And Now the Rest of the Family Knows

My mother contacted me in a panic. Apparently my mother had been trying to reach my spouse to discuss High School graduation plans, and that is when she found out that my spouse and our youngest had left me. Apparently my spouse tried to assure my mother that the future of our youngest was fine, that none of these events would impact their future. This is an interesting statement considering they have been removed from high school. They won’t be able to walk the stage with their friends, celebrated by family.

I tried to explain everything to my mother, but, once again, I just spent a part of the phone call sobbing about how this is yet more of the same old behavior from my spouse. That they have this pattern of procrastinating on something to the pointof making it an emergency, and instead of dealing with it they always find some reason to run away instead. Often their stories are partially true, so long as one ignores the details being left out that might paint my spouse in a negative light. This is a frequent tactic of my spouse, lies of omission.

Over the years we have delt with this same behavior, this same “put it off until it is on fire” pattern, and once it is on fire simply run away. We have tried therapy, both marriage therapy as well as therapy for my spouse. We have studied articles, looked up research. My spouse has gone in for two of sleep studies, believing themselves to be narcoleptic; both studies came back negative. In the end we were slowly zeroing in on them having anxiety, or depression, or both, and they were currently taking medication and seeing, or was supposed to be seeing, a therapist. For almost the last year my spouse and claimed to have missed their appointment, yet again. Though last I checked you still get billed for that if you don’t call in and cancel. Also, once one has missed something like that enough times .. wouldn’t adding it to the calendar be appropriate?

One of the things we did agree on was that my spouse was highly anxious about their social image. They would often avoid conversations if they were not certain how the other person would respond; needing a sort of warranty against a negative response or image. Often this resulted in my spouse telling the same stories and the same jokes over and over again, being devoid of any meaningful conversation. My spouse’s anxiety towards their self image was so great that they were prone to modify the truth, leave out details, to paint themselves in a better light, even if it resulted in hurting others. They also tended to avoid any and all contact with any individual whom might contradict those narritives, insisting that they needed to avoid those people at all costs, hinting at some unspoken hurt or damage, but always being unwilling to discuss anything. Always responding with silence and allowing all those around to imagine what might have happened and come to their own conclusions. Over the years I started recognizing the pattern and came to realize that this was just another way for them to deflect. An almost Hitchockian method for developing a monster.

Because, ironically, everyone whom has been through a traumatic event should wallow it up inside and not discuss it, right?

I think the best example of this behavior in action from my spouse is related to a relationship they were in before we ever met. At the time they had been in a relationship with two other people, which is fine, I have been there as well. For whatever reason my spouse decided to leave the relationship, and to this day I have no idea why, they never talked about it. At the time I felt that something really bad must have happened, but over the years the others kept trying to contact us to just “hang out” and were contually baffled by my spouses complete rejection of even acknowledging them. More curiously, my spouse’s best friend (at the time) eventually ended up hanging out with and developing a relationship with this couple. My spouse gave their best friend an ultimatum stating that so long as they were hanging out with them, that they could no longer be friends. To my knowledge they haven’t talked since.

Seems a really weird way to treat your best friends.

It reminds me of how I am being treated now…