My wife left me…again. Yesterday. Bummer? Not exactly. She has a tendency to leave me every now and then. She loves to go to “her canyons” in UT and hike. Sometimes she has dragged me along or allowed me to travel and hike with her. Once she left me and went to Portugal to hike. She called me up and said, “I am so glad you’re not with me.” After a pause she then said, “I miss you terribly. I wish you were here.” I use this as an illustration of the centrality of paradox, and particularly of paradoxical feelings. See? She was certainly glad that I wasn’t with her, mostly so she could go at her own pace, do her own thing, and be alone. As an introvert she really enjoys her time alone. She particularly enjoys the two days of the week that she doesn’t see me except for early AM and late PM when I go to our Madison office. She is usually seeing clients on those days, but also enjoys puttering around in her garden or green house…again without my intrusion.
This time when she has left me, her destination is not so clear. When she left yesterday morning, she said that she “thought” that she would go to St. Croix, WI, about 4 hours away at the beginning of the Ice Age Trail that goes 1000 miles across Wisconsin. I doubt that she will walk/hike 1000 miles, because she would have to walk back another 1000 miles to get her car. I expect that she will walk or hike for a while and then God knows what she might do. Go north? Go west…maybe to the canyons? Decide to come home? I’m sure she’ll be OK with whatever she does because she is a person who trusts her feelings. Note that her “feelings” are not just an emotional experience but a deeper personal experience that we call “spiritual”. When I tell people about our tendency to “trust our feelings” and “just go west” or something, most people are envious, while others are appalled that we don’t have a plan. Planners are people we call “high boundary” people, who like boundaries, rules, and plans. Low boundary people like spontaneity and freedom. Both are good ways of life. The difficulty comes when a high boundary person is trying to plan what s/he might do with a low boundary person, who would really rather “just go.”
Enough about Deb and me. This blog is about several men I have known who have been “left” in one way or another. You might resonate with one or them.
The woman seeking a divorce after a long marriage
Jane left Jim after 34 years of marriage. She struggled with leaving him for at least two years that I know of (she saw Deb for s while she was trying to figure out what to do about being largely unhappy in her marriage. Jane did what many women do (and perhaps some men as well…but that’s another story): she stayed married far longer than she should have stayed married. In Jane’s case there were several factors, all of which amounted to what other people would think if she got a divorce from Jim. There was the “Christian” disapproval of divorce. (Actually, this was evangelical Christian disapproval. Many mainline Christian churches, as well as Christian denominations have a place for divorce, find it valuable and godly, but not so with many evangelicals despite the fact that there are nearly the same number of evangelicals who get divorced as there are non-evangelicals.) Many evangelicals seek to justify a divorce on so-called biblical grounds, namely a singular statement Jesus seemed to have made that divorce is justified in circumstances of adultery. I knew one woman who got a divorce justifying it on these “grounds” because her husband had been using pornography. She asked a “Baptist” (read, conservative, evangelical) pastor if pornography was, indeed “adultery” and was glad to see that she could divorce “justifiably.” In Jane’s case, she did not seek this artificial reason for divorcing Jim. She is quite introverted by nature and introverts have a distinct tendency to keep most or all of their feelings to themselves.
I think the more important thing about the situation with Jane is that she has never really been happy with her marriage to Jim. They shared a house, raised children, both worked professionally, and went to church faithfully. But from what I learned from Jane, albeit with intuition and conjecture, is that she should have married Jim. Or if she married him, she should have been honest with herself and with Jim that she had made a mistake marrying him. It is possible that 34 years ago the marriage could have ended quickly and found way to survive and thrive. But Jane stayed married, and I think she was never happy with him. Indeed, the two of them are quite different in personality but there seem to have been some deeper issues that Jane was not able to see. Sadly, now her perspective is that the marriage was wrong because Jim did this or that, didn’t do this or that. Indeed, Jim has made some significant mistakes in life as well as with Jane, but these divorce-related, attorney-aggravated attacks on Jim are a rouse. I think…and must say that I “think” Jane has never liked Jim and could never bright herself to admit to it. In a nutshell, Jane has not been honest with Jim about this, and probably has not been honest with herself. The theme of some women (and again, possibly many men, I suppose) not knowing how they feel (unhappy), or unable to express it, or unwilling to act on it.
