My Ex-Husband Just Told Me He Is Taking Care of His Mental Health Issues After Years of Ignoring Them
Another chapter from the book of How Is This Supposed To Make Me Feel?
“I’m on medication now. I no longer feel like I have a boa constrictor wrapped around me. I can breathe. I can relax. I can just sit still and be okay.”
These words are coming through the phone as I talk to my ex-husband about an issue with one of our daughters. I hear them. I understand them. I know he expects me to respond and yet I have no ready response. I mean, seriously, how is this information supposed to make me feel? What does he expect me to say?
I spent the better part of eighteen years trying to get my ex-husband to seek help for behaviors I increasingly felt were due to serious mental health problems. I suggested, then asked, then begged and pleaded, and finally insisted that he seek professional help. That he get a diagnosis for whatever unseen demons plagued him and caused him to behave the way he did toward me and our daughters. When I finally forced his hand, he ended our marriage rather than see a psychiatrist.
Now, less than two years after our initial separation, he is a changed man (so he says). He is seeing a therapist. He is on medication. He feels so much better than he ever has and he wishes he had sought help earlier — much earlier — as far back as his teenage years.
For years, I struggled to keep seeing the man I once loved through the cloud of self-destruction, chaos, anger, hatefulness, resentment, and paranoia he exuded. I gave him the benefit of every doubt even as I endured his rants, rages, and fits of jealousy. I was perfect yet never good enough. I didn’t love him enough. It was my fault he drank and stayed out all night. It was my fault he couldn’t bear to sit still or talk to me or be around our children for more than an hour or two at a time. He used to tell me that I was everything that was wrong with his life.
So finally, I took him at his word and moved into the basement and then out of our house. The years of struggle and self-doubt ended. I regained lost energy and focused on my life. I was almost immediately happier. I knew deep down that our divorce was the best outcome I could have hoped for despite the difficulty…
