Sometimes it hurts.
May 14 '00
I just read Poseidon's editorial on this topic, and HR'd it too. Commitment is something I adhere to. You have to expect that a guy called TheKnight believes in values such as honor, integrity and above all perhaps, loyalty.
However, there is a saying about "the best laid plans..." which is a fact of most divources. I am not divourced, but I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth. My wife simply doesn't love me anymore.
Actually I could accept that, could change whatever was needed to mend the rift between us if it was as simple as falling out of love. In this case it isn't simple. It honestly isn't a simple case of something I have done wrong or something I am not doing right.
My wife has an over-active thyroid. In fact according to the hospital registrar, she has the absolute worst case of Hyperthyroidism he has seen in his 20 years of work. They use a scale to measure the level and severity of the condition. Her condition literally goes 4 times above the top end of the scale. In his words, she could just drop down dead tomorrow.
This is naturally a difficult enough thing to cope with for us both. We have three young children and it was the birth of our youngest on St Patric's day 1999 that was believed to have 'triggered' the condition. Yet strangely it is not the stresses of this that are the problem either.
One symptom of Hyperthyroidism is a dramitic personality change. This is not just mood swings. She has her body running at incredibly high levels - just sitting still her heart rate is 160 bpm. Its as though she has been for a five mile run all the time. She is tired, irritable and impatient but on top of this there is a genuine and sudden change to her most basic and fundamental personality.
I suddenly found myself living with someone I had never met, and worse still someone who now actively resented me. I know that the illness caused this change. What I don't know, and no-one else can assure me, is whether when she is well again she will once again be the woman I love. To me, the woman I love suddenly disappeared over a year ago, and has been replaced by someone who dresses, thinks and acts in a totally unknown manner.
She has told me, to my face, on more than a dozen occassions that she doesn't love me. She has told me that she'd like me to leave. But I swore a vow of commitment - "in sickness and in health". The problem is that this is not the woman I swore it to, and there is no knowing whether that woman will ever return.
I'm writing this bluntly, factually, but I assure you that I have a turmoil of feelings, emotions and principles that are all warring and wailing over the situation.
It would be easy perhaps to say that in view of no clear commitment one way or the other with my wife, that my commitment to the children comes first. In practice however there are yet more complications.
The woman in my wife's body has become everything my wife was not and revilled. She is agressive, inconsiderate of all others, prone to violent temper towards me and has constantly involved the children in the rows and arguments.
I refuse to use the children in such a way - to 'turn' them against their mother. I refuse to let them see her as 'ill' in a way they cannot understand, because, as I said, she could die on the morrow. Would you like the last thing said about your mother to be that she had 'gone a little strange in the head'? While I am confident these latest drugs will help her, I still have to face the possibility that these could be her last days. There is no way that I can risk despoiling them.
As a result of all of this she is winning a weird and twisted propaganda war with the children. Our eldest daughter now thinks her mother is right and that I am 'unwanted' and un-needed. All I can do is strive to 'do the right thing', but without any real assurance that any possible decision could be right under these impossible circumstances.
What is 'the right thing' for me? Well to stick with her and the children at least until she is well. Once her hyperthyroidism is under control (it has taken a long time to get a proper diagnosis because of the severity of the illness which were thought to be additional complaints) if she still is another person who does not want me then I must honorably abide by her wishes. However while she is ill, there is no other honorable thing for me to do than suffer the hurt, swallow it down and provide all the love and support I can both to her and our children.
I am a rational man. I took every precaution to choose 'the one' in my partner. I have a level of commitment that will bear anyone's scrutiny. So while I agree with Poseidon's editorial in the main, I must respectfully point out that sometimes every precaution, forethought and good intention in the world, may not be enough. Or as a wise man once said: Sh*t happens.
Please don't feel sorry for me, anyone.. I can handle anything but sympathy right now. I just have to keep my eye on the objective and not look at the flames I must walk on to reach it. Please don't remind me of the heat. I have the strength to survive this. While I may feel that I want to curl up and die rather than face another day of the hurt, I know that my children and my wife are depending on me right now.
As with every other part of being a guy called TheKnight, I have no intention of letting down those who need me.
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Epinions.com ID:
the.knight
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Member: Black Knight
Location: London, England
Reviews written: 41
Trusted by: 49 members
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