I was working through some emotional issues about a year and change ago, before she got her DUI. I figured most of the writings should see the light of day now, since they mean nothing to me emotionally anymore. I don’t think I could get up the interest to write any of this stuff again.
Why Divorce in 2022?
As for why the divorce happened when it did – it wasn’t COVID per se. It was the two 7 day bender-in-bed incidents in summer 2021, the last one being the leg break and the resulting timeline started there. That pushed me past my limit, i’d put up with everything before as just normal stuff. I loved you and that was that, I had no boundaries at all. So I solicited my legal coverage and got a lawyer while you were still in the hospital.
At 10 years of marriage, some form of spousal support is pretty much a given. I wasn’t going to put up with the addiction stuff anymore until I was stuck paying you for the rest of your life. I gave you 9 months after the leg break to get your act together, amping up the pressure bit by bit, knowing I couldn’t let it get much past 8 years (meaning 10/4/22). I would have filed before October ’22, in other words, maybe, if i’d found the willpower. We see what you did with the time instead.
If at any point you’d relented instead of bullshitting everyone about recovery and hanging out in bars, things would be quite a bit different for everyone now. I’d have never found program. I’d still be doing the enabling thing perhaps. Program taught me that it was a stupid expectation to think you’d change – possibly ever. But I was stupid, and now i’m less stupid. To do over again, knowing what I know now, i’d have left and forced a house sale in September 2021 and been much the better for it. But i’d have needed the rock bottom moment and some recovery before I was ready to do that, and that didn’t happen until much later, so it happened as it did.
The irony here is that an actual honest discussion about your behavior would have forestalled the divorce, even if you didn’t actually recover. But I couldn’t trust you and you showed no sign of the self-awareness to realize this. I found out later it was because you are an addict. It wasn’t possible. But I believed it was before that.
Why Contact your Employer?
I contacted your employer because it was the ethical thing to do, and any emotional reason I had to keep the information about your addiction and criminal behavior from them was blotted out by how mean you were in your narcissistic discard. I understand the rage and desperation at your loss of security that you felt that brought on the discard, but these are just the facts. I had no real reason anymore to protect you and lots of reasons as a decent human being to let them know what you were up to.
I’m sure you realize by now that they’d have fired you eventually anyway. My note was not the only issue and the conversation I had with them afterward indicated they were on the cusp of making the same decision anyway. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t sent it, but only because then you’d realize that the loss of your job was your own fault, which it was, rather than being able to blame it on me. It was a waste of a teachable moment. My sponsor agrees with my assessment. In fact, it was his point of view from the start and I overruled him. Proving I need more recovery…
Counsel and Support
You did ask once, not all that long ago for some counsel and support, and for the last time i’m giving it below, because i’m afraid I know you better than anyone else alive, and I will probably never have anything else to say:
Your whole life is an act in an attempt to find security when you feel so deeply inadequate. You despise yourself. The things you have said and done make this abundantly clear. It is not clear why you feel this way; it is only how you treat others that makes you despicable, you yourself could be a perfectly decent person and have a lot of good qualities.
Being good at fooling people for a time is not proof against bad things happening to you, it’s a purely short term solution. You must know that by now, after having lost so much over time when absent your issues you’d be secure. So many people have loved you and then left you behind as a result of your issues. The way you are trying to manage your issues is not going to work longer term and you’ll suffer as a result of the things you are doing to manage. I specifically refer to the drugs and alcohol here. I know you’ve probably accepted that an early death due to your addictions’ impact on your health is your fate. I don’t believe it’s that clear cut and I think you could find something better for yourself. I hope you realize that yourself someday. The first step is accepting the true nature of your problem and seeking the right kind of help. My personal view is that groups are more effective than individuals but YMMV.
Stop manipulating your therapists, they can’t help you if you do that. It’s silly and pointless. Incidentally, that’s why I shut down the couples counseling, I saw the way you were manipulating the sessions away from talking about your real issues like addiction. The fact you thought that was going to work is pretty sad, really.
I know you must have no conception how you appear to others, perhaps, but you are just as awful as I am portraying you here when not actively manipulating someone. On a purely intellectual basis, watching you perform the discard on me was actually interesting in how well it tracked with the books I read in the intervening year about narcissism. You mirrored all the habits of your new relationship – picked up smoking, switched brands, changed behaviors, changed musical tastes, even manifestly appeared less intelligent because you were no longer putting up an act for me. I’m sure you were love bombing the shit out of him, not that I saw it. It became obvious that there was no real relationship between us, it was purely utilitarian from your perspective. The surprise for me was that after recovery, it was utilitarian for me also – I felt a codependent duty to you. I even said that once to you, though I didn’t realize the implications until doing my step work. I was marching in lockstep of unhealth with you.
