Dear Abigail,
Almost three years ago, my husband reformed his life: He quit drinking and lost a hundred pounds. He started a business, then stopped it. He got a job, and says he hates it. We had to sell our home to pay off our debts, and we now rent down the road. My husband’s cousin committed suicide days before our move, last November, and at first he was consumed by grief. Now he is increasingly dissatisfied with everything and everyone in our life, and is exhibiting controlling behavior I never used to experience with him: He doesn’t like my gigs, friends, social media consumption. We have two young sons, ages 8 and 9.
My husband exercises and meditates but kiboshed a therapy session I set up for us. He couldn’t even talk about what drew him to me in the early days. He’s tried painting, knitting, archery. He disappears for walks in nature, sometimes all day and night. He might as well have a second family, although I know he is not cheating or using drugs or alcohol while away. He tells me he cries on these walks. He also says he loves me and our sons but he hates our life.
I try to be supportive of his efforts to heal. I have tried to cushion, to absorb, to reinterpret, to wait. I have tried to love him into stability. I know he is capable of change. We don’t have grandparents or any “help” with our kids (my mother passed away), so when I recently got shift work, it forced him to be present, which has been healing for all of us.
But my fear is that we are giving our boys a playbook for disrespectful and doormat behavior. It’s not like it’s going to get easier to guide or discipline them once testosterone enters the picture. What are our sons telling themselves? I check in with them—“anything you want to talk about?”—and I do not trash-talk their father. I would suffer—and have suffered—any indignity to keep us under the same roof. I do not want a blended family. I have seen what children have to endure in the name of their parents’ “happiness.” We say children are resilient, as though they have any choice but to acquiesce.
Two things can be true: My husband is doing the best he can and it’s hurting us. Some days he does not even say good morning, or goodbye. My friends are horrified by this treatment. I am humiliated by their judgment, so I stopped sharing the details. They all left the fathers of their children. None of their mothers are dead. They just don’t understand my holding on.
Abigail: How do I keep my family intact when the pieces are broken?
—Jessica, 44
Jessica,
On my one serious attempt to treat my son’s allergies, I trucked him through a day of testing, then purchased a $300 vial of liquid the color of dehydrated urine. We were instructed to place two drops of the elixir under his tongue every night for months. But hours after we returned home, my son began yelling from the bathroom. I found him on his knees, mopping up the precious liquid with a towel.
The slippery stuff made it into every crevice in the tile and formed a sheen on the bathroom floor. Though it had fallen from the counter, the vial didn’t crack.
The pain in your letter made me think of that viscous yellow liquid, spilling out all over. And of you. You are not broken. Your children are not broken. Your pain may spill out, but you refuse to break.
Your friends have dumped the fathers of their children, and they seem flummoxed that you haven’t done likewise. They tell themselves that this was best for their kids. But our society is full of women congratulating one another for breaking up families as if it were a brave, enlightened act. Meanwhile, you witness their kids and perceive the betrayal. Tempting as it would be to join them, you look over at your little boys and summon the will to hold your family together.
