinking and going to the emergency room. He would have maybe two, three whiskeys under his belt. It was very important to drink before eating . . . so he’d start drinking at five and wouldn’t eat until ten o’clock at night. He might have been camouflaging this before I married him, but I’m sure it was always there. I truly believe he was a functional alcoholic. Functional alcoholics are ones who self-medicate all the time. They can carry on life activities. A lot of times they’ll drink vodka because they think you won’t be able to smell it on their breath. I also noticed that his drinks had to be exactly the same, exactly right. It had to be a certain brand. It had to be only that soda. Functional alcoholics define their drinks . . . and they talk about their drinks. I’ve seen him drive intoxicated, denying that he was drunk. However, he was very careful not to let his colleagues see. If I said something, he accused me of thinking everybody was an alcoholic. We went to Mexico with another couple and she started smoking cigarettes and drinking beer at nine o’clock in the morning, never having anything to eat until four o’clock in the afternoon. He didn’t have any problem with that. That was fine with him. Our marriage really started to fall apart when I pulled back and said, “I don’t want anything to drink.” When I stopped drinking with him, that’s when things really got bad. And that’s when I started to watch. I was cold sober now. I could remember what he said. Before that, I would have about two drinks a night, which was unusual for me because I hardly ever drink. Now I wasn’t the same person to him. When we went dancing, that was a perfect place to go and drink. When we went out on the trail ride with the horses, people drank. Then he started carrying a flask. I didn’t know who I was married to, but I knew where this was going. I finally realized he was a functional alcoholic. Functional alcoholics eventually will become full-blown alcoholics.

The Relationship Trap

The marriage was definitely disintegrating. By this time, I realized Owen was after my money. Once, he actually swindled me. I received a windfall of stock where I worked and was advised I would probably have to pay income tax on it. Owen told me that the accountant said I would have to pay $20,000. I asked him, “Who should I write the check to?” He said it was both state and federal, “so just write a check to me and I’ll put it into my account.” I had been busy traveling on business and I didn’t have time to sign the return. I just authorized his receptionist to sign it. I put it on my To Do List that I needed to look at that return. Later I found out my portion was only $8,000. Then I began to notice that he had started to position himself to leave. Now I know that people can divorce you daily. They pull away emotionally and physically. First he pulled away physically. No more sex. We slept in the same room, but he made darned sure he didn’t go to sleep the same time I did. I think it probably started to disintegrate big time about three years into the marriage, but the marriage lasted eight years. When I finally saw what he was really like, that’s when it started. It was an all out court press. He asked for a divorce at the worst possible time for me, financially. He froze the lines of credit for my business, and the divorce went on for almost eighteen months. There were no children involved. It was all about money. He destroyed my credit rating. He destroyed my character. And he was out to destroy me. But he didn’t destroy me. I don’t know exactly how I managed to survive all that. I think it may be because I finally had the support of my family. In addition, for the first time I got the counseling that I should have had after my second marriage. It was a great catharsis. When I left him, I moved to a small town where I could find a simple life and wide open spaces. I needed a breath of fresh air after what I had been through.

C. J. | Listen to Your Inner Voice

What I Have Learned I would not want to go through that experience again, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me because it taught me to trust my instincts, to listen to my inner voice. I’ve learned that my instinctual nature is far more valuable to me than logic. If I react physically or mentally to something and I can’t describe why, I now know that it’s significant and that it’s a warning sign of some sort. In the marriage, I was overriding my instincts because I wasn’t used to things happening to me that way. Where my instinctual nature was really trying to protect me and trying to talk to me, I couldn’t understand its language. I wasn’t in touch with it. Well, I finally learned about me . . . that I need to feed my soul . . . that I am in charge of feeding my soul. I had been neglecting it and I almost lost it. I truly believe you can lose your soul, your spirit. I believe my spirit is still coming alive. Now I’m nurturing myself. I’m learning what I like and what I don’t like, what is good for me and what isn’t good for me. I still have those times when I try to override my instinctual nature. Just recently, I met a man who was very nice and had some very good qualities. He started saying some things . . . similar to what Dr. Owen used to say. I reacted badly. Was I reacting to Dr. Owen or was I reacting to what was said that I didn’t like? I had to sort that out. Nowadays, if I know a red flag is there, I don’t have to react physically any more. I’m able to detach myself and not be tied to the outcome. Before, I would want it to happen a certain way. For instance, if you give money to a homeless person you can’t be tied to the outcome of what they do with it. Maybe they do buy that next drink, but you can’t be tied to their decision. And so, what I want now in my life is a mature relationship with a very nice person who comes from his heart. I’ve somewhat defined the kind of person

The Relationship Trap

I’d like to have in my life. When I meet men, I appreciate their good qualities. Their other side may show a person with whom I may not want to spend the rest of my life, but I don’t say, well, I could change that. I’m not tied to that is the last person I will ever meet who will come around with those qualities. What am I looking for? I want a man who has substance on the inside. And I would like to be a priority. I would want a little bit of adventure. I want a man who is intelligent, with a good sense of humor, someone who comes from the heart and is open to ideas, who enjoys having a good time, and who is a good communicator. I would like a man who is generous, and that would be with his time, his money (and there’s no definition as to how much) and, of course, his heart. He and I together, not against the world, but with the world. I do not want an alcoholic or anyone addicted to any substance, gambling, or sex. My number one priority is someone who is spiritual, a man who believes in something beyond himself, kind, sensitive, a bit intuitive, solid, satisfied with what he has accomplished in life, and willing to build something else . . . together. Wanting to understand, wanting me. Nowadays I can talk about it or I can walk away or I can see that other person’s point of view, but I’m not willing to compromise on character and integrity. I finally know what I want and what I don’t want.

— C.J.’s Advice to You — 1. First of all, trust your instincts. That’s the most important piece of advice I can give anyone. Listen to your inner self. If you feel that you don’t have instincts, it’s about time you realize that you do have them and you had better develop them. A part of you is deaf, and it’s the most important part of you. You can get a “hearing aid” by getting in touch with yourself. That’s not easy to do, but it’s what feeds your soul.

C. J. | Listen to Your Inner Voice

2. Secondly, be open to any signs that contradict who he portrays himself to be. If it doesn’t seem right, it’s because it’s not right. It’s that simple. 3. Look for signs of alcohol, drugs or other addictions. For example, he’d show up at different times such as 11 a.m. and say I need to have my orange juice . . . and the vodka was going in it. Another time he walked by the liquor cabinet, grabbed a bottle of brandy, and drank out of it without pouring it in a glass. Still another time I found a glass with the ice still in it in the car. Any man who orders a double of anything . . . big red flag! 4. Detach and open your eyes. If you see yourself physically reacting to somebody, and you don’t know why, go with your gut feeling. You might want to get away from him or at least detach and find out or observe what’s going on. 5. Look for red flags. Don’t try to explain it away. Don’t try to fix this person. Don’t try to rescue him. It doesn’t work. It’s not your job. Kindly say, from a loving place, it’s not going to work. You’re a nice person but I can’t do this. Then end it. 6. Be kind to yourself, first. I used to have big expectations about birthdays. Recently I had a birthday, but I didn’t have a big party, I established a ritual—Happy Birthday to Me! I made sure that it was my responsibility to have a happy birthday. Now I am never disappointed with my birthday. If anyone gives me a gift, it’s icing on the cake! But, I already ate the cake! 7. Seek sexual compatibility. If you’re not comfortable, don’t do it. 8. Develop a key question. This is something important. Work it into the conversation and see how he reacts to it. The man who responds to this question with interest is the man for me. 9. If the relationship is not going anywhere, move on. I’m beginning to see that I’m getting closer to substance in what I’m attracting. I’m moving faster through relationships if I know they’re not going

The Relationship Trap

anywhere. It doesn’t take years or even months any more. Sometimes it only takes weeks . . . maybe just one date. 10. Make sure he’s not threatened by your independence. I’ve had a varied background, both in the business world as well as personal experience, and I need a man who would appreciate that. I’m not at that stage in my life where, as I did in college, if I knew the answer to the problem and no one else knew the answer, I didn’t raise my hand because I wanted a date for Saturday night and didn’t want to demean the guys. Nowadays, I’ve been called independent, like it was a dirty word. I need to find a man who thinks that’s a plus. 11. Nurture yourself. I can be friendly to people who don’t have my best interests at heart, but I can’t let them into my heart. All the things I want in a man are what I am willing to give to another person. Why would I accept less from someone else than I am willing to give? If I now nurture my soul, why would I go into a relationship that does not nurture my soul? Nurture yourself and accept nothing that might take away from that. Let the light of your soul shine through.

Look for any signs that contradict who he portrays himself to be.

4 Julie | The Life of the Party “Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

’m a 37-year-old stockbroker with a major brokerage firm, 5'6" tall and pretty, with a nice figure, strawberry blond hair down to my shoulders, and the most amazing light blue eyes, according to Jake. I was married when I was eighteen, right out of high school. I met Ted when I was sixteen. I really thought I was ready for marriage and so mature for my age. I wanted to get out of my house, and here was a man who was five years older and provided me with the love and attention that I was lacking at home. Not only that, he came from a family that was very loving and spent a lot of time together. I was terribly drawn to that. It was exactly what I wanted. However, I don’t think he was ready for marriage. We were both too young, and neither one of us had a good self-image. 51

The Relationship Trap

Soon after we were married, Ted started seeing other women. He was seeing one woman for about six months when I found out. I finally left him, but then decided no, we’re going to work on it. We talked and talked and ended up trying to work things out. I moved back in for about six months, but then I just couldn’t do it. Anytime he was late we always got into a fight, arguing about where he was, what he was doing. Finally, I said, “Look. You really don’t want to be married. I’m young. You’re young. Neither one of us needs to go through this for the rest of our life. You don’t need me to constantly doubt you, not to trust you. Obviously, you’re not willing to put any effort into the relationship.” So, two years after we were married, I divorced him and moved to another city. Fast forward to about four years ago. I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship, the first one I had after my divorce, and had been single for about eight months, when a girl I worked with decided that she had the perfect man for me. I wasn’t interested, wasn’t interested, wasn’t interested! Finally she just said, “Julie, I really want you to meet him.” What could I do? She wouldn’t leave me alone. I finally gave in and met him . . . and much to my surprise, we really hit it off. From that day forward we were together every day. Jake was African American, tall, my age, 29, a professional basketball player. He was very used to attention and definitely enjoyed the attention that he got, especially from females. He’s always had a lot of female friends. He was very outgoing and usually the life of the party. Everyone wanted Jake to be there because he was such fun. On the flip side, he hid his feelings about things that happened in the past. He grew up in a single-family household, the oldest of several boys, and was responsible for taking care of his mom and the family. I don’t really know a whole lot about his dad, but he did tell me that his dad taught him how to fix cars, how to be a mechanic and use his hands. His mom taught him to be clean, self-sufficient, and not rely on a woman to take care of him.

Julie | The Life of the Party

When I first met Jake, I thought I met the perfect guy. He could cook, clean, and do all this stuff. He loved his mother. You know, you always hear that somebody who’s very responsive to his mother is a good catch. Well, all that’s wrong. He just hid a lot of things about himself, not only from me but from his family, too. I don’t think his mom even knows the real Jake because he puts on a show for everybody. Actually, I don’t think Jake knows who he is. There are too many different layers, too many different lies that he told to manipulate situations to make them beneficial to him. About two and a half years into the relationship, I was at the point where I wanted to get married, but he wasn’t ready, so we didn’t talk about it for a while. After all, if you don’t bring it up, you won’t have to deal with it. Eventually, I decided, either we were going to plan a wedding or we weren’t. My biological clock was ticking and I wanted to have a family. If we weren’t going to be together in a long-term relationship, then I needed to be married or move on. So I brought up the subject again. Well, he told me he felt like that was an ultimatum. I didn’t think so because, basically, I was just letting him know where I was coming from. It’s a natural thing for a woman to express. Ultimately, my long-range plan was to be married and have a family. I did love Jake, but I thought, if this isn’t what you want, then why are you here? If both of us are not at the same place, then we just need to admit it and move on. Finally, he decided he did want to marry me, and we began arranging for a wedding to take place about a year after that conversation. We wanted a small, intimate wedding with only our close family and friends. The wedding planning was not at all enjoyable because I pretty much did everything. I was the one who was stressed out. I was the one who contacted everybody, getting the list of family names. I remember my bridal shower. His whole family was there, but only my mom and sister came. They flew in from out-of-town. There were probably five people from my side including a couple of friends. The rest were all his friends and family.

The Relationship Trap

He was supposed to come to the shower. He didn’t really want to come, but he said he’d show up later. Never showed up. Truly, if you love somebody and you’re getting married, wouldn’t you want to participate in the planning? We fought about that, but it didn’t do any good. He was working hard trying to start a business. He couldn’t play basketball forever. I could understand that. He had things going on. That was his excuse. A week or two before the wedding, we went to a counseling session with the pastor who was going to marry us. He asked us to write a list of reasons why we loved each other. I had this long list of stupid stuff . . . I love your toes . . . just corny stuff because I loved everything about him. He, on the other hand, was seriously stressed out over making this list. He had only written five things. I can’t remember exactly what was on the list, but I saved it because the pastor asked us to save it so we could refer back to it when times got tough. There were things like I love how you’re so loving and caring. I mean, they were all very nice things, well thought out, but you could tell he was really stressed out about it, and it really bothered me that he only had a few things. The pastor felt it wasn’t a big deal. “It isn’t a contest to see who had the most things on their list,” he said. I let it pass. Well, that night he told me that the pastor thought I would be a high maintenance person because I had such low self-esteem due to a previous marriage. Since my ex-husband had cheated on me, it was really hard for me to trust a man and Jake knew how vulnerable I was. He didn’t want to go to the next counseling session with the pastor, so we didn’t go. At the time I felt, O.K., we’re getting married . . . whatever. I was real busy. I had a lot of stuff going on at work, not to mention making all the wedding plans. I’m sure the reason he didn’t want to go was because it was hitting too close to home. The pastor was making him think about things that perhaps he didn’t want to deal with. The day of the wedding was a huge disaster. I waited so many years to remarry, and this was supposed to be an incredibly special day for me. To say the least, I could hardly contain my excitement. My wedding day!

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Well, Jake called me around noon, all upset and crying, “I’m not sure what we’re doing here.” Now the wedding was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. We were supposed to be there by 3:00 p.m. to take pictures, and I was getting my hair done at 1:00 p.m. I had just stepped out of the shower, hadn’t even dried my hair or anything yet, no makeup, no nothing. He called to let me know how upset he was and asked me why I made the comment about Linda, his ex-girlfriend, coming to the wedding. We were getting married in three hours and he called me to talk about his ex-girlfriend? He had invited her without telling me, and I knew his ex-girlfriend still had feelings for him. Out of the blue, he told me this at the rehearsal dinner, and I said I was not comfortable with that. He was like, what is the big deal? At rehearsal dinner he was standoffish. At no point did he come over to me and hold my hand or hug me or give me a kiss. I was very irritated. However, I dismissed it as O.K., he was nervous. Just let it go. Nevertheless, I complained to my friend who was there, “He wants his ex-girlfriend to come to the wedding.” “Julie, he’s marrying you . . . so just relax. You’re both on edge here. Just relax, O.K.?” Once again I let it go. When he called that day, he said he wanted to talk because he couldn’t believe my comment to him the night before which was, “Well, you’re going to dance with Linda all night at the wedding.” “Why would you think that, Julie?’ He thought I was being ridiculous. “Because that’s how you are, Jake.” I was so frustrated. “Sometimes you don’t care about my feelings and you just go off and do what you want to do. And I know you and Linda are very good friends. This is my wedding day. I don’t want to be left behind on my wedding day.” “Julie, I would never do that to you. Look. This is our wedding day. What are we doing here?” “I don’t know! I don’t know!” Instead of being calm and composed, I was exhausted and pretty exasperated with this whole business. “I’m supposed to be at the beauty salon.”

The Relationship Trap

“And I have to go downtown to pick up my tux.” “Do you mean to tell me you haven’t even gotten your tux yet? That’s absolutely incredible! You were supposed to get it last night.” Hadn’t gotten his tux yet! Things were going from bad to worse. Finally, I called the pastor and he asked to talk to both of us. So I dropped everything. I mean, I had just stepped out of the shower and looked like a scrub. I had been crying, but I threw on some clothes and flew out the door saying, “I have to go,” leaving my mom, my best friend, my sister, and my niece sitting there, bewildered. I ran over to the pastor’s house. Jake wasn’t there yet. I waited for about a half-hour. He still wasn’t there. Finally, I called him. His sister answered the phone and I asked her, “What is your brother doing?” “Well, he went to get his tux.” “I thought we were supposed to be meeting at the pastor’s house to discuss what’s going on here. I don’t know if we’re even getting married so why is he getting the tux?” What was he thinking? “What do you mean you’re not getting married? Who said that?” “Well, Jake’s having this whole problem with everything so it doesn’t seem like we’re getting married.” She tried to calm my nerves. “He never told me that. He loves you. He was really nervous when he left.” I had been waiting for an hour and a half when he finally showed up. By this time, it was three o’clock and I was a wreck. When he finally got there, we sat down and talked. Basically, all the pastor said was, “Julie, do you love Jake?” “Yes,” and I looked right at Jake, “but you want me to be the strong one and say it’s over, don’t you?” “No, that’s not true. I love you and I want to be with you. I don’t know what’s happening. I just feel nervous and scared.” O.K. So I bought into that line of crap. I believed that he really loved me and he wanted to be with me, that he was just nervous, even though, deep

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down, I knew he had a fear of commitment. I knew because we had talked about it. O.K., I thought, this is something he needs to get over. Anyway, we decided to get married after all. The wedding was scheduled for four o’clock. Well it was four o’clock! We were scrambling around trying to get everything together because, as I said before, I had just gotten out of the shower, had no makeup on, had not done my hair . . . totally was not prepared to have a wedding in a matter of a few minutes. So I ran back to my apartment, did my hair, called my sister and told her what was going on. She started yelling at me over the phone, “Don’t you dare marry him!” I tried to calm her down, “I can handle this. I just need to talk to him.” “Are you kidding?” she yelled. “Don’t you marry him! What are you thinking?” “Look, Sis, stay out of this. He says he loves me and wants to be with me.” Then Jake got on the phone with my sister and apologized, “I’m sorry about all this. I really do love Julie and I want to be with her. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just afraid.” I got back on the phone and said, “I just need to know that you are going to stand by me and accept my decision.” “Well,” she sighed, “this is your life so do whatever you want.” To make a long story short, we ended up getting married that day and the wedding was fine. It was more like a party than a wedding. Everybody was drinking, having a good time and dancing. Linda, the ex-girlfriend, never showed up, and I don’t know if it was because a friend of his told her not to come or she just realized it wouldn’t be in very good taste. We spent that night in the honeymoon suite, and that was a big joke. I had this nice little sexy nightgown. I had a picture in my head . . . we all do . . . of a romantic wedding night, but when we got to the hotel room he decided he was hungry and wanted to go get something to eat. So he left and was gone for I don’t know how long because I ended up falling asleep. He finally came back much later. No sex that night. So much for my dream.

The Relationship Trap

From that day on it was pretty much life as usual because Jake and I had lived together prior to getting married. The wedding was just another day in our lives. We got married in June, but we waited until December to go on a honeymoon. We went to Mexico and had a great time, but that was when I began to question his love for me. He didn’t seem very affectionate. On the other hand, I wondered if I was just being overly sensitive about everything. Maybe he does truly love me and I’m way too sensitive. On the whole, our honeymoon turned out to be rather enjoyable, but during most of our vacation he did his own thing and I did mine. In the morning, I sometimes went with him to work out, but usually, I would hit the beach and leave him still working out. I had an enjoyable time and we did do some fun stuff, but there was very little to no sex on the honeymoon. Although I made lots of advances, sometimes he said he was tired and sometimes we did have sex, but it didn’t have the passion. Maybe I’ve read too many romance novels, but it wasn’t the passion you should have when you are with somebody you love. So, that was bothering me. When we came back from the honeymoon, we went back to business as usual. I did my thing and he did his. We spent time together in the evening but, for the most part, we led separate lives. In March, I started playing softball with the people from work. Then he joined the team and played when time permitted. Things seemed to be improving. He was spending more time with me, paid more attention to me. He was doing little things for me. So I was all excited, thinking things are just great, things are definitely improving. Then, a bombshell was dropped on me in September when his friend, Arnella, came over to our apartment complaining that they had plans for that weekend, but he never showed up, never even called. I didn’t even know they were supposed to get together. Now Jake and I had just had a great weekend together. Well, I found out that day that he had been having an affair with Arnella since March. The reason she came over was to meet me and find out why he “broke their plans”. She knew where he lived but had

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never been over to his house. He always went over to her house. Then Jake came home. To say the least, a few words were exchanged before she left. Jake and I sat down to discuss this bombshell that had been dropped on me. I was truly feeling numb because this was the same exact thing that broke up my first marriage . . . my husband had an affair. My response to both of them was, “You’ve got to freaking be kidding me!” All Jake said was, “I know you want me to leave and you know I’ll leave. I’ll get my stuff and I’ll leave.” The words came too quickly, too easily. “No. That’s not what I want. We got married for a reason so we need to sit down and talk about this. What’s going on?” Well, he couldn’t tell me. Every time I asked him, “Why do you want to be with her?” he could never answer the question. I asked him if he loved her and he said no, it wasn’t about that, so I said, “Well, what is it about, then?” He never really answered me. We finally decided to see a counselor, but every time I tried to schedule a counseling appointment, Jake backed out. He always had an excuse, “things are better so we don’t need it.” When I first found out they were having an affair, he and Arnella were playing softball together. By this time, Jake’s basketball career was over, and he was happy to find an outlet for his athletic ability. They were team captains for the office. Anyway, he had told me he would quit the softball team, and I said, “That’s great. That’s exactly what you need to do.” However, he just plain lied to me. I was having a huge problem trusting him. Isn’t that surprising? He continued to play softball, lying to me, telling me he had to work late. I wanted to believe him, and part of me did, but part of me didn’t. At this point, as you can imagine, I was extremely unhappy and struggling with what to do. I had confided in Laurie, a good friend of mine, but otherwise, nobody knew what had happened. I didn’t tell my family or any other friends. I was too embarrassed. By this time, I realized that I shouldn’t have married him, that I had made a bad decision. In spite of it all, I was determined to make it work. So,

The Relationship Trap

whatever hoops I needed to jump through to make it work was pretty much what I did. However, things continued to go downhill. Christmas, for example, was horrible for us. No matter what I wanted to do with him, there was always stuff that came up that prevented him from doing it. When we were together, he was very standoffish and wasn’t real interested. All this had been going on since September. In April his family came over and we had a little birthday party for him. Everything was great and we had a good time. As a matter of fact, we were in the process of buying a house. Can you believe that? All those problems and we had just put a deposit down on this house. Now, that was another whole issue. I was the one that did all the footwork. I was the one who went out looking for a house and had to drag him to do anything. I couldn’t understand his disinterest. “Why don’t you want a house?” “What’s our rush?” “Well, I don’t know what you want, but I want a house, so I’m going to look for a house! Either come along or don’t, but I want a house and that’s what I’m going to look for!” A few days after his birthday, I got a phone call at work. I was in the middle of a very important project when they interrupted me and said, “Julie, there’s a Lisa on the phone and she says it’s very important. She needs to talk to you.” I didn’t know a Lisa, and I was rather annoyed, but I took the call. As soon as I got on the phone she said, “Hi, Julie. You don’t know me, but I’m sleeping with your husband.” Well, that was another bombshell. No, it was definitely a devastation. I had such a sense of betrayal and loss, I could hardly speak. I found out that both Arnella and Lisa worked with Jake. Lisa called to tell me that Arnella found out about Lisa and Lisa found out about Arnella. Neither of them realized that the other person was dating Jake. So a big old

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to-do took place. It seems they realized that, you know what? Maybe Jake’s been lying to all of us. Maybe he was not getting a divorce as he had been telling them. Maybe he was still married. So Arnella went into his palm pilot and found my phone number at work. That’s when Lisa called me. They were going to confront him at Arnella’s house, and they wanted to know if I wanted to come. At first I thought absolutely not. I’m at work. I have things to do, responsibilities. I’m not dealing with this. Finally, I realized that maybe I should go. “Tell me where Arnella lives and I’ll be there. However, give me some time. I’ve got to get some stuff together.” Then I spoke to my boss and let him know what was going on. I was very distraught and crying. I said, “I just want to let you know I probably won’t be in tomorrow. I need to take a couple of days.” Then I scrambled around, cancelled the credit cards that I had in his name, and pulled all the money out of the checking account. Once I got all the ducks in a row and all the finances in order, I headed out to meet them. When I think back on it, it’s interesting that I took care of all the financial matters first. I guess this goes back to the bad experience I had in my first marriage. I took my friend, Laurie, with me when I went there because I didn’t know what to expect. I left her to wait in the car. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here, the words rang in my head as I walked up to the house. As I approached the door, I could hear Jake arguing with someone. When I rang the bell, I heard him say, “I’ll get the door.” He took one look at me and said, “Oh, who called Julie?” Of course I had the whole “bitch” attitude at this point. With an ice-cold smile on my face, I said, “Oh, honey, I’m home. How was your day? Did you have a good day? I did.” He just looked at me and didn’t say a word. Then I walked in, looked at Arnella and Lisa, and said, “You know what? I don’t know why either one of you are here, and frankly, I really don’t give a damn.” I was so angry. “Jake, I just want you to know I cancelled the credit

The Relationship Trap

cards, I closed the checking account, and I cancelled the deal with the house. That’s all I came for.” He just stood there staring at me. Then Arnella asked Jake, “What do you mean the house? What house? You were buying a house? You were supposed to move in with me this weekend!” Well, that started another whole big discussion. This was just unbelievable. I glared at him, “How were you supposed to move in with her this weekend? Would you like to explain how this was going to work?” During all this he was standing next to Arnella. He never came over to me. Never said anything to me. This whole scenario hurt my feelings beyond belief. This must be a terrible nightmare. Just let me wake up and know it was all a dream. Still standing by Arnella’s side, he turned to her and explained, “You know, I never wanted to buy that house. She was forcing me into it. I never wanted to marry her.” That was what sticks in my mind . . . that he just didn’t want to be with me, that he wanted to be with Arnella. “I didn’t force you into anything, Jake. Arnella, I gave him several opportunities to get out of this marriage if he wanted. We talked about getting married or not getting married. He decided that he wanted to marry me. I didn’t force him into anything.” Then I turned to Jake. “You know what?” and then the bitch in me came out, “You need to grow some freakin’ balls because you have a whole situation going on here and you have no balls to stand up and take ownership for what you did!” Basically, things escalated from there because I had reached my breaking point. I was so upset seeing him standing there with Arnella who said, “Don’t listen to what she’s saying,” as if that would ease the situation. Then he came over to me because of something I said . . . I don’t remember what it was but I’m sure it was not nice . . . and he pushed my shoulder. Arnella and Lisa immediately ran over to us. I began to shout, “Go ahead! Freakin’ touch me again! Give me the power that I need because if you touch me, I have all the freakin’ power there is!”

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Then I reminded him that he had been in a domestic situation with an old girlfriend years before that. “Go ahead! Go ahead and touch me! Remember, she called the cops? Go ahead and do it. Just touch me.” We were literally nose to nose. I was in his face when Arnella and Lisa broke us up. Jake was so mad he began punching the walls and the door as Arnella tried to calm him down. I was yelling, “I don’t know who the hell you are!” I had never seen that side of Jake. Never! “I have no idea who you are right now. And you know what? You are somebody who I don’t want to be with . . . ever again.” I started to walk toward the door and Lisa followed me. Then I made another choice comment to Jake and he lunged at me. I moved quickly to one side, and he hit the door with his fist. As he massaged it, I looked him right in the eye and said, “You know, you are not even worth it. You are definitely not worth it!” and I opened the door and walked out. Never during the whole time did I cry, but as soon as I walked outside, I lost it. I just started bawling. At that point my friend, Laurie, jumped out of the car and said, “Oh, my God, what happened?” I couldn’t even answer her. I was hysterical. When I gained some modicum of composure, all I could think of was Arnella, who was still in the house with him . . . all by herself . . . because Lisa left with me. I looked at Lisa and said, “I am not comfortable leaving Arnella there with him. I don’t trust what he will do.” She didn’t hesitate. “We need to call the police.” Well, my friend Laurie works for the police department, so she quickly got on the cell phone and three police cars, sirens blaring, were there in five minutes. Now we had a whole domestic situation going on. I didn’t know this because I wasn’t there at the time, but the reason Arnella and Lisa were trying to break Jake and I up when we were in the house was because he had gotten physical with Lisa before I arrived. He had picked Lisa up by the neck and had thrown her up against the wall. Now Jake had

The Relationship Trap

never ever laid a hand on me. Ever! That’s why it just totally blew my mind. I thought, Jake, who are you? So there we were with police officers all over the place. I kept thinking, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to press charges. Well, Lisa did. By the way, I now remember what I did that angered Jake. I kicked him. He had walked away from me and I was mad. So, with the heel of my foot, I pushed his butt. It’s not like I really kicked him . . . but, yeah, I did. Well, the police officer told me that technically they could press charges against me due to the fact that I was the one who was physical against him. I said, “I understand. It was a bad decision and I know that. But, yes, I did do it.” That was a terribly long night. The officers went in and talked to Jake. First they asked me if he had a gun and would he cause harm to himself or to others? I said, “I don’t know! I truly do not know at this point who he is any more, so I can’t answer that.” Eventually Arnella calmed him down, and the officers went in and talked to him. Then I called his brother and said, “You need to get here now. I don’t know what’s happened with Jake but just get here!” Then, exhausted, I finally went home. It was not a good time for me. I took two days off from work. I was completely emotionally drained. Totally devastated. So many different thoughts were rushing through my mind. I made the same mistake before. What was I thinking? Why did he do this to me? If he didn’t want to be with me all he had to do was tell me. He knew what had happened to me in my first marriage. He knew I had a hard time trusting. He knew when I got married this time divorce was not an option. Now this would be my second divorce. That was probably the biggest blow. I was having a very hard time understanding why he would do this to me. Why would he want to proceed with a marriage if he didn’t feel the same way, if he wasn’t in love? From that day on, he no longer lived with me. For the first thirty days I think I had a bottle of wine a night. Then I decided, you know what, this is ridiculous. I need to see a counselor and find a lawyer.

