We're Setting Sail to the Place on the Map from Which No One Has Ever Returned

Therapy

I may have inadvertently stumbled across the best therapist I could find for the set of life problems I am dealing with.  Yesterday we spoke about the impossibility of the situation, the ceaseless gaslighting, the questionable couple's therapy, and the need to compartmentalize to survive this difficult time.

For to Live Without Your Love It's Just Impossible

Pancreatic cancer.  Death. Loss. Survivors.  Alone, this cluster is enough to paralyze a person.  Add to that the discovery that ther spouse with a terminal illness has been carrying on a long term affair and refuses to stop and, well, fuck all it's impossible.  It has gotten better, living with all this.  And the strategy to help improve the day-to-day and long-term interactions is working, thus far.  But  underneath it all, I suffer.  I am lonely. I have allies, but no refuge; understanding, but no cure.  I am up to my neck in a sea of daily grief, but I'm learning to back float in the depths, keeping contact with the wet and salty reality of grief at my back, but moving and breathing. When I do the backstroke, I notoriously swim in circles, but at least im not having to swallow my tears.

The question is what would any decent person do who is faced with a dying unfaithful spouse, who has suicidal ideation and tried to act upon it, where you have two kids at home who also struggle with the darkness of depression and anxiety?  I stay because I love her.  If I left, permanently, I would ask the girls to come.  I think Abby would come, but these days, who knows?  Leiney, unlikely.  She is a better Jenny locator than Life360. But how can I leave this dying woman, despite her bullshit? How do I stay without falling apart? When it comes to self-abnegation, monks got nothing on me.  

Compartmentalize This

Dr. F proposed that if I want to get through this rough patch, I  need to do what, as  I already have told our couple's counselor unbeknownst to Dr. F, I am already doing. I put all the bullshit in a box and leave that box tucked away in some distant recess of my mind.  I stay away from it.  I play the Stepford husband.  The stench still wafts from the box, but the trick is to keep it inside me.  The trick is to keep my mouth shut tight when the topics in the box come up, despite by drive to release the pressure by letting the noxious gas out.  I have experience with this digestively, and frankly, having farted the loudest fart I ever had in the middle of a psych exam surrounded by 100s of others, I'm not very good at it.  Do, not try.  So I am doing. I am the adult child of alcoholics, who on my mother's side at least, bred a large number of the same.  So, I should be able to master living in the land of make believe fairly quickly.  I acknowledge, and my therapist didn't push back, that the box will need to be unpacked when the need for it ends.  

But for now, getting through the day-to-day living sans strife is important.  I have been pretty good today.  

Jenny went to see Sheila today, the woman who went to Vegas with Jenny and the fucking worm, my erstwhile friend of 30 years.  I swallowed my anger.  I agreed and did abandon all the people who knew of my affair when Jenny didn't, when we were seeing Nina in California and she said it was required.  Jenny refuses to relinquish even those who enabled and covered for her.  Refuses. She is the captain, and I am no one.  

What matters it, that, all around, Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie, 

If but within our bosom's bound We hold a bright, untroubled sky, 

Warm with ten thousand mingled rays Of suns that know no winter days? 

                                                                                        -Emily Bronte 

Gaslighting

I shared stories with my therapist yesterday, like the one in which Jenny said she'd given up so much to make this relationship work, after I said I had given up everything to make this living arrangement work.  Remember, from an earlier post, her example was that she gave up seeing Eric the pinché  motherfucker everyday.  This, to be clear, was not a sacrifice undertaken for me or us, but a consequence of being caught having an affair.  I told Dr. F how invariably Jenny brings up Sonia to accuse me of hypocrisy when I say she needs to stop the affair.  I told her how Jenny looked at me again, just this week, without a smile or any irony, and announced that she isn't having an affair anymore, that she and Eric the pinche motherfucker are just friends--complete and utter bullshit.  I gave more examples.  The doctor didn't mince words.  This is gaslighting, pure gaslighting, she said.  Its constant.  I pointed out to the doctor that the journaling was really helping keep me grounded, to understand what is real and what isn't. Jenny sounds so convincing when she says these things that I often get flummoxed.  When I retreat and write down the interactions, the veil falls away, and I can see the gaslighting for what it is.  The doctor asked me why I talk to people about this affair, and suggested it was so that I could both get a clear understanding that what Jenny's not okay, a kind of reality check, and to confirm that the things I believe to be true are and conversely some of Jenny's assertions aren't.  I am trying to put out the flame.

Per Wikipedia: Psychotherapist Stephanie Moulton Sarkis explained that it takes "a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to remain connected to a gaslighter" and that "the healthiest way to resolve cognitive dissonance" in such situations involves "leaving or distancing yourself from the gaslighter."

And so, my therapist is telling me to distance myself from the gaslighter.  Put the issues in a box, put them away, and don't discuss.  There is no point.  I spoke at length of my sense of cognitive dissonance, which elicited vigorous head nodding in agreement from the doctor.  Having just seen Sarkis' explanation, it looks like I am on the right path.

Couple's Therapy

Throughout my individual sessions, I raise issues that arise in couple's therapy.  I have little use for the therapist, who is young and inexperienced.  I discussed this again on the Friday call with my individual therapist, and she asked a reasonable question, "Why are you doing couple's therapy?"  I told her it was never about fixing the relationship, but instead to figure out how to learn to live together.  I also told her that I asked the couple's therapist in one of our most recent sessions, what the point of this therapy is, what she tells her supervisor when she discusses our case.  Shayla, the couple's therapist said that the therapy had shifted in her opinion to focus on grief.  The grief of the diagnosis and illness, the grief over the betrayal (her words, not mine), the grief over the possible death of Jenny.  

Dr. Fiedler said two things.  One, a therapist like this is too young--too inexperienced for such a complicated matter.  Secondly, if all we are doing is reopening wounds every time we meet, what is the utility of the therapy.  I actually agree that it is like ripping scabs off, every session's progression is more painful.  Things are fine as long as I compartmentalize--so stopping things like looking at Jenny's phone and discussing the affair inure to the good.  I will discuss with Jenny at some point.  I am afraid she will think I am attacking her or bailing.  Not sure which.

Its Saturday afternoon, time to go get Abby's car from the repair shop.