The woman who “couldn’t do it anymore” and left
Mary and Matt were in a second marriage for both, each have suffered in previous marriages and each having children. They had been married for 15 years when Deb and I began to see them. From what I understand, Mary almost immediately talked about how Mike did this or that, or didn’t do this or that. But Deb is no therapist who allows any client to complain for long, so after the first sessions of complaints, she set the stage for Mary, namely to talk about herself, mature in her self-understanding and emotional awareness, and then to do something. Mike came to see me with the notorious “female hand in the back” syndrome, meaning, “You need to see the therapist.” Indeed, Mike was figuratively pushed into my office but we made a bit of progress, particularly on his tendency towards expressing anger easily, an almost universal phenomenon with the men that I see. I say that men have “A” problems, namely anger, avoidance, addiction, and accommodation. They usually don’t know how to express their deeper feelings, much hear feelings from anyone else. Mike cane for a while, and then Deb insisted that Mary and Mike come to see me together. I did my best, but I couldn’t get Mary beyond doing what so many people do, talk about the other person. I hear something like, “I’ll tell you how I feel. Mike….”
Wait a minute; I thought you were going to tell me how YOU felt, but all you did was talk about Mike and his alleged problems. I didn’t make much progress because it was quite obvious that Mary’s position was that Mike should somehow “change” in some unknown way. It seemed like she was saying, “I married you the way you are; now change.” After a particularly difficult session where Mary came after me with a vengeance because I was attempting to give Mike some hope in the marriage. I talked to Deb about the incident and said to Deb that I was either going to make a direct challenge to Mary or quit marital therapy altogether. Deb pleaded with me to do neither, and then she saw Mary the next day. Deb reminded Mary that therapy was not about the other person but about oneself, and furthermore Deb insisted that Mary “do something.” But Mary said that she didn’t know what to do. Neither did Deb.
That night Mary met Mike at the doorway and said, “I can’t do this anymore” and the proceeded to leave the house and go to their cabin for the night, perhaps permanently. Mary soon called Deb frantically two or three times, sobbing and overwhelmed that she had “fucked up” and didn’t know what to do .A few hours later Mary texted Mike without his response, and then again and again, and then called him. Mike apparently did not think he could talk to Mary expecting that it would be more of the same, namely he was “the problem.” But such was not the case. Somehow, in what we consider to be a “spiritual engagement,” she had found a way to see Mike for who he was, and then saw that she not only loved him, but also liked him. She came home after a sobbing-filled phone call, they talked for hours, and came to see me the next day.
I don’t really know what happened with Mary but her “doing something” turned out to be the right thing, namely doing something. Sometimes you have to move forward so that you can do a 180 and move backward or perhaps to the right or left.
The woman who left the perfect man
I’ve been seeing a 30-something man who has been very successful in business. He is honest, hard—working, expressive although introverted by nature, and generally kind to the people in his life. He has, unfortunately, not been very successful with women including the most recent female relationship, which lasted about nine months. Previously, he has had relationships that lasted a couple of years but never has been able to sustain anything with a woman long enough to establish a real bond and eventually a commitment to a life together. It appears that he has suffered from a phenomenon that I will next discuss, but more importantly, he is a good “catch” for any woman because of the ingredients just noted, like independent success in work, honesty, commitment, and genuine kindness. Guys like this often fail to sustain long-term relationships because they are so attractive to women, often women who are impressed with the guy’s physical appearance, vocational status, or general kindness. Who would leave such a man? This is the question Jack asked me when he came to see me because he was just at the end of this 9-month long relationship with Sidney that she ended, but for reasons that were not clear to him. She spoke of his being great in all areas but then said that “she was not ready to commit” and “needed to find herself.”
