Nunca Encontrarás Un Amor Como El Mío, Y Todavía Lo Odio Por Ti

High school sweethearts… that’s what everyone called us my whole life. We were perfect for each other, weren’t we? Destined to live happily ever after, because of course we would.

Back then, I felt like your high school sweetheart—except for when I felt like anything but. All these years, until now, Vivía en un ingenuo mundo de fantasía de negación... that you were who you claimed to be, the guy everyone loved. But year after year, you were proving to me alone—behind closed doors of course—that wasn’t ever really who you were.

Pero cuando las cosas iban bien, éramos geniales. Lo mejor de lo mejor. Diversión, risas, viajes por nuestro pequeño rincón del mundo. Hiciste los regalos más dulces, dándote palmaditas en la espalda cada vez. Subiste la escalera corporativa y me mantuviste a salvo en casa criando a los niños, donde nunca pude ver cuánto mejor podría ser la vida fuera de nuestras cuatro paredes.

Había colegios privados, incluso educación en casa, bailes en el salón, asistían y servían juntos en la iglesia y cortaban árboles de Navidad frescos cada año. La fachada estaba firmemente en su lugar para los que miraban desde fuera. Incluso yo me lo creía la mitad del tiempo.

Pero cuando las cosas iban mal, Me sentía como en una montaña rusa...apenas se mantenían en las vías. Las discusiones nocturnas eran habituales y siempre surgían de la nada. Tenía que llevar tapones para los oídos cerca y usar la almohada para ahogar el dolor mientras tú te parabas repetidamente sobre mi cama, gritándome por cada nuevo error de percepción.

I knew our kids were upstairs covering their ears too, and my heart ached for them. I never wanted my children to have the fear and pain I’d endured as a child but I felt powerless to do anything more than just tell you what you wanted to hear to keep the peace.

I walked on eggshells my entire life trying not to piss off a man who refused to see how his anger and control affected his family—primero mi propio padre, then the man who’d sworn to love, cherish and protect me all the days of my life. I’ll never forget the bedtime tuck-in when my then 9-year-old daughter asked me why Daddy never gets in trouble for the same things she does.

I might have asked my mom the same question a few decades ago. Sadly, I don’t even recall what nonsense I must have spewed to placate her searching heart. I know I hugged her and told her how sorry I was that Daddy was just so sad and needed our prayers. I was always apologizing for your behavior to our kids, but you don’t remember that, do you?

You probably never knew, and if you did, you would have made it my fault somehow anyway. You were always so absorbed in yourself that how I felt, or how our kids felt, was like a foreign language you never cared to learn. It was up to me to make sure our kids knew that adults mess up too. I couldn’t bear the thought of them growing up without apologies from adults like I’d had.

Luego hubo momentos en que las cosas fueron realmente mal. Like the time I startled awake to the pounding on our front door at 2 a.m. to find you so drunk and disheveled that you couldn’t get the key to work in the door. We awoke the next morning to find you had totaled your car on a drunken drive home from a local bar after we had argued. I guess that would have been my fault somehow too. It was pretty damn sobering to have to watch the local news to see if there had been a hit-and-run. We never did find out what you had hit.

Luego, hubo una vez que insististe en que dejáramos una iglesia en la que éramos perfectamente felices, para asistir a lo que era básicamente una secta dirigida por un sociópata. Silenciaste todas mis objeciones antes, durante y después de nuestra estancia allí. ¿Recuerdas el día en que me arrinconaste en el cuarto de baño, amenazándome por atreverme a hablar con tu nuevo confidente de la nueva iglesia sobre la confusión emocional de nuestro hogar?

That was definitely labeled wrong of me to ‘ruin your friendships’ by speaking up about my pain, wasn’t it? One of the final straws was the time when I sat like a spectator of my own life in our final attempt at couples counseling. I watched in shock as you spewed angry, paranoid delusions that shocked our therapist. It was nothing new to me.

I’d seen you overreact this way a thousand times before but thank you for finally letting someone else besides me see it, someone who could help me understand it and finally do something about it.

Our therapist would later confess that this was the day he lost hope for us. It’s hard for me to choose just one but this was definitely one of the days that made things much clearer for me. This was the day someone outside our four walls knew what I wished I could have seen long ago—that you would never really look at your behavior and take responsibility for how you affected me and our family.

