The Wildman

So today I met with the Wildman- he is the pastoral councilor who I have been seeing since September to help me sort through my feelings about marriage, divorce and family of origin issues. I guess that I have learned over the past 15 years that if you do not respect yourself enough to be honest with yourself about your own culpability in your failed relationships than you will inevitably bring your unresolved issues into every relationship that you establish and continue to play them out. The decision to find a councilor was overwhelming because, well, it isn't that easy to find one who you connect with and who respects your beliefs. But moreover, I had no idea where to begin. Do you begin with family of origin issues, do you begin with issues that you brought into the marriage, do you begin with issues that the two of you have created during the marriage? I just didn't have any idea where to begin. The funny thing was that I just began where I was at the exact moment that I walked into his office and he really has been thoughtful, insightful and intelligent in his responses.

Today the Wildman and I talked about the very bad few weeks that I've had. We discussed the issue of control. I hate control; I hate that I am always in control and I really hate the instances when I allow myself to be briefly out of control and work diligently to regain a sense of control and centeredness...

One of the major reasons that I decided to end my marriage was because I had to be in control of everything or things would start to fall apart. I came across an email that I sent to my husband last year. I told him that I really just needed him to take more responsibility in our marriage, in our family and in our lives. He just wasn't able to. It's that simple and that complex all at the same time.

I resented having to control everything; I was exhausted from having to keep everything together- especially my husband. The control was killing everything good and lovely about me. And when he moved out in January I felt an overwhelming sense of peace- peace that passes all understanding- settle on my house, my life, my family. That's good right?

The interesting thing is that I was always in control and became very controlling. I kept him organized, functional, moving forward. When he broke down I called our health care provider to request medication be called in. And as much as I did not want that responsibility- I am finding it very difficult to relinquish that control.

Since he has moved out he has become incredibly manic. I had seen glimpses of mania during our marriage but I just worked that much harder to keep our lives under control. I am finding it very difficult to watch him self destruct. His decisions do continue to effect me as we are still married and we have children to parent. Before I made the decision to divorce I could not let him hit rock bottom. We were a family. Preventing him from hitting rock bottom created co-dependency!

So in summary- over the past two weeks I have realized that my husband doesn't simply have a major depressive disorder- he likely has manic depression, in spite of the fact that I hated and resented being in control of everything- all the time- I have become a control freak and somewhat co-dependent as allowing him to fail would mean that our family failed... It was an eventful session and a painful couple of weeks for sure.