We were sitting on the front porch of the house I’d been renting since separating from Husband #2 four months earlier. It was casual conversation, laced with little jewels of familiarity and laughter.
I was enjoying that ‘in the moment’ connection with my 28-year old son when he locked those intense blue eyes of his right into mine and asked: “So, how long were you married the second time before you realized you’d married the same man?”
Ouch!
Touché!
He hadn’t said it to be cruel, so I couldn’t reflexively get my back up and lay out some weak rationalization.
Insight is insight.
Truth is truth.
I had been married to his dad for twenty years and to Husband #2 for eight. Collectively, almost my entire adult life involved being someone’s wife, involved being with someone whose traits included hard-working (aka workaholic); generous, in a self-serving way; kind, although that kindness was offset by a destructive need to always be right, to win at all costs, even if that meant laying waste to me in the process.
In both marriages, we didn’t have arguments, we had all out wars, where there was a winner and a loser. Not surprisingly, I was more often than not the loser.
I had racked up more than thirty years of dealing with their aloofness, the trait that no degree of loving, cajoling, pampering, begging, ignoring or yelling could penetrate. And along with that aloofness came the emotional unavailability. A two-for-one deal, much like the traits shared by my father and mother. Harbingers of the past.
More than thirty years of being with men with a strong need to control, where vulnerability was seen as a weakness suffered by fools and women, of which I am definitely the latter (and on occasion the former).
After experiencing firsthand the direct effects of anger and control unchecked in my first marriage, and the toll it took on my self-respect and my soul, I thought for certain I’d learned my lesson. After all, I was a 45-year old woman when I married for the second time. Surely I knew not to repeat the same mistakes, make the same compromises of the heart that I’d made the first time?
But there’s no shelf life on the lies we midlife women tell ourselves. Especially when they come all dressed up in the wide-eyed, first blush of love. Nor, apparently, on the lies we continue to tell ourselves once that first blush has faded and we are faced with the truth. And while we know it’s the truth, we can’t yet admit it, because to admit it means facing the free fall, the culpability, and the deep unknown.
That conversation with my son was almost two years ago. In the time that’s gone by, much has changed, including my place of residence. No, I didn’t move back in with my husband. Despite counseling, despite half-assed reconciliations and broken promises, our marriage was DOA. There was no going back. Instead, I moved forward, leaving the roots I’d spent three decades tending to move to a new state, a new home, a new life.
As a woman in midlife I finally got real. I took off the self-made blinders and shined a critical, unrelenting light on myself, on the ways in which I’d failed to face the truth at different points in my life, at how I took responsibility for “fixing” things that were not mine to fix just to keep the peace and be seen as “nice” and “selfless.”
What I discovered was both freeing and unsettling – like a ship untethered and adrift. Both feelings had to do with my commitment, some 30 years overdue, to make and be responsible for my own decisions. To make decisions based on what was best for me – not what was best for anyone else. Because no one else was living my life BUT me.
And I had to face that culpability. I’d played a part in choosing the type of men I’d gotten involved with; I’d played a part in the kind of marriages I had. It was easier to point the finger outward, but I could no longer escape the fingers pointing back at me.
Some of that culpability existed in the shadows. It became a part of my self image without my really being aware it had taken root there. As women we are indoctrinated into the culture very early on in life to feel guilty when we don’t put others above ourselves. It’s part of the feminine description to be nurturing, but we aren’t encouraged to include ourselves in that nurturing. When we do, we hear or think of that most damning trait – being selfish – and we inwardly cringe.
But the biggest discovery on this journey to myself was that I had finally set boundaries that I wasn’t willing to let myself or anyone else cross. And I discovered that it was paramount that I invest in myself, that I see the truth when it is often easier to believe the lie, that I face the demons that work to hold me back, and embrace the resilience and spirit that enable me to thrive.
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The post The Lies We Midlife Women Tell Ourselves appeared first on Midlife Coaching for Women | Evelyn Kalinosky.