No podías o no querías ver la realidad de quién eras en nuestra relación. Peor aún, no viste la realidad de en quién me había convertido. Cómo Dios me ha liberado en la última década de la disfunción que me llevó a esta relación para empezar. Te estaba ofreciendo un amor que pocos hombres conocerán, un amor que tú dabas por sentado.

Te negabas a verme tal y como era, prefiriendo siempre ser el loco a los mandos de nuestra montaña rusa. Al menos ahora por fin tengo un nombre para ese loco.

Reading Margalis Fjelstad’s book, Dejar de cuidar al borderline o al narcisista, at the recommendation of our therapist, finally helped me understand it all. I didn’t waste my breath trying to get you to read it, although oh how I still ached to heal us! But I finally understood that you would never give yourself over to what would be required for that.

You don’t really want to change. Being a narcissist works for you. You are only interested in ‘faking good’ not being good to me. Your only desire for anyone who sees beyond your mask is to villainize them or deceive them back into believing and you could no longer do either one with me. Our relationship would never have changed for any length of time.

Lo demostraste repetidamente a través de las muchas segundas, terceras, cuartas, quintas y vigésimas oportunidades que te di. Y merezco una cantidad razonable de amor y paz, pero aún así, no podía renunciar a ti sin un último combate.

Me había mudado de nuestro dormitorio well over a year before, knowing it was over, but then you did that thing you always do, where you would tearfully relate some epiphany you’d had about what you were doing wrong, and you made all kinds of hopeful promises of change to lure me back in.

Así que, como todas las veces anteriores, nos di esta última oportunidad, aferrándome a la esperanza de que en el fondo fueras ese buen hombre que siempre había creído que eras. Siempre fui optimista hasta la exageración cuando se trataba de ti. Esa esperanza siempre me recuerda lo que aprendí de nuestro penúltimo consejero.

Me dijo que era muy amable por mi parte ofrecer una explicación compasiva a tus comportamientos hirientes y estar dispuesta a recorrer ese camino contigo a pesar de tu continua negación. Dijo que a la mayoría de las mujeres no les importaría por qué las trataban así; simplemente se irían. Yo no era la mayoría de las mujeres.

Y, por lo visto, tampoco aún preparado para aceptar la realidad. Necesitaba saber si toda su ira, irritabilidad y emotividad, unidas a su negativa a ver el bien en mí, se debían a los repetidos golpes que se había dado en la cabeza por accidentes de coche, caídas y lesiones deportivas. Si era así, razoné que tal vez había opciones de tratamiento que podrían devolverme al hombre del que me enamoré, al hombre que echaba de menos.

El hombre que, como resulta, siempre fue un producto de mi imaginación, sólo la proyección de tu falso yo, el tipo que el resto del mundo pudo disfrutar, que sólo hizo apariciones infrecuentes e impredecibles en mi vida. ¡Oh, pero si hubiera podido tener a ese tipo todo el tiempo!

Asumir que la primera mitad de mi vida fue en gran medida una fantasía fue devastador. Al principio no tenía ni idea de cómo razonarlo todo en mi mente. A pesar de esta constatación y de la posterior desaparición de nuestra relación, sé sin lugar a dudas mi vida no ha sido un completo desperdicio. Ha habido cosas buenas.

Había muchos buenos recuerdos mezclados con el tormento emocional. My love was real even if yours wasn’t, even if that’s the best kind of love you have to give. I would never want to imagine my life without the wonderful children you gave me. The reality of my life up until this point has served as the catalyst for the strength and healing I now enjoy, despite the difficult decisions this awareness has demanded of me—decisions like filing for divorce and no doubt being pegged as the homewrecker by those who only know your false self and believe your lies and distorted perceptions.

We were awfully good at faking being the perfect little family though, so I expect a few people were shocked. Anyone who really knew us was not. But here I am, facing the reality that you won’t take care of me, despite explicitly and repeatedly assuring me that even in divorce, you would keep your promises to take care of me.

More manipulation that finally didn’t work. You swore you would never do to me what some of my friends’ narcissist exes had done to them in divorce… like hiring slimy lawyers, being deceitful, making claims of abuse when I, the abused, chose the high road, and trying to avoid paying a dime more than the law requires. In case you didn’t know, I know this is who you have been all along.

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Pero nunca quise que terminara. Quería creer tus mentiras, y sin embargo aquí estoy en medio de una batalla legal contenciosa just to get my reasonable needs met after devoting over twenty years of my life to taking care of you and our kids, sacrificing my own career and well-being. I left you as a shell of my former self. I didn’t know who I was anymore, if I ever did.