Julie | The Life of the Party

In the meantime, the lies kept coming. He said that he wanted to work things out. He told me he was living in a hotel. Well, he didn’t get a hotel room. He was living with Arnella the whole time. Would you believe I would have tried to work it out one more time? That scares me. While the divorce proceedings were going on, he was still trying to work it out. He was sending me flowers and cards. When I got those gifts, part of me was happy, thinking maybe he really does love me, and then the other half of me said, what are you thinking? He doesn’t care about you. This is just another way he’s trying to manipulate you. One night, Arnella called me looking for Jake. According to him, they weren’t living together any longer. So I asked her, “How are things with you and Jake? I heard you broke up.” Surprised, she said, “Who told you that?” “Well, he did.” “Julie, he’s been living here since that day. That essentially solidified everything right there. I talked to him about it and told him I didn’t understand why he was lying about everything, why he was trying to hold on to both of us. “What are you really trying to do?” There was silence on the other end of the phone. Finally he said, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m confused. I’m not sure.” All the while, I was thinking he was very good at manipulating people and having relationships with two women at once . . . no . . . three! Why does he do it? I think his mom taught her children to be selfish. You are the only one who matters. He grew up without a father, so he really never learned the dynamics of how a healthy male-female relationship is supposed to work. Jake wanted a little bit of everything. He had a huge ego from being a sports figure, and he was hungry for attention. He was used to having women any time he wanted. Whenever he got off the court there were women waiting for him. He was used to the attention. The one thing he said he always liked about me was that I really didn’t care about what he did in basketball. It wasn’t important to me if he was a success or not. Nevertheless, I think that

The Relationship Trap

over time he wanted somebody who worshipped the ground he walked on. Jake, oh my God! You’re such a wonderful basketball player. Oh, you did this! Oh you did that! That wasn’t me. I can appreciate all that goes into being a successful athlete, but I would never place him on a pedestal. Before we were divorced I told him, “The Grass-Is-Always-Greener Syndrome” is going on here. “You think that Arnella is this wonderfully different person. But she’s not married to you, so when you see her it’s all about having a good time. You could sit there and bitch to her how horrible I was and how horrible your life was and she would be compassionate and understanding. She was truly not involved in that part of your life, the day in and day out stuff. All you guys do is have fun together.” I’ve gone through therapy, I’ve had time to heal and move on with my life. I’ve picked up and moved to another state so I can make a fresh start. I’ve had the opportunity to sit back and look at all that happened. Yes, there were definitely warning signs. But I always made excuses for them. “Oh, that’s just Jake. That’s how he is.” Unfortunately, he had a big letter “C” on his forehead that stood for Fear of Commitment. Everything was fine until the wedding day. Then that big “C” began to move down to his throat until he began to choke on it. When a person gets married and still has a fear of commitment and doesn’t know how to get out of it, what’s a nice easy way of getting out? Have an affair. Even better . . . make sure she finds out about it. I have always been attracted to the kind of guy who was the-life-of-theparty, the one that everybody loved. Definitely not good marriage material. Well, I’ve finally ended that screw-you attitude. Now I’m truly trying to figure out who Julie is and what Julie wants. Postscript Would you believe? Now I have a fear of commitment. Actually, it’s not so much a fear of commitment as a fear of intimacy. I’m afraid to let my guard down, to let a man in, to truly let him know me.

Julie | The Life of the Party

It all goes back to my childhood. I am the oldest of three children. I didn’t grow up in a loving, affectionate household. My mom and dad never kissed in front of us, held hands, or showed any type of affection of any kind. My mom constantly told my sister and me that men were not to be trusted. That was because my dad had an affair that my mom knew about. Nevertheless, she chose to stay with my dad. My mom was the type of person who could be very mean. I didn’t want to put myself out there to have her hurt me. I was raped at the age of fourteen, but I didn’t tell a soul. That’s because my mom would have blamed me. What did you do? Why were you there? It would never have been anything I could have discussed with my mom or my dad. Now I’m comfortable talking about it because I went through therapy. It was a gang rape. I was at a party and there were a lot of guys from college there. I had been drinking and so I truly do not remember . . . perhaps because I was drunk or maybe I just blocked out the terrible memory. I just remember bits and pieces. For example, I remember my friend asking me if I was sore the next day. She knew because people were talking about it at the party. This took place outside and they brought me inside and put me in a bedroom. The guys, I guess, were trying to come in there. I remember my friend kicking one guy out of the bedroom. Anyway, I blamed myself because I’d been drinking. Suddenly, everything changed. Previously, I was very outgoing. I was like Miss Congeniality. Then we moved to a new town, and I was totally out of place. I didn’t fit in because all these girls wore makeup and dressed fashionably, and I was a tomboy. I played sports, climbed trees, cut the grass, and hung out with my dad. Well, the tomboy went to a party and was raped. I never told my parents, but from that day on I became the party girl. I went out all the time with my friends, partied, drank, and became a totally crazy teenager. It didn’t matter. Lots of sex. I didn’t care. When I look back, I realize that the rape totally altered who I was. I really blamed myself for that situation. There is one thing I still have to do. I have to forgive myself. I blamed myself for a lot of things when I really didn’t need to do that. I am finally working on letting go of the blame and forgiving myself. It’s an ongoing process.

The Relationship Trap

— Julie’s Advice To You — 1. I would definitely encourage you to seek counseling, whether it’s a pastor or therapist, when you have challenges in your life that are traumatic. Or just seek somebody to talk to. Don’t try to deal with it on your own because it’s a huge burden. 2. On your wedding day, if you were in the same shoes . . . walk away! That’s a tough one because your heart is so entrenched in the relationship and the struggles, the difficulties, the wins, the successes that you’ve been through, that it would be extremely hard to walk away. However, if you can, step back, without him there, without anybody else there, take the time to truly think about what’s been happening, and logically look at the circumstances as opposed to emotionally. When it’s your wedding day it’s all about emotion. 3. Listen when someone warns you that this guy is not for you. I had asked friends prior to my getting married, what do you think? Do you think Jake and I make a good couple? They all said yes, you guys get along great. You look good together. However, friends or family don’t see everything. Sometimes it depends on whether they are willing to stand up, which is very uncomfortable ground for them to be on, and say, you know what? You’re making a huge mistake. Don’t do it! I know. My sister said that. Unfortunately, that did not work for me. I am one of those people; if you tell me I can’t do it, I will prove to you that I can. I’ve always been like that. Don’t tell me what I have to do or not do. I should have listened to them. 4. Do things together. We always did everything separately. 5. Know what you want out of life and know the direction in which you need to be going. Then keep going in that direction. 6. The life-of-the-party-guy is not really a good prospect for a husband because very often he is covering up a lot of fears or inadequacies.

Julie | The Life of the Party

That’s why he has such a great need for attention. He’s great for the party but not necessarily great as a mate. 7. Know what you’re looking for in a mate and don’t be so willing to compromise, to make excuses. I am truly attracted to somebody who is the life of the party, very cheerful, very entertaining, who makes me laugh. But when it comes to actual day-in and day-out stuff, what I should be looking for is somebody who is truly my friend. Somebody I can sit down with in the evening and just talk with, find out how his day was. You don’t have to be out socializing to have a good time. You can have a good time just being with each other . . . going for a walk, throwing the ball around in the back yard, going for a hike or a bike ride, or just being a friend. 8. Know who you are. Be comfortable in your own skin. Then you can stand your ground on things you feel are important and be able to recognize when things aren’t quite the way they should be. 9. Remember, just because they’re married doesn’t mean they don’t fool around.

Seek counseling when you have challenges in your life that are traumatic. But, traumatic or not, just seek somebody with whom you can talk. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t try to deal with it on your own.

5 Cecelia | Living Well Is the Best Revenge “She wanted to marry him. He was not a good man, she could tell that, but she might change him . . . She wanted to be with him, wanted him to possess her. It was like a bitter drink which bids you back.” —The #1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

peered over my cup of herbal tea at the woman in front of me, a soft-spoken fortynine-year-old school teacher, second generation Hispanic, with a few extra pounds around the hips. Most people would describe Cecelia as having a very pleasant face with a voice that matched. I wondered what tale would unfold from her lips. “This is my story. Hopefully it will help others,” she began, and she took a sip of coffee. Let’s go all the way back to 1979. I met my husband, Glenn, that year at a party. He begged and begged for a date and kept calling until I finally went out with him. We were both only twenty-one. Oh, we were so young. Would you believe I actually took a friend along on the date?

The Relationship Trap

I was going to college out of town. I’d go home to see my parents every weekend, and he’d come along. I could tell early on that they didn’t like him. My father saw the signs, but I didn’t. How could I? I was too young. There was one night during that dating period when I should have realized he had a lot of anger in him. Glenn got terribly upset about something, and he just went off like a volcano. When my father saw that, he told me I was going to have a rough life with him. Oh, I listened, but I did nothing. After dating him for about six months, I told my father that he asked me to marry him. My parents reluctantly agreed, and we were married a year after we met. I quit school . . . left college, which I shouldn’t have done. Glenn had joined the Air Force, but he wasn’t making enough money to support the two of us, and I knew I needed to go to work. He didn’t encourage me to quit, but, then again, he didn’t say don’t. About a year and a half later, our daughter came along, and things were fine for a while, but it was a completely different life than when I lived at home. I had a very good family life. My parents didn’t drink. Glenn did. Everything was very calm back home, but not in our house. Glenn was a very unhappy, very angry person. When he’d get upset, it was just like the whole world was against him. When I met his family, it was easy to tell why he was so angry. His father was an alcoholic. He disliked his mother so much that he did not want me to meet her before we were married. She didn’t come to the wedding. In fact, no one in his family did. They were invited, but no one came. When Glenn left the Air Force, he went to work as an engineer for a large aeronautical engineering company. As the years went by, he started drinking more and more and would often lose his temper. Once, he got so angry he pulled the phone off the wall. He drank just about every day and often would come home from work drunk. He’d stop at his favorite bar along the way, meet friends . . . and drink. About five years after my daughter was born, I became pregnant with our son. Glenn was drinking at that time as well. He would come home

Cecelia | Living Well is the Best Revenge

upset. Then he’d get angry about dinner because it wasn’t warm. Of course it wasn’t warm. He came home long after dinner was over. I would end up crying myself to sleep almost every night while I was pregnant. We had purchased a home, and I was excited about the arrival of a new baby, as well as the thought of having my own home. When the baby arrived, I was knee deep in diapers and breast feeding. Not long after my son, Andy, was born, Glenn noticed that some of his friends were getting into trouble with their drinking. DUI, for example. Therefore, he decided not to stop off after work, but instead, come directly home and drink. If I said anything about his drinking, he’d get upset, throw it in the sink, and start yelling. After about six or seven years of this, I finally started fighting back. I wasn’t going to sit by and do nothing any more. Unfortunately, I waited too long to do it. That’s when Glenn started pushing me around. Of course, it had an effect on the children. They’d be in bed, but they could still hear everything. When he pushed me around, he was yelling and cursing. Finally, one night I had enough, and I left and took the children with me. A few days later, of course, I went back. What brought me back, I think, was probably the fear. I didn’t think I could make it on my own. The children were pretty young at the time. My son was probably in first grade. A year later, I left again. It was just the same thing, the same old argument. In fact, Glenn called the police. Imagine! He called the police. Perhaps he was afraid of what he might do. The policemen encouraged me to leave with the children . . . for our own safety’s sake. They wanted us to go to a shelter, but what was I going to do there? Where was I going to go when I left? I had two small children. So I had them take us to my friend’s home. When I knocked on the door, they had no warning that we were coming, but they took us right in. I was there for about a week, but I realized I couldn’t stay there forever, so I said to my friend, “Look, I can’t impose on you any longer, and the children have to get back to school. I have to go back to him.” I had no choice. I had to call him. I needed a way to get around. I didn’t have a car.

The Relationship Trap

I knew how to drive . . . basically control was the issue . . . but I was able to turn that around to make Glenn think he was the boss. In an old-fashioned type of marriage you had to learn to let them have the control, but you also were in control, if you knew how to do it. It had to be that way, because I didn’t know any other way. In the meantime, the children were going through a lot of hard times, because seeing their father drunk and hearing the yelling and cursing was affecting them. They knew what was going on, and they didn’t like it. Even though Glenn was making good money, he would never buy anything for them except for birthdays and Christmas. If I didn’t work, they wouldn’t have any clothes or money to do certain extra things they wanted to do. Eventually, my daughter got married and moved out of the house. I worked on the other side of town in a retirement community, taking care of people there. I drove them to doctors, cooked for them, whatever was necessary, and I did that for years and years. These people became my friends and they helped me out a lot. One day I called my son, Andy, from work. I had left him a note to take care of a few things. He had planned to have some friends come over. Now my husband did skeet shooting. The last time they had gone out to practice he left the lock off the gun. Unknown to me, the boys started playing with Glenn’s shotguns. When I called Andy to find out if everything was allright . . . you know . . . every mother worries when she leaves kids alone in the house . . . I found myself talking to a strange man. “What are you doing in my home?” “There was an accident. The boys were playing, and your son accidentally shot one of the boys . . . and he killed him.” . . . and it happened in our bedroom! I didn’t know what to say or do at that time. The policeman told me not to come home but to go straight to the police department. So I called my

Cecelia | Living Well is the Best Revenge

husband, and we sped over there, because that’s where they had taken Andy to get him way from the scene of the accident. He was only thirteen at the time. It was absolutely devastating. Between psychiatrists and the police . . . it was a terrible nightmare. Some people said that Glenn was a gun collector, but he wasn’t at that time. However, after this all happened, he just went the opposite way and started collecting guns. He’d buy guns with all the extra money he had. At least he purchased a safe after the incident. Between my husband and my son, I felt like I was living in a real nightmare. My son did as well as could be expected, but he blamed himself for everything. My husband, on the other hand, blamed me. Andy got into drugs within a year after the incident. I caught him smoking marijuana out in the backyard. It was absolutely devastating. By this time I was desperate. I looked for help. I needed to find out what I could do, what I needed to do when a child turns to drugs. In the meantime, my husband again turned his back. Once more, I was alone to take care of situations that needed both of us. We needed to cling to each other for support and work together, yet we were as far apart as ever. For years, I did all that I could to help Andy. Finally, I went back to school . . . tried it again . . . however, this time I became very ill. I had constant diarrhea. It wouldn’t stop, no matter what I tried. They gave me all kinds of tests. Finally, they said I had lupus. Then they didn’t know. Then more tests. At last they did a liver biopsy, and it showed that I had Epstein-Barr and Crohn’s Disease. I was thankful that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with me. I wasn’t going to die. That was my biggest worry, but during that time, I had lost about thirty-five pounds. In the meantime, my first granddaughter was born. Things were O.K. for a little while, but then they started getting bad again. My husband was drinking more and more. One night, just before I got sick, I got terribly upset with him. We had an argument, and he turned around and socked me. I didn’t know it at that

The Relationship Trap

moment, but he had cracked a rib. Now, he’s a big man, 6'2", and broadboned enough that I could stand behind him and you wouldn’t be able to see me. I’m only about 5'3". It’s like having a football player coming at you. It was such a shock. He never even apologized. He didn’t know how. Anyway, I went to a doctor, he took an x-ray, and that’s when I found out I had a fractured rib. Well, I left that night. I stayed away about a week. When I left, I grabbed all the telephone numbers so he couldn’t get hold of me. When I came back, he still didn’t apologize. Yet, he seemed glad that I came back. Things were O.K. for a while after that. However, I really believe he knew that things would never be the same again. I was determined that he would never hit me again. He never did. But that’s when he started to bring the guns out when he was angry. He threatened me with a gun many times. He’d put a gun in my face and threaten to kill me. However, I was not afraid of him any more. I really didn’t care if he killed me, and I told him, which was like taking the fun out of it. Having fun . . . that’s what he was trying to do. I told him I didn’t care and I meant it. I really didn’t care if he killed me. I don’t know how in the world I got to the point where it didn’t matter if he killed me. I just don’t know. It’s like everything just piled up year after year. Then one day I woke up and asked what’s going on with my life? I was never really allowed to have friends come over because he didn’t like people. If anyone did come over, even the children’s friends, he made them feel extremely uncomfortable. It was his domain and don’t you come near. It was a terrible way to live, so completely different from the way I grew up. I still managed to have friends because I turned to the church and started doing all kinds of volunteer work. My girlfriend and I used to laugh because we both had problems with husbands who drank. We were volunteering and doing all those things at the church so as not to come home. We joked that we lived at the church, we were there so much. It provided a convenient escape for us.

Cecelia | Living Well is the Best Revenge

During this time Glenn’s sister, Sue Ann, who was eighteen years younger than him and lived in Ohio, called and said she was having marital problems. He asked my permission to bring her here to stay with us until she got a job and a place of her own. I agreed. Two years later, Sue Ann was still living with us. She never got a job and she never left. Instead, she became a drinking partner. So now I had two of them. I’d have dinner ready and they wouldn’t extend me the courtesy to let me know they’d planned to go out to dinner. I started noticing little things like they wouldn’t smoke in the house, but they both smoked outside. Or she would have her hand on him, and the way she’d touch him, it was not normal for a sister to do that. It was just too intimate. They’d be talking outside and I’d go out and try to join the conversation. All of a sudden they’d shut up. They wouldn’t talk to me. Come a holiday three-day weekend, he’d bring in six cases of beer! Six cases that the two would drink! And they’d finish all of it! Then I’d start seeing things come in, like gold chains. If he got me a book or something for my birthday, somehow Sue Ann would also end up with a gift. I loved to cook. Anything I needed for the kitchen, I had. If he saw something on television, he went out and bought it for me, but he also had to buy one for her. Why? She didn’t have a home and she didn’t cook. One day in the summer of 2001, my daughter called and asked if she could have her old bedroom set. I said fine. Glenn and I agreed that she’d take one bed and the dresser. However, when I told his sister about it and said she needed to take her things out of the dresser, I guess she told him, and he just threw a fit. Because Sue Ann didn’t like it, it was not O.K. Anyway, my daughter and her husband came with a U-haul, and they not only took the bedroom furniture, they took the dining room set, also. I gave them a few other things so it would be less crowded in the house, not knowing what was to come. Things were definitely getting worse.

The Relationship Trap

I remember when they moved out the furniture; Glenn had been drinking, and he walked outside with a pistol in his hand. My daughter immediately grabbed the girls and left. She never brought them back again. Over the years she urged me . . . you ought to leave him. Unfortunately, it becomes an environment you just live in. You just put up with it. Soon Christmas came, and I was scrubbing the floors, getting ready for the holidays, when I asked myself, why am I doing this? I stopped right then and there, packed some clothes, ran out of the house, picked up my father, brought him to my daughter’s, and we had Christmas dinner there. When I was at my daughter’s, I felt fine. No guilt. None at all. I spent the night there and didn’t tell my husband where I was. Didn’t feel I needed to. I went back that evening, and he didn’t ask me where I went. He wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of telling him. He acted like it didn’t matter. He could have cared less if I was dead or alive. Then came New Year’s Eve. I wasn’t feeling well, so I rested on the bed for a while. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move. I didn’t realize at the time that I had Epstein-Barr Syndrome, and that was causing me to feel so weak. When I finally was able to get up, I found him in the kitchen with the lights out, dancing with his sister. I yelled, “This is not right. Just what’s going on here?” They just laughed and kept on dancing. I finally had enough, and I grabbed my jacket and purse . . . and I left. I went to my daughter’s, and I never went back to that house again. I couldn’t go back. I have no regrets. Actually, I did go back . . . just once. I hired a moving van to get what I wanted out of that house. My son and a couple of friends helped me pack up my things. I put all my stuff into storage, stayed with my daughter for a month, and then rented a condo. That’s when the war began. This was a war between man and wife. I filed for separation, and he turned around and filed for divorce. It turned out to be a year and a half of battling back and forth. He accused me of taking this and that . . . material stuff. I really didn’t take anything that was his. I even left all of my good clothes in the closet. They were in the bedroom where his sister was

Cecelia | Living Well is the Best Revenge

staying, and she was home when I arrived with the moving van. No way would I walk into that bedroom. When I walked into that house, I made sure she couldn’t back out of the driveway and leave, and I disconnected all the phones so she couldn’t call him. She was stuck there, so she just locked herself in the bedroom. When I moved into my own place, I couldn’t cook because I didn’t have any dishes or silverware. I was eating off paper plates. I didn’t take much from the kitchen because I didn’t have time. I just wanted to get out of there. What I took were the nicer things that I had collected, some books and pictures, things I knew I could not replace. At that time, they were having fires in California and people were losing everything. Basically, I came out alive and well. One thing I’ve learned—material things don’t mean a thing to me any more. I have peace of mind, and that’s more important. There’s not enough money in the world to buy that. I knew when I walked out of that house, I could never go back, and yet, I felt a peace that I’d never felt in my life. I think if anybody was to walk up to me and put a gun in my face today, I’d be afraid of what I might do to them. It has numbed me so bad that I have no fear. As for my son, basically, the divorce devastated him. A couple of months later, my husband threw him out . . . in one of his rages. There he was, standing barefooted in the street, with just the clothes on his back. He now lives in Oregon and has gone through extensive therapy. He’s now in his twenties and has accepted that whatever his father has done is not his fault. When my husband threw him out, he never went back. Since that time, my husband has had nothing to do with either of the children, because my daughter had taken me in and my son came to help me. Who won the war? I won my freedom, so I won the war. I won my peace of mind. I won the satisfaction of knowing who I am. I am a woman who knows where she’s going, where she wants to go, and what she wants for the future.

The Relationship Trap

I just want to live my life and help other people. In the meantime, I’m teaching, a job I love and enjoy; I’m almost finished with graduate school; and I’ve purchased a five-bedroom home because my daughter and her children live with me. She divorced her husband, also. He just didn’t know how to control his spending. Even though the stock market practically wiped me out, I’m not worried about it. I know that things are going to be all right. I’ve been there with nothing in my pockets and came back. I did it once, and I can do it again . . . and again and again. I prayed for forgiveness every night, especially when we were going through the divorce. Forgiveness is very important. I have not allowed him or his sister to bother me. I’ve forgiven them for whatever they’ve done. He still lives in that house. In fact, my daughter’s ex once went by to see him. He answered the door and said, “If you have any questions go see your mother-in-law,” and slammed the door in his face. No one has seen him since.

— Cecelia’s Advice to You — 1. If you have a good reason for leaving him, you don’t have a good reason for going back to him. 2. Take a good look at the relationship from the outside. You can’t see what’s going on when you’re in it. 3. Material things don’t matter. Peace of mind is more important, and forgiveness brings peace of mind. 4. Forgiveness releases the anger within and helps you get on with your life. Forgive him. Forgive yourself. And move on. 5. Living well is the best revenge . . . I wish I could remember who said that. 6. Don’t ignore warnings from your friends and family. They see what you cannot.

What Is Your Relationship Like? If it’s good, it’s comfortable; If it’s not, it’s frustrating.

6 Frankie | Lady in Black The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. —Roseanne Barr

his really cool lady stood in front of me, a study in black . . . black shoes, a black leather beret, tight-fitting black tee shirt over her designer jeans, all of which definitely showed off her model-slender figure. Her shiny black hair was afire with deep red highlights. Dark sunglasses completed the picture. Twenty-eight year old Frankie certainly made a fashion statement standing there that hot, sunny morning with an ice cold bottle of water in her hand. My present relationship with Alex started four years ago, and I’m happy to say it’s working! In the beginning, it was more ups and downs because we’re both, like, so passionate. Alex is pretty similar to someone in a past relationship. They both have similar personalities, but this time around I’m smarter at making it work.

The Relationship Trap

First of all, let me tell you a little about myself. I’m an independent person, but I can be like an independent-codependent, if there’s such a thing. I’m very outgoing and really in tune with people. Because my work involves dealing with people all day long, I can chameleonize my personality. If someone is shy, I can be somewhat shy. My personality kind of reflects who I’m around. I’ve always been like that. I look the same as when I was in my early twenties. I’m about 5'5", 114 lbs., fair complexion, with dark hair and dark eyes. Attractive, sexy, cute, funny, independent . . . and, as you can tell, not modest. I met Brad, my first real love, in a bar in Phoenix, Arizona, when I was twenty-one years old. I grew up in Phoenix, and we had seen each other in different places, but never officially met. When we did, the attraction was like bam! I could feel everything change. Everything! Like I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I was nuts about him. Absolutely nuts!” However, Brad wasn’t ready to be in a relationship and I just kind of let it go . . . no pressure, because I was just nuts about him. I would have done anything for him. About nine months into the relationship, I started pulling away because he still wasn’t ready to commit to a relationship. That’s when he came around and finally began to show his feelings. Brad wanted to see me exclusively because I began to go out with my girlfriends again and didn’t see him as much. He was like a rejection junky! He wanted it when he couldn’t have it. I worked as a receptionist while going to school part time, and he was in finance. However, he wanted to be a stockbroker, so one day he quit his job and began looking for a job with a brokerage firm. Unfortunately, his selfesteem plunged because it wasn’t easy finding another job, and now he was out of work. So I began picking up the slack. No problem. I felt we were a team. I told him, “I don’t mind paying the rent while you’re trying to get on your feet.” Brad had enough money for car payments, things like that. We were getting by and still going out to dinner regularly, but he was floundering, trying to find himself.

Frankie | Lady in Black

When I first met Brad, he was in this big power job in finance. When he decided he wanted to be a broker, he went back to school, finished his last six months of college, and then looked for a job. As I look back on it all, I think he was just trying to find himself, and he couldn’t give what he needed to give. We lost each other because I was picking up the slack and his ego couldn’t handle it. It was hard being so independent and yet, like a chameleon. Often, his mood would affect me. For instance, sometimes I would quiet my personality to accommodate him. I would not be as bubbly, as talkative. I’m the kind who could talk to anyone, have fun in any situation, but I could be less outgoing to make him feel like he was in charge of the situation. That’s why I’m both independent and co-dependent, too. Deep down inside, I think he wanted me to be pretty, sweet and quiet . . . and stay at home, and I was willing to be that way because I was totally nuts about him, like I couldn’t breathe without him. It was that passionate. I had never felt like that before. Brad was very handsome, very charming, the way he spoke, the way he carried himself. He was about 6'1", with dark hair and dark eyes . . . really attractive, very charming and always knew what to say. Although he was only twenty-four, he was not like a typical person his age because he was around more mature people at work. Very handsome, very charming, . . . and very controlling. That was Brad. In the beginning, I did so much for him, extra little things to make him notice me. For example, I would always drop by for lunch or bring him flowers. I worked in a beautiful resort, and every once in a while I would get a room so he could use the facilities there. I would treat him to a nice dinner. The first nine months I courted him. Before long I began to blossom. I looked better and became more confident, especially when he reacted like Wow! I don’t want to lose her. Eventually, I began to wonder how come it took so long for Brad to appreciate me, and I started pulling back. For nine months he did not commit himself in any way but still took all those favors from me, and all the while, I never stopped to say, wait a minute, something’s wrong with this picture. I knew inside that it was wrong, but I was still nuts about him. Every time we

The Relationship Trap

would leave each other, like after dinner, I was sad. I always wondered when I would see him again, when he would call. It might be five days between his calls. I never stopped to think that it was a bit unusual for a relationship to go on like that for nine months. I think Brad really knew I liked him a lot, and he just played on it. I should have known better, but I had never met anybody like him . . . and I loved his lifestyle. When we first met, Brad let me know he was making great money, like that was his self-esteem. I assumed he was making like thirty grand a year being just twenty-two years old. Like that’s great money! But, he was making one hundred fifty grand, which, for his age, was absolutely incredible! Brad would take me on nice trips, but he would do it at his convenience. Six months after we first met, he took me for a weekend in Mexico. I thought, Oh, my God! This guy’s going to take me on this trip, and he’s paying for everything. He told me, “I’m doing it because I know you do all these extra things for me and I never really showed my appreciation.” What a sport! For six months Brad never thought to show his appreciation. Now I can joke about it, but he never expressed his feelings, so I didn’t know how he felt about me. Maybe he was afraid to get involved. He knew how much I liked him, and perhaps he didn’t want to say I like you that much, too. Brad’s former girlfriend was also nuts about him. When they broke up, she became anorexic, and it became so bad she had to get medical help. After I met him, I became anorexic, too. I don’t know. Maybe our personalities were similar. It took me six years after that to be able to eat normally, to be a normal person again. I couldn’t afford to take time off from work for inpatient treatment, so I read the books, went for counseling, and did it that way. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever, ever done. I’m proud to say I’ve been in remission for over a year now. I finally told my present boyfriend because I wanted to be open about it, but before that I would never say anything because I wanted to hide it. Of course, there’s really no way to hide anorexia. It’s funny how you can see life differently when you’re not stuck in it.