What happened to Jack has happened to many men who are good in many ways and “look good” to women. Women are initially attracted to the stability that such men offer, but eventually find the man “not good enough,” probably not exciting enough. Men like Jack are self-made, confident, and usually pretty successful in work but may not be all that some women want. They tend to attract women who they try to “fix”. This “fixing” comes after a few months in the relationship with the woman starts to be true to herself and displays the “deep hole” that I will describe next. I think that Jack couldn’t fix Sidney. More importantly, because of many women’s tendency to overly emotionalize, Jack was less emotional himself. More importantly, Jack is not emotionally mature himself, which means knowing what you feel, valuing what you feel, communicating what you feel, and governing what you feel. This, of course, leads to the man being able to hear and adjust to a woman’s feelings. Jack was good at listening but his tendency to fix Sidney didn’t work. It never does.
The women caused the man to leave
Many men become involved with women who have a “deep hole” in their soul. My previous blog was about deep hole people, whether male or female. Such people tend to be very attractive, often very sexually active, often outgoing, fun-loving, and very engaging. They are, in a nutshell, the bombshell woman that many men are attracted to…unfortunately. I don’t know how they develop this bombshell manner, but I suspect they have learned to “be attractive” to men, whether consciously or unconsciously. So they “get” men, but then they began to display the deep hole phenomenon that starts to deteriorate the relationship with the man. Like Jack, men usually try to “fix” these women, but there can be no successful fixing of the deep hole. It needs to be healed. Deep hole people, whether male or female, tend to be in relationships quickly but not successfully, sometimes going from person to person, often being promiscuous, and usually having some kind of addiction, whether behavioral or chemical. I’ve recently seen two such men and one gay man who was “left” by the deep hole man he was with for a few months.
In one case, the man was somewhat sophisticated in psychological matters and concluded that the proper diagnosis for his former partner was a “personality disorder.” That was probably right, but I don’t like the diagnosis as it speaks of what is wrong with someone rather than what is right, much what can be done about it. The other “left” man simply gave up on his deep hole woman after trying to fix her for years. Both of these men were exhausted, one still exhausted from the end of his relationship a year after it ended. What happened is that these men got so drained by the deep hole women in their lives, that they finally got a grip and ended the relationship. In both cases the woman protested loudly that she loved the guy in her life and promised to be “better,” but it was too late. They had drained the life out of the guy who was trying to fill the empty hole. The gay guy had a similarly deep hole person whom he left because he couldn’t tolerate his lover’s promiscuity anymore. He was driven to leave his lover just as the deep hole women had driven the guys to leave them.
The woman who left because the man couldn’t
Now I get personal. This is me. I am not alone in this category partly because many men really want to leave the women in their lives but can’t seem to do it. I was married for the wrong reason: I wanted to have sex, and at that stage of my life, I couldn’t have sex while unmarried. Perhaps, more importantly, I couldn’t deal with the sadness and hurt my wife displayed when I suggested that we break up…even “for a while.” I caved. My wife was a lovely woman, but I was the one who propped her up in many ways, encouraged her, and helped her make a life. Eventually, I got tired of all the work and began to drift away. I drifted into another woman’s arms, also a good woman, but perhaps also a woman with needs that I couldn’t manage. However wrong it was for me to have an affair, it was the only way I could see of getting out of a marriage to a “good woman,” but someone who was not good for me. You understand, hopefully, that I delete much of the rest of the story for reasons of propriety and privacy of all concerned. So my wife left me because I didn’t leave her. I most certainly shouldn’t have married her, and most certainly should have trusted my feelings in the very first year of our 14-year marriage when I suspected that I shouldn’t have married her. I didn’t trust those feelings and paid an enormous price, the price exacted by the scorned woman. I won’t give the details, but this is now 40 years in the past and no longer are important to me. There are many men who somehow get into a relationship or marriage on shaky grounds, stay in it too long, and end up being left by the women that they don’t really want to be with in the first place. You can’t blame the woman here.
My encouragement to men is always to trust their feelings, however murky these feelings are. This is the core of the work I do with men and it is the core of work Deb does with women. It is hard work, but it is valuable work. Many marriages wouldn’t happen, would end quickly, or would be healed with good therapy if the man could be honest with his feelings. We can’t blame the women for our lack of courage, wisdom, and emotional maturity. It’s not up to the woman to do something. And when it happens, it is up to the man to see what he has not seen, not been willing to see, or otherwise ignores. The men that I see in the “left man” syndrome need to look at themselves, not the woman. It’s not her fault.