with seemingly stable men who cared about me. One in particular asked me to marry him, describing a lovely, festive wedding in our quaint community. This was more than I could bear. So I left him for another. I can only imagine that he must have wondered what the hell was wrong with me. It has taken me a long time to find out.
The man I left him for was the man who became my second husband. And this has been the most challenging relationship of all for me. I felt off-balance almost from the start. I was instantly attracted to him the first time I met him. He came into the building that housed my work office inquiring where he was to go to work for the evening shift. He was a new, temporary employee. I gave him the information he requested, and he went on his way. I wondered who he was and where he came from.
Within a short period of time, I gathered that information and started to get to know him through mutual friends. I learned bits here and there about him. The facts revealed that he had temporarily come to this area to live with a friend who had also recently moved here; he had previously lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a commune; he had worked in a psychiatric hospital in Boston; he was thirty-seven years old and had held twenty-five jobs; he liked to have a six-pack of cheap beer at the end of every day.
And to these facts I added all sorts of bits and pieces of my own about who I thought he was. I thought he was a charming intellectual of New England descent. I thought he was brilliant, worldly, and sophisticated. I was fascinated by him. I thought he had fabulous ideas that put mine to shame. I thought he was deep. I thought he was exotic. I thought I was simple and plain and unexciting. I thought he was wonderful and I was not. I thought he could not possibly like me for who I was.
And so I became very attached to these illusions and to my desire to have him like me nevertheless. And so I created a sort of hell for my self that went on for years.
Recently, my husband and I were reviewing the names of the presidents of the United States in the twentieth century in response to some question by our daughter. My husband had the encyclopedia in his hands, and I was trying to recall them in order. When I thought I had successfully finished the list, my husband said, “That was all right except that you forgot Ronald Reagan. He was president for the first eight years of our relationship.” He paused, and with a knowing smile he said, “I guess you missed that one because you thought I was president then.” We laughed. I knew exactly what he meant.
The insecurities and self-doubts I put my self through during the first years of our relationship were awful. I remember consciously asking my self, “Would he like me if I looked like that?” “Would he think I was more interesting if I was like her?” I was constantly searching for what I could do to be appealing and interesting to him. I was sure I was not.
And small fights with him would devastate me. I would go off sobbing by my self and feel very lost and fearful that our relationship was certainly over.
I was always sure he would leave me.
I got to feeling so bad and off-center. I would feel like the bottom was dropping out from under me. I would feel agitated and unable to concentrate. Things that generally brought me pleasure were unimportant and cast aside. I would pursue arguments for hours, hoping that we could come to some point where I again would feel sure he was not going away. I would feel compelled to say some things to him and to seek his reassurance. As I approached such conversations, I would know that they would likely not produce the results I desired. But I pursued them anyway, wanting to hold onto this man.
And about “this man”: This book is about me and will remain so. But it is important to make a few general comments about him that enrich this picture. This man did not shower me with gifts or verbalizations offering me the reassurance I sought. He had his own issues with work and intimacy and, as I’ve already hinted, alcohol. I had finally found the rebellious sort I sought out in the seventh grade. But this one was cloaked in intellect and social class that made our being together seem more appropriate and okay. He seemed hardly emotionally available to me, and this drew me in like a magnet.
And he knew this.
So it should have not been a surprise to me several years into our relationship when we were walking by a bookstore in a mall that he pointed out Robin Norwood’s book Women Who Love Too Much to me. How insulting! How insightful! How correct!
This is how I handled the situation: A big part of me wanted to please him. So of course I showed interest in the book and the topic. I even bought it on the spot. A small part of me was bothered that he would even suggest that something was wrong with me, needless to mention with our relationship. And an even smaller part of me thought perhaps the help I knew I needed was to be had in that book.
And, in fact, it was. It was the beginning of the way out at last, the way out of my lostness, anxiety, and despair. A year or so prior to this I had entered psychotherapy to help me with these same issues. I had been feeling so bad in the relationship that I had seen a psychologist for the first time in my life. I had also done this because I thought my husband would like me to do it. He did.
The psychotherapy had been pleasant, comforting, and somewhat revealing, but our work had not really helped me with my entanglements with my husband. I don’t think I shared the depths of those issues with this male psychotherapist. I was too ashamed, in part. I had an image of competence and togetherness to maintain. After all, I was a psychotherapist too, so I should know better. I should have it all together. It didn’t help either that my therapist moved to another state before we finished our work. Nor did it help that the presence of alcoholism was never raised. So, insight I had gained, but my pain remained.
This was somewhere around 1985 or 1986. I started to get a clue that the way out of my entanglements involved getting my focus on my self and not on the other. But this was only a clue. Years of learning to disentangle were ahead of me.
Somewhere around this time I made a decision that was both healthy and unhealthy. For some reason I decided to apply to return to graduate school to complete my Ph.D. To my surprise, I was accepted into the program I sought. I was stunned and on the spot. I had not really thought about what I would do if I was accepted. To be in the program required moving to another part of the state. I waited until the very last day to give them my answer. And that answer was “No, thank you.”
I declined this wonderful opportunity for two reasons. The healthy reason, or so it seemed to me, was that I was good at school and lousy at relationships. So I decided that rather than run away from this relationship, I would stay and work on it and me.
The other reason was the unhealthy one: I feared that if I went away to graduate school I would lose this man. I was sure of this and could not bear the thought of it happening. It felt like a great risk that my abandonment fears could not tolerate. So I said, “No, thank you.”
I have not regretted that decision. I have in fact stuck with the course I picked at that time, which was to work on my intimacy difficulties and to increase my capacity for a healthy relationship. Consider this book my dissertation. It is the document that captures my experience, strength, and hope gathered through this educational path I chose in the mid-1980s.
In September 1987 we were married in a service on the front lawn of our home with our friends and my family present. In August 1988 our most wonderful daughter was born. In November 1988 my husband entered treatment. His diagnosis: alcoholism.
Finally, we had a name, a label, a way to conceptualize the craziness we had been living with. And we both took it seriously and embarked on our paths to recovery.
That was 1988. I started attending Al-Anon meetings almost right away, though not for particularly the right reasons. I saw the meetings as interesting and fun. I enjoyed hearing people’s stories and intellectually absorbing
