Tears fell as she contemplated the years ahead of her. Years of being trapped in a marriage that existed in name only. Years of being trapped with a man she no longer loved, if she ever had, years of waiting for him to die so she could be free. Over the years she’d come close to having the courage to leave. Years when she still had her career, years when she could have supported herself and taken her life in a different direction. Years when she was still young.
But fear and pride had kept her tethered.
Now. Now she was almost 70 years old. She had taken early retirement at 57 because her husband, older than she, had experienced a serious health crisis. Most people would have died then, but not her husband. Thirteen years later, he has over a dozen serious health conditions, he’s had three strokes, and the son-of-a-bitch is still playing nine holes of golf at least once a week.
A few months ago she decided to work with her long-time therapist again. She felt certain her therapist was tired of hearing her complain about her marriage and her husband, but she needed to do the work. Otherwise, she felt she might go crazy. When the light finally went on for her – “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” – she was, for the first time, ready and willing to accept responsibility for her own actions, and to own, again for the first time, the reasons she had stayed in that pitiful excuse for a marriage.
Now she was trapped. Her word, not her therapist’s. Just fucking trapped.
Pride had kept her captive, a prisoner in the cell to which she alone held the key. And it wasn’t just pride. She’d made a horrible mistake in her first marriage, and she didn’t want to admit that she’d done it again with husband number two. The personal price she’d paid for marrying her current husband had been too, too horrendous. If she got a divorce, she’d be admitting that choosing him had been one big, fat, shit-hole mistake.
She had stayed to justify the price she had paid for marrying him.
To people who knew her, none could believe she had turned over complete control of her life to husband #2. She was a hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners litigator. But that was her professional life. Privately – to keep the peace and to stave off a divorce which would again expose her terrible choice of husbands – privately, she allowed him to take all of her income, income that was more than twice what he earned, and do what he wanted with it. She had to ask permission to buy clothes. He told her which grocery store to shop in. He wanted her physically in his presence when she wasn’t working, doing his bidding, never developing friends of her own. Behind closed doors he was emotionally and verbally abusive. In public, everyone thought they were the perfect couple.
After years living in a home she had built and adored, he decided they needed to downsize and move. So, they moved to a tiny town in another state where she knew absolutely no one. After the first winter in the new house, he said he couldn’t spend the winters there, so they bought a second house situated in a more southerly-sited state. She hated spending half her time in one place and then another, because nesting was important to her. But he insisted. He didn’t like the cold. After a few years, they came as close to a divorce as they ever had. Seeking a geographical cure, something she knew never worked, they sold both houses, and moved yet again, this time to the quasi-retirement community that he picked out, in the town he picked out, and bought the house he picked out.
So, now a few weeks from turning 70 she looks at the reality that has become her life. Her husband has a progressive brain disorder along with all his other medical problems. His short-term memory is declining at a fairly rapid pace, and his ability to problem solve comes and goes, but mostly goes. He’s on a cane, and they have handicap stickers for their cars. The only upside she can see to her current situation is that she can get the best parking spots now. Otherwise, she sees years of caregiving a man who she doesn’t love as his brain shuts down and his body fails. If they are both lucky, a stroke will kill him before he becomes demented and in diapers.
She made a commitment almost 37 years ago. A legal and moral commitment when she married this man. She has asked herself what seems like a hundred times, would she leave now if he weren’t sick? Truthfully? Probably not because the financial blow at this time of her life would be impossible to recover from. She might be miserable and depressed, but she’s not stupid.
It is so very hard for her right now. She can barely stand to be in the same room with her husband. Conversation is forced. She reminds herself that her husband is a child of the Divine, and she tries her best to be kind. But it is so very hard, when his touch repels her, and her thoughts are constantly with what could have been.
This is the story of how she got here, in part, but also the story of where she is going. I don’t know how her story will end – she doesn’t know either, but she has invited me along to record it in real time. I am hopeful that there will be a happy ending. She deserves one.