The Question

“Did he get remarried?”

My aunt asked me this about my ex husband last weekend. I attended a baby shower for one of my cousins, and I saw family I hadn’t seen in many years. Probably about six years to be exact. With the wonders of Facebook, I’d seen many of their faces since then. But I hadn’t heard their voices, felt their hugs. It just happened that my mom wasn’t attending this event, and I was able to.

I expected some uncomfortable conversations, but there really were none. That one question though… that question has rung in my head since.

It’s been almost three years since we officially divorced. I don’t remember what I thought when it was happening, but I certainly did not think that I’d be sitting here, still single, without a partner, living alone with my kids — three years later. And I certainly didn’t think he would be either.

I mentioned this to a friend yesterday morning as some of us were gathering for tea and she and I discussed how men’s lives are improved with marriage, and women’s get harder. It makes sense that my aunt — who is in her 70’s — would ask this.

What it feels like she was asking was “Since you stopped taking care of him, did someone else step up?”

Ooof.

No, because I still take care of him. Actually, in some ways we still take care of each other.

About a year ago, he fell to the ground and had a seizure at a park with two of our sons. The park was just down the street from my house, so a neighbor walked him over as my stunned teenagers looked on. The ambulance was called, he was assessed, and taken to the ER to make sure he was ok. As they closed the doors and drove with the lights off… one of the fire/rescue/paramedics asked me “How long has he had an alcohol abuse problem?”

I cared for him. I reassured him he’d be ok. I picked him up from the ER and I brought him to my house for a few hours. I can’t even remember now how his car ended up back at his house, but I must’ve taken care of that, too.

It was scary, and it was real, and I held his hand as we laid down together in my bed. All I could think of was how badly he was still hurting, how much trauma he still had unprocessed, and how he’d laid with me in that same bed when it was in a bedroom at our shared family home. He was with me when I didn’t want to face another day of suffering. He was with me.

But it is far more complicated when you involve addiction, codepedency, and enmeshment. After three years, I still struggle to have boundaries with him at times. And I fear that because I’ve stayed present in his life, that I’ve enabled him to not seek recovery.

It wasn’t until a few weeks ago when he had a relapse and his body quite forcefully objected by making him vomit over and over that he quietly said to me on the phone

“I’m sick.”

“Yeah, you drank too much.”

“No, I mean I’m sick. I have a drinking problem.”

He said it. After 21 years, 7 months, and a handful of days since I met him. He said it.

Watching him struggle with this and not being able to change it has been very hard for me. I don’t want to lose him. He is still very important to me, and important in my life and my kids’ lives, even though he struggles. He cannot fully connect with me or with them. He can’t even connect with himself.

No, neither of us have remarried or are in serious relationships. That should be an obvious answer to that question.

It isn’t because I hope to reconcile with him. Maybe he does with me, I don’t know. But that’s not it.

It’s because I am still learning what love looks like, and I am still wading through the muck of the complexities around all of it.

I don’t know how to end this one — in reference to this piece. Maybe that’s a good metaphor for this relationship as well.