Frankie | Lady in Black

Actually, my mom was anorexic, too. She was always very pretty and very thin. I couldn’t help but pick up on it. You don’t realize what your kids see and feel. Anyway, it came out when I was older. I got into it about a year after I met Brad. I remember the moment when everything changed— about food, working out, and just being nuts. I thought, if I was this perfect little thin person, maybe he would like me more. It definitely worked. Obviously Brad liked me to be thin as a rail. Although, I do remember that he once said, “You’re too thin.” Nevertheless, he was feeding his own ego. Look, I’m with this model. We are this power couple. Brad had a huge ego, and he was very jealous, as if I was his property. He was never abusive, but I could just tell because his eyes would change and become like crazy eyes. He wasn’t much of a dancer, so I would go out and dance with my friends. I could just see a change on his face when I told him I was going dancing. Maybe it went back to when he was growing up. He had a great family. His parents were very nice people, very down-to-earth. They didn’t feel they needed to keep up with the neighbors. They didn’t have a lot of money, so his father was very frugal. Occasionally, his mom would substitute at the nearby elementary school, but she basically stayed at home their whole childhood. Early on, Brad decided he was going to have a good job and make lots of money. “You shouldn’t be as stressed as I am,” he told me, “because I need you. I need to come home to you, and you would take care of me. You can get a job or have a career. If you work a couple of days that’s good enough, but not forty hours a week. I don’t want to marry a businesswoman.” Since Brad grew up in a very conservative family with a mom who stayed at home, what he really wanted was . . . another mom. I should stay at home, and he’d give me permission to go out and work a couple of days a week so I could have some pocket money. But, his job would be important. He would be Numero Uno. Well, everything changed once we moved in together, which was nine months into the relationship. That’s when it began to fall apart. I didn’t want

The Relationship Trap

all the passion to end, yet I could feel it in my bones. Because I was young and idealistic, I expected everything to be the same, but it wasn’t. A month after we moved in together, he decided he was going to be a broker and quit his job. My reaction was—what are you doing? By that time, I was making pretty good money, enough to pay all our bills, so he figured he would just live by the seat of his pants . . . with my help. Brad’s like a cat; he always lands on his feet. However, he didn’t have a job for five months, and I know that’s what changed it all. He would interview for a job, but not get it, and little by little, he became very depressed. He was not the same guy I met all those months ago. He was not this person who was in control of his feelings. I felt like I had lost the man I knew. He worried about not being able to pay the rent, so I paid it. I wanted him to know I was there for him but he was like all ego. I can’t believe she has to pay the rent. We were just on such different wavelengths that we started growing apart. I was moving forward, still working and struggling, earning money and trying to keep us together. I tried so hard, letting him know I was there for him. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t have money. I wasn’t attracted to you just because you had money. You’ll get a job. It’s just hard right now.” But he just wasn’t strong enough to deal with the Oh, my God! I’m not working, and he fell apart. So underneath that ego, if you stripped the layers away like you peel an onion, what would you find? Pretty low self-esteem. Obviously, his money and self-esteem were tied together. Money helps, but you have to be strong, and then you can get through it. I wondered if something serious were to happen to us, could I really trust that he could handle it and be strong enough to say it’s O.K., we’re going to get through it, and not just fall apart and be depressed. Now I like money, but I just think it helps pay your bills and deal with problems. It’s not the answer to everything. But, Brad was so influenced by money. All his friends had money in high school. Money was the big thing. If all your friends have money and you don’t have money and you get out in

Frankie | Lady in Black

that big wide world, what do you want? Exactly! Money! Lots of it. And he had it. But he took it for granted. His ego went sky high, and then he figured, hey, I can get any job I want. I can make a fortune at any job. Well, that’s just not realistic. When he fell apart I saw the real him. I saw the ugliness of it. I was very young, but in nine months I had grown up. I knew when we moved in together that I had to take on all the responsibilities. I wanted to be different. I didn’t want to go to bars with my friends any more. I wanted to go to dinner. Then I started thinking that maybe we should get married. Perhaps that would make it better. Suddenly, I became obsessed with the idea of marriage, to have a ring and to tell people about our wedding plans. He was O.K. with the marriage idea because he wanted to be with me. However, I knew things were wrong, because my own behavior started changing. It was like I just hit a wall and I suddenly felt . . . I’m done. I’m over it. I think it happened one night when we were supposed to go out and, as usual, I was looking forward to it. He didn’t go, but he said, “God! You look really attractive. I’m glad you’re going out.” I was so frustrated. “Why don’t you want to go? You’re just going to stay at home and watch TV.” I wanted to add there’s a reason why you’re not going, like I’m not that important for you to go. But, I never really got an answer to my question. He just shrugged his shoulders and picked up the TV remote. So I went without him. It just happened that someone who was there that night was the person I ended up marrying. I knew Danny, but I had never talked to him. I’d known this group of friends for about four years. This guy was so much more like me than they were. He was arty and really smart. He had been accepted to medical school the week before I met him. He was going to start in three months. When I meet someone, it’s like everything changes. I knew I was over Brad. Actually, I had become disillusioned six months before because I wasn’t getting what I needed, which was communication. I felt he wasn’t paying any attention to what I would say.

The Relationship Trap

But this new guy, Danny, everything he said was like gold. I was intrigued. I loved listening to him. It was new and exciting. It wasn’t baggage, it was conversation. It was communication. He was attractive, but had a totally different personality than Brad. I couldn’t have a conversation with Brad. Not towards the end. Danny and Brad were totally opposite. The night I met Danny, I told Brad it was over. “Although you had a great job and a large income, I truly think that I would have been unhappy in five years.” I knew he would never change. If there was an issue or problem and we needed to talk about it, he would listen, but he wouldn’t change or try work on it. There were problems like not spending enough time with me, not talking to me because “men don’t talk”. I had to force him to discuss our problems, but he never changed. It was just his kind of personality. It was hard, it was sad, and I ended it. Then Danny and I just had fun. Again it was nuts. It was new and exciting. He was just so different than Brad. He liked to dance. He was so much like me. He almost looked like me. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and no ego . . . or what I thought was no ego . . . but I was wrong. He had this thing where humbleness was attractive. He’d just been accepted into medical school and to get into med school is so hard. By that time I was twenty-three, and all my friends were moving on. They had graduated college and were moving elsewhere like Seattle and New York. Danny was going to medical school in California. He was the kind of person who would never run off and get married, but there was so much passion between us that we eloped three months after we met. It wasn’t like I had just met him. For example, one of his best friends was one of my best friends, and I knew about Danny, but we just never went out. One day, he went off to school, came back, and said, “Let’s get married. Let’s just do it,” which was so not like him. That was like my behavior. That’s how I always wanted to get married . . . just be in love, go to the justice of the peace, and get married. Maybe I was nuts, but when I was about ten years old I thought that was the best way. I just wanted to fulfill my childhood dream.

Frankie | Lady in Black

So we got married and moved to California. Oh, the mentality, the students. Everyone was smoking pot and everyone had a dog. Nothing like me at all. It was a very hippy-like place. Neither one of us smoked pot. We had done it earlier in our lives, but we were over it at that point. Perhaps we’d have a couple of cocktails and that was it. I decided it would be great to change careers and go to culinary school, but I soon realized our marriage was all about him. I couldn’t go to school. I knew what my role was. I had to work. Danny’s school was all paid for. He had a scholarship to go to med school as long as he came back to Arizona to practice for at least four years. Before long, I started seeing the real Danny. When we met, he was like . . . well, I drink a lot. I think I’m an alcoholic. He said that when we went to Vegas on a trip. I thought he was just drinking like everyone did. I never saw that he was truly an alcoholic because I’d never really been around an alcoholic, so I ignored the warning signs. He said it not like he was confessing that he had a problem. Rather, he was kind of saying this is who I am. And I just passed it off. You know, everyone’s got problems. Then when I got to California and we were away from all of our friends, I couldn’t deal with it. There were other pressures, too. Danny didn’t tell his family we got married until four months later. On the other hand, I told my family right away; I saw no reason to hide it. The three months of fun had ended. It wasn’t fun any more. He was scared to tell them. I think he felt guilty that he didn’t let them know right away and it kept going and going and going. Now what could he say? O.K. We got married in August? He’s a procrastinator and kept putting it off. When they found out, they didn’t understand. They asked Danny, “How could you have done that?” “You would have wanted a big wedding, and I didn’t want one.” That’s why you really have to know someone before you get married. I’m glad I did it. I don’t ever regret it. But it was the hardest time in my life, because I really didn’t know him, and I didn’t want to get a divorce. However, I started seeing all the skeletons come out. I was having a hard time trying to find a job in California, so I was depressed,

The Relationship Trap

and Danny would kick me down even further, trying to make me feel bad about myself. He said things like, “I can’t believe you can’t get a job.” “I’m just trying to do the best I can,” I answered, hoping for at least a little understanding. This only made me feel worse at a time when I needed his support. And he was verbally abusive. Totally verbally abusive. Danny tried to make me feel bad about myself. Like if I was really stressed and maybe I didn’t look as good as I could have or just didn’t have my makeup on, he would throw the criticism at me, “You really don’t look very good,” or “You look like you’re gaining weight.” Imagine! Danny knew I was already dealing with anorexia. Things like that were just hateful. I remember calling my mom, crying, and she told me, “Look, you really have to get it together.” I’d never been so depressed in my life! I didn’t want to just leave and have people think I was giving up. I really tried to make it work. However, by Christmas things had become much worse. It would always be when Danny was drunk. By that time I had a job, so I had to be up by seven in the morning. He only had to go to school. That was his job and his life. He would drink Jack Daniels from ten at night until eight in the morning. Alone. It was scary because I never knew if he was going to act mean and make me cry or if he was going to lash out and wake me up and just start yelling at me. You’re not doing this. You’re not good enough. The house is a mess. We got married in August, and this was all happening by Christmas. That bad, that soon. My best friend from high school was still single and living in San Diego. She was a great help to me. I would call her. I needed to lean on her because I was so depressed from everything that was going on, not to mention trying to deal with anorexia. I was a mess. I remember one day when I was sick and throwing up. I think I had the stomach flu. I asked Danny to get me some water and he said no. That’s when I decided I had to get out of there. There were job opportunities in San Diego. I would live with my friend. I could make more money, and I would come home on the weekends. I desperately needed the break. Finally,

Frankie | Lady in Black

in May I moved from Los Angeles to San Diego. I lived with my friend for a couple of months. In the meantime, Danny was worried about what his family would think if I left. In San Diego I was making way more money than I had before. We had a great apartment, which was not expensive, and I could afford to live there. So Danny and I were now living apart. I just needed some space. At the same time, I was hoping he’d change. Maybe he’d snap out of it. I had totally lost my self-esteem from the time we had gotten married in August until May. I mean like nothing was left. I was so depressed. I remember thinking, this is probably how people feel when they want to commit suicide. I felt like there was no light and I couldn’t see the end of the dark tunnel. In San Diego I was just trying to feel normal again. I thought, at least if I look good, I’m O.K. I can control this because everything else is total chaos. All this had driven me even deeper into anorexia. I weighed maybe ninety-eight pounds soaking wet. After living in San Diego for eight months, from May until February, I tried to give our marriage one more shot. I went back to Danny because I believed in marriage, I believed in him. Like let’s try to make it work. He really wanted it, too, but he just didn’t open up. Danny knew he was having problems. For example, he knew what he did was wrong . . . but he wouldn’t change. He still drank. He would often go to school drunk. He didn’t hit me . . . it was more like pushing . . . but he was still abusive. For instance, if I accidentally spilled something and it was a mess, he would scream, “I can’t believe you did that!” It would go on for an hour and a half, even while I was cleaning it up. At last, I had to admit this wasn’t working. I had tried to keep life real simple. I would just go to work and come right home. I never went out with him or drank with him. I kept my distance and tried to keep it as calm as possible until I could move out. Finally, I packed my own things, and all the while Danny was saying things like, “You’re bitter, you’ll be back,” but I was just counting the hours. I just wanted to get back to normalcy. I was totally walking on eggshells until I could finally leave. I took such a deep breath when I finally got in my car.

The Relationship Trap

The night I left, Danny wrote me a letter. I still have it. He is a great writer. He put all of his feelings in it. He acknowledged every single thing about the relationship. “I know I wasn’t there for you. I know I did those things. I can’t imagine you gone. I don’t want you to leave.” It was very hard for him, yet I had been trying to reach out to him for nine months. “I know I take everything for granted.” Every single thing that I had just said about how he reacted to my making a mistake, or being sick, or not being perfect . . . he could write it, but he couldn’t say it. That made me feel good, like I was justified in what I was doing, because for a long time I wondered if maybe it was me that was crazy. To have that validation that it was O.K., that I was right to get out of there, made me feel much better. It took me a long time to decide to come back to Arizona because I felt I made this big mistake by leaving. When I left Arizona I told myself, if I leave, I can’t go back. I was still questioning my judgment at that point. I had been knocked to the ground. My self-esteem was shot. I had to second guess everything I did because I didn’t believe in myself any more. Before this, I always believed that I’d get through it . . . whatever it was. But mentally and physically, I was just exhausted. So I got in my car and drove back, and I remember I was so excited to see Arizona again. I was crying when I saw a sign that welcomed me to Arizona. I had lived there my whole life. At last I was home, and I was safe. When I entered Arizona, I felt like a weight was gone. I thought, at last I’m O.K. because I know Arizona, I have so many friends here, I’m sure everything’s going to be just fine now. My self-esteem improved just by entering Arizona. I was around people I knew. I felt at home and people cared about me. My new roommate was recently divorced, so I finally had some empathy. We both were about the same age, and both of us just went through this kind of crazy time. At last, I finally began to get my life back together. I didn’t date for a year because we were still married. Danny said he would get a divorce. I didn’t want alimony. I didn’t want anything. I just wanted to be done with it. He was such a procrastinator that I finally filed for divorce,

Frankie | Lady in Black

which took about six months because I couldn’t afford to pay anybody to do it. It cost about three hundred dollars to do it on my own, and that was a lot with my car payment and my rent, considering that I wasn’t making a lot of money at the time. But, at last it was over, and it was an awesome feeling to finally have it behind me. When I walked out of there, I was smiling. I was free. I felt like a bird. I remember, for two days I had so much energy; I was so happy. I would get up early and couldn’t wait to start my day. I met my current boyfriend, Alex, a year after the divorce became final. He is so similar to my first boyfriend, Brad. They are like twins. I loved everything about him. When I met Alex, every single thing changed. When I got up the next day, I felt different because I met him. I was just like, oh my God, I love him, I love everything about him, I was nuts about him!” I guess I fall in and out of love easily, and it’s been like this with these three men, but I’ve never been promiscuous. Either I met someone and got into a relationship, or I was alone. I’ve never just kind of dated. Alex had just gotten out of a five year relationship. We didn’t play games. We talked and we were honest. Brad took nine months . . . of me wooing him. Well, Alex was right there all the way through. We moved in a month after we met. It was kind of hard in the beginning because he was controlling and possessive . . . does that sound familiar? Do you sense a pattern here? He’s almost exactly like Brad, except he doesn’t have issues with money. He just wants to have a good life and be happy, like me. In the beginning he was jealous and had an ego bigger than Brad’s. However, in the past year we have both changed and grown so close that we’re dropping all this negative baggage. If I have an issue or a problem and I’m not happy, I let him know it, and he will do as much as he can to change. There’s communication and there’s trust. If he says he will be home at a certain time, he will be home. It’s always been like that. He’s there when he says he’ll be there. I go to school from five to nine at night, Monday through Friday, and I work every weekday. We try to make the best of the little time we have together on weekends.

The Relationship Trap

The jealousy issue is gone. I used to be a little jealous, out of fear, like I’m not good enough, pretty enough. But, now I’m much more comfortable in my own skin. This is who I am. I don’t have to look like everyone else. I believe I’m pretty and I believe I’m a good person. I believe in myself, so I don’t have to be jealous. I gained my self-esteem back because the people around me make me feel good and I make them feel good. At work or at home, the people I come in contact with help me believe in myself and I help them believe in themselves. It’s like a mirror. The self-esteem is reflected back. When I started school, my self-esteem shot way up. His self-esteem is great. He feels good about himself, whether he has money or he doesn’t. I’ve seen him both ways. He just got this big raise. Now we can buy a house and perhaps we can start a family. We just want a normal life and to have good friends. If there’s an issue or a problem I’m concerned about, I say O.K., this is going on, we need to talk about it. I’ll talk to you until I’m blue in the face if necessary, but if you don’t give me back what I need, I’m going to leave you. I’ll say we need to work on this. You need to change. And he listens and he works on it. And that’s why I love him. For example, we don’t fight over who pays what, like who buys the groceries, and we share the rent. It’s our money, we don’t waste energy fighting about it. There was some bickering in the beginning of our relationship. He would say, “I don’t want you to go to school at night. I’m going to miss you.” I had to make him understand, “I need to go to school or I’m going to leave you. I have to go to school.” I’ve done a lot of growing since I’ve first met Alex. The other day he told me, “Frankie, you’ve grown into a lovely woman.” He likes to build me up. He does all the things that the other two men I had been involved with didn’t do. He’s nurturing. He’s my best friend. We are family and we’ll take care of each other no matter what. We have the passion and the intimacy and we’ve been together almost four years. We are going to take care of each other. I’m happy! I love him! He’s a good guy.

Frankie | Lady in Black

What I Have Learned I’ve learned that you have to get married for the right reasons, not because it’s your time, or you think you should be married. I think a woman should wait until she’s around thirty. At least thirty. When you fall in love really fast, in the beginning it’s all sunshine, roses, and fun, but you don’t see the real person. Not until you have something thrown at you. A tragedy, an issue, anything. You’ll never see the real person until that point. You have to peel off all the shiny outer part and get to the core, the real person. If everything has been smooth in a relationship, and you’ve never experienced anything like someone’s lost a job, somebody was physically hurt, you’re not going to know the person. You have to see him at his worst, as well as his best. All this takes time. The longer you’re with someone, the more you’re going to start seeing who he really is. Mainly, I learned what I want in a relationship. A person should think about what he or she wants five or ten years down the road. If someone asked me what do you want out of life in five years, and asked my boyfriend that same question, and his answer was very different from what I wanted, it’s rare that he’s going to change. I learned that having money is good, but it’s not going to make me happy. My family, my friends, my husband, and my children are going to make me happy. Money is just going to make it better. That’s how I’ve always felt. I’m not out to impress other people. I just want to have a good home and a caring family. So many people make the same mistakes over and over again like I did. They never learn. They go back to what they know. But not me. I learned my lessons well.

— FRANKIE’S Advice to You — 1. If you’re codependent and you really love your boyfriend, you need to build yourself up. Start taking classes, find some hobbies,

4. 5.

The Relationship Trap

do something that makes you feel good. You can still be close with your boyfriend, but take time for yourself. Then you’re going to be a lot happier in your relationship and will pick the person who’s right for you because you’re going to know yourself better and like yourself a lot better, too. If your life revolves around your boyfriend, you’re only going to see all his good qualities and the things he’s doing and you’re going to put all of yourself into him and not have anything of your own to add to the relationship. You will miss the picture of who you are and what you really want. All you’re doing is what he really wants. That’s codependency. You can be a little independent and a little codependent. But neither of you should be so independent that it’s all about you or all about him. If it doesn’t feel right, just go with your gut and believe in yourself. When I didn’t have self-esteem, I lost my belief in my gut feelings. I knew this relationship was wrong, but my self-esteem was so low I couldn’t say to myself, this is really wrong. Do not seek external gratification. You have to believe in yourself so much that you can say to yourself, I know I’m right, and I’m doing it for me, and I don’t care what someone else thinks. That’s why you have to get an education or have any other accomplishment which would make you feel good about yourself. You have to believe in yourself right from the beginning . . . when you’re young. I believe that women are nurturers and you should nurture your man, but he should nurture you, too. Have something to fall back on. If you put everything into him in the beginning, you’ll never put anything into yourself. Then you’ll stay in a bad relationship. Build up your self-esteem before you get into a relationship. Enter the relationship because you want to, not because you need to.

Build up your self-esteem before you get into a relationship. Enter the relationship because you want to, not because you need to.

7 Kelly | Childhood Sweethearts “It may be there in a distracted glance out of an open window or in the split second of an absent look . . . or in some unspecified sixth sense that you can’t name, but when love is over, its signals are louder than disclosure, if only you are willing and open enough to acknowledge them. But, of course we shake off these feelings as if they were mere irritations, as if they were unimportant and uninvited guests at a feast . . . ” —Sting, from the book, Broken Music

Kelly was a family person, and when she got together with Jason, it was a package deal. Although she was a strong, independent woman, she never saw how he had eroded her self-esteem and was driving her into depression. She was willing to go along for the ride as long as she could play the role of an enabler. Kelly was an attractive twenty-five year old with hazel eyes and light brown hair, and she seemed vibrant and healthy, yet there was just a hint of dark rings under her eyes. Her life revolved around sports, her main vice, as she claimed. She enjoyed triathlons, rollerblading, hiking, and playing volleyball and golf. She worked out and swam at the health club regularly.

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She was a physical therapist for an orthopedic group. That’s pretty much what her life revolves, around besides family—work and physical fitness. “I love spending time with my family, with Jason’s family, any family. I just like being around families. You could say I’m into sports and families.” Let me tell you about Jason. I met him a long time ago. I’ve actually known him over twenty years. He was a year ahead of me in elementary school. My brother and Jason were actually in the same grade. In our family album we have a picture of us sitting on a see-saw when I was four and he was six. In high school he was still friends with my brother. I was thirteen when we started going out, and I became really close with his family. I love his family. After we were going out for a year, my brother finally got a girlfriend. Jason broke up with me for Kirstin, who was my brother’s girlfriend’s best friend. They began to date and I was absolutely heartbroken. From that point on, I compared all of my relationships to Jason, my first love when I was thirteen. I had quite a few relationships, but they really didn’t last very long, except that I did get engaged at one point, but I was very young, just eighteen. It was a very short engagement. We weren’t made for each other. It was just that we were both at very low points in our life, and we just kind of clung to each other. Other than that, I’ve had a couple of relationships here and there, but nothing significant. One day, Jason’s mom was wondering how I was, so she contacted my mom in order to get hold of me. We talked for two hours and it was as if I had seen her yesterday. I found out Jason wasn’t seeing anybody at that time, so I called him, just to see how he was doing. Even though we only lived a couple of miles from each other, we talked on the phone several times but didn’t end up seeing each other until one night he called and said, “I don’t have to work tomorrow. Let’s go grab a drink.” We ended up going back to his house, and we talked all night long. And that was it. It felt like we had never been apart. We just fell right back into where we were ten years ago. By this time I was twenty-four years old. From that night on, we started spending all our free time together.

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Only now am I starting to realize that it was the best year of my life. We were so happy. I think I was holding on to the memory of our past relationship and that was why I was so happy when we first got back together . . . and perhaps that’s why we’re having problems now. One other thing. He had beaten a drug problem, and I think he has some serious issues in regard to when he was on drugs, emotional things, what it did to him. I was there for that and I knew what he went through and I think that’s another reason why he was holding on to me. I think he was grateful that I didn’t judge him, that I already knew everything, so he didn’t have to explain it. So we just fell back into where we were. Like I said, I was heartbroken when we broke up. I was fourteen years old, and I thought this was going to be the love of my life forever. However, in ten years you change a lot. When we were kids, we were very happy together until this other girl came into the picture. She was wild and crazy and I guess, being young, he just wanted something different, to experience as much as he could. It was just after Valentine’s Day, I was fourteen and he was sixteen when we broke up. She was very wild, very promiscuous, and I think that was very appealing to a sixteen-year-old guy. When I saw him for the first time again, just a year ago, it took me back to when I was fourteen years old, and I immediately fell right back into a relationship with Jason. It was comfortable because we didn’t have to go through the whole getting to know each other thing again. I didn’t have to be uncomfortable meeting the parents. I knew them. I was always their favorite, the one that they wanted Jason to be with, so they were very excited when we got back together again. We moved in together within three months. For a while everything was great. Both of us had lived abroad and traveled the world and felt that we got it all out of our system, and now it was time to start settling down. However, I think we were just holding on to how we were when we were fifteen years old. We didn’t realize until we were in too deep that we both changed a lot in the last ten years. About six months into the relationship things started getting bad. And part of it was . . . and I didn’t know this before . . . he

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drank. Not during the week or anything and he very rarely went out. Also, he’s not very social, while I, on the other hand, am very social. He would stay home and drink alone . . . to the point where he would pass out and that scared me. It frustrated and aggravated me. I grew up with a father who was an alcoholic. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with that. Sometimes families of alcoholics tip-toe around them, not really acknowledging there’s an elephant sitting there in the living room. They all go about their business . . . but there’s an elephant in the living room! Well, in my family we didn’t have to tip-toe around it, I mean, it was out there. My dad’s been in AA now for twenty years, but it was pretty difficult growing up in that house. He was a violent drunk, and luckily he never took it out on us kids, but there was always a new picture up on the wall where he had punched a hole the night before. That kind of stuff. Jason wasn’t necessarily a violent drunk, but he’d get somewhat verbally abusive, call me names, things like that. He called me a spoiled brat and said that everything had to be my way. It’s not that it has to be my way; it’s just that I’m not going to live with a drunk. That’s all there is to it. It would always be a Friday night. I’d either go out with some friends or something and come home and find him drunk. One night when I came home, the kitchen and bathroom faucets were running, every light in the house was on, and the TV was blaring. He was passed out in the middle of the living room, and I couldn’t wake him up. That was so scary. I work Saturday mornings, so I have to be up early, but he’d be up all night, drunk, stumbling around and being so loud I couldn’t sleep. On Saturday afternoons, I’d come home from work, and he’d still be sleeping. This happened quite a few Friday nights, and every time it’d be the same conversation. I would threaten to leave. He would say the same thing over and over, “I don’t know why I drink like that, and I promise it won’t happen again.” Then for a week he would stop drinking, but it never lasted more than a couple of weeks, and he’d be drinking again.

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This went on for a few months. And then we decided to buy a new house. We’d been living in his condo, but it wasn’t big enough, it wasn’t in the greatest neighborhood, and I didn’t feel safe, so we agreed to go looking for a house. We looked for a little bit and then he said, “Well, I don’t want to move until the first of the year.” Reluctantly, I said, “That’s fine, whatever you want.” At first, we agreed that he would make the down payment and it would be in his name until we got married. Then we agreed to put it in both our names, but I told him, “I don’t want to feel like I’m living in your house. I want to have an equal say in everything that goes in it. I’m paying for part of this.” Although he makes about four times as much as I do and has an expense account, he doesn’t have to make a car payment, pay car insurance or cell phone bills. I put in as much as I can. I pay for groceries and cable TV, and I take care of the house. I clean, I cook, and I pick up. I do quite a bit because I understand that I can’t pay as much as he can. I do feel that I’m putting in an equal share, although I’m not sure he agrees. He was very stressed out about the whole process of buying a house, and he was still drinking. And he was still smoking. Again, being the health nut that I am, I had problems with that, too. So here I am with a drinker, a smoker, and a stressed out guy. Really fun to live with. He’s also a workaholic. He gets stressed out about every little thing. If it’s not done his way, then it’s wrong, whether it’s at work or at home. That’s another problem. I do things differently than he does. He thinks that it’s wrong if it’s not his way. I keep trying to explain, “Jason, it’s not wrong; it’s just different. I have a say in what goes on around this house. You can’t order me around like I’m one of your employees. If I want to take a nap because I wake up at four thirty and go to work at six in the morning, I’m going to nap. You’re still going to have dinner on the table. The house is still going to be clean.” His reaction is that I’m lazy and I don’t do anything. That is so far from the truth.

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Another thing is that I’m big on family relationships, and he is not. He doesn’t like being around a lot of people. I think part of that comes from when he was on drugs. He saw friends of his die. I think he feels if he gets close to anyone, they may die and he will get hurt again. So he doesn’t show any emotion about anything. His grandmother died a couple of months ago. He never wanted to go see her in the hospital; he hates going to hospitals. He didn’t want to see his grandmother sick. I can understand that, but he just does not want to deal with any family things whatsoever. My parents are divorced. My dad lives right near us. Jason has not seen my dad since we’ve been back together. I have a younger sister and brother that he’s never met because he will not go to family things, and that is another thing that makes me angry. Christmas rolled around, and I’m huge on holidays, huge on Christmas. But, we celebrate Christmas separately with my mom and my dad. It’s always been like that. It’s something I’ve learned to live with. Sure I would love my parents to be together for Christmas, but I learned long ago that it’s not going to happen. When he wouldn’t go to Christmas at my dad’s, we had an argument about it, but we got over it. He said he’d go to the next family celebration. Nevertheless, a month later, when my niece’s birthday rolled around, the morning of the birthday party he said, “I’m not going,” and I was really fed up. “Jason, you made a promise to me that you would go. It’s important to me. You know how much family means to me.” “Well, I’m not going,” he said, but when he saw the expression on my face he added, “Well, I’ll go, but I’m only staying for one hour. We’ll drive separately.” I got so excited about that. “Great! I am so glad you’re going. Even if it’s for an hour, I’m glad you’ll be there with me.” Then, an hour before we were to go, he announced he was not going. So I got upset again. “You’re being too emotional, Kelly.”

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So now it was my fault again. Of course I was going to be emotional. He tells me he’s going. I get excited. He tells me he’s not going; I get upset. He tells me he’s going. I get excited. Of course I’m going to be emotional about this. I felt like I was on a roller coaster. So, we fought about that. “You know, Jason, you made a promise to me.” “Well, I don’t make you go to any family things with me, so I don’t think it’s right for you to make me go to any family things with you.” “But family is important to me, Jason. I’m not going to separate you from my family for the rest of my life. A relationship involves two people. It involves sacrifice and things that you don’t necessarily want to do.” “It’s not fair of you to insist that I go. It doesn’t matter to anyone else except you if I’m there or not,” and he marched out of the room, slamming the door behind him. That is so not true. Every time I show up somewhere, I have eight people ask me, “Oh, where’s Jason?” So I end up making excuses. The first couple of times they kind of just blew it off . . . whatever . . . but now it’s getting to the point where my brother, who was his best friend growing up, doesn’t even invite us to his home any more. I invited them over for dinner a few weeks ago, but they won’t come because Jason is constantly in a bad mood. He’s always negative and doesn’t like people around. His dad and I have talked for hours about that. It got to the point just recently where he was missing some work. We don’t know why he’s like that . . . drinking, smoking, always in a bad mood. All he did was trade one addiction for another . . . two others. It’s so frustrating. Part of the problem is that he holds everything in. He doesn’t tell anyone his feelings. He has so many issues. He grew up going to church, but now he just doesn’t believe in God at all. Maybe he’s mad at God and mad at the world for what happened to him. On the other hand, he overcame the drug habit, so he should have a new respect for life and how precious it is. Sometimes I wonder if he’s in a state of depression. That’s one of the reasons I told him, “You need help. You need to sort out a lot of things. My couple of psychology classes in high school isn’t going to help you.”

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I pleaded with him to see a psychiatrist, but he said, “They’re just full of crap and don’t know anything.” I was so frustrated with his whole attitude. “Well, Jason, psychiatrists have had a lot of schooling, they’ve been around for a while, and they obviously know what they’re doing.” My patience was wearing thin. But he just refused to see a psychiatrist. However, three weeks ago, he did agree to see his regular doctor, the one who his family has seen forever. His dad went with him. He’s never been able to sleep well at night, so the doctor prescribed sleeping pills and a mild tranquilizer to help him relax a little bit and calm down. So, now he sleeps all the time! He comes home from work and just hits a wall. The medication is probably too strong, but I can’t tell him that because he’ll think I’m questioning his doctor. I understand he’s fine at work, but when he gets home it’s another story. The other night he was asleep at seven o’clock. Now, he has quit drinking . . . but again, it’s only been three weeks, so I don’t know if that’ll last. He still hasn’t seen a psychiatrist, and he still denies that anything is wrong. But I can see it. His parents can see it. His brother can see it. There are some deep-rooted issues, and he needs to find out what they are and how to deal with them. For example, when his grandmother died, he didn’t know how to deal with it, so he held everything in and refused to talk about it. I was there for him. I could have listened to him all day long if he chose to talk to me. But he never did. I finally decided I had enough, and I did leave for a weekend. I couldn’t take it any more. I couldn’t take the fighting and all the put-downs. His way of joking is put-downs and sarcasm, and it would be O.K. if there were some compliments thrown in there, but it was sarcasm all the time. When you hear something so many times you start to believe it. I was so worn down and so miserable that I just couldn’t handle it any more. I wanted him to know that I was serious, that something needed to change.

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I went to my mom’s, but I came back on Monday. That did it. Finally, he made an appointment with his doctor, and he stopped drinking and smoking. He didn’t smoke for a while and then several months ago, he started again. I thought he was stressed out about something at work. He kept promising me he was going to quit. “As soon as we move into our new house, the day we move in, I’m going to quit smoking.” It seems like a new excuse always came up. So I told him, “instead of making excuses, you need to figure out what to do because you can’t keep making excuses all the time. If you know you’re not going to keep the promise, don’t make it. If you know that you’re going to get drunk next weekend, don’t promise me that you’re not. If you know that you’re not going to stop smoking, don’t promise me that you will. If you know you’re not going to go to the next family thing with me, don’t tell me that you are.” Perhaps I may have lectured him too much, brought it up too many times, because he said, “You know, you sound just like my mom, and I don’t need another mom. Leave me alone!” “I just want to help you, Jason.” “I don’t need any help, thank you,” and with his teeth clenched he stomped out of the room. Then, he just stopped telling me anything. He stopped making promises, and now he’ll just tell me, no, I’m not going to any family thing . . . And that hurts, too, because I want him with me. I’m a huge family person. He’s a huge part of my life. I want them to be together. I don’t want to have to separate two major things in my life . . . for the rest of my life. He can’t avoid my family forever.” Now that I think of it, I’m very busy trying to help him, but who’s there for me? No one. Right now my life’s a struggle. I’m a morning person. Usually I can hop out of the bed at four-thirty in the morning and be ready to go. I have to be at

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work at six, and I’m a physical therapist, so I have to be upbeat, motivating, and in a good mood all the time. Now it’s a great effort to get out of bed in the morning. I’m not motivated to do much of anything. I feel so down, so depressed, that when I come home from work, I just want to sleep. I want to lie down and read so I can be in someone else’s world and not my own. I need some mental rest. I need some emotional rest. Physically, I’m still all right, so I don’t think that’s a problem. But I need to build myself up. Who knocked me down? I guess I just don’t want to admit that it’s Jason. I think he beat me down a little bit . . . well . . . a lot. I hate putting blame on anyone or anything but . . . he did. There were a lot of put-downs. For example, one day we were arguing about him not keeping any promises, so he shouted at me not to compare him to my dad . . . all the letdowns, all the broken promises. I resented that. “Jason, if you want to talk about the number of lies, you’ve broken more promises and you’ve lied to me more than my dad ever did.” I’m at the point where I’m not even attracted to him any more. Sexually, I haven’t even slept with him in over two months. And he brings that up. “It’s your fault,” he says. It’s my fault because now I’m not attracted to him. “Jason, I don’t want to kiss someone who tastes like cigarettes. It’s hard for me to be close to you because I don’t like the smell. And you know what? I haven’t been attracted to you lately. I haven’t been attracted to a stumbling, fall-down drunk. I’m sorry, but that does not turn me on.” “Well fine. Now it’s all my fault,” he grumbled. He tried to lay a guilt trip on me. “When you left that weekend, it hurt my feelings.” “Well, Jason, you hurt my feelings for the past three months. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings that one time, but I had to leave. I can’t live like this any more.” I’m at the point where I think I’m still with him because of his dad. We are very close. He says, if he ever had a daughter, he’d want it to be me. He doesn’t want to lose me. Maybe I ought to adopt his dad.

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His dad asked me to just stick with Jason for a couple of more weeks until his doctor’s appointment. It’s been about three weeks now, and this past Sunday night we got into another argument. We had spent the day at his parent’s house and were driving home when my friend called me. She was upset because she was having problems with her boyfriend and might break up with him. Of course, I wanted to talk to her. My friend was very upset, and I was not going to hang up on her just because we were in the car. When I hung up the phone he complained, “Your talking on the phone was so trying on my nerves.” “What!” “Well, you were on the phone and I couldn’t listen to the radio and that’s just rude!” “If a friend calls me all upset, I’m not going to hang up on her. Put yourself in her shoes.” “Still, that was very rude.” “Sorry I annoy you so much.” “Right,” and then there was an icy silence. When we got home, I dashed inside. I really had to go to the bathroom, and when I came back out to talk to him about it, he was in his office with the door locked. He wouldn’t let me in. “Leave me alone. I just need some peace and quiet.” “Well, Jason, this is why we never work anything out. You never want to talk about anything. How are we supposed to fix anything, if you don’t want to talk about it?” “Well, all you do is yell.” “Jason, I’m so frustrated that you won’t listen to me. I unconsciously raise my voice to make you listen.’” “I’m always wrong. Everything that goes wrong is my fault.” He’s never to blame, never wrong. He has an alcohol problem. He’s addicted to cigarettes. But I’m the bad guy.” I guess I’ve never been able to step out of it long enough to see how abusive

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it is. Why do I keep defending myself in this relationship? He always tries to turn it around and say, “You’re right. I’m a horrible person. I’m the bad guy,” trying to make me feel bad when I try to tell him what’s wrong. Even when he accepts the blame, he makes me feel guilty. I’m finally beginning to see the whole picture. He’s just not willing to change. I love his family, but that’s not enough to keep us together any more. Yes, I think it’s finally time to leave him . . . soon. I want to leave, but I love him. I’ve always loved him.

— Kelly’s Advice to You — 1. Don’t stay in a relationship that isn’t working. Get out! 2. Don’t try to “fix it”. You’re not his psychologist. You’re not his mother. 3. If you don’t like drinking and smoking, find some who doesn’t drink or smoke! 4. Don’t let your love of his family keep you tied to him. Even if he comes from a wonderful family, if you can’t live with him, get out. 5. Listen to your own advice. (I’m still working on that one.)

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get so attached to his family that you stay in a bad relationship because you like them so much.

8 Amy | Sex, Drugs, and Alcohol There are those among us that live in rooms of experience that you and I can never enter. —John Steinbeck

Amy’s Brothers

Oldest: Tom Second: Jake Third: Chuck Youngest: Peter

“W

hen we got back from California, he said he wouldn’t do drugs any more. And he didn’t for about three months, until he met someone at work who offered him some. Then it snowballed; it became the same thing all over again. He became violent, and suddenly it was a hostage scenario. I couldn’t leave. I’d be in bed asleep and he would come home in a rage and pick up his shotgun and stand in front of the door to the bedroom. He’d pace back and forth with the shotgun in his hand making threats. There was always 115

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the threat that if I left, he would kill me. If I said anything to the police, he would kill me. I didn’t know what to do . . . ” How far I have come from that fourteen year old girl who was so innocent to this forty-two-year-old woman who got into one mess after another, each one worse than the next. I saw the warning signs. Why did I have to go through so many relationships, so much heartache, before I finally learned? Perhaps I should start with my brother Chuck. He was a nice guy, friendly, funny, easy to talk to. Whenever I had a problem, he would always stick up for me. That’s why I loved him, but he also smoked marijuana and had a felony record. And so I ended up being attracted to felons who were drug users, without those pluses that Chuck had. It was O.K. if they used marijuana because he did. It was O.K. if they were felons because my idol was a felon. Amazingly, my brother survived the system. He learned from it and came out a better person. I wasn’t disillusioned by my brother being a felon because he came out O.K. and was such a nice guy. When I was growing up, I believed that everybody would come out O.K. ——— As she told her life story, she skipped back and forth from the present to the past, so follow along as we have a wild roller coaster ride through life with a lady named Amy. How would I describe myself ? Well, I’m 5'5" and a bit overweight. I have light brown hair and hazel eyes and a lot of Irish-English ancestors. Right now I’m a counseling student in the graduate program at the university. I live two hundred miles away and commute to school several days a week. I am pursuing a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies so I can become certified in counseling and human relations. In the process, I certainly have learned a lot about myself. I’ve had an educated tour of my life. My parents were both ministers, so it was a very strict household. They met in bible college and married shortly after. I am the youngest of five

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children, the only girl. My youngest brother is eight years older than I am. When I was ten years old, my mom started having problems with her legs, which gradually became worse over the years. Being the only girl, I was given a huge responsibility, taking over my mother’s role, cleaning the house, cooking, and all that sort of thing. I got married very young, naively thinking I would get married once and it would be a commitment for life. It was very simple. Oh, we were so young. I was sixteen, almost seventeen. He was eighteen and fresh out of high school. Unfortunately, we came from different backgrounds. He had a completely different concept of what marriage and commitment was about. As far as he was concerned, he was not in a committed relationship, even though we happened to be married. I wasn’t necessarily marrying to escape all the mothering responsibilities. I found in the long run that it was just the opposite. I’ve been very much a mothering type, and that’s affected my relationships in a negative way. I was the Rescuer, Miss Fix-It. I can fix you and make you better, stronger than before. The reason I didn’t like living at home wasn’t really because of the responsibilities, but something else that had been happening. I was being molested by my brother Peter, the youngest one. Like I said, he’s eight years older than me. I didn’t realize how much molestation had occurred because I was very young when it started, probably about three years old. Going back to my childhood again, I was six when my oldest brother, Tom passed away. He was killed instantly in a car accident about six months after he got home from Vietnam. He was only twenty-one when he died. We were sent to live at my grandparent’s farm for about six months, but my youngest brother recalls molesting me during that time, perhaps out in the barn. My oldest brother fits into the scenario, too. I always try to find an answer to why I’m attracted to one certain type of man. He was almost a father figure. I only have one real memory of him and that’s when he picked me up and touched my head to the ceiling. I was four years old. He was about fifteen years older than me. He was about 6'1", and I felt so tall when

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he picked me up and touched my head to the ceiling. One day, he brought home a stuffed bear for me that he had won at a carnival. It had a wind up thing on the back of it and a big bow on the front. I still have it. However, it seems my oldest brother wasn’t the idol I had built him up to be, but I’ll tell you more about that later. The next memory I have was when I was seven years old. I spent a night at a girlfriend’s house, and she tried to touch me! I started crying. I was like, what is wrong with everybody? Then she confided in me that that’s what her father did to her, and I think that was a big aha in my life. Then I understood right from wrong. It was the beginning of that’s wrong. I’m really not sure whether or not I told my parents about my brother. I think I had said something about Peter when I was about five or six. There’s a vague memory of something happening when we were traveling and my mom sitting down and talking to me and then my dad taking Peter outside and giving him a whipping. Anyway, when I was nine years old, my brother tried again. This time I said, “No way! I know better now. What you’re doing is wrong.” That’s when I started running away. I just wanted to get out of the house. Once I realized what had been going on, I was very angry. I just hated my brother. He tried a couple of times. However, I was able to stop him. One instance was very scary. I was with a friend of mine and he was with a friend of his. He was driving and they drove us out to the middle of nowhere . . . and wanted to . . . touch it . . . or whatever. They wouldn’t take us home. You can’t walk from here, they told us. He used a lot of manipulation and threats like that, and both of us were just terrified. It ended up that neither one of us did anything except cry, so they took us home. He did make a lot of threats . . . if I ever told . . . and all kinds of stuff like that, but I think on my part there was a little bit of blackmail, too. It’s like I have this to hold over your head now . . . and for the rest of your life. I was lucky I was able to stop him because, come to find out, there was a lot more to it . . . not necessarily on my part, but on his part. I know I’m kind

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of jumping back and forth, but years later, fairly recently as a matter of fact, around five years ago my second oldest brother, Jake, who is fourteen years older than me, ended up going to court. And Jake was always the straightlaced one. He was in the armed forces. He never did any kind of drugs. He got married, tried to have a family right away. Very straightlaced. Well, come to find out, twenty years down the road, Jake had been molesting his oldest daughter who decided to press charges . . . oh, my goodness . . . when she was eighteen years old. She finally decided to come out and say something. I was so confused because I thought he was the straight and narrow one! When my brother Jake got arrested, it was like, oh my God! I was so confused. Were all men perverts? My dad was a minister for heaven’s sake! It started with my oldest brother, Tom. It’s kind of a foggy story since he’s been dead for twenty years . . . but most of the story comes from Jake, the one who was arrested, the straightlaced one. My brother Jake molested my youngest brother, Peter, the one that molested me. Someone from outside the family molested Jake. That man was known to have had some serious problems. He had been a devil worshiper but became a born-again Christian, trying to get involved in the church. Well, while he was getting involved with the church, he was getting involved with my brother. No one ever said anything. My other brothers knew what was going on. My parents didn’t know. The oldest was Tom, who passed away at twenty-one. The next oldest was Jake. He was the one who was molested. Actually, he was raped. It was more than molestation. He was raped, and he never dealt with it either. The third brother is Chuck. He’s important down the road, though. I’ll talk about him later. The youngest one is Peter. Jake molested Peter. Apparently it was intercourse. Peter gets very emotional just thinking about it. And he, in turn, molested me. At the age of nine, I had no knowledge of the family history, and I had no concept of that type of behavior. One was molesting the other in a bizarre chain, and I was the low man . . . or woman . . . on the totem pole, so to speak.

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When I was ten years old, my brother Chuck moved back to the house. He was the cool one. At the time I didn’t know how this being cool would affect the rest of my life. He had just gotten out of prison! When he was a teen, Chuck had seen what was going on in the house and didn’t want any part of it. He wanted to move out of the house, too. So he was acting out, getting into trouble. When he was fifteen years old, he was sent to a camp. At least that’s what the family called it. Then he got into trouble when he was a little older and was sent to prison. So, my cool brother, my hero, had just gotten out of prison. One day I walked into the house with my friend. Everyone was gone, and he was sitting in his room smoking a joint. He asked me if I wanted to try it. I was ten years old. What did I know? I asked him, “What does it do?” “Oh, you know, it makes you laugh; it makes you happy.” Click! In my mind, that’s what I needed! Something to make me happy. So I tried it, and I didn’t do it again for a couple of years, but then I continued off and on until my thirties. I used drugs to find that subconscious thing that could make me happy, but it put me into the drug culture. It put me in the same environment with people who were doing more than pot. Not until later on, when I moved to California, did I realize that. I ended up getting into trouble as a kid because of all my running away. I was sent to a girl’s school, and when I got out the following summer, I went on vacation with my family. I was fourteen and still a virgin. In the girl’s school, the topic of conversation . . . always . . . was sex and are you a virgin and your first time and all that stuff. We were all about the same age, and there were only three of us in the whole school who were still virgins. The next summer we went on vacation again. By this time we had moved to a new city, and this time I brought a friend with us on vacation. When I met her at my new school, the first thing she asked was if I got high. Oh, yeah. Of course. You know. I’m cool. Inevitably, it led me to everybody in town who got high. So I was automatically in the drug culture again. It

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was a very small town, and it was a divided town. You were either a jock, a cheerleader, or a loady. Since I introduced myself as being cool, I was automatically a loady. By the time we went on vacation, we had gotten stoned together a couple of times. One day my friend and I went to the beach and there I met someone on the boardwalk . . . a drop dead gorgeous guy named Judd, and he invited us to a party. Well, that was just my dream come true. It was a big party and it was pretty crowded. Judd was waiting there when we arrived. It was on the campground with tents all around. There was a big bowl of punch on the picnic table. Everyone was inside the tent smoking pot. Well, I was outside filling my cup with punch, and then I was inside the tent smoking a joint. Judd asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. I said O.K., but when I stood up, I started feeling really, really funny. Like whoa! Come to find out, the punch was full of drugs. Party Punch they called it. It was full of everything. He did warn me, like when I took a second cup. “Watch it. That’s Party Punch.” And I was like, “What does that mean?” He told me, but too late. What could I do then? I ended up really out of it. When Judd took me for a drive, he had me alone in the car and I was getting worse and worse, more and more out of it. He ended up taking me back to his tent, and there went my virginity. Wonderful first experience! But I didn’t tell a soul. The whole town knew me as a virgin. Since this happened out of town, I didn’t want to tell anybody. I didn’t have sex for a year or so after that, until I met someone who wasn’t in the same circle of friends and was a little bit older. Then everyone assumed that I wasn’t a virgin any more and it was O.K. I became pregnant with the next guy in my life. I was only fifteen years old. We were engaged and living at his grandma’s. One day, we got into an argument, and he threw a really big ashtray at me and hit me in the stomach. I was about two months pregnant, but he threw it with malice. “Forget it. That’s it. I’m out of here.” My brother Chuck, the third from the oldest, came

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and helped me move out. He was always there for me. He was that kind of brother, a real role model. That’s right. The same one that was a felon. Close to that time, this guy named Ben came to town. He had been in the army and everybody was all excited because he was back. We were introduced and ended up dating. He knew that I was pregnant, and he knew the father of the baby. Everybody knew. As I said, it was a small town, around 3,500 people. Around my third month of pregnancy, I had done some babysitting and ended up getting German measles. I had some testing, and they told me the baby was affected and I should get an abortion. Ben came to the hospital and was with me the whole time. However, it didn’t change his feelings. He was still in love with me and still wanted to marry me. We ended up getting married, which was about six months after I had met him. Two years after we were married, I found out he had been cheating on me with three of my friends. I found all this out on my eighteenth birthday! I had gone to a bar with a bunch of friends to celebrate my birthday. At the party, this guy named Joe asked me to dance, but I refused because my husband was out of town. I didn’t want to dance with somebody else because I was a married woman. He said, “Don’t you know?” That’s when I found out. Some birthday present! Well, I ended up going out with Joe, the man who had asked me to dance. We became friends and ended up getting involved in a relationship. Of course, as soon as my husband came home I told him, “That’s it. It’s over. You’re out of here.” He packed his things and left. He was crushed and very angry. However, I felt pretty good knowing that I had Joe. So I went right into the arms of the next Prince Charming. However, my husband would come over crying, wanting to get back together, and a month later I got back together with him because I believed in commitment. Well, within two months, I found out I was pregnant, and we didn’t know if it was his or Joe’s. He wanted me to have an abortion. This is the same man who wanted to marry me when he knew I was pregnant with someone else’s child. He wasn’t sure it was his or Joe’s and he wanted me to abort it . . . and I did.

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Eighteen years old, two abortions, and molested as a child. That’s pretty heavy stuff, but I had my coping mechanism . . . pot, my drug of choice. My husband and I were together around four years, but we ended up divorcing. You see, he was an alcoholic. At the time I didn’t even understand alcoholism. We had no alcohol in our family. My father had never touched a drop of alcohol in his life. The relationship ended when I caught him with another woman . . . almost in the act . . . and still he lied about it. So that was the end of him. By this time, I was just nineteen years old . . . . . . and had two abortions, molestation as a child, was raped, and divorced. About a year later, I met another man. He walked up to me with a bottle of whiskey in his back pocket. Amazingly, no bells went off at all. Actually, I think I ignored the bells because he was gorgeous! He was 6'1" with long, dark shoulder length hair, feathered down the side . . . oh, so handsome . . . those green eyes . . . fairly thin, probably 180 lbs., nice build. He was really funny and always joking around, always really nice, affectionate and romantic. His name was Andy and he was totally attracted to me. He kept asking me out and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He would come up and put his arm around me; I would laugh it off, but eventually I did go out with him, and he turned out to be pretty much the love of my life. I was twenty-four, and he was about four years older than I was. We ended up moving in together. He really was a very nice guy, but unfortunately, he was a serious alcoholic. It was in this relationship that I finally understood what alcoholism really was. Before that, I really didn’t know the signs. When I was with him, I finally realized that my first husband was also an alcoholic . . . along with all the pot. Andy wasn’t that much into smoking pot, but he allowed me to do it. It didn’t bother him. However, we used to drink heavily together. When we first started dating, it was a game. Before I met him, I wasn’t much of a drinker. I used to sneak into the bars when I was sixteen, seventeen years old, but never drank very much. But Andy was a whiskey drinker,

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so I began drinking a lot of whiskey . . . usually a shot of whiskey and a shot of soda. It would be . . . see who could drink the most shots. He always won. We were both drunk a lot, but at the time things weren’t clicking. It never occurred to me that he could be an alcoholic, even though he got drunk every day. Initially, he was drinking probably a pint of whiskey . . . a day. My friends were more in the drug culture. He was more into alcohol. He was the one who introduced me to the bar scene. “I can’t go into a bar,” I argued, “I’m only twenty years old.” He laughed, “Don’t worry about it,” as if it was no big deal. He was one of those I-can-take-care-of-everything guys. I’ll get you in. Not a problem. And he did. The first day I walked in, the owner asked me if I wanted a job. It soon became our home away from home. At first, I was like ugh! It was a dive. I thought there was no way you could catch me dead working there. A year down the road, I was running the place. That was part of his personality—don’t worry about it. We ended up going there on a regular basis . . . every day . . . not necessarily at night. I don’t think either one of us was working. I went to school part time and was on unemployment. He had just recently quit his job. He was in construction and would do odd jobs. The bar was an important part of his life. He would go there in the morning and see if there was work for him. If there was work, they would leave from there. If not, he’d end up staying in the bar. Most of the time, however, he did get work. I don’t remember what triggered it, but during that period of my life I tried to commit suicide. I took a bunch of pills, which reminds me of my mom and all the Valium she took. That might have been a trigger in my head because I took Valium, I drank some whiskey, and I ended up going home and slicing my wrist. Big time. And I have the scars to prove it. But something clicked. I thought, you know, I’m a Christian, and this is against the rules. If I die right now, I am going to spend an eternity in hell. That’s not acceptable. So I woke Andy up, “I think I need to go to the hospital.” He jumped up, grabbed some towels, and wrapped them around my bleeding wrists.

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On the way to the hospital, I ended up telling him what my brother had done. Looking back at all the things that happened to me, I realize he was the first person that I told. It took me getting to death’s doorstep to tell someone. Twenty milligrams of Valium and a pint of whiskey in me . . . and who knows how much blood I had lost? I was just out of it and kind of rambling. It took all that for me to get to the point of being able to tell somebody about what happened. Andy reacted . . . like wow! He just took everything in, and then afterwards he talked to me about it, which I thought was really nice. He quit drinking shortly after that. He went to AA, an in-house program, for a couple of months, and I went to Al-Anon. During that time, there was so much sharing and healing going on. In some ways it created a very special bond between us. It certainly made our relationship stronger. I had never talked about it with anybody else. It brought up all those subconscious memories, and I felt a little better because I had finally released some of it. Actually, I released a lot of it and I was able to release it to my partner. We realized how important we were to each other and became very close. He ended up giving me a diamond ring on my twenty-first birthday. It was only a ten point diamond, but it was important to us. It didn’t come with a proposal; it was a promise ring. We were still living together but not married. We lived together like that for about nine months. I wanted him to stop drinking so we could have a serious relationship, and he decided to quit drinking about three months after the suicide attempt. Almost immediately after he quit drinking, one of his friends who he met in the program dropped out. The friend’s father had died, and he inherited a lot of money. Well, the friend began buying cocaine, marijuana . . . whatever. Drugs. A pile of them. And he invited Andy over. That was the day Andy was introduced to cocaine. And that was all she wrote. He had a very addictive personality, and he had just traded one addiction for another. He gave up alcohol and started on cocaine. Of course, he was

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instantly addicted. We went back and forth about that. “Are you crazy?” He’d stop and then he’d start again, and as a result we broke up. At the time he was making very good money doing private investigative work and spending it on tremendous quantities of cocaine. That was like a hundred dollars for half an hour of pleasure. It didn’t take long before he started running out of money, so he reverted to methamphetamine, which was like twenty-five dollars for a day or two. For him, it was probably a couple of hours because he would do major quantities. He moved in with some friends in a heavy drug culture neighborhood. He only did it once in front of me, but when he did, I couldn’t handle it. He was using a needle. I thought I was going to die right then and there. I have a really big phobia about needles. We were living apart and I hadn’t seen him for three months. I didn’t realize what had been going on. We were in the car on the way to my parent’s house when he said, “Pull over here for a minute before we get there.” He got out a syringe and I just couldn’t believe it. “What in the hell are you doing?” “It’ll just take a minute.” “You have got to be kidding me!” I was just kind of freaking out. But he went right ahead and injected speed . . . a lot of it. Barely able to control my anger, I drove into a parking lot near my parent’s house, and we got into a big argument. Well, we parted company that day right in the middle of the parking lot. Going back in time, there was one instance when my father wanted me to apologize to my mother. I told her to go to hell or something like that and dashed out of the house. I started toward downtown, zigzagging across vacant lots. My father jumped into the car immediately and caught me just as I arrived in town. He was so angry, he said, “If you don’t get in, I’ll push you into this car.” Needless to say, I got in the car. He drove me out to the middle of nowhere and said, “You’re going to go home and apologize.” I was terrified, partly because he was so angry and partly because we were in the

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middle of nowhere, and my brother Peter had already freaked me out in the middle of nowhere when I was a kid. I had no idea what my father was going to do. So, I reluctantly agreed to apologize to my mother, and we drove home in stony silence. That’s why I wanted to drive all the time. It seemed that whenever someone else was driving, I always got into trouble. I was always the nurturer, the care provider, and I think that comes from taking care of my mom and the house. Recently, I began putting it all together. There were other realizations, perhaps I should call them aha’s. I guess this was kind of an aha. I don’t know what else to call it. Andy and I were going to move away. That’s another aha. Every time I planned to move, something bad happened. For example, my first husband cheated on me. “We’ll move to California, where my mother lives, and start over.” He promised me he was going to quit drugs. Well, Andy told me he was going to stop using drugs, and we were packing to move. He had to go back to that apartment where he was living with friends and get his things, and I dropped him off there. That was my mistake—leaving him there for that long to pick up his things. Sure enough, he did some drugs again, and I said, “That’s it. Forget it. I quit. It’s all over between us.” Eventually, he moved out, and he pretty much stopped using, but still, to this day, he shakes. He ended up going to the veteran’s hospital. He was never the same again. I have been in contact with him. I suppose that’s kind of unusual. He asks about my brother, Peter, the one that molested me. The one I told him about. What’s really weird is that Andy was diagnosed with schizophrenia amphetamine psychosis, the same illness as my brother had, when he was about twenty-five. Peter was on drugs, too. He told me he had smoked some acid or something, and I then remember that the next day he started hearing voices. He became paranoid.

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Now let’s skip ahead to my second marriage. What both marriages had in common was the drug culture. That’s how we met. A couple of years after my relationship with Andy ended, I was in the garage working on my car, and this guy walked by with a box in his hand. He stopped to ask me something about my car, and we started talking. I found out his name was Nick, and I asked him about the box in his hand. Actually, I knew what it was. It was a stash box, and it wasn’t long before he asked me, “You want to get stoned?” I thought he was really cute. Nick was 6'1" with dark hair, dark eyes, thin . . . and he fit the same profile. I was always attracted to that tall, thin, handsome guy like my brother Tom, who was very handsome. Chuck was more my hero. Tom was my idol. Physically, each of the guys I ended up with resembled Tom, the one that held me up high, close to the ceiling. Otherwise, they were more like Chuck, the one that provided my happiness. He gave me the escape route, the path that I used initially when I was ten . . . to escape from my other brother Peter, and what happened. I was always attracted to guys who were handsome and provided the escape route. Great role models. Nick and I became friends, then started dating, and finally moved in together, but he would still go out with his friends. His friends became our friends, and my friends kind of went by the wayside. Since I was working every Saturday morning, he made it a point to go out every Friday night with his friends. He discouraged my friendship with my friends and encouraged my friendship with his friends. Then he discouraged my friendship with his friends as well. When we were all together it was fine, but he would always choose to go out on Friday nights because I had to be at work at five o’clock on Saturday morning. Come to find out, the reason he liked Friday nights was that he was attracted to one of the girls who was in that group. Also, he was using speed during that time, and he knew how I felt about speed because of what happened to Andy. Still we got married, even with the warning signs flashing frantically in my face.

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Initially, I didn’t know about his drug use because of his secrecy. He knew how I felt about it, but he did it anyway. Finally, everything came out. The discussion started because I was not happy about all those Friday nights and how they always had these girls there and the dancing and having fun. I should have paid attention to all those warning signs. Secrecy, lying, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and partying alone, without me. Going out with his friends, without me, with girls there, going dancing. We shouldn’t have married. I know that now. Then it started. Once in a while he’d make comments when we were around my friends. He’d try to make me look like she’s not all bad, you know, but I’m the one that’s the man, the cool one. He would not come right out and say you’re stupid, but he would make comments like that. Come to find out, he wound up having an affair with one of the girls who was part of that Friday night group. It was somewhere around six months into our marriage. He would say he had to work late, but he wasn’t working late; he was going to his girlfriend’s. He would make these odd phone calls. I once got a phone call from a girl looking for him. One day it was my birthday . . . another birthday event . . . and we were all at the bar during happy hour after work. All my friends were there. Trying to impress them, he walked in with a dozen roses and a gift of jewelry for me. They thought he was great! Little did they know. When I discovered the affair, we split up for about three months. Well, he wanted to get back together and move to Texas where his mother lived. I wasn’t all that sure. So I talked to my father, and he reminded me of what commitment means, so we got back together and moved to Texas . . . and the same thing happened. His old friends lived there, and he started hanging around them. There were drugs, women, the same old thing. This time he asked for a divorce. I dated and partied for about a year after that, but I finally had enough of that life and moved up into the hills to live in a travel trailer in a trailer park. Come to find out that the trailer park was filled with mostly bikers. My next door neighbor was one of them. When I met him, he wore overalls

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and looked like a farm boy. He’d invite me over for cookouts. He’d leave little notes on my door, little wild flowers. I thought that was very sweet, and I fell for him. But it happened again. We ended up moving in together. His friends were heavy into drugs. He knew that I smoked pot. He smoked, but he started using speed. And he almost killed me. That was when I learned about the peaks and valleys of methamphetamine. Three days on. Three days off. Three days on. Three days off. The first day, he was very loving, very sexual. The second day, he was melancholy, nothing really extreme one way or the other, but the third day, he would be down, and he would always get very angry. He’d be very touchy and temperamental. I guess I said something on the wrong day, perhaps something about his ex-wife. I don’t even remember what the argument was about. He grabbed a shotgun that was sitting on the shelf above my head and started yelling at me, turning red with anger. I said something, and he cocked the shotgun and almost shot me in the head. Then he lifted it, pulled the trigger, and the bullet went through the ceiling. I was just dumbfounded. You’d think that would be enough of a warning sign to send me running out of there. The speed itself was a red flag. When I found out he was a biker it was a red flag, too. Loads of red flags, but the shotgun was like a roadblock! I left him after that incident, but I ended up going back with him. He pleaded with me. “It’s the speed, the drugs. I’ve got to get out of here. If I get away from everybody, if I get away from the biker club and the speed, I think I’ll be O.K. I love you and I want this to work. Let’s go to New Mexico.” And I did. He didn’t touch speed again for about three months. Then we went back to California to pick up his things. The first thing his friends did was . . . here you go . . . freebie. Thank you and he went off again. I didn’t know until we were halfway home, and he pulled off to the side of the road and told me. He still had some left. We had quite an argument. When we got back, he said he wouldn’t do any more. I didn’t know how to say goodbye. Again, he didn’t do any for about three months, until he met

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someone at work who offered him some. Then it snowballed and became the same thing all over again. He became violent, and suddenly it was a hostage scenario. I couldn’t leave. I’d be in bed asleep, and he would come home in a rage and pick up his shotgun and stand in front of the door of the bedroom. He’d pace back and forth with a shotgun in his hand making threats. There was always the threat that if I left he would kill me. If I said anything to the police, he would kill me. I didn’t know what to do. Eventually I left anyway. I couldn’t take it any more, and I moved back into my travel trailer. Then he began to stalk me. It was the same thing. I’ll quit. I’ll never do it again. I really wanted to believe that he would quit. Still, there was his temper, his appearance, the wide eyes, the intense emotions, the conversations, and always, “I’m never going to do it again.” There were his expressions, the jerky kind of motions, aggressive type of speech, talking very loud, very fast, very abrupt. And his behavior. I know he flattened my tire, even though he’d deny it to this day. He’d come to my office and confront me in the middle of my work. It certainly wasn’t normal behavior. Yet, I did go back . . . because he did quit. He had been clean for three months. He stayed clean for another five months, but one day I came home late from work. He was sitting there drinking iced tea, so I didn’t think that he had been using anything. When I walked through the door, he threatened me again. I thought, he’s straight, he’s been clean for eight months, and yet he’s threatening me. This time he threatened me either way, whether I stayed, whether I left, whether I went to the police, whether I didn’t. No matter what I did, he was going to kill me. At that point, I felt I had nothing to lose. He was going to kill me either way. So I went to the police, and that was the end of it. They came and arrested him. He was out of there. I had an order of protection, a restraining order against him, but I always wondered. Is he out there watching? Is he going to shoot me some day when I walk out of the trailer? Is he going to break in and do it?

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For a while I lived like that. And then one day I decided, you know what, this is ridiculous. I’ve had enough! And I finally went for some counseling. At last, I stopped using pot. I don’t know if I outgrew it or if I felt like I didn’t need it any more. By this time, I was thirty-five years old. I had used pot to try to find happiness, and it put me in with that drug culture. I ended up with the opposite of happiness. Invariably, I got involved with men who used speed. That stuff is just horrible. The mood swings and that sort of thing. I looked for happiness, and what did I find? Hell! I ended up meeting someone else through the same group of people in the trailer park. They were very heavy into that drug culture. He had just gotten out of prison. He ended up raping me, and that was a major, major turning point in my life. Ultimately, I stopped living. I stopped dating. I stopped smoking. I stopped having sex. I stopped talking to people. I stopped everything. I just closed down. But I was my parent’s care provider at the time, and I had to continue that. I never did tell them. I had to go to their house the same day it happened to prepare their dinner. My mother was fully incapacitated by that time and passed away shortly after that. Then I shut off completely. I didn’t even leave my mobile home for a month. Surprisingly, I didn’t go back to smoking pot. Smoked cigarettes for a couple of days, though. Then I realized that smoking was something I had control over. I couldn’t control what he did, but I could control what I did. I wasn’t going to let this change what I decided about smoking pot, or what I decided about my job, or anything else. I wasn’t going to let it affect me. I’m not sure why I didn’t report the rape. Perhaps because I was in a state of shock. He was someone I had been dating for a while. One day I had gotten upset with him because he wanted strictly oral sex, and I said, “You know what? I can’t do this,” and I walked out. I called it off and ended the relationship. A week later, he saw someone in the car with me. It was my friend’s young son. When he drove by and saw that, he went into a rage. He drove around

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the block to see who I was with. I thought when he saw who I was with, that it was a teenager, it would be the end of it and he would realize that he was going off into a rage for no reason. Obviously, that was not the case. The next time I saw him, I went over to his apartment to talk to him. I still was very attracted to him and wanted to get back together. I was in the process of telling him that, and I was sitting on one end of the couch, and he was sitting on the other end, when he put his arms out for me. When I went to him, he grabbed me by the hair. I don’t even know if he said anything or not, but he forced me into giving him oral sex. In hindsight, putting all those things together, I realized he looked like my brother Chuck, another blonde hair, blue eyes, 6'1" tall, nice body, kind of thin. He was an ex-felon. My other brother was an ex-felon. If I had to give some advice to another woman, based on my experience, I would tell her to examine her role models and try to find out what it is that makes them important. I smoked pot because I believed that it would make me happy. I still look for someone who can make me happy. I shouldn’t say make me happy. That’s not right . . . someone who is happy or someone who knows how to have fun and enjoy life without needing something to make him happy. I still like someone intelligent, who will let me be myself, who will love me for who I am, unconditional love, who will not try to control me or be my father. Someone who will allow me to have my independence but still be in a secure relationship. Someone who’s not a pervert, someone who will not cheat. I don’t want a drug user. I don’t want an alcoholic. I don’t want an addictive personality. I’ve had enough of them to last a lifetime. Two lifetimes. What I Have Learned The biggest lesson I’ve learned is if you hang around with drug addicts, you’re going to end up dating one. I saw what happened to Andy. He was never the same again. He totally lost it. He was the first person to teach me about the dangers of speed.

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All the time I hung around with addicts, I never said to myself, they’re addicts, I’m out of here! It didn’t seem to matter because I never used speed, so I wasn’t worried about becoming an addict. But I was afraid of it because of what it did. It took Andy. I think I stayed with Nick, the one after Andy, because he kept saying he’d quit. Part of me still believed that he quit because of me. I talked Andy into quitting, showed him how to quit. I led the way. The nurturer, the mother came out! I can take care of you, dear. I can make it all better. But I was just rationalizing. When it didn’t get fixed, I would get frustrated. Then I’d rationalize in the opposite direction. It was their problem, and I couldn’t control it, which, in actuality, is more rational. I can’t control someone else’s behavior. That was one of the major lessons I learned. I heard that over and over, but it didn’t set in until I let it. I could be the mom and put a Band-Aid on it, but it’s not the Band-Aid that heals the problem; it’s not the person that puts the Band-Aid on that actually heals it. It’s their inner strength that comes from within that heals the cut and not the person who puts the Band-Aid on. So I closed my box of Band-Aids and finally put it away. Nowadays, I want to work with children because of the issues I dealt with as a child. I know the feelings I experienced and the reasons for them. I spent years in counseling. Leaving the house wasn’t the answer. I needed to address what the others were doing, as well as how I was reacting, my coping mechanisms, or lack of them. I hope these realizations will help me understand the children I counsel, as well as the issues that come up in adulthood as the result of molestation. Hopefully, I can prevent children from shutting down or following a destructive path because of what I experienced and what I learned from those experiences. I want to give them the right tools—healthy tools—to deal with the issues and not avoid them, not cover them up, not let them control their life.

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This experience has reinforced my understanding of the different addictive personality types that I have seen. Andy was ignorant of the effects of drugs and it overpowered him. It destroyed him before he even realized it. Nick enjoyed being a drug addict. His personality fit the role. It will destroy him, too. It took me a long time to learn my lessons, but I learned them well.

— Amy’s Advice to You — 1. Drugs: Look at the people the guy hangs around with. That can be a big clue. Identify the type of friends he has. If the majority of his friends are drug addicts, it’s likely that he is involved in some way. 2. Bars: I’m very leery of meeting people in a bar. Why is he there? Is he an alcoholic? Again, it’s partying type of atmosphere. It reduces my access but, still, I’m very leery. If he’s drunk, watch out. Look at the environment, where you meet them, how you meet them. 3. Appearances: Nowadays, I always wonder when I see a man who’s very thin. I still like tall and thin, but I’m very leery of this. Are they thin because they’re using drugs or because they’re an alcoholic, or are they naturally thin? 4. Definitely pay attention to the clues. Find out what this person is like ahead of time, before all the lust sets in. Before you’ve had sex for the first time, try as hard as you possibly can to put that off until you’ve had more conversation. Once you have sex, all the thoughts are out the window. It doesn’t matter. Then you’re already in lust or in love, past the point of reasoning, and it’s harder to let go or call it off. If you haven’t had sex, it’s easier to say this guy isn’t right, but maybe the next guy will be. Once you date somebody and you’ve started having sex, you’ve already committed yourself to more time, and I think that time

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commitment sometimes can hold you back. You say to yourself, I’ve tried for three months so maybe I should try a little harder, a little longer. Therefore, fit as much conversation as you can in the first three hours . . . or three days . . . or three dates . . . to learn more about him before you jump into a relationship. 5. Personality: Is he aggressive or assertive? There’s a fine line. Try to find out where that fine line is . . . and the opposite . . . sometimes if they’re too quiet or too private, they may be involved in drugs, or internet activities and affairs, or secretive sex type of things. 6. Sex: Knowing their sex history is important. Know what kind of experimenting they have done. Then you can find out what some of their private ideas are. 7. Ask yourself: Does he enhance my life? If he doesn’t, you don’t need him in your life.

Benjamin Franklin once remarked that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

9 Maggie | Older Woman, Younger Man “You get what you settle for.” —from the movie Thelma and Louise

he first thing you notice about Maggie is her husky voice, deep and throaty. Then you become aware of her quiet strength and sensitive nature. Maggie is the kind of woman you are sure you could trust with your innermost secrets. When she speaks, the words slowly leave her lips, almost reluctantly, each one soft and measured. Picture a forty-six-year-old woman who looks five years younger, with light brown curly hair, blue eyes, 5'6", and a few extra pounds that accumulated over the years. “As for my weight,” she smiled, “I don’t go there,” and she changed the subject. Her clothes are social-worker practical with just the right amount of earthiness. She’s the kind of person who is right at home in comfortable sandals. Maggie has two grown daughters from a previous marriage. I divorced my husband in 1998, and it was a very painful divorce because I had trusted him like I had never trusted anybody before in my life. It was a 139

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real betrayal. To put it simply, a few years ago he called me, apologizing, “I know I was not there for you or the girls the way you needed me to be, but I want you to know that I will always be there for you . . . and the girls.” Since then he has called me every birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. He’s grown up a lot since the divorce. So have I. Here I am, forty-six years old, and I know pretty well who I am, what I want in my life, and what I don’t want in my life. I realized when I was about forty that I had a choice . . . I could do this; I should not do that. I was divorced and not really looking, not really interested. My life and career were right on course, and I was really enjoying just being . . . me. And then . . . along came Adam. I met him in a rather unique way. He was quite a bit younger than me, younger than I would be interested in being involved with. He really pursued me, and I truly liked who he seemed to be. We met, of all places, in a bookstore. I was enjoying something I was reading and I started laughing. He came up behind me and asked me what was so funny. We started talking and I remember I turned around and looked at him, and his eyes . . . oh, they were so incredible. He really had amazing eyes, very kind eyes. Or so I thought. Anyway, we had coffee, we met for dinner, we met again, we talked, I really liked who he was and what he seemed to be about. He verbalized values and beliefs that I thought were pretty incredible for a man his age. He seemed emotionally mature, way beyond his years. Part of me said, you’re being ridiculous. He’s much younger than you, and the other part said, oh, who cares? You only live once. Just go for the ride. I didn’t want to be one of those people who, when they’re on their death bed, regret all the things they didn’t do. I believe that people come into your life for a reason. You learn from them as well as teach. The main thing is to take whatever it evolves to be, minute by minute, day by day, however long it might be. I really liked who he was, and we saw each other over a long period of time. There was nothing critical. He just seemed to accept who I was at any given time. That was really refreshing because all of the men I have ever been involved with to any degree have always wanted to take over—what I

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would do—how I would do it—all of that. If there would have been even a hint of that, I would have been . . . bye . . . see ya. Well, after a year he wanted to move out West. The irony is that I always wanted to live out there. I even visualized a living space, and somehow I felt that was where I was supposed to be as well. So now we were living together, a couple of thousand miles away from family. It started to become apparent to me after about six months that being in a strange place, not having anyone at all that I could use as a reality check, and finances being what they were, it was grandiose thinking on his part. He got us into a property that cost a great deal of money, which, had I been making the salary I made when I left, wouldn’t have been a problem. But, here the wages are so much lower for social workers, I mean it’s not even a living wage. It’s a joke. Therefore, I made excuses and rationalizations and justifications about our relationship and what was happening to me physically. I was feeling less than because I was starting menopause, and there were changes in my body. So I was blaming my feelings on that, rather than realizing it wasn’t about me, it was about him. I had never been around an alcoholic, so I didn’t see the telltale signs. Also, part of it was the fact that I was working sixty, seventy hours a week. You have to understand, here I was with a man who was fifteen years my junior, but professed not to be affected by that at all. The bottom line was I wasn’t working at this as a lifetime thing. I just liked who he seemed to be, and the rest was just dessert. Adam was very good looking, over six feet tall, a big man, very gentle in manner and voice. Never raised his voice . . . ever. So I was dealing with all this stuff while I was working double shifts many, many days in a row. He was self-employed, however, and he was dipping into my account because he needed the money up front to buy supplies, in order to do the job and get paid. My way of thinking has always been, and probably will be modified greatly from now on, we’re partners in this together, and you do what you have to do to make things work out. It was a team effort. Nevertheless, I had occasional uneasy feelings about it.

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Money is a real issue with me and, though I’ve worked on it, the lack of it scares me because it’s always been just me. Nobody else. I had to raise my kids by myself. It’s always been like that, so I don’t know why I’m constantly afraid. But the fear is always there. That’s always been a touchy issue, but I really never seriously addressed it. If I did, I would just rationalize my uneasiness and feel foolish. But, I didn’t listen to my gut, which was telling me you are being used and abused and it’s not O.K. You should put your foot down. But I didn’t . . . not for a long time. Then, when I started to become me again, it seemed like I was recovering my lost self. I was so exhausted from the physical stuff going on and, on top of all that, I had been with him a year and a half when I learned I had cancer . . . not only was that a shock, but I realized my doctor never told me. Oh, that really threw me for a loop! I got a letter from the hospital where I had some surgery, a follow-up saying that they liked to keep in touch with people who had been diagnosed and/or treated for cancer. I thought . . . What!!! It took me a while to deal with that. I went to my doctor and said, you need to get those records. Sure enough, I had cancer, and I was never informed. They just treated it with laser. Changes were going on in my body, and my doctor advised me that I needed a complete hysterectomy. He told me that for two and a half years cellular changes were occurring, and they needed to be addressed. All during this time, Adam was drinking heavily. He would actually have seizures and fall down on the floor. I’d find him face down, and I wouldn’t know what to expect when I came home from work. One day, I called his family and asked for help because I didn’t know if he was going to live through the night. They sent money immediately. He quit drinking for a period of time, but then he started drinking again. It just got worse and worse. He became so critical of everything I did. I would be criticized because the roll of toilet paper wasn’t on the roll in my bathroom. Guilty as charged. Sometimes I would be flying out of there in the morning, so I would just get a fresh roll and put it on the toilet tank top.

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There would be a half full waste basket—you know, tissues or such—not garbage, but he would go on and on about that. All he would talk about were these same old things and we would go round and round. He’d wake me up out of a dead sleep and do really bizarre things like be on the other side of the room, and something would come flying across the room and hit the bed, which, in turn, would make the dog start barking. I would be awakened from a dead sleep . . . all night long. Intimacy had completely stopped. All he did was watch stupid television shows. He wouldn’t talk, sometimes for days on end. He’d be drunk, but he wouldn’t seem drunk. Yet, I could smell it on his breath. He’d get into trouble financially, and I’d have to bail him out, or his family would bail him out. Finally, I just told them, no more, I’m done. Please don’t rescue him. If you keep doing this he’s never going to learn. He would sit and talk to me about how close I am to my daughters and how he never had that kind of relationship with his mother and so on. At the same time, he would criticize the clients I worked with. “Why don’t they just get a job. Nobody ever handed me anything on a silver platter,” and I thought, you know, it’s exactly the opposite. He got everything on a silver platter. Sometimes he was given thousands of dollars at a time. He never had to be accountable and responsible because his parents would always bail him out. He came from a very wealthy family. Oh, yes. He had my debit card, which I gave him because his was maxed out. He had my car and would drive me to work and pick me up. I never went anywhere, just to work. And then he would criticize my car! Yet, he had a hunk of junk sitting in the driveway that didn’t run. I wondered how I was going to get out of this mess. I don’t make enough money to put any aside. There were times I was ready to go . . . just grab my three cats and my dog and take off. At one point I started recording in a journal exactly what happened, what I said, what he said, what I felt, what he had done. It became my reality

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check because I didn’t have anyone to confide in. I’m the type of person who feels every day is a new day. Everybody has a new chance, including me. That’s just the way I am. I guess I’ll always be an optimist. I realized I had to do something. I had been stuck in this here and now. Five years could pass and I’d still be in the same old boat. I had been in this relationship a good year and a half already. I decided to visit my daughters who live in another state where I own a home. Those eleven days away, walking on the beach, just doing nothing but being there, thinking, I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it, but I knew I was going to leave him, and I gave myself a time limit in which to do it. I knew I would be able to recognize an opportunity when it would arise. Since he had driven my car into the ground . . . didn’t change the oil, didn’t do anything . . . one of the first things I did when I came back was to buy a new car. I didn’t even tell him. I went to work on a Thursday and then went straight to an automobile agency that a very close friend, Gabrielle, had recommended. She made the call and then said, “There you go!” I said, “Gabrielle, are you my angel? Because you need to be . . . to get me in another car,” since my credit was lousy—not because of Adam, but from a previous marriage. That was a financial disaster, too, but that’s another story. Lo and behold, I did get a car, a very nice car . . . and . . . I drove home. He didn’t say anything. Nothing. By the way, when I came back from my trip, I started asserting my rights as a human being. Rather than reacting to what he said, withdrawing into myself, feeling bad, or responding in kind, I would be brief, state the facts, and walk away. It drove him nuts! His drinking increased even more . . . if that was possible. I don’t know how much he was able to work. I was supporting him. I gave him everything I earned; I didn’t buy soda; I didn’t go out to eat. Nothing. I virtually spent no money. Everything I wore came from a thrift shop. I really didn’t mind. That wasn’t the problem. The quality of my life was the problem. The problem was that everything I valued, he began to devalue.

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He twisted everything around, and only my journal saved my sanity. It reinforced my knowledge that this is not about me; it’s about him. I recognized that he had some really deep-seated issues and he needed big time help. I had been working with women who had been in abusive relationships and being in this situation helped me very much in my work because I realized how easy it was to become traumatized. There were many traumas over a period of time, which kept me connected with somebody I couldn’t stand. Abuse clouds your thinking to a great degree because you’re keeping a secret. But then I told someone. I stopped keeping this big secret and things began to change. Before that, I either put on a front, or I didn’t say anything at all. Anyway, his response to my increased self-esteem was a more aggressive attacking of me. My self-esteem was a threat. A big threat. I don’t know what his agenda was, I only know he was deeply disturbed from whatever happened way back in his childhood. I learned from a family member that there were problems back then . . . and my heart goes out to him . . . but it doesn’t belong to him. My life belongs to me, and my heart wasn’t going to be held captive any longer. Shortly after, I had major surgery. The day after the surgery, I was dressed and ready to go home at six in the morning. After breakfast, I called a taxi and was on the way to the elevator with a wheelchair I snagged out of the utility room and all my stuff piled on my lap when a nurse caught me. She made me go back, saying she had to get a written release and then I would be free to go. I had a complete hysterectomy and went home exactly twenty-four hours afterward. I had a lot to do. I was going to look for an apartment. So I came home, made dinner . . . my mom was there . . . she came back with me after the visit to my daughters. She could see something was not right. The next morning she had bought breakfast from this little deli that makes fabulous breakfast sandwiches that are to die for. After breakfast, I walked into the bedroom and saw him sitting on the bed with a glass of wine in his hand. It was half full. I turned and walked

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back out, heading for the kitchen. He came out after me and stopped me in the living room. My mother was out on the patio waiting for me. She was having coffee and leafing through a magazine. He started telling me all these faults I had and things like, your mom is really tight with money. This tirade was going on and on. Again, I heard about the toilet paper. Then he started accusing me of other things, and I asked him for specific instances. He just continued the tirade. I said, “No, you give me an example. Unless you can state specific facts I don’t want to hear you.” Well, he was furious! He went on and on about how I had set a boundary and it cost more than that to live. “Look, Adam, this is the amount of rent, this is how much the phone and utilities are. This is my half. I’m not giving you any more than that.” “Oh, but it costs more than that.” “Give me specifics, Adam. How does it cost more than that?” “Well, it just does.” “No, Adam, I think you just don’t have your half because you’re drinking it all up and not working. You’re just lying passed out on the sofa. So, until you can come up with a bill to prove we need it, you’re not getting any more from me.” At that, he marched out of the house. His friend picked him up because his car works for forty five minutes and then quits. Anyway, I went back into the bedroom, looked under the bed, and lo and behold, there was a gallon jug of wine. This wasn’t the first time I found hidden bottles all over the place. But to do that in front of my mom . . . that was inexcusable. That was Thursday. That very day, I got out four big U-Haul boxes, taped the bottoms, and started packing. That night a friend called me and said, “Oh, I wish you were ready for a roommate.” I laughed, “I am really ready for a roommate.” “Actually, Maggie, I need a roommate by May first.” “I can’t. I have to give thirty days notice. I can’t move in until June first.” “That’s O.K. It’s not a problem.”

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On Saturday, my mom and I went to check out the place. It looked pretty good, so we clinched the deal, and that was the beginning. He was absolutely flabbergasted when I told him I was leaving. Unfortunately, I moved out of the frying pan and into the fire because her supposedly ex-boyfriend came back, broke into the house, and beat her up for making him leave . . . all this while I was there. I ran into my bedroom, locked the door, took the phone, and dashed into the closet. Just in the nick of time because he broke the bedroom door down . . . .he really did . . . took my wallet out of my purse, which was on the dresser, and all the while I was hiding in the closet scared to death, having called 911. They were asking me something, and I couldn’t talk! When he left the room, I heard her screaming, “The garage is on fire!” My car was in there. My new car. I dashed out of the closet, grabbed my purse and keys, got in the car, and backed it out . . . and saw him pulling away. I followed him and gave 911 his license number and the direction he was going. They arrested him right away. I was there at his pretrial and gave a statement to the judge. It was just horrible. That night I had a nightmare that I moved four times in two weeks. I left that roommate because . . . would you believe . . . she let him come back. The tension was so great that I didn’t know what I was going to find from day to day because he was extremely volatile. Now, Adam would say hurtful things, but he wasn’t violent. Well . . . .that was the catalyst to make me say, O.K. I don’t have enough money, but I’m ready to go back home. I wanted to have the finances available to fix up my house after it had been rented for seven years. New refrigerator, washer and dryer, things like that. Getting a job is no big deal. I’m not going to do social work any more because it doesn’t pay. Whatever I do, I just know it will unfold because I received an absolutely marvelous letter of recommendation from work. I teased my boss, “My God! You left out the part where I walk on water.” No,

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getting a job isn’t going to be a problem. I can actually work as a temp and make more money than I’m making right now. However, I’ve always had this little thing in the back of my head, this little business that I started doing and then stopped when I came here. It’s totally my creative side, which had been stifled this past year and a half. Coincidentally, my daughter called me the other night and said, “Mom, I can’t stand working for other people. Do you remember that idea you had, that business you dabbled in before you left town?” “Of course.” “Well, my husband and I have talked it over and we want to invest big time money and we want to push it right now, before Christmas. Let’s do it!” “You’re kidding!” “No, Mom, you just relax and do your thing and we’ll do all the rest.” “Oh, hon, that’s marvelous! Just one thing, though . . . ” “What’s that?” “Please don’t quit your day job just yet.” “Not to worry, mom.” Everything has been falling into place. I had to go through all that hell in order to say, I’m ready; I’m leaving now. And wouldn’t you know, at the precise moment I decided to leave, the couple who rented my home moved out. So my daughters are all in there painting, putting up new mini blinds . . . doing all that and it will be ready when I arrive. And . . . my ex-husband is flying out here the day before I leave to help me drive back. No kidding. I’ll be leaving at the end of the month to start a new life. I can’t wait. What I Have Learned First of all, I learned that I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. No matter how much education you have, you can be fooled. Alcoholics are great pretenders. I’ve witnessed that in the courtroom as an advocate for women. They come across as being very calm, rational, wonderful human beings. Some

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guy put a baseball bat in his wife’s mouth, knocked her teeth out because she didn’t have the laundry folded, and yet, up on the stand, in front of the judge, he seemed like a pillar of the community, a really neat guy, and she came across as a nut case. Secondly, I learned . . . trust your gut . . . it always tells you the truth. Not what appears to be the truth. Not what everybody else says or their perceptions of the truth. Your gut knows the truth. I’m very willing to love like I’ve never been hurt . . . what’s that saying? Dance like no one’s watching . . . I can’t remember any more. But next time my eyes will be open. I’ll be watching and listening carefully. I don’t have any regrets about this relationship because there were a lot of good things, and I’m a better person than I ever was. I wouldn’t recommend the experience, but whatever comes your way, just take what you want from it and discard the rest. Like garbage. You don’t leave it in your house to build up; you get rid of it. Take a good look at the relationship and ask yourself: What made me vulnerable? What would I have done differently? I think I needed to go through this to get to where I am right now. That’s the way life is. It teaches you, not through ecstasy and pleasure, but through the really hard stuff. I used to worry about what other people would think. Occasionally I still do, but not for long. I like who I am, and it doesn’t matter what other people think. Of course, like anyone else, I would like to be well thought of, but the most important thing is that I can look at myself in the mirror and not be ashamed of who I am, what I’ve done, or how I treat people. You can’t be good to others at great expense to yourself. I think I’m done. No, I’m just beginning!

— Maggie’s Advice to You — 1. Learn to recognize the signs of an alcoholic. With any addiction, the bottom line is dependency needs and traumas that haven’t been dealt with. I didn’t see the clues initially. Had I spent more time with him

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before we moved in together, I would have seen them. However, he hid it very well. I never saw him drunk. I saw him drink. But not to excess. I do remember that he said something about his ex-wife complaining, “Oh! You’re drinking again.” I should have paid more attention. There are always two sides to a story. Now I never believe anything I hear and only half of what I see. I take everything with a grain of salt. I think he is a major alcoholic. He goes through long periods of time when he doesn’t drink and then he starts in again. There are days and days when he can’t get out of bed because he is so physically ill. But that’s not my problem any more. 2. Even if you can’t pinpoint it, spell it out or see it; if your gut is telling you that it’s probably abusive, you’re probably being abused. It’s that simple. I got so caught up in the everyday survival stuff, that if I had not taken that journal and written down the truth, it would have taken me longer to see it for exactly what it was. Trust your gut. It always tells you the truth, not what appears to be the truth. 3. Keep a Journal. Document your thoughts and feelings. That is so important. In my opinion, it’s the surest way to find yourself. Journal, and then go back and look. You will see patterns. You will see what was happening and how you responded. Why was he doing that? What triggered it? What was really going on? Why was I feeling this icky when it was supposedly no big deal? This is why, because this is what really happened. This is how he twisted it. When you document it, you know what happened. Two days later, or even twenty-four hours after the emotional turmoil, you can’t be sure of anything. When you have someone tell you that’s not what happened, you’ll know whether that’s the truth because it’ll all be there in your journal. 4. If he’s toxic, leave him. Period. I know that I can still get pulled in because alcoholics are very good at not disclosing who they really are. Perhaps it’s because they’re so wounded they can’t share who they really are. In an alcoholic fog, he once said, “You know too much about me, and when people know me, they don’t love me any more.”

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I was preparing to get out of Dodge, so to speak, and I thought, that poor thing; I’m deserting him. But pity was not going to hold me there. I know I can love someone, but if he is toxic to my life I have to leave. If he won’t go, I have to go. Only economics kept me there so long. I was too exhausted to get another job. I worked fifty-seven hours the week before my surgery . . . on top of my 40 hours. I did a lot of double shifts, sixteen hour days. I didn’t know what was going to happen after surgery and I had very little sick time coming to me and I had a car payment. I thought that would be my cushion. I went back to work on the tenth day. My doctor almost had a fit. 5. Don’t worry about what other people will think. It doesn’t matter what they think. Be proud of who you are. 6. Experience is a great teacher. Learn by your experiences. Don’t look back. The past is over. Put one foot in front of the other and keep looking ahead.

“Glasses don’t help when I don’t have my eyes open.” —Unknown

10 Lexi | At Last! A Really Nice Guy I’ve been on so many blind dates, I should get a free dog. —Wendy Leibman

lexis is a 45-year-old Realtor with dark brown hair, highlighted in shades of blonde, which shows off her beautiful blue eyes. Alexis (everyone calls her Lexi) is of average height, but definitely has an above average figure and smiling personality. She has been divorced for eight years and has dated on and off the entire time and, as she says, “I have yet to meet a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” Her two grown daughters have flown the nest, and her ex-husband has remarried and lives in another state. I was on one of the usual Tuesday tours of our Real Estate company’s new listings of single family homes, when my friend, Sandy, another Realtor, mentioned that she was the best man at a wedding the past weekend. “That’s a new twist.” I told her, “I wonder what it’s like for a woman to be a best man.”

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“It turned out to be a very small wedding, but at the last minute the best man fell ill. Since I was a close friend of both the bride and groom, I stepped in to be the best man, and all ended well.” She said that she had fixed them up and was so happy to see them married. “This was the last single man I know,” she added. Without thinking, I blurted out, “If you ever find another one, let me know!” Much to my surprise, Sandy said, with a sudden gleam of matchmaker in her eyes, “As a matter of fact, I do know of somebody. One of my clients is moving into his new home this week. He’s a single airline pilot who recently moved to town. I’ll give him some time to get organized, then I’ll call him next week and give him your number.” “Why wait?” I smiled, “He might meet someone else in the meantime,” and I pictured a handsome pilot in his neatly pressed uniform. I can dream, can’t I? “You know, you’re right. I’ll call him today!” Then a horn beeped, and I had a little bounce in my step as I dashed out to my waiting carpool and was on my way to the next house on the tour. It was either feast or famine for me, and I had definitely been in the famine stage for too long. Sandy was waiting for me when I arrived at the last house on tour. She cornered me in the dining room and, with a big smile, whispered, “I just called him and gave him your number. Let me know how it turns out. His name is Tony. He’s a really nice guy and good looking, too.” Sounded great! Certainly a lot better than the last blind date I had. I waited two long weeks before finally calling Sandy. “Tony never called! What’s going on? How interested could he be?” So Sandy made another call. He said he’d been busy packing but would call that day . . . and he did. It was a Thursday, and he said he was moving into his new home on Saturday. O.K. That explained why I hadn’t heard from him. I assumed he had already moved. We made a date for the following Tuesday, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

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“Lately, every time I had a blind date I’ve been disappointed when I opened the door and looked at the man standing there,” I told Sandy. But when Tony showed up at my front door, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Sandy was right. He really was good looking. To add to the enjoyment of the evening, he took me to a lovely restaurant for dinner. He seemed like such a nice guy. He was well dressed and drove a nice car, too. I was definitely impressed. I judge men by their cars, among other things. A man is like his car—if it’s clean, I like that. If it’s a mess, so is he. It had been a long time since I had such a nice evening. Did I finally find what I was looking for? I was cautiously happy, but it was too soon to judge. However, the next date was enjoyable, too. Tony was such a nice guy, easy to talk to, comfortable to be with. It had been so long since I had felt this happy. What a good feeling! How wonderful to know joy again! Interestingly, at the same time, another man I had met a few months earlier called to say he was back in town. He was a snowbird who spent summers in his Pennsylvania home and owned a condo here, as well. Last week there was no one. Suddenly I had to juggle two men—the old All-or Nothing-Situation. However, the comparison was stark. Sean, the out-of-towner, seemed intent on getting me into his townhouse spa . . . naked. As far as I could tell, that was his only goal. Tony was a sweet, nice guy, who seemed genuinely interested in me. He was a real gentleman. It seemed as if my guardian angels had sent me two opposites so I could compare and know how wonderful it was to have a really nice man. However, they had another lesson for me as well. Oh, the twists of fate. Tony was the opposite of Sean. He didn’t seem to have any interest in sex, closeness, or intimacy in any form. After several weeks of seeing each other twice a week and emailing back and forth every day, it seemed like he was pulling back. I felt it in my gut. On Father’s Day I made Tony a special dinner, candlelight and all, and gave him a little gift. He had specifically asked me not to buy him a Father’s Day gift, but on special occasions I just like to give gifts . . . it’s my nature . . .

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so I gave him what I call a generic gift . . . a plant for his new house, along with a rather generic card that just said Happy Father’s Day from Lexi and Winston (my dog) . . . purposely not showing any warm sentiments. It seemed like this would be appropriate, given his reticence to get too close. Still, I should have seen the warning signs flashing in front of my face, but I ignored them because I thought I found “a really nice guy.” That evening, as we sat in the living room after dinner, I couldn’t help noticing that Tony tried to sit as far away from me as he could. He was pulling away. I could feel it. I couldn’t ignore it any more. I sensed that he felt we had become too close and it was too uncomfortable. Somehow I sensed that this man could not accept a close relationship. (Or did I put too much garlic in the pot roast?) Obviously, he had never known the true meaning of intimacy, even though he had been married over twenty years and had two children. He had told me his wife was one of those women who lay back on the bed and said, “Hurry up and get it over with!” Why did I have the feeling he was also the kind who wanted to hurry up and get it over with as well? This guy was in sexual kindergarten. He didn’t even know how to kiss. His idea of a romantic kiss was a quick peck on the lips, followed by a little embarrassed grin. His idea of a passionate kiss was five quick pecks in succession, after which he leaned back with satisfaction, as if he had given something extra special. Was this a man who was married more than twenty years? I was so disappointed because I have a healthy attitude toward sex, and he was trying to avoid any contact. Where was my brain? Was it asleep? Was I so desperate for “a nice man” that I overlooked this man’s sexual inadequacies? Tony didn’t call for three days after his Father’s Day feast. Not even a Thanks, I had a nice time. Did the generic plant and card scare him off ? Somehow, my gut told me I’d never see him again, but I couldn’t stand not knowing for sure, so I called him. With both anger and disappointment in my heart, I finally got up the courage to ask him if he OD’d on the pot roast he ate on Father’s Day. However, I knew what his answer would be. Some lame excuse. Why did I bother to call? What was it I needed to know?

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He laughed and said it was not the pot roast. He said he went home and thought a lot about everything and then asked if we could just be friends. My heart sank. My first thought was that I had gotten too close; he couldn’t handle it. He didn’t want a Father’s Day celebration, and I made it anyway. I was mentally kicking myself. Then I decided, O.K., Tony’s a very nice man. I’m willing to be just friends. That idea lasted for about two minutes before I realized that I wasn’t looking for a platonic friendship. I was looking for romance. That’s when I finally took off the rose-colored glasses and added up all the facts. Tony is a man who doesn’t know how to give of himself. He’s not a taker like Sean, but he’s not a giver, either. He doesn’t want a relationship, and I came along to complicate things. I want a relationship with all the basic elements. He’s incapable of giving more than an occasional phone call and dinner. That’s not enough for me. To be my friend, you must be there for me, and I will be there for you. I am willing to give . . . of my heart, my friendship, my trust, and my soul. I was there for him. When he asked, I gave him the name of a handyman and advice on what was needed to update his home. I brought him Chinese food one night because he was stuck at home all day with a bad leak in a pipe that turned his back yard into a swamp, and I did it all quietly, not asking for anything in return. And what did he give me? Dinner, his company, and nothing more. Talk about disappointment! Over the course of several weeks I went from hope to euphoria, which I hadn’t felt in so long, and then to depression. It was like riding a relationship roller coaster. I remember what Sandy said afterwards, “It’s not you; it’s him. It’s in his head. It’s nothing you did or said. So don’t think of the things you should have done. His wife left him after twenty years of marriage. He told me he never had much of a relationship with his sister or his children. Apparently, Tony never bonded with anybody. Perhaps not even with his wife. So how could he bond with you?” “Thanks, Sandy. Now you tell me.”

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“I didn’t know any of this until we went for coffee last week and he told me,” she said apologetically. “Well, he also told me about his children and sister. I just never stepped back and took a good look at the man.” Certainly there was more to this than met the eye. There was a piece missing from this puzzle. I didn’t see it because every guy I ever dated after I divorced my husband had only one goal: to get me into bed as soon as he could. I’m an attractive woman; at least that’s what my mirror tells me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t come across anyone whose brains were located above his belt. I should have picked up on it. Sexual kindergarten. Not calling me for days at a time. Just dinner dates. Baby kisses. It all added up. Who knows? I now realize that most likely Tony was gay and in the closet and didn’t want my friend to know it. He probably felt obligated to go out with me. I just didn’t see them but all the signs were there. Anyone else want a platonic friendship with me? The line forms to the right. Postscript I’m pleased to report that a year later, I met a really wonderful man and we’ve been happily married for two years. When I met my husband, I kept looking for warning signs. I looked hard and long . . . with my eyes wide open . . . and then I married him. He’s a great guy. There is a happily ever after. You just have to keep your eyes open and have faith that it can happen.

— Lexi’s Advice to You — 1. Keep your eyes wide open. Look for warning signs. I should have seen them, but I chose to ignore them because he was a nice guy and I wanted so badly for the relationship to work.

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2. If it doesn’t seem right, if you’re not comfortable, trust your intuition and end the relationship. I knew early on, that something wasn’t right. In time, the two of you should naturally move into a deeper relationship. If this doesn’t happen, admit that he’s just not that into you. 3. Find out as much as you can about a blind date before you meet him. Obviously my friend didn’t know him very well.

If a friend arranges a blind date for you, ask how well she or he knows him.

11 Pam | Stamp It on the Middle of My Forehead Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. —Will Rogers

t times I forget and my mind wanders to the future. When that happens, I have to stop myself. My name is Pam, and I am in my early fifties. I am about 5'3" tall. Nowadays, I take very good care of myself, but in the course of the last ten years, I bet I’ve lost and gained 200 lbs. No kidding. I’ve gone from 150 lbs. to about 116 lbs. But now I work in a physically demanding profession. I don’t have to go to a gym to keep myself in shape because in my work I just run and run. But I like it, and I’m very fortunate to be around some extremely wonderful people who have touched my life in so many beautiful ways. They’ve taught me a lot of lessons. Basically, by nature I’m a very forgiving person. But I’m learning all the time. I try to live one day at a time. I almost forgot to mention that I’m of Asian descent. Both of my parents are Chinese. My mother was not born in this country, but my father was. 161

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Actually, I think I have the best of both worlds, America and China. However, every once in a while my Brooklyn accent comes through because I grew up in New York. My mother was overwhelmed because she was a non-English speaking person in an English speaking world in Brooklyn. She couldn’t even read a prescription on the back of a bottle. She lived in a male-dominated world with this little girl who was able to read and take her mother by the hand and translate from English into Chinese for her. She relied on me, and I became Little Mom. All I wanted was to watch TV and read because reading is my passion . . . or be with my friends. These were all the things I wanted that I could never do. Instead, I was washing, cleaning, and cooking . . . you name it. When I was growing up, that’s all I ever did. “Dinner is at six o’clock. I don’t want it any later than that, and don’t give me anything out of a can.” So I learned to do everything by the seat of my pants, and everything was from scratch. Relationships have never come easily for me. That’s because I was a late bloomer. I didn’t even have a boyfriend until after I was eighteen. Because of my Asian background, I wasn’t allowed to date until that age. Also, I was forbidden by my parents to date outside my ethnic background. Therefore, I didn’t date. But when I went to college, away from the eyes of my parents, I went crazy. Forget studying, I wanted a social life. But I never went so bananas that I didn’t watch what I did. I still knew right from wrong. My first serious relationship was with Bill, my son’s father. He was someone I knew from high school, but he was just a friend then. When I met him on a trip to Washington D.C. we struck up a quick friendship again. I thought, gee whiz, here was a guy I liked back in high school. I thought he was nice and attractive back then, but my parents wouldn’t allow me to date him, nor would I even think of it because I wanted to please my parents. Well, now I was in my twenties, and I thought I can do this. I’m old enough. However, I became pregnant and I was not married to him. He asked me to marry him after he learned about the baby, but I refused.

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“I’m only going to ask you this one time,” he said. “Do you want to get married . . . because of this child?” “No, Bill, I don’t want to marry you.” It was that simple. I didn’t love him. I knew that. But I wanted to have the baby. So we had the child and stayed together for years. Our son was about five years old when I left Bill. Although he didn’t want me to leave, I did so because Bill was emotionally abusive. In the morning, I would drop my son off at the nursery, and I would pick him up later. Bill would never drop him off or pick him up. He never changed a diaper. He said it was the woman’s job. And he said, when I say jump, you jump, and count how high on the way up. There was no gray. Only black or white. I was not allowed to buy lipstick or wear makeup. If I went to the mall to buy myself a new blouse or something, when I came back I would rumple it up and throw it in my drawer until I had it for a while because I wasn’t allowed to buy new things. He would say, “Oh, how long have you had this? You just buy things to show yourself off.” He would ask me, “Where are you going?” I’d say, “To the drugstore.” “Well, take the baby with you. That way you’ll be back sooner. And if you’re longer than twenty minutes, call me from that store.” If I found myself being a few minutes late, I would call. I wouldn’t dare forget. He’d go, “Where are you?” I’d say, “I’m where I told you I’d be . . . at the store.” However, I was too much of a free spirit even then to handle that. Bill didn’t hit me or anything like that, but it was an emotional hit in the face if you ask me. However, I was so afraid of losing a relationship, I went along with it. No one has really taken care of me. And that’s O.K. I’ve always taken care of someone else. If there was a baby crying, there was this man sitting in the living room saying, “Hey, in there! Bring me a coke!” “I’m in the middle of cooking and the baby needs me.”

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“It doesn’t matter. Bring me a coke. Stop what you’re doing. You’re the woman. You’re to wait on me.” I heard that a lot. His mother even told me, “I don’t see how you can stand it. Just tell him where to get off.” I told her, “I’ve tried, but he still does it. He’s never going to change.” After I left Bill, I didn’t have much contact with him, except for two major times. One day he came to see me just to say, “I’m doing great, and this is it. You won’t see me again.” And for the second time in his life, he laid a hand on me. Actually, he knocked the breath out of me. Knocked me off the stoop on which I was standing and walked to his car, drove away, and I never saw him again. He drove fourteen hours just to do that. I think it was just anger and resentment toward me for leaving him. The second time, he called to tell me he was getting married. That was it. I never heard from him again. Thinking back, I said he was emotionally abusive, but there was physical abuse, too. The first time he hit me, he knocked me to the floor. I was about five months pregnant with my son. I had said something to him. I don’t remember what it was any more, but I’m sure it was out of anger. After he knocked me down, he pinned me to the floor with his hand on my throat. Then he picked me up off the floor and put me on the floor furnace. (We had a floor furnace at the time.) I shouted, “You’re burning my feet!” and I jumped off. When he realized what he had done, I think he came to his senses. He stopped and stood there. He was literally red with anger. At that time I was feeling very emotionally hurt and physically abused. I went into the kitchen and picked up an aluminum frying pan, and I said, “Don’t come near me again.” But he started toward me again, and I hit him on the back of the neck with the frying pan. All it did was dent the pan. Well, he just started laughing. It really didn’t hurt him. It was one of those cheap little frying pans, and the whole handle bent back. He just stood there laughing . . . and that was the end of the incident. I was so glad I didn’t have a miscarriage after that happened because he actually threw me on the floor.

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After I left Bill, I went back to college where I entered a work/study program. I put my little five-year-old son into daycare for low-income children because I sure was low-income at the time. I was going to school on grants, working for the head of the department . . . grading papers . . . doing this and that. Basically, I started from scratch once more, but this time with a child. Yet, I began enjoying my life. All I ever wanted to do was to save the world and the environment, so after college I moved upstate and lived there for many years, writing grants for someone who was deep into ecology, and I also wanted to save the world. It was a very happy time for me, and I only left that part of the state because of a relationship with John. We were very much in love when we started our relationship. John was a terrific person, and we understood each other very well. We could sit together and talk for hours and not be tired. He was a wonderful person. But we had money issues. I guess all my life I’ve had prosperity issues . . . abundance . . . that sort of thing. I began to think, boy, I am so tired of being poverty stricken, working as hard as I can and not getting further ahead. That’s an awful thing . . . not to be able to get ahead. John was a self-employed artist. Somehow, I always gravitate toward artists, and we never seemed to make ends meet. I know that money should not be an issue, but in this case it was. If you don’t have it, it really, really hurts. He was so conservative that at times, if I wanted to spend money on something that could have been really important to us, I wasn’t allowed. Yet, as a child, my mother and father hardly had two cents to rub together, but we were very happy. As my father started making a little bit of money, we were allowed to spend . . . of course, within boundaries. I wanted to be able to do the same thing in a relationship. That’s where we didn’t see eye to eye. I was this little ex-hippie. If we didn’t have money, that was O.K. I would think, oh, gee, we’re raising a kid here and it’s O.K. to have him in a school lunch program. When we did have some money, we always had to use it to pay bills, instead of saving it or spending it on a decent automobile. Our

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ideas on how to spend were different. I wanted to spend it on a nice car or perhaps do something for the whole family, but I always made sure we had the next meal. Things were so hard for us, that after struggling and struggling I couldn’t deal with it any more. I left him after ten years, and I’ve always felt guilty about it. I’ve been carrying my guilt for so long . . . even through other relationships. That’s why they don’t last. My next relationship also lasted ten years. This time I was married. It was pretty mellow, actually. Ben and I didn’t fight. We probably didn’t communicate very well, but we were two people who pretty much just let each other live. We did things together, more so than in my first relationship. But even that faded with time. You know. It’s like a sack race. The two inside legs are in the sack and the outside legs are able to move independently. I allowed him to do what he wanted to do such as playing golf, fishing, and he didn’t mind me going out with my friends. Still, toward the middle of the marriage it all came to a head. I looked at our relationship, and I was very dissatisfied with it. We were doing everything apart . . . all four of our legs were outside the sack . . . and we didn’t fix that. I just thought that if I allowed Ben enough freedom, and he allowed me the same, it would be a nice relationship where he could never say, you kept me from doing this or that. He probably thought the same thing . . . I didn’t keep you from having lunch with your friends or going to another city to see art shows. Nevertheless, one day Ben walked in and said, “I have something to tell you. Sit down.” At that moment, I know that all of the blood must have drained out of my face because . . . I knew. I knew right then what he was going to say. He said he felt guilty, and then he added, “This is the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do in my whole life.” That’s how he started it. “I’m leaving.” “When?” My stomach did a somersault. He about bowled me over when he said, “Right now.” “Where are you going?” “I have another place.”

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Within two hours, he was gone. I was devastated. I was in shock. I still had a lot of feelings for him. It was not another woman. We had just grown apart. I felt . . . and here’s where that guilt comes in . . . I felt that it was my karma; it was my payback for leaving John. A debt has been paid. Ben beat me to it. I knew something was fishy earlier that day. It was Ben’s day off from work, and I was always able to call him on his cell phone, whether he was fishing, playing golf, or whatever. So I called him and asked, “When are you coming home? We’re supposed to go to the movies.” “I can’t talk to you right now. I’ll tell you about it later,” and he hung up on me. I thought, what is going on? Yet, I had an intuitive feeling. I’ve always been rather psychic. When I worked in an art gallery, I used to say, I’m going to sell that piece today. It could be $5,000. Someone would walk in and go, “I’ll take that piece.” I did it all the time. So that day I knew something was going on. Two hours later, I called him back. All he said was, “I can’t talk to you right now,” and hung up on me again. When he showed up a few hours later, I had that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. When he said, “Sit down I have something to tell you,” I knew before he even said it. I felt it in my heart. I’m a heart person. That’s also where I carry all that guilt. I never wanted to carry it. Perhaps it would help me if I told John, that person I left all those years ago, that I was sorry. I’ve written letters . . . but I never mailed them. Yet, whenever I saw him afterwards, he was very kind and considerate of me, probably because of our son, who he adopted all those years ago. Maybe that’s where some of my guilt is coming from. I think of Ben’s leaving me as payback for what I did to John. I was younger, more impetuous, and quicker to take action. Now I sit on things forever. When I left John, it seemed like it was all of a sudden. He always held anger inside, but every once in a while he’d kick a door in. That would be the only sign of any anger for years and years. He never hurt me. Heavens, he was a very gentle person. Am I going to hold onto this guilt because I know he’s still holding onto this anger?

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I don’t want to enter into a long-term relationship again because I’m so vulnerable. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Now I’m enjoying my life again. At last I’m reading, meditating, feng shui-ing my house. I’m into personal growth. I’m a very spiritual person. My mistake was that I wanted too much from a person. Also, I took too much personally. You would think I’d learn. You’d think I would just let it go and allow a person do what he needs to do. Even if this person needs to jump in a lake in the freezing water . . . go . . . if that’s what you want to do. It probably would work better than what I’ve been doing! I’ve taken care of people all my life. But no one has ever taken care of me. In college, I was finally able to play. But when I had my son, I changed. I quit playing. When I left John . . . that’s it! I can play again. Each time I left a man I would start to play, after so many years of duties and responsibilities, of doing nothing but working and taking care of this home, this person, this child, and not taking care of myself. The only way I knew how not to do that was to leave the person . . . until one day someone left me. When I think back, all I wanted was someone who was intellectually stimulating, someone who was passionate about everything . . . the way he lived, the way he loved a person, the way he cared about children or his work . . . passionate about life. And I want someone who was a giver. I’ve never had a giver. All the men I have lived with have been takers. At first, it didn’t seem that way because you know how it is when you first start a new relationship. They’re so happy to give. Perhaps I trained them to be takers because I’m so willing to give. I don’t want a man who just gives me presents because I’ve had that. Flowers. They don’t last. I want a person in my life who is willing to share . . . feelings . . . words . . . and thoughts . . . as well as wanting to be with you. They started out sharing, which is the way it should be. I’m willing to share my time with you, my love, my energy. That’s what you fall in love with . . . that person’s energy, and the fact that they are giving you time. Then, as you get

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to know them, as they start spending more time with you, it seems like they take it away. That’s what happened in each of my relationships. They were willing to give and give until . . . .oh, well, I have her now. I don’t need to give any more. Unfortunately, I am one of the most loyal people in the world. I stayed and stayed beyond the welcoming point. I did it with Ben, the last one . . . until he left. I was hoping he would change. You can’t change spots on a leopard, but I guess I thought I could. I’ve finally learned it. Now I hope I can live it. Ben and I wanted to keep everything the way it was. We didn’t want to rock the boat. We were living in the same house, sharing the expenses . . . just going on with our day to day things . . . not fighting. We didn’t have a cross word with each other. Everyone in the whole world thought, boy, if our relationship could be like theirs! Look at them! However, there wasn’t much communication. Passion and romance had disappeared five years before, but we were still together. It had become a platonic relationship. But that’s not what I wanted. We were always telling each other, Oh! I love you, I love you. It was just lip service, there was no action. We would sleep in the same bed, but I’d stay up and read or something and then go to bed later. At one point, I suspected that he was having an affair. I actually caught them together at one in the morning. I did talk to him about it, but he said there was nothing going on; he just liked talking to her. Every time I would go to look for him, he’d be sitting in a bar. Each of these times, I stayed because I loved the person enough to work it out. Just because something was wrong, I didn’t want to say, I’m out of here. Infidelity is the worst, the absolute worst, and yet I stayed. I’ve been programmed for so long to hang in there, to be the nurturer, the enabler, loving this person no matter what. I hope I finally learned.

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— Pam’s Advice to You — 1. He must be able to show you his love, not just throw loving words at you. He must be available. 2. If it’s not working, don’t hang around another five years. Don’t stay in a dead relationship. 3. Infidelity is inexcusable. Period. 4. You deserve better than you’ve accepted. Don’t accept less than you deserve. 5. Don’t always feel that it’s your fault that the relationship has problems. He has to accept responsibility as well, for making a relationship work. 6. Forget the guilt. Get on with your life. 7. There must be communication. In my last long relationship, we could talk into the wee hours of the night. We could talk about the economy, about the Beatles, about Jackson Pollack, we could talk about anything. That’s how diverse our conversation was. That’s how the relationship started . . . before we got anything going on at all, we talked. 8. Don’t ignore the warning signs. I saw the signs, but by that time I cared about the man so much that I felt it was impossible to let him go. Recognize that it’s that person’s problems; it’s not yours and do not take it personally. I actually want to make a stamp out of that and stamp my head with it. Right here on my head so I could always slap my forehead! Then I can look at it all the time.

The longer you wait, the harder it is to end the relationship.

12 Rebecca | A Diamond in the Rough You get what you settle for. —Unknown

’m a pretty good interior designer, and I breed dogs in my spare time. I’m 5'6", 38 years old, short red hair, with a rather nice figure, if I must say so. It’s hard for me to say whether I’m introverted or extroverted because I’m a little of both. I tend to be a very deep thinker. I’ve always been extremely sensitive. I feel things very easily. I’m a very loyal friend. I care a lot about people. I have a degree in accounting, of all things, because I didn’t think pursuing an art career would be practical. Growing up, I had no voice in the house. No one ever asked for my opinion. My mother wouldn’t even let me pick out my own clothes. I wasn’t allowed to decorate my own room. My mother would even admit that I was a pet, not a person in the house. As the pet, I got a lot of hugs. That’s why I’m a very huggy kind of person. I was never included in a conversation. I was

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completely alone in the family. My two older brothers never played with me, they were only interested in hurting me. They would pin me to the floor and tickle me . . . both of them, together. Now, that is true torture. And I was tortured every day, sometimes more than once a day. I soon learned that you do not speak, you do not make a sound, because someone might notice you and hurt you. If I was alone with my brothers, that was truly a scary thing. I had to do everything they told me to do and do it just right. I could never complain about anything. It was deeply instilled in me. Therefore, I’m a very nonconfrontational person because I was trained from very early on to be one. It’s interesting that when I have nightmares, it’s not that I’m being hurt, it’s that I’m being tickled. I have trained myself to wake up, if I’m being tickled in a dream. The thought of being tickled brings back the most horrible memories. It’s so painful to be tickled. I can handle loss, but don’t ever tickle me. If I complained to my parents, they would say, well, that’s the only way your brothers know how to show you they love you. If I was screaming, my mother would just yell, stop! But she never came in to physically separate us. She had her own things to deal with. My father was dying of cancer. So they were dealing with their stuff, and I was very, very depressed. There was so much trauma that I blocked out everything. For example, when I was in high school, my father had an operation to remove a cancerous tumor and I didn’t remember a thing. Now I remember almost everything. Believe me, childhood was no picnic. I am much happier as an adult. As to relationships . . . I certainly had to learn things the hard way because my parents had a very committed relationship, a very good marriage. There was considerable fighting . . . my father was a very dramatic man . . . a lot like Jackie Gleason’s character in The Honeymooners. Not quite that over the top, but awfully close. There was never a dull moment in the household, but it never occurred to me that a couple would get married and not stay together somehow. So when I went out into the world, of course, what did I know about love?

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My first romance was with a man I met on a kibbutz in Israel. His name was Rob. When we arrived at the kibbutz, we all had to ride in a van and everyone thought we came together, so they assigned us to the same room. There was another man in there, too. Eventually, the other gentleman left and after a while we started having a relationship. In fact, we actually got engaged while we were on the kibbutz. Rob was from Australia, and the whole debate between us was who was going to move to which country. He thought, since I was American and I was from California and hugged everybody, I was very loose and screwed everybody. He was extremely possessive. He would rage at me, assuming I was having affairs with other people. Now, I didn’t see that as a bad sign because I’d never run into that before. It was annoying, but what did I know? At one point, I went on a trip to the Sinai Desert and when I came back, he was having a relationship with someone else, the only other American woman there. He had assumed I was having an affair with someone on this trip. Later, I decided he was probably projecting his own inner desires. And so we broke up. I was extremely broken hearted. In fact, I didn’t get over this relationship for a year. It’s interesting . . . so many years later, we’re still in touch. Years and years later, Rob told me that he realized that the relationship was not going to work out . . . there were problems concerning who was going to live where . . . he had a ranch in the boondocks . . . out in the middle of Australia . . . and I’m more of a city person. He just knew it had to end. He was a little bit older than I was. I was all of eighteen. This was a six-month relationship, but a part of me shut down after it ended. I don’t know why, but somehow, I was never quite the same after that. A lot of it was in the sexual realm. He was a fantastic lover. After that, I never really opened up, never enjoyed sex as much. I don’t know if it was because I never met a man who was as good a lover, or if a part of me died because it was suddenly cut off. That was my first love. It was so new for me. Since then, I’ve never made sex a very important part of my life.

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All that had happened between my freshman and sophomore year of college. The first day back in school, I met my future husband, Scott. We had been friends during my freshman year, but then fell very deeply in love when I returned to school. We lived together for a few years before deciding to get married. I think he had always wanted to get married. I was the one who didn’t want to get married. Just the thought of getting married seemed so weird. I was a hippie at that time. I didn’t see any signs of impending problems. My parents, on the other hand, were most unhappy with him. My mother always said that Scott would never look her in the eye. When he was with me, of course, he was fully engaged, but when he was with them, he just couldn’t relate to them somehow. He couldn’t appreciate them. Part of that might have been a cultural divide. Scott was Christian and brought up in a very fundamentalist family. His father was a minister and his mother’s father had been a minister, too. His mother was the quiet little mouse, the little slave, doing everything for everybody. His father was a tyrant. I came from a very expressive, loud Jewish family. His family was very reserved. I don’t know if he quite knew how to deal with my parent’s energy. They just saw this guy who didn’t interact with them. I couldn’t understand that because this was someone who loved me and appreciated me. Once Scott had the love from me, he started to blossom. However, he didn’t really value the fact that he had someone special. He didn’t quite know how to turn away women’s attention. He thought that by experiencing other women, he would develop and grow. At the same time, he began to be very critical of me, which I think is what happens when men start having other relationships. This was happening before we were married, as well as afterwards. I was pretty clueless because I had never encountered this in my family. Everyone in my family . . . my parents, my grandparents . . . they all were very loyal. They all had stable marriages. They all loved each other. I remember the first time it happened. We were both in college in Santa Cruz at that time and there was this young man who was my biology lab

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partner. I never told him I was living with a guy. I didn’t really know how to tell him. I should have told him the very first time we met, even though it seemed like who cares? What does it matter? We were flirting and I was thinking, how could I tell him? Then I’ll have to deal with a very uncomfortable moment. Heaven forbid! Finally I told Scott about him. Well, I discovered that at the same time, he was kind of attracted to one of the women we lived with. (We shared a house with a couple of other people.) So, one day we made this agreement that we could kiss other people, but not go any further. By this time, I was twenty or twenty-one. I should have known better . . . but I didn’t! Well, I never did kiss my lab partner because, when it came right down to it, I just couldn’t, didn’t even want to. But, on the very next day after we made the agreement, I came home and the woman that Scott had made out with . . . Georgia was her name . . . came to me saying she was in love with Scott and that she wanted us all to be together . . . as a threesome! And that’s when it hit me. Once you go through something like this, the primal part of you is activated and you realize that this is so not O.K. At that point, I finally came to the conclusion that this was not for me, and I was willing to break up with him. This was a very big deal because we had been together for quite a few years and I was still very much in love. Then he made a decision—in that case, I want you over Georgia. You’d think that’d be the end of it, but it’s very interesting how Georgia didn’t let up for years and I turned into the evil person who stood between them. Why, when she got married she wanted to have a foursome! I was the bad one. Idiotically, I didn’t see that this was a bad sign. It seemed that one month Scott would love me and would be totally into the relationship, and the next month he’d be out looking elsewhere. He couldn’t make up his mind. He wanted it all. When I found out about Georgia, I said, “I’m calling off the wedding.” I mean, I was a little bit smart. But he convinced me not to. No I want you. I love you. At the wedding, we were very happy and I had no misgivings

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because I believed him. I didn’t understand when people are a certain way it’s hard to change their nature. They have to be willing to change and they have to be motivated. And then it’s usually a sink or swim situation that makes someone want to really change. So there we were, a married couple. Scott was commuting to a school out of town and he would stay at this woman’s house. Well, before I knew it, he became attracted to this woman, her name was Lorri, and now I had to deal with that. I would start calling when was he there and then he’d get mad at me, accusing me of not trusting him. He’d say, “If you only knew how I felt about you, you wouldn’t be jealous.” We even went to a therapist together, but she sided with him. She told me that my feelings of jealously were like a sickness. Well, that was very helpful, wasn’t it? You know, sometimes therapists can be really bad. I was taught not to trust my feelings, that my feelings of jealousy were old-fashioned and bad. And so I began to slip into a real depression. I couldn’t trust myself. I was being put down at home. The love and security that everyone wants was being withheld. I would try to block out the jealous feelings, block out all my bad feeling, and soon I was blocking out all my feelings. Not that I had such tremendous self-esteem to begin with. Believe me, I didn’t. I brought a lot of baggage into these relationships. I was told that my jealousy was bad and I believed everybody. I thought everyone else had the answer and I, for some reason, was the only one who didn’t know the answer. So I became more and more depressed and of course, Scott started liking me less and less because I was becoming more and more mousy. I didn’t even want to go out and walk around the block. I became a very dependent person. Somewhere in that time period, we moved to be nearer to his school so he wouldn’t have to commute. He had a life at school and he had a life at work, where he had a part time job as a psych tech, and I worked out of my home as an interior designer. He began to lose more and more respect for me and soon became involved with one of the nurses at his work. When I confronted him, he got so mad at me for reading his diary. That was his

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technique. Like a politician, you don’t talk about the issue, you attack your opponent. I could do nothing right. In the meantime, oddly enough, when these issues didn’t come up, we got along so well. There was a certain flow, a good feeling between us. It was all very confusing. But sex was really bad with us. Again, after having that other lover, nothing could compare. It’s a bad thing to have a really good lover at some point in your life. It’s very hard for anyone else to compete. Maybe he was insecure and needed to explore sex with someone else. At some point, even before I read the diary, I went to a therapist who changed my life. This time I found a good one. I went to her, not because of marital problems, but because suddenly I wasn’t able to work. I would stand at the door of my home office and I dreaded going in. Once I’d get into it, I could work, but it was very difficult. At the very end of the first session I said, “Oh, by the way, my husband is seeing someone,” and the therapist laughed. She went, “What!” and I told her a little bit more about the situation. Then she said, point blank, “You have no sense of ‘I’. You have no sense of self.” I didn’t even know what she meant. I didn’t know my own feelings. I didn’t know myself. I didn’t honor myself. I was so far from that. I remember she said to me, “Well, you have to go home and tell him either he works on this relationship or not. But if he’s going to be with you, he has to give up the other relationship while he’s working on yours. If you decide you’re not going to be together, then he can go to the other woman. He can’t have both.” Well, I went home and I told him. Now he had been going through primal therapy. So he started crying like he was in the womb. You know that kind of deep cry? Poor Scott, having to give up dear Lorri. He thought I really had no right to say that to him. At that point, I finally realized that things had gotten a bit out of control. I’d let them go so far because I didn’t know what I was doing. All those affairs. Oh, my God, he just felt like the big man on campus.

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Three days later, he got ready to go out. While he was drying his hair I asked, “Where are you going?” He answered rather nonchalantly, “I’m going dancing with Lorri.” “Well, you know you can’t come home.” That was what I had told him earlier and, of course, whatever you say, you have to stand by it. “If you see her, then you’re out of here.” He left anyway and was gone for the night. When he came back I asked him, “Well, how was it with Lorri?” That was kind of dumb of me. “It was O.K.” Well, I’ve never wanted to kill someone, but I literally had to sit on my hands because I wanted to choke him. I really, really could have attacked him. The only reason I didn’t do it was because I had a really strong part of me that knew it was bad to kill somebody. But, I was screaming. I was absolutely screaming. Before then, he’d never really gone all the way . . . that I knew about . . . with anybody. He left the room because he said I was acting like the people on the mental ward where he worked, which was always what he would say to me when I would express any emotion. (His family never expressed any emotion.) He left the room and he was getting his stuff to move out. At one point, I even tried to tell him, “I’m crying because I need help!” Can you imagine having to say that? And he was training to be a therapist! He said he wanted to see me once a week on Sundays. Can you believe that? I told him that was absolutely ridiculous. By this time, I had some voice of reason, thanks to my therapy sessions. Naturally, he was disappointed about that. He still wanted it all. So he left, and I did not see him again for sixteen years. Six months later, I had him served with divorce papers. He called me and asked me if I really wanted a divorce. Was I really sure? At this point he was out there having these “experiences” and maybe when he was all finished, maybe we would still get back together. Again, I said, “Yes, I want the divorce,” but I really didn’t mean it.

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The next six months were spent mostly in bed, mostly crying. I hit as rock bottom as anyone can hit. I lost so much weight I was an emaciated 93 lbs. I think I lost about 30 pounds in one month. I had so built up this fantasy that we had this great love relationship, that despite all the bad things he was doing, his leaving me didn’t make any sense. I could not accept it. After those first two weeks, I kept hoping that he would call and come back, and every day that I wouldn’t hear from him, was another day of trauma. I remember thinking that it was like gravity turning upside down. Thank God I had this relationship with a good therapist. We had to start from scratch, totally, for me to get a clear picture of who Scott was and all the signs I had missed. I was so thick. Surely, I wasn’t the only one in the world who was that thick. One of the best pieces of information she ever gave me was the fact that there is no right or wrong in the world. There’s just everyone’s best guess of the best way to act at any particular time . . . the best way to dress . . . the best thing to do . . . no right or wrong. Learning that gave me a tremendous freedom, the beginning of being able to trust whatever came out of me. She said I can only know what’s right for me by my feelings . . . jealousy, anger, hatred . . . all these things are guideposts for me. That would be ever so basic to a well-adjusted person, but to someone who grew up feeling that I had no value, that everything I did was wrong, it was like a tremendous revelation. From that point on, I knew I wanted someone who did not need attention from other women in order to boost his self-esteem. I was not attracted to people who were flirtatious. It was as if I had developed an allergy to it. I learned that flirtatious people need something from other people that they cannot provide for themselves. My current husband, on the other hand, is not at all a flirtatious person. He’s not charismatic and what you see is what you get. He doesn’t know how to pretend. That is one of the things I totally love about him. It took a disastrous relationship to finally develop my ability to appreciate that quality in somebody.

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I was looking for someone who, when the going got tough, couldn’t leave, wouldn’t want to leave, because he was attached on such a deep level, that to get to that point and go through that pain would be so awful, it would actually be less painful to stay and try to work things out. That is a quality that you either have or don’t have. With Scott, when he was there for me, we had this great wonderful rapport, but when it came down to it, it was like . . . hello . . . is anyone home? Is there anyone there who can empathize with me, someone who cares? I almost felt as if Scott wasn’t a real person, like if I shot him, he wouldn’t bleed. He was like a robot with no emotion, just a lot of anger pent up inside. How dare I keep him from doing something he wanted to do! When I confronted him with my emotions, he would just dig in his heels and retract. Later, he said I was too emotional for him. Ironically, he’s been married for a long time, and now he is the emotional one who spends his energies trying to bring her out. I have to watch myself in my relationship with my husband. He has a domineering personality. I have to be very vigilant. It would be easy for me to constantly try to please him. However, I’m too smart now. My brothers were very abusive, and I guess I was attracted to men who were like them. However, I found that once I slept with Rob . . . and then Scott, I would become a little girl. I couldn’t help it. I would be afraid to say anything. And then they would start abusing me. I could even see how I would bring that out in them by suddenly being so shy and coy. That happened twice and I finally got it. I realized what I was doing and it was so painful. I certainly learned a lot when I went through this intense therapy. For example, I walk on eggshells a lot. I am a perfectionist and perfectionists are not born, they are created . . . usually in childhood. And so I sabotage myself. Yes, I definitely have some weird saboteur in me. I get very fumbly. I think part of it is because of my mother. She never let me do anything, so I have this tape in my head that I can’t do anything. If you see the way I dress, I never look that great. It’s like I can’t get it right. My picture of myself is of a bumbling person and I have to work extra

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hard at everything. I look very calm because I always wear an extra coating of protection . . . like armor. I’m so afraid of doing something wrong. Because I’m a perfectionist, I judge every little thing that comes out of me. I was dating quite a bit after my marriage ended. I learned that even if a man I met wasn’t the right one, it didn’t mean that it was a complete waste of time. I could learn from the experience. I was always so petrified about how to end a relationship because I was so bad at breaking up. Oh, the anxiety. It went against my nature to break up. I’m a pleaser. I never want to upset anyone. When I started dating my husband, he needed a lot of work as far as I was concerned, but the difference was that he was responsive. It’s the key quality in people. Either you’re rigid and defensive or you’re open to discovering, to finding what’s right, what’s the best for the two of you, and learning how to work things out. He was open to learning, and takes such inner strength that I’m proceeding slowly because I know he’s worth it. He’s a keeper. Postscript By the way, sixteen years after we parted, I saw Scott again and we had a very interesting talk that lasted several hours. The next day, I had a post traumatic stress reaction . . . of the highest order. Once more, I became the girl who was dumped . . . in bed . . . all those years before. It was like a flashback. Until then, I never thought of him . . . I wondered what happened to him, but he was pretty much history. I had been through so much trauma with Scott. Every time I had contact with him, it would be disastrous. There was a part of my brain that had built a whole circuitry around him, and it would activate, and then all these things would happen. It was exactly like I was there again. I realized I could not let him do this to me again. In fact, I had such a severe reaction to seeing him, not that day but for the next week, that I stopped menstruating at the age of forty. I thought, you’ve got me again. I was still hoping for children and I thought . . . this man is just toxic for me.

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My heart was ripped out of my chest again. It wasn’t that I still loved him. It was all that buried stuff that shot up to the surface like a long submerged submarine, but that was good because it had been buried for such a long time. It needed to come out. I had spent a year crying over him. I would compulsively think about him. Eventually, there came a point where I had to start training myself to think of something else. That was a long time to be mourning over a relationship. All that garbage was buried inside, but at last I released some of the pressure. The trauma, the memories are always there. How do you work them out? Sometimes you never can. Now I’m much more at peace with that relationship. There’s probably a little tiny piece in me that will always yearn for him, even though it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Or am I yearning for what I thought I had . . . or what I lost? But, you know, I love my present husband and I’m so happy with him because this time I’m getting the same good stuff . . . minus the crap. At last I’ve found some peace.

— Rebecca’s Advice to You — 1. I would advise a woman to look at the family of origin. You know the old thing, how well did he treat his mother? Because that’s their modus operandi. My present husband had a pretty good relationship with his mother. He was very courteous, very nice to her. I felt this was a good sign. In Scott’s family, emotion was not allowed to be expressed. That’s not healthy. 2. Make little tests for people to go through and just watch the results. And be honest with yourself. Don’t think you can change this person. If an argument comes up, see how he reacts. Too many people are in denial. They want so badly for a relationship to work out that they’re not willing to see that someone is basically an insensitive person. They’re just so absorbed with themselves.

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3. See how he handles anger. Is he just going to withdraw? Or will he let it build up, let it build up, let it build up . . . and then dump? Does he hold a grudge? Any relationship can work out if the two people have the skills to work with anger in a way that doesn’t rip the other apart. There’s always going to be stuff. One doesn’t have to be right and one wrong. 4. Never give him a road map. A road map would be: The way I like to be treated is X, Y, Z. Then these people can, for the courtship period, just follow the road map. They know exactly what to say and exactly what to do. But that’s not who they really are. So, don’t give him the answer before you give him the test. It’s hard to say what the test is. It’s just things that come up every day. Little things. 5. Establish boundaries. Make sure your partner respects your boundaries and you respect your partner’s. 6. Know yourself well enough to recognize that someone’s behavior is bothering you. Then nothing has to be dramatic and nothing has to become a problem. When people ignore a problem, or attach a little bit of baggage to it, or they don’t know how to tell you, when they finally tell you there could be an ugliness to it. For example, he might shout, “I can’t stand it when you ask about my business! Stop bothering me!” 7. In the beginning, don’t start talking about past relationships. There must be other things in common that you could find to talk about. 8. Just have fun. You have to be able to have fun together and not have everything revolve around sex. If you’re a couple, and it doesn’t really feel good, but the sex is great, it can be very misleading. Can you have fun doing the little things in life that need to get done, like doing the laundry, making the bed? If you don’t know how to have fun together, don’t pursue the relationship. 9. Relationships should proceed slowly. It’s a very primal experience. Once you have sex with somebody, you feel some kind of bond, like now we’re a couple . . . although you may have nothing in common.

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10. You have to work out who’s going to do what. Who’s doing the shopping? Who’s going to pay the bills? How are you going to share decision-making? All these decisions need to be made. 11. Make sure you bond. I didn’t experience that with my first husband. Not ever. 12. I’m there for him. And he’s there for me. And that makes all the difference. To have a strong relationship you have to devote time to it and be there for each other. 13. Ultimately it’s important that there’s respect. That’s a hard one for me, coming from where I’m coming from . . . and not standing up for myself a lot. I can get into situations, even with my present husband, where I have to be sure I’m respected and express myself while not sounding like a shrew.

Nobody ever crossed my boundaries because I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any!

13 Samantha | Over the Edge “Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.” —Margaret Mead (So is life in the twenty-first century.)

icture a beautiful thirty-one-year-old woman with a model’s body and a face to match. Samantha is 5'7" with fashionably straight blonde hair that brushes her shoulders and the bluest of blue eyes. Any man would want to take this lady to the company office party. It all started in California when I was twenty-six. Chris and I met through mutual friends and hit it off right away. We stayed together almost a year and a half, which for me was a long time. He was the sweetest, most wonderful man I ever met. We were very close . . . shared everything . . . and within six months I moved in with him, something I had never done before. There weren’t any signs beforehand that maybe this relationship wouldn’t work. It 189

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was when we moved together to Nevada that I realized how very dependent he was on his friends and family. When we moved here, our relationship basically fell apart. Actually, I sensed it was going to be make-or-break time. To move here, to start over somewhere new together, would be a whole different scenario, a new challenge. I’ve been on my own for a very long time so I knew that one way or the other, I was going to be O.K. I wasn’t sure about Chris. It was pretty tough in the beginning. We had to find jobs and get settled in a relatively short amount of time. When I moved from Hawaii to L.A., my goal was to find work in Beverly Hills. This was a dream of mine and I made that happen, but it took a lot to get there. Chris was with me through all those struggles, as I worked to get my Real Estate license and take the state boards. He was very supportive, very loving, and very understanding. I can’t remember a time when we really, really fought. We had disagreements, but we got along pretty well the whole time we were together. I would say we had a great relationship. Then we moved to Las Vegas. I should have seen that he could definitely lose his temper a little bit, but he never turned that on me. He would rant and rave, raise his voice. That was another warning sign that I should have seen. I didn’t see that his close relationship with his father could be a problem. It was a huge deal in his life. His father was very distant and cold and had always been that way. I never got along with his parents from day one because, to put it mildly, they didn’t extend any warmth to me. His father told him, “I can see why you love her or like her . . . whatever . . . but don’t marry her.” His father said that about me and I was completely crushed. So I’m sure that that had a lot to do with his reactions toward me. When we first arrived in Nevada, we were struggling financially. I needed to work and pay my share of the rent so I found a temporary job, but I wasn’t happy at work. However, Chris didn’t care if I was happy or not, I had to be

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there and make it work. So I quit complaining about it, just turned inward and made the best of a bad situation. I had no choice. I’m a pretty tough cookie. No support at work. No support at home. I helped Chris as much as I could to try and find a job. I pleaded with him, “I don’t care what you do. You’ve got to do something. We’re not going to make it if you don’t pull your half.” But he was resentful, and starting to get very down. He didn’t know how to help himself and he didn’t have much incentive since he used money from his dad and the good nature of his friends to take care of him. Looking back, I can see all that, but I didn’t see it at the time. I guess I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t see how dependent he was on all those people. I just thought he had such wonderfully supportive and loving people in his life. When we moved here everything pretty much unraveled. He started drinking quite a bit, and he also became abusive. He only hit me when he was drunk. I couldn’t believe it was happening because I had never been in a situation like that before. Never. I was completely stunned and thought, Oh, my God! What am I doing? What am I doing? I guess maybe there was some psychological abuse in there as well. I was definitely in denial, still making excuses to myself for the abuse that occurred. Maybe I’m still making excuses. Here I was working hard, trying to get us financially stable . . . it’s a team effort to me . . . but if I’m with the right person, I’ll bend over backwards, I’ll do whatever it takes. On the other hand, he was frustrated because he felt like a failure. That was because he didn’t know how to stand on his own two feet. He saw me as strong and competent and he resented it. So he took it out on me. Then, one night, a really weird scenario happened. We met this couple within a month of our moving here, and one day the four of us went out for drinks and dinner after work. Afterwards, we went back to their place to swim in the pool at their apartment complex. And . . . this is just so crazy . . . I can’t believe it happened.

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We were all showering after swimming. I was in the shower . . . with my swimsuit on . . . just rinsing off when the girl’s boyfriend came into the bathroom, opened the shower door, and tried to kiss me. Then he put his hand down my bathing suit. For a minute I just froze. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Then I pushed him away and said, “What are you doing? Get out of here!” He turned and ran out of the bathroom. I quickly got out of the shower and then just stood there. I couldn’t move. How do I handle this situation? So I dressed as fast as I could and quickly found Chris out on the balcony and told him what happened. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. This is the first time he ever laid a hand on me. He didn’t believe me! And I couldn’t believe that he didn’t believe me. I should have realized how unsupportive he was. I didn’t know what to do. It was the most horrible feeling. Obviously he should have been sticking up for me. Right? “What do you mean you don’t believe me?” I couldn’t understand his reaction. Then he started yelling at me. So, of course, I started yelling back. He was calling me names. And then . . . he put his hands around my neck and he started choking me . . . pushing me against the balcony railing! I was hanging over the balcony of the second floor apartment! And that’s pretty high! I couldn’t scream because he had his hands around my throat. He was . . . just . . . choking me. I was trying to hit him and make him get off me but, obviously, he was stronger than I was. I have never been so terrified in my life. Suddenly, the other guy came out onto the balcony. I’m sure it was the only thing that saved me. Chris would have choked me until I . . . I don’t know what would have happened. As soon as the guy opened the sliding glass door, Chris let go of me, and I just ran out of the apartment, grabbing my shoes and purse on the way. Unfortunately, we had just moved to Vegas and I had no idea where I lived, what to do, or how to get home. I was completely stranded in an unknown place. I knew no one in town. No one.

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So there I was, out on the street with my arms wrapped around my purse and shoes, just standing there crying and . . . I couldn’t stop. I was taking such deep breaths, I started hyperventilating. I was so distraught, I was like . . . O.K. . . . get a hold of yourself. I said a prayer and finally, I just knocked on a door, but nobody answered. I didn’t know what to do. In the meantime, the couple we were with dashed out of their apartment and were driving around looking for me. When they found me, they told me they were going take me home. They asked me what happened. What could I say? I felt like saying, obviously, you know what happened in the shower, but I didn’t say anything. I felt that I needed to protect myself and just get home. Just get home and be safe. The other guy never apologized. All he did was ask, “What happened? What happened?” But, I didn’t care. All I knew was that I couldn’t find my way back and he was going to take me home. His girlfriend was in the car, so I knew nothing was going to happen. Since he picked us up, he knew where I lived. Well, I got home about three in the morning and packed my bag as quickly as I could because I didn’t know when Chris was coming back, threw it in my car, and drove to California to be with my girlfriend . . . that very night. I didn’t even leave her house for five days. I just sat and cried. But, I didn’t want to live in California because I already lived there. So, somehow I justified calling him. I rationalized his doing what he did because he was drinking. If he never did it again, if he’s really sorry . . . if a million things. I know he loves me. I love him. Isn’t that the most important? Instead of saying no, this is wrong and I never want to be with him again, I simply justified everything that he did until I felt I could call him. I was weighing it out. I missed him. Definitely, I missed him. I loved him very much. I just knew that he didn’t mean to do it. I asked myself, how did I provoke him? What did I do? I don’t know if I could have dealt with all of the feelings about the incident, so I just blocked that scenario out of my mind and put it aside, instead of giving it the weight that it deserved.

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It was a terrible, terrible mistake, I know. When I called him, Chris was very concerned, “Where are you? I’ve been looking all over for you. I called everyone. I called your dad. I called your mom. Nobody knew where you were.” He apologized profusely. “I will never do it again. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that I did that. I love you so much. Please come home.” And I did. He came out to get me, and we drove back together. I went back to live with him. Well, Chris was on his best behavior for a while. He was a very good boy, very supportive, very nice. But then, the tension got worse again. You see, he still wasn’t working. Actually, there was tension from the moment we moved to Vegas . . . on both of our parts. I was frustrated because he wasn’t working. “Look, why can’t you get a job? I’m working two jobs. So why can’t you get one job if I have two? Why can’t you help yourself ?” Well, it took him a good three months before he got a job. Then the next incident occurred. Again, he was drinking. He came home late one night and I was asleep when this happened. He woke me up because he was mad at me for something . . . I don’t even remember what it was. “Why are you waking me up to yell at me?” It didn’t make any sense. “I have to get up early tomorrow!” Well, it got very heated. He wouldn’t stop yelling. Soon things started to escalate. He jerked me around . . . he ripped my clothing and pushed me down. He called me a bitch. He called me a slut a couple of times, which so wasn’t true. Just ridiculous names that I know aren’t me. I was yelling back at him, “I don’t care how much you yell at me because I’m going to counter it. Don’t you dare hit me because I’ll hit you right back.” I said to myself, this is ridiculous! We’re fighting all the time. The tension’s mounting again. Basically, that’s when I decided to leave. And there was a third incident. It was just more of the same. Pushing and hitting me and being very forceful . . . calling me names . . . when he was drunk. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I know there were three incidents. And that’s when I called it quits. Three strikes and you’re out . . . of my life. I called a roommate service, found a roommate, and moved out within a month.

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Then the harassment started. He would call my house and basically plead with me, “I love you. You know I want to be with you.” And then he would call drunk and he would say, “I can’t believe what a bitch you are. You’re useless and worthless,” whatever he could say that he felt might hurt me. I’m not useless and worthless. I know that. But it hurts when someone says that. I don’t deserve to be called that. I had his number blocked. And I didn’t tell him my new address. So, he didn’t know where I lived, and I had his number blocked from my phone at work. He didn’t know where I worked, either. He didn’t move back to California, he’s still here in Nevada . . . working at a golf course. You know, pursuing his dream. And good for him. I didn’t want to see him again, but after I moved out I saw him maybe one or two times because I felt bad. I don’t know why I felt bad. I guess I needed to find some closure and I wanted it just to be a peaceful out. I’m a nurturer. I felt responsible in a way because I’m the stronger person. From the very beginning of our relationship, I helped him along his way and then I felt like I had abandoned him. I just felt sorry for him. Actually, I pitied him. I felt a little guilty because we moved out here together and he didn’t have the means to help himself. He hit me, he was often drunk, he didn’t have any means of support, and I was feeling guilty. I guess both of us were busy laying guilt on me. Chris really showed his true colors when we moved here, but I just distanced myself from all that. There were many warning signs, but I didn’t want to see them. I’ve tried not to think about this relationship for so long, but it’s important to think about it. I’m sure I’m still denying that this was truly an abusive situation. He kept trying to get back together with me, so I met him at a coffee shop one day. I told him, “You know what? I can’t get back together with you. I can’t be anywhere near you. But, I care about you enough to give you this counselor’s card and tell you, if you want to get better, you have to work

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through this and you have to help yourself. I can’t do it for you.” And that’s basically it. I gave him the card and he was crying and miserable, but I just had enough. I didn’t deserve this. Basically, I had to just say, “You know what, Chris? You hit me. You hit me. You put your hands around my throat and you choked me. Why would I stay with you?” All he could say was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” as though an apology would be enough to win me back. And you know what? I felt guilty because I believe it was the first time he really opened up to anyone. “You know, Chris,” I added, “what you need to do is talk more about what’s going on in your life and stop bottling everything up. But you need to talk to a professional, not me.” So I gave him the card, and he thanked me for everything, especially for helping him get out here to follow his dream because he wouldn’t have had the strength to do it. And maybe he will get help. Maybe he won’t. But I don’t care. That’s not my concern any more. I don’t need to talk to him ever again. I don’t need to find out where he is in his life. I wished him well and that was it. Then I walked out of the coffee shop and never saw him again. Postscript About a year later, Chris managed to get my telephone number and he left a message on my answering machine. He said he had some things he wanted to show me. I wrote down his telephone number and then thought about what I had just done. Then I tore up the number and erased the answering machine message.

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— Samantha’s Advice to You — 1. Don’t waste any time staying in the relationship once you realize what’s going on. Know that you deserve better and move on. I should have gotten out of there the first time. I will never stay . . . ever again . . . as long as I did. I’ve always wondered why women stay. Then it happened to me. But I simply could not believe that this was happening. This man that I loved just did this to me. And so I turned it all inward and questioned myself, when I should have just walked away. 2. Don’t be dependent on a man for your needs. I learned not to be so dependent on someone emotionally. I’m a whole person outside of him. I’m a whole person outside of everyone. I’m my own person. And it’s made me stronger. My friends are my support. I, above anyone else, am my support. And I can take care of all of my needs without having a man in my life. 3. Don’t settle for less than you deserve. When you love someone, you want to believe the best in them and so you overlook certain things that eventually can blow up . . . things that are not healthy. If someone’s drinking too much, if someone infringes on your ability to be positive in your own life, these are things you want to stay away from. You can’t justify that; if you do, it’s going to make you feel bad about yourself. 4. Don’t justify what he did. That’s what a lot of women do. They turn inward and blame themselves. However, this person needs help beyond anything that you can give. And if you think it’s not going to happen again, you’re dead wrong. It will happen again . . . if you allow it. 5. If your relationship is not a positive one, walk away. It doesn’t have to get to the point of abuse. Get out. Fast. It’s wrong to be hit. Period. I feel stronger today because I know that I can walk away. I respect myself and I know I am strong enough to walk away.

Don’t justify what he did and don’t blame yourself. If you think the abuse is not going to happen again, you’re dead wrong. It will happen again . . . if you allow it.

14 Camille | Power and Control If I am not for me who will be for me? If I am only for me, who am I? If not now, then when? â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Hillel

amille looked a little frayed around the edges when I met her, but then she has been through a lot. As I sat at the breakfast room table of this beautiful forty-four-yearold woman, I admired the view of the lush back yard and a very inviting pool, and wondered if this once vibrant woman had the energy to swim. A cool glass of lemonade, a bowl of nuts and a little plate of cookies were begging to be sampled. I tried hard to concentrate on her story and not the temptations. Jeffrey is eight years older than I am. I was twenty-six when we got married and a partner in a large accounting firm. It was a first marriage for both of us. He was a very powerful person and already a partner in a law firm. I knew these things before I married him. He was a tough cookie, but I really

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thought that over the years he would soften and not be so hard and fast about things. I should have known better than to expect him to change. One of the things I remember very clearly before we got married is the way he spoke to my father. It was with complete disrespect, which was very hurtful because my father is a very honorable man, a very sensitive person. At the time, my parents didn’t really know we were living together. Well, they sort of knew it. At one point Jeffrey said to my father, “You don’t think I’m going to run six blocks just to screw your daughter.” This was the most amazingly disgusting thing to say to my father. I remember I just stood there. My father and I were so shocked, neither one of us said anything. That just happened to be the night he proposed to me. My father and I have since talked about that and both of us realized we should have done something. I should have just kicked him out right then. And there were other things . . . but more about that later. I met Jeffrey on a blind date. One of my friends fixed us up. We were both from the East Coast living in the West, both Jewish, and both professionals. My friend and his wife thought we’d get along very well, and we did. We got along famously on our first date. We went out on a Friday night and we saw each other every night after that. Within two years we were married. There were two times while we were dating when I decided I couldn’t stand him and wanted to leave. I did break up with him, but we got back together. One of those times was when we went to Hawaii together. When we were coming home, the air traffic controllers were on strike. I had to be at my job the next morning. We couldn’t get a flight back from L.A. to get to work on time unless we took the Red Eye and flew all night. “You are absolutely not going to do that,” Jeffrey insisted. “Just call the office and tell them you’re not going to be in tomorrow and cancel your clients.” “I can’t do that, Jeffrey. I have responsibilities.” After spending hours discussing it, I finally succumbed to what he said and ended up calling my office and asking them to cancel my clients. I was very upset and cried the

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whole way home. I remember saying to myself, who does this guy think he is, telling me what to do and making me do it! Now I realize that he was a control freak. He absolutely controlled me . . . and I knew it. I knew it and I stopped seeing him for about three weeks, expecting that somehow he would call and apologize. He never did. It just faded away and we started seeing each other again. When I think back on it, why did I go back with the guy when I wasn’t desperate? I was meeting plenty of guys. I always had a lot of dates. I remember another incident when we were dating. We hiked down the Grand Canyon with some of Jeffrey’s friends and camped there for two nights. Everybody was having a great time. Things were fine and loose. But Jeffrey was acting like a little boy scout. He was so obnoxious that I was embarrassed to be with him! He had to set up all these lean-tos in case of rain . . . and it turned out that it did rain. Everything he did was for a purpose and he was right. But it was the way that he did it . . . taking over the whole scene. He was so into total control. When we climbed back up out of the Canyon, I thought he would see that he was obnoxious, but he never did. He was just like that all the time. Unfortunately, I interpreted his controlling ways as strength of character. This was somebody who was very strong, would be a good husband, would be very protective, and would be a good father. I took all those traits that I didn’t like and turned them around into something that was positive. I was totally in love with him and totally in denial. I thought they were good qualities for a father. Actually he was great with kids. Kids loved him. When we came out of the Canyon I told him, “I am going back East for two weeks, and when I come back, I’m not going to see you very much.” Nevertheless, when I came back, I did see him again, and we just fell right back into the relationship. Being the in-control person that he was, could he allow me to pull out? No way. He told me he knew when I opened the door on the blind date that he was going to marry me. He said he was absolutely positive of that. I think

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I fitted all the things on his checklist, all the things that were important to him. He’d been a bachelor for thirty-five years. Everybody in town had fixed him up with someone. And then someone fixed him up with me. Everybody was delighted. All his friends were absolutely thrilled. He met a lovely woman. A partner in a large accounting firm. Everything was going to be great. Even his mother was thrilled. Jeffrey, The Only Child, was born King of the World. He totally took care of her . . . financially, physically, anything she ever needed. His father had died a few months before I met Jeffrey. His father had a lot of businesses, but could never hold onto any money. Jeffrey says, since he was about ten years old he used to run all the businesses for him, do all the books. So he took on the role of father very early. I am sure that is how Jeffrey developed that very controlling, narcissistic personality. You either go with it, or you get out. There were so many incidents before we got married. One of the major ones occurred when he wanted me to sign a prenuptial agreement. I never knew that there are two different kinds of prenuptial agreements. One is just to protect anything you have before the marriage—property or money. Another one is called a creative pre-nuptial, where you also include wording about protecting monies you will earn in the future, which otherwise, would be part of the marriage and community property. Jeffrey had this totally set up. I was in love and I was getting married. It didn’t matter to me. Anyway, I didn’t sign it at that time because I needed to go back East. We were getting married in Connecticut. About ten days before the wedding and Jeffrey placed some papers in front of me and said, “Sign this . . . or I’m not going to marry you. Now sign this before you leave.” Well, I brushed it off, “Oh, come on! It doesn’t mean anything.” It’s like setting up for the divorce. That’s how I looked at it. I thought it was ridiculous. Neither one of us had that many assets, anyway. There was some stuff, but not a big estate or anything.

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However Jeffrey was deadly serious. “If you don’t sign this, I’m not going to Connecticut and I’m not marrying you.” He absolutely meant what he said. So I signed it, laughing. O.K. Big deal. Afterwards, when it all sank in, I looked at him and said, “What do you mean you’re not going to get married? Everything’s all set.” He never answered. He just picked up the papers and walked out of the room. At that point I was under a lot of pressure. I wouldn’t have called off the wedding. He had me totally trapped and he knew it. My mother had always said to me, “Never sign a pre-nup. Never.” Although I’m very close to her, I could never get myself to tell her, not until last summer, when I filed for divorce. Well, it came back to haunt me. Big time! Jeffrey was totally calculating about everything. He had everything set up so that in our marriage our money would be totally separate. We would have one little joint account for married type of things and everything else was kept separate. When we divorced, I got hardly any money after twenty years of marriage. Because of that prenuptial agreement, it was not community property. Instead of 50-50, it was 30-70. But I had to get out. Money was not worth my sanity. Back to the wedding, which was in Connecticut where my parents lived. My father had set up the whole marriage ceremony which was to take place on Sunday afternoon at four p.m. On Friday, we met with the Rabbi who was going to marry us. I’ve known him my whole life. He was a very learned man, a very quiet man. He had never met Jeffrey before, so we went to see him the Friday before the wedding. The Rabbi went through the usual speech of talking to the soon-to-be bride and groom, as if we were this young couple just getting married. On his desk he had this book, which he pushed in front of Jeffrey. It was something about sex . . . Sex and Marriage, Sex and Religion . . . whatever. Jeffrey took the book, pushed it back at the Rabbi, and said, “You’ve got to be kidding! Don’t you think I’ve slept with her already?” This was the second time he made an issue of sleeping with me, with someone of authority. When he said that, I just sat there. I distinctly remember this. I felt like a little five-year-old girl. I was so embarrassed. I stood up

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to everyone else in my life, but I didn’t stand up to him. Sitting there in front of the Rabbi, I couldn’t say anything. I wouldn’t degrade myself to humiliate him in front of those people, so I just didn’t say anything. I didn’t even know how to say it. After the Rabbi spoke to us, Jeffrey said, “And by the way, I want to face everybody during the ceremony. I don’t want our backs to be toward everybody.” The Rabbi was agreeable. “Well, I’ve never done that before, but that’s O.K. We could do that.” Then Jeffrey added, “And I’m also going to speak at the wedding ceremony.” Since were getting married outdoors, under the magnificent trees in this beautiful garden, the Rabbi said, “No problem. We’ll have a microphone for you.” Jeffrey replied resolutely, “I don’t need a microphone.” “Well, Jeffrey, it’s your wedding,” said the Rabbi, rather taken aback. “Some people choke up a little bit. They lose their words or their voices become very low and they don’t project well. So it would be nice to have a microphone.” “Rabbi, I don’t need a microphone. I will speak extemporaneously,” that was the exact word he used, “and everyone will hear me.” He was puffing out his chest to show who the macho man was. Again, the Rabbi just agreed. It wasn’t that big a deal, but Jeffrey was making it a big deal. If he would have spoken about it nicely and said, you know, I had this idea. I’d really like to do this. I don’t need a microphone, if he had said it differently or gently, he would have had the same result and it would have been so much better. But he wasn’t like that. I still remember it because that’s how intense and adamant he was. It hurt me deeply. Well, that next day, Saturday, we were practicing the ceremony, in the back yard. My father tried to make sure of every little detail. Since Jeffrey wanted to turn everything around, I said, “You tell my father how you want to do it. It was all your idea.” As for me, I really didn’t want to face everybody. I wanted it to be more private. I didn’t want to catch anybody’s eye. Well, he let us go through the entire practice as if we were not going to be facing everybody, and at the very end he looked at my father

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and declared, “By the way, we will be facing everyone. We are doing it completely opposite to this.” My father couldn’t believe it. He had spent so much time figuring it out. We went through the whole practice, and then Jeffrey said we were going to turn it all around. To this day my father remembers Jeffrey telling him this. My parents saw Jeffrey for what he was. Still, they were very respectful of my choice, although my mother called me two months before the wedding saying, “I need to tell you something. You’re not going to be happy with it, but as your mother, I feel I’m obligated to tell you.” (This was after the wedding invitations were out and the wedding plans were all in place.) “Jeffrey is a very selfish man. He is very self-centered, and in his eyes, he comes first and he always will.” I just said, “O.K., Mom . . . maybe . . . but I don’t think so, because, really, he has been very good to me.” “Jeffrey will always be first in Jeffrey’s eyes. Just know that, Camille. If you can live with that, and you still love him, then that’s your choice.” Well, he had his way at the wedding and he didn’t need a microphone. We taped the whole ceremony and you could barely hear my voice. All I said at the wedding was, “I do.’” Thinking back, I should have said, “I don’t!” After we were married a few years, we needed a bigger house. We were negotiating back and forth on a lovely house, but the price was not coming down very much. I had never bought a house before so I didn’t know anything about negotiating. However, Jeffrey did. He said, “If you want this house so badly, you make the phone call and you talk to him.” Well, I called the owner and we agreed on the final price. During the divorce proceedings my mother reminded me that I had some stocks that my grandfather had left me, and I had to cash them out to put in money for this house. Jeffrey made me do that. He had plenty of money to buy the house but, again, it had to be partially my money and partially his money . . . from separate accounts. I always felt that when you’re married, all your money is your shared money. I worked. I made good money as a CPA. I didn’t care where I put it and what I did with it because whatever we did, our future was going to

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be one big thing. But that was not his philosophy. Again, it had to be totally separate accounts. Another thing. Jeffrey was incredibly cheap. Everything that we had to buy or do was a big deal. For example, when we went furniture shopping, whatever the price was, his first reaction was no, we don’t need it. It wasn’t that we were scraping by with no money. We were fine. Therefore, if I wanted it, I would have to put the extra money in. That happened for twenty years. In the meantime, he amassed this huge amount of money that I never knew about, in some account somewhere. I didn’t know where any of it was until we got divorced. I didn’t care. I didn’t even ask because it didn’t really matter. He was going to take it with him when he died. As a matter of fact, I asked him that one day. He didn’t spend it on himself either. He didn’t buy expensive clothing, didn’t take big trips. His idea of a summer vacation was to take a camping trip. Camping trips don’t cost much money, and I had to do all the work. It was always Jeffrey doing exactly what he wanted to do, and if I wanted to differ from that plan in any way, either I did it on my own, or we didn’t do it. I felt like I was alone in this marriage, and I would literally say to Jeffrey, “This isn’t a marriage. You are still a single man who just happens to be married.” As the years went on, there was a lot of arguing. We both yelled a lot, but he would yell at me, swearing at me . . . a lot of curse words . . . in front of the boys all the time. So they learned how to speak to me like that. It was so degrading. He totally put me down. I really don’t even want to repeat what he said to me. It was pretty bad. I would say to Jeffrey, “Now let’s not talk about this in front of the kids,” and he would just say, ‘Well, why not? They’re part of the family. They need to know this, too.” Three years after my second son was born, I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Something triggered it and I never bounced back after that. I got so sick I was in bed for two years. Two years! I literally got up just to use the bathroom.

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During those years, it became them against me. Instead of Jeffrey involving me in the family activities, saying come on, let’s read to mommy, let’s eat in there with her, he just took them and continued on with life as if I wasn’t there. They went bike riding every Sunday. “Let mommy sleep. She’s really tired,” he would say. I was so lonesome for company. It was easier for him to take the kids out to dinner than to cook something at home. Now, imagine! When they came back, they would hardly ever bring me anything. I was bedridden. Who was supposed to prepare meals for me? It was just . . . whatever. I hardly ate. It was awful. Even when we went on vacation, he would always say, “Well, you don’t want me to take a picture of you because you always say you don’t look good.” He was always giving me the message that I didn’t look good. He always had to have the last word because he was always right. He made all the final decisions. It didn’t matter what I thought. He yelled and screamed at me like I was a piece of garbage, and he did this in front of the children. I didn’t want to fight back in front of the kids. I wanted to do that in private, but he always made sure it was in front of them so I couldn’t say anything. All I wanted was to have my husband be there for me, be my soulmate, but I was all alone in the marriage. As for sex, it was nonexistent. It was as if he was an asexual person. I even persuaded him to go to the doctor to get his testosterone level tested. He was a very macho man, you know, kind of big and strong and everything, but he was not interested in sex. Then, when I got ill, he would constantly use that as an excuse for not having sex. In the beginning of our marriage the sex was great. It stopped being great after our son was born. I mean, we didn’t have sex for years. When we did have sex, I never felt like he was making love to me. It was just a thing to do. He was just not there for me. It was never a satisfying emotional experience. He was never a great lover, but it was like O.K. He was very quick, not lingering, not loving, never really emotionally there. Yet, it wasn’t always bad or why would I have been attracted to him? In the beginning it was fun and he was there for me, yet I remember on

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our wedding night we didn’t make love. To me that’s almost like a given . . . to make love on your wedding night. I know that’s like a storybook and it’s a romantic thing and who cares, it’s not a big deal. There are all those other nights, but . . . it would have been nice. I bought a special little nightgown and all that kind of stuff. And then friends of ours, who were in from out of town, called and asked us to meet them down at the bar. So we got dressed and went down and had a drink with them. When we went back up to the room, we opened some more presents. Then he said he was tired and went to bed. He didn’t want to make love that night, and I was very upset about that. For him it was no big deal. The wedding was over and we were married. It was done. It was just another night in his life. It meant nothing. He had no feeling for anything. I was the romantic, so what better way to puncture my balloon than to say I’m tired and go to bed? He did that all the time. He could have cared less. When we did have sex, it was totally nothing. Just nothing. Now I had been in relationships before I got married, and I know what that feeling is like. But you get married and have kids and you get busy, so I just accepted it as being that way. I feel sorry for him now, and I told him that. He just laughed. He’s a really screwed up person. He has so many issues. After eighteen years, I finally had enough, so I filed for divorce last summer. It took forever for him to move out. He stayed in the house for the first month, and I was living in the guest room. He was horribly abusive, yelling and screaming all the time. He’d shout, “I’m not moving out of this house! It’s my house! It’s my bed. I’m not going anywhere.” By that time, I couldn’t even stand to look at him. Eventually he said to the kids, “We have to find a place to live.” I glared at him, “No. They live here. This is their house. You need to go find a place to live . . . with an extra room so when they want to come see you, they’ll have a place to stay.” Since he wouldn’t take the time off from work to find a place to live, he sent our oldest boy out with the Realtor to find a three-bedroom house.

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Then my youngest son said, “Mom, I have to go with dad because, you know, we do things together. We lift weights, we ride bikes . . . and dad’s not going to know how to do things on his own.” I raised him to be independent, but he was going to be the one to take care of his father. If he was going to live with his father, then my oldest son had to because the boys are velcroed together. And so all three of them left. The day they moved out I should have left the house, but not only was I there, I helped them pack; I gave them dishes and silverware and so on. What an idiot I was to do that! It was the most painful thing I ever did. Through this whole year of divorce, and it has been a very brutal divorce, he would tell the boys everything, step by step, of what was going on between us. One day, after we were separated, he came over to the house and we had a big argument. He grabbed my wrist and it really hurt. I was so shocked that I called the police. They came over and I filed a report. They told me that the next day I should go to Municipal Court and get a Restraining Order on him or an Order of Protection. I was very upset that night. Anyway, the next day I went to court. The police had said, “Just go there and talk to the judge.” I was crying and quite shaken. To make matters worse, I found out that I couldn’t talk to the judge because I was already legally separated from Jeffrey. They said I would have to go to Superior Court and told me to call my lawyer. When I called him, he told me that Jeffrey’s lawyer had already been there and told him all about it. Somehow Jeffrey was even in control of the divorce. That night, Jeffrey called and poured all his anger out on me. He knew he was in trouble. His lawyer was already talking to my lawyer. Then, would you believe, my lawyer started talking me out of getting this Order of Protection? I asked him, “What do I do? Where do I go? Where’s Superior Court? I don’t even know where it is.” “You know, Camille. That’s the court we went to for the two previous hearings.” I felt so dejected, so frustrated. “You drove and I was so upset. I didn’t pay any attention to where we were going. What’s the address?”

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“Well, if this is what you really want to do, we can write out a stipulation.” I was furious. I asked him, point blank, “Are you talking me out of it? Why are you protecting Jeffrey?” “Well, I really don’t know if it’s what you want to do,” he replied, trying to calm me down. “Let’s just do this first. I’ll write out a letter of stipulation saying he is to have no contact with you unless it’s through an attorney or through the mail or email. He cannot come to your house. He cannot see you, etc. If he signs that, it’s just as good as an Order of Protection.” Then he added, “I’ll talk to Jeffrey’s lawyer.” I waited all day long, but I never got a phone call back from him. I called the next morning and he wasn’t in the office that day. I spoke to his paralegal, “I don’t understand why my lawyer was talking me out of getting a Restraining Order against Jeffrey?” She explained, “He wasn’t talking you out of it. What he said was that if you really felt that you were being threatened by him, or that your life was in danger, or that you don’t know if he is going to harm you again, then you go ahead and get a Restraining Order. But, if you don’t think that’s what you should do, just remember, if you get a Restraining Order or an Order of Protection, it’s a pretty serious accusation. He could lose his job because of this, plus, it will affect your spousal maintenance.” So here he was, still abusing me after we separated, and he was still in control of the situation. I couldn’t even get an Order of Protection against him because it could affect his job. If he couldn’t work, I wouldn’t get spousal maintenance. It’s very interesting that my lawyer didn’t come back with an answer for me after he said he was going to speak to Jeffrey’s lawyer. Who was my lawyer really protecting? Obviously, Jeffrey! He was protecting Jeffrey from any reprimand, from anything that could come out in public. And I knew that from the beginning! But, once you start, how do you change attorneys?” Well, I finally did change lawyers after other instances in which I felt he protected Jeffrey to my detriment, but not before it cost me a fortune. I paid financially, emotionally, and physically, not only during the marriage, but

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during the divorce proceedings. I truly believe Jeffrey won’t be happy until he totally destroys me. At last, I have an attorney who is working solely in my interest. It took me a long time to wake up. Too long. It’s been more than a year and the divorce negotiations are still going on. My health is better now that we’re no longer living together, but I can never work again.

— Camille’s Advice to You — 1. A marriage relationship should be 50-50. Make sure your marriage is 50-50, too. Don’t settle for less. If you wind up paying more than your fair share, it’s not a good marriage. 2. Be careful what you sign. It may come back to haunt you—big time! 3. Don’t stay in a relationship or marriage if it’s not working. If your partner is not nurturing and loving, get out. There is life after marriage. 4. Don’t marry him in the first place, if you see definite signs of a control freak. I rationalized that his need to control was strength. The signs were there. I chose to ignore them. I paid for that with my health and my career. 5. Don’t expect him to change. If you don’t like what you see, move on. 6. If you file for divorce, get the best attorney you can find. Then make sure he or she is working in your best interest. If not, there is no law that says you cannot change attorneys, no matter how much you’ve already spent. You want your attorney sitting on your side of the table.

When you do not see, or choose to ignore, the red flags that are waving in front of you, the consequences can be disastrous.

Part II Where Are They Now?

A jewel in a crown Only shines in the light. When it catches the light, It reflects it. In a relationship, You cannot shine Unless your companion Provides the light. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Marilyn Frazer

1 If I Could Live My Life All Over Again Tomorrow is a Mystery. Yesterday is History. Today is a Gift. That is why we call it the Present. —Eleanor Roosevelt

The advice from each woman who told her story is a gift to you. All you have is the present. Don’t waste it with the wrong person. Keep your eyes open and trust your gut feelings. Look for someone who will enhance your life. The right person for you is out there . . . waiting.

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Amy

graduated with a master degree in Social Work and is presently working for a Social Service Agency. Pot is no longer an option for her. She has cleaned up her life and feels she can cope with whatever fate has in store for her without depending on drugs.

C.J.

has learned her lessons well. This very attractive woman has had two relationships since she related her story. Each time she was keenly aware of the warning signs and decided these guys were not for her. At last, she said she met Mr. Right. She checked him out carefully and then she fell in love. Both had been burned badly in former relationships and knew what they wanted and what they definitely did not want in a partner. C.J. said she was so appreciative of finding a good person who had common interests and was an intellectual equal, attractive, kind, and loving. However, things were not good in Paradise. He found it too difficult to communicate his thoughts and feelings, 217

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and eventually, C.J. felt she had no choice but to end the relationship. “I don’t think I’ll ever marry again.” She has given up the thought of finding the right person “out there,” bought a house, and settled down with her dog in a small town. Camille

has been stuck in a bitter divorce battle for several years. All that time, her husband has been trying to suck the energy out of her and make her miserable. The good news is that she found a good attorney, who truly represents her best interests. The end is in sight.

Cecelia

is now an elementary school teacher and very happy with her job. She’s not interested in dating and has no intention of ever marrying again. She is quite satisfied with her life as it is now.

Elizabeth is now a business owner. She loves her new single life and says she is very happy. She is in contact with her ex-husband but never intends to be in a relationship with him again. For the past year, she has been seeing a man who is ten years younger than her and believes in monogamy. Stay tuned. Frankie

is about to graduate and is still working part-time. She says that at last she is happy to be in a nurturing relationship and has finally found “the right man.”

Julie

said she has met someone special. “He’s so nice, so easy to be with. It’s so comfortable! But I’m taking it real easy. I’m in no hurry. It’s so refreshing not to be out there.” However, there is a problem. After dating for a year, she feels she needs more “warm fuzzies” than this man is willing to give. She suspects he is afraid of both intimacy and commitment, but she chooses to ignore these warning signs. There are no strings, yet she

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wants strings and says she needs strings for her own emotional well-being. Her biological clock is ticking loudly. Is she wasting precious time with this man? Has she decided to throw the clock out the window and not care about the ticking any more? Is a relationship that is going nowhere better than having the right man in her life? Perhaps she has more lessons to learn. Kelly

has finally ended the relationship. She has fond memories of Jason, her childhood sweetheart, but her memories of the mature Jason are not so sweet.

Lexi

has been happily married for several years. As she says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I kissed a lot of frogs but none of them ever turned into a prince. Then I met a prince. He was never a frog.â&#x20AC;?

Maggie

moved back East to start a new life as an entrepreneur. She is in business with her daughter and son-in-law and is blissfully single.

Pam

is single, but she is happy, at peace with the world, very spiritual, working hard, and still struggling to make a living, but she has a deep sense of self and a beautiful, uplifting outlook on life.

Rebecca

is happily married and content in this relationship. She is busy breeding dogs in her spare time, while enjoying her success as a sought-after interior designer.

Samantha upgraded her wish list. She has set some good boundaries and healthy priorities, and is following her head not her heart. She calls it The Look-Before-You-Leap Principle. Recently she met someone new. She dated him for eighteen months and said he was kind, considerate, loving, giving of himself, and showed in many ways that he considered her very special, and she felt the

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same way about him. However, he had yet to launch a career, while Samantha had established hers. She just ended the relationship because she does not want “to be his mentor.” She wants someone who is on his way or has arrived there. So she bought a condo, got a cat, and settled down to enjoy her own company. Stacy

Although I have not seen Stacy in years, I picture her working as an executive secretary for a large firm. I also picture her at home with two lovable cats to keep her company. I am hoping she was able to find someone special to share her life . . . and her cats.

3 In Conclusion These women hope their advice can be of help to you or a loved one. As Maggie said, “If I can help one woman, if my story can prevent her from going through what I went through, then I’m content.” Although these fourteen women were selected at random, a common thread of alcohol or abuse (or both) runs through most of these stories. I was surprised to find how many of these women were victims of psychological or physical abuse, and it all happened behind closed doors, hidden from view by both parties. Furthermore, almost all of the women ignored the warning signs that said this guy’s not for you. C.J.’s husband hid the signs but, who knows . . . she might have seen them had she not been so worn down by her previous marriage, or had she been aware of the need to look for signs. To borrow some words from Harold Kushner’s book, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, “ . . . in the end, we too will one day go off into the

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darkness, and if we have learned how to live, we will face it neither wisely nor foolishly, but bravely and unafraid.â&#x20AC;? A few of these women have more lessons to learn. The rest are confident and unafraid of what the future holds in store for them. They escaped the relationship trap.

Part III Escape the Relationship Trap

How Do I Know You? How do I know you, dear? I know you in my heart. I know you in my head, Although my head Is far too logical To just accept this love Without examining it And expecting more. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Marilyn Frazer

1 What is the Key to a Healthy Relationship? I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry. —Rita Rudner

You Deserve to Be Happy You have read the stories of fourteen women who ignored the warning signs that said this guy is not for you. You have seen fourteen examples of relationships that did not work. You, too, can escape the relationship trap. The key to a healthy relationship, one that could work for you, is to know what to look for and how to look for it. First of all, the key to a healthy relationship is having a plan which must be in place before you go on your next “first date.” Most singles do not have a plan, they just wing it. They date, enter a relationship, perhaps marry, and then the rose-colored glasses begin to disintegrate. Your plan should include a list of ways to meet someone, questions you will ask during the first few dates in order to learn more about him, and a wish list of characteristics you would like in a partner. Think of the ideal partner for you. What

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would he be like? Then create your plan and personal wish list. Make sure it’s reasonable. Make a Simple Plan Negotiables and Non-Negotiables When you create a list of what you want and don’t want in a relationship, think about the issues on which you willing to compromise . . . these are the negotiables. The issues on which you are unwilling to compromise are the non-negotiables. For example, perhaps one non-negotiable might be religion. You may feel you have to be in a relationship with someone of your own religion. No compromise there. A negotiable might be he is geographically undesirable right now, but this would no longer be a problem if you are willing to move. What are your negotiables and non-negotiables? Negotiables Non-Negotiables

Create a Wish List A Wish List is a list of wants and needs. It will include everything you want in a partner: tall, dark, handsome, well-educated, financially comfortable, the same religion, etc. However, be reasonable. Does he have to be tall? That

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could be a negotiable. State your needs, your non-negotiables in a positive way. For example, write drug-free, rather than does not do drugs. Remember, he does not have to fit every item on your wish list. The list is just a guide, your own personal needs and wishes. Be sure to distinguish between needs and wishes. Nevertheless, the more items that match, the more suitable he will be as a partner. Conversely, if he doesn’t match many of the items on your wish list, most likely he would not be a good candidate for a relationship. Don’t wait until it is too late to make a good decision. What Would You Like to Know About Him in Order to Make a Wise Choice? Do your homework on your honey before you plunge into a relationship. In other words . . . Look before you leap! What would you like to learn about him when you first meet, before the hormones begin to rage? Exactly what are you looking for in a relationship? Decide what is important to you, before you ever go on that first date. You need to learn about him, his relationship with his family and friends, and much more. Slow down and spend time asking questions about: • Money • Children • Sex • Principles • Likes and Dislikes • Values The other day, a friend told me, “I remember, on one first date, I threw so many questions at him that he finally asked, ‘Why are you asking so many questions? I feel like I’m on the witness stand!’ I got carried away, but I

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wanted to know, right up front, if I would be wasting my time with this man. As it turned out, he didn’t pass my personal test, but with the next guy, I was careful not to sound like I was playing Twenty Questions.” Be a Good Listener Does he only talk about himself ? Is he the center of his universe or is he interested in you and getting to know you better? Be careful to note if he is a good listener. I remember one blind date. The guy talked all about himself. Finally, he said, “I realize I’ve been talking mostly about myself. Tell me a little about yourself.” A few minutes after I began, he jumped right in and began talking about himself again.” He definitely was the center of his universe. That was our first and last date. Keep your eyes and ears open. Listen and observe. What would you like to know about him? Below is a short list of questions you might ask. It is not a comprehensive list by any means, but just a few questions you might like to keep in mind. There are many more questions you might want to ask, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Remember, this is not a police inquest; it is just your desire to learn more about him. A Few Sample Questions to Keep in Mind

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Is he close to his family? What is his relationship with his family? What are his values? What is important to him? Is he interested in politics? What does he do for fun? Is he a morning or night person? Has he ever been married? How many times? Does he like children? Does he have any children from a former marriage? Who has custody?

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8. Does he have a pet? Does he like dogs? . . . cats? Is he allergic to them? 9. What kind of work does he do? 10. Is he religious? Remember: • No relationship will be perfect. No man is perfect. But, there are certain characteristics of a healthy relationship that you should look for in a partner, such as trust and respect. For some women, if he’s breathing, that’s enough! You deserve more than that. • You can find out more about him from his friends or family. Do you like his friends? These are the people he chooses to be with. Do you like his family? They are his roots; they provided his foundation, his ethics, his first view of life, his role models. In the next chapter you will find a list of some basic characteristics of healthy relationships.

2 Characteristics of Healthy Relationships • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Unconditional love Saying “I love you” every day Trust Respect Support Communicate! Communicate! Communicate! Be a good listener Have a short memory Responsibility Being there for the other person Good self-worth Intimacy Appreciation Ability to compromise Family background Common interests

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• • • • • • • • • • • • •

Good give and take Past relationships Sense of humor Flexibility Never go to bed angry Enjoy lovemaking Pick your battles Financial responsibility Same religion Being needed, being there for each other No strings Stick it out through good times and bad A realistic acceptance of vulnerabilities and weaknesses More About Each Characteristic

Unconditional Love • Be nonjudgmental. You’re not perfect. Why demand it of your partner? Every day tell each other I love you. Then watch the smile appear on your partner’s face. Trust • This is the first foundation block of the entire relationship. Each partner must be trustworthy. Without trust, you cannot have a good relationship. Respect • This is the second foundation block upon which the relationship must be built. Mutual respect and understanding is the key to a wholesome relationship. It doesn’t work unless it is mutual.

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• Your partner should respect your wishes and needs and honor your personhood. • Setting healthy boundaries creates mutual respect. Support • This is the third foundation block that is the necessary basis for a wholesome relationship. Support means being there for the other person. A supportive partner encourages, stands by, and provides loving advice, not criticism. Effective Communication • Both of you must be on the same page. Both partners must be willing to give each other their attention. • Communicate your expectations. You have the right to set personal boundaries. • Communicate to your partner what you consider to be acceptable behavior. If you have the idea that your love for each other can solve any problem, think again! • Discuss the details: for example, rules for walking the dog or who takes out the garbage. • Communicate! Communicate! Communicate! Be a Really Good Listener • Most people are not good listeners. They are too busy thinking of what they are going to say next. Learn to be a good listener. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to tell a partner something and realizing it’s going in one ear and out the other. Even more devastating is the silent treatment, when one partner will not communicate with the other as a form of punishment. This just creates resentment. • Be patient. What you hear may be more important than what you say . . . or plan to say.

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Have a Short Memory • Don’t carry a grudge. Speak up and then listen. Responsibility • Each partner must accept responsibility for making the marriage a success—emotional, financial, and parenting responsibility. One partner should not be expected to accomplish it alone. Being There • Each partner must be there for the other person—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is important to have someone to lean on in stressful times. Being needed is very important for good physical, as well as emotional, health. Conversely, not being there causes frustration, loneliness, stress, and distress for the partner. The couch potato is physically present but emotionally attached to the TV. Good Self-Worth • Low self-worth leads to codependence. Excessive self-worth, an over-inflated ego, leads to power and control issues. • Good self-worth in both partners generates a healthy relationship. • Do not enter a relationship without having developed a good selfworth. Work on developing this beforehand. Intimacy • Intimacy is essential because it creates a bond that is the glue that holds the relationship together. Intimacy occurs when two souls touch. It is the deepest form of love. Appreciation • Both partners must appreciate having the other in their life. • Pay attention to what is going well in your relationship and appreciate it. Too often people focus on what is not going well and don’t stop

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to appreciate having that person in his or her life. Take a moment to think about what life would be without your partner. Family Background • His parents are his role models. Therefore, take a good look at his family. Since we tend to repeat patterns, the way his father treats his mother may be the way he will treat you. Compromise, Compromise, Compromise • Both of you will not have the same point of view on everything. Life is a little black and white and a whole lot of gray stuff. Give and Take • The interactions of receiving and giving are so essential to daily life that they affect virtually all aspects of the relationship. Healthy give and take provides better understanding and a wholesome relationship. • One giver and one taker = a codependent relationship • Two takers = a bad relationship • Two givers = a good relationship • Each gives and takes = a good relationship • A pleaser is a person who has been taught to give but never learned to take. Have Common Interests • Doing things together creates intimacy; it brings stimulation, fun, and happiness into the relationship. It also creates relationship history. • Without a genuine value connection, common interests are meaningless. He likes to play tennis and so do you, but if that’s all you have in common, it’s not enough to hold a relationship together. Past Relationships • Learn as much as you can about his past relationships. Talk to his friends, family, and, if possible, a former girlfriend. Why did they

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break up? He may have one version and they might have another, more revealing version. Sense of Humor • Humor reduces stress and tension in a relationship. It diffuses anger and overcomes barriers to solving problems, bringing the couple closer together. • Humor creates intimacy, generates optimism, and a joy in sharing life together. Flexibility • Couples must be flexible, especially with regard to compromise and the negotiation of differences. Through bargaining and negotiation, couples resolve conflicts. On the other hand, rigidity generates tension and resentment. Sex • What are your partner’s preferences? Make sure they are compatible with yours. Don’t do what is uncomfortable or unpleasant to you. • Put some fun in lovemaking. Always keep the romance alive. Never Go to Bed Angry with Each Other • When disagreeing with the other’s point of view, be polite and civil. Otherwise, you will lose the closeness and move further and further apart. Say good night, kiss, and call it a day (or night). Tomorrow your heads will be a little clearer. Pick Your Battles Carefully • The world won’t come to an end if you let your partner have his or her way. • Often, the hardest words to say are: I’m sorry and you’re right. Every time

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you say I’m sorry it diffuses the tension, the anger. These are two very powerful words and very difficult for many people to say, or admit. • When was the last time you said, you were right? Financial Responsibility • Financial responsibility is an indication of stability and maturity and knowing the direction in which you are going. Don’t be a debt collector, and don’t pick one for a partner. Same Religion • When you are both of the same religion, the relationship is more harmonious and there are less difficult decisions and adjustments to make, such as, in what religion (if any) the children will be raised? Being Needed • We all want to feel needed and useful in our relationship. The idea is to feel needed without being needy. No Strings • Do not put strings on your partner and do not accept them from him. • Example of strings: I’ll only love you if you . . . Otherwise, I will not love you. Stick it Out Through Bad Times and Good • That’s what love is all about. However, don’t stick it out if the relationship is bad. There is no law that says you have to stay in a bad relationship. • The longer you stay in a bad relationship, the more you feel committed to the person and the relationship because you have invested so much time and energy in it, and the harder it is to leave.

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Realistic Acceptance of Vulnerabilities and Weaknesses • Accept your partner’s individual differences, “warts” and all. He’s only human. • Do not try to take advantage of your partner’s vulnerability or criticize his weaknesses. You would not like him to do the same.

In a good relationship, the partners hang in there through good times and bad because their foundation is solid.

3 My Wish List What I Want in a Relationship

What I Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Want in a Relationship

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In a Relationship . . . Two People are Right for Each Other . . . • • • • • • • •

if they feel comfortable with each other if they understand each other if they play well with each other if there is mutual trust if they feel needed if they want the same things for themselves and their partner if they respect and honor each other and each other’s minds if they respect each other’s boundaries

But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. —Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet