I could write hundreds of pages on this topic, the madness that she put me through. I kept telling myself, I gotta stay for the kids. The kids are the most important thing. No matter how much shit it was, I had to take it for them. We tried counseling. Therapy. Didn’t help, mostly because she didn’t believe in it, nor did she want to take it seriously. She thought it was like finding a referee to say who was right or wrong.

You might think, this story is totally one sided. It definitely is. I won’t sit here and pretend I knew what was going on with LK, and why she acted how she did. This entire blog is primarily from my perspective. I can tell you though that everything is 100% true. I don’t need to make anything up, more real life shit happened to me than I could ever imagine.

Something I would like to highlight, I know my experience has been very unique to me. I can understand the disdain people will show for my ex wife. But she had her own struggles too, I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her to live with her disorder. Ultimately, it was our inability to communicate and support each other that led to our downfall.

You might say, I quit on her. I stopped being sweet, or stopped doing nice things for her. I can tell you I didn’t. Every holiday or occasion, I would still go out of my way for her. Over the years, you do lose some of the zest in the relationship. Still, Mother’s day I picked up the kids, along with an Edible Arrangement and surprised her at work. I would buy her surprise gifts for her birthday, Christmas. Regardless of how bad things were, and how poorly she treated me at times, I still wanted to be a good father and husband. She was still my wife and the mother of my children.

Appreciation

Before I end this part of my life, I do want to try to acknowledge some of the things that were positive. LK did love our kids in her own way, they were important to her at her core. She just wasn’t good at expressing herself. People would tell me that she loved me very much, she just didn’t know how to show it. I couldn’t feel it though, I never felt like underneath it all she loved me for who I was. I felt like she was more in love with the notion of a “husband”, and husband could be anyone.

She loved her job and she was pretty good at it. She was devoted to patient care and advocating for the patients. She would try and be supportive to some of the nicer families that would come in. She had few friends but was very loyal to the ones she had.

But I’m human. I have breakdowns. I make mistakes. The difference though is I own up to my mistakes, I apologize for them and try to make things right. I show remorse. At times I just wanted to hear her say “I’m sorry honey”. I’m very forgiving, it’s a gift and a curse.

There were times where I would see her finally crack, for a brief moment, I felt like the real LK was exposed for a second. She would look at me with a fearful look and say she needed help. I always tried to grab onto that moment and get her to stay there, but it would always disappear again in an instant. Those moments were few and far between but they gave me a sliver of hope. Just maybe, one day it would happen. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

Disorder Diagnosis

After years of pleading, I finally convinced her to see a psychiatrist. We went together. I remember it vividly. He was a younger Hispanic fellow. Very nice. He sat her down, and chatted with her for about 15 minutes. Abruptly, he says: “You have borderline personality disorder.” I was in shock. He described the symptoms and behavior patterns. He was on the mark on everything.

I had very mixed feelings about this. Part of me felt validation that I wasn’t being absurd. The other part of me felt this emptiness about all the years I had endured this behavior.

For those who don’t know what Borderline Personality Disorder is, it’s on the spectrum of Bi Polar disorder, but much more extreme. Bi Polar Disorder is a little bit more easier to manage because it comes in phases and long periods. BPD, as the psychiatrist explained to me, meant that LK sat on a fence everyday. One side of the fence was a normal person’s thinking and logic. The other side of the fence, was a sociopath’s. She could fall onto either side of the fence at any given time, and you wouldn’t know which it was. That explained the volatility and the inability to reason with her. She would also show no empathy towards others. It is a very difficult disorder to deal with, and it’s very difficult to live with.

Taken from the U.S National Library of Medicine’s website:

She was in denial, still. Due to her nursing background, she never believed his diagnosis. He explained to her that they could treat it with some meds to stabilize her hormones, then intense therapy to correct the behavior. She tried to take the easy route, she asked if there was just some pill she could take to fix it. Unfortunately, there was not. He told her that she needed to start the therapy immediately. The older the person was, the longer it would take to break their habits. She refused and we left.

The Separation

We had a serious discussion about this that day. She was visibly anxious about what had happened. She asked if I was going to leave her now. I told her that depends on how she continues this discussion. I told her I was tired, I couldn’t take any more of the current situation. I promised that if she would take the therapy seriously and genuinely put in the effort to get better, I would stay and support her. If she treated it the same way she did marriage counseling, I told her I was done. She told me she wouldn’t do the therapy.

My daughter and I were really close then. I was, and still am, so proud of her. The day my heart first broke was after the psych visit. I put the kids to bed, before she fell asleep I asked her: “Do mom and dad fight a lot?”. Hesitantly, she replied yes. I asked then, “How does that make you feel?”. Her answer: “It makes me feel like I don’t have a mom and dad.” She was ~6 at the time. It killed me, my heart sank. Right then and there, I realized trying to stay for the kids wasn’t healthy for them after all. It was the most difficult decision I have ever made. I debated staying and leaving and how it would affect their lives.

I decided I wanted a divorce. It was around June 2011. I tried to talk to LK in a very soft, calm tone. I laid out a plan, that entailed 6 months for me to find a job, move out and get the kids situation sorted out. I wanted to minimize the impact on them as much as I could. She looked at me blankly and said: “Get your shit, and get the fuck out.”

Frustrated, I gave up. I warned her once. If I leave now, you won’t see me again.

“Get the fuck out.”

Fine. I did and never looked back.

Continue Reading – Chapter 4 Wingman Life – After Separation