I would hope after all your DSM reading you’d know about ‘love bombing’, ‘discard’ and ‘mirroring’ but if not, there are some good books on narcissism that will explain precisely what is meant. “The Covert Passive-Aggressive Narcissist” by Debbie Mirza is actually pretty good, and on-point as well. The Audible version is very listenable, because I know you don’t like reading. And yes, I think you are a covert narcissist and I think you hit the 5 of 9 in the DSM for the particular personality disorder.
At one time I would have tried to help, but that was codependence, and being around codependents is just as bad for you as being around addicts. They are just as sick in their own way. In other words, I didn’t help at all, and neither do any of the other codependents in your life (your mom is a great example), because no one can help except you. In fact, all the codependents in your life are trying to *control* you – which is what codependents do, it’s why they are so insidious and harmful to you, along with the enabling.
You can’t save anyone else and you can’t control them into being better. A healthy person is a non-addict who doesn’t enable and lets the addict in their life have the freedom of choice to do the right thing – or not. It is true that non-addicts who aren’t codependent won’t stay with an active addict long term, it’s untenable, but being with an active addict (as an active addict) is not good either as it just propels you both to an early grave faster. Like stepping on a gas pedal. This is why the only real hope for you is recovery.
I put a plug in here for Al Anon. AA/NA will not help with that part of the problem – they are focused on ‘just one more day’ of not drinking/doing drugs for health reasons. Al Anon gets at deeper stuff, the cycle of codependence – that is what it is for. But recovery is not for those who need it, it’s for people who want it. You’d have to do both AA/NA and Al Anon to succeed, which is hard, very hard. But is dying early worse, and the likely abuse you will suffer due to your behavior? People are going to be mean to you (or not cut you breaks) because your behavior encourages that ultimately. Everything i’ve seen in your life, from the situation at the print shop 15 years ago to the present day, indicates that. Break the cycle. Find a healthy lifestyle. It’s the only real hope for you.
Why a PPO?
I agreed to the PPO because I wanted a PPO – I had gone down in May of 22 to get one right after you left, but they wanted me to lie and I don’t like lying. It got you away from my family in one shot, which was my goal. One of my daughters specifically asked for that. The lies you wrote in there are just another thing to litigate if I ever hear from you again. It is ironic that the only way to get what I wanted was to make sure you believed it was hurting me somehow 😉
Why I won't ever Use Your Name again
To preserve my privacy, since you are a public figure (TV show, Amazon stuff, etc), you’ll be under a pseudonym in my autobiography, when I get around to writing the rest of it someday. My current choice of title for my autobiography is, “Hillbilly to Hebrew”, though that just is what is making me laugh this week, if you’ll think about it you’ll get it. Well ok, one of my girlfriends was Jewish.
My efforts over the first months of 2023 to have all web pages mentioning both of us taken down have been pretty successful and I intend to keep it that way. If our two names ever end up in the same space again, i’ll take whatever administrative or legal action is required to make that stop. I’m not ashamed I ever knew you, but you were awful to almost everyone I know. So that is another reason why no names ever again. It shows up in Google searches, for another thing, and as you proceed with padding your criminal record i’d prefer not to have my name associated. Thanks for the quick name change, by the way.
Why we can't Talk again - the truth
While I forgive you (and it’s been a heavy lift…) for my own sake and emotional health, under the premise you have an incurable disease bound up with a personality disorder and that it was my mistake as a codependent getting involved with you and rescuing you, nothing about that changes that with that illness you are toxic: an awful person and did awful, inhuman and criminal things to me and my family, and will never be welcome again for this same reason. Forgiving your awful actions doesn’t mean forgetting or wanting any future contact with you. That would be just foolish to allow you even an iota of an opening to manipulate me again, and i’ve learned my lesson finally. Besides, your life is going to get worse over time due to your disease, not better, and I don’t want to watch. I suppose there is enough concern there that it would bother me to see it.
My family would also never forgive me, to the extent they do. I already have much to answer for, exposing them to you. They all despised and despise you – even my stepfather, he saw you for what you were but never told me before he died. Figures, as he was a narc salesperson, he’d recognize the type. He pretended to like you to make sure he could see “his” grandchildren. Said something along the lines of “You (meaning the rest of the family) don’t know how to deal with her. I do.”, which is why he was always trying to get you to do work for him. Trying to make you feel special so you’d come see him. It was his way, a politician to the end. My younger daughter thinks you drink isopropanol, and she’s the one who liked you the most. Well, until you made her dislike you too. You know how, and it’s unforgivable, for her probably. For me, it’s the thing i’ve had the hardest time getting over. But I am told that I shouldn’t make that decision for others and we forgive for ourselves, not for the person who did the deed.
How we could ever Speak again
Recovery is the only way. An amend would prove that you were recovered, so i’ll await that. I expect I will never receive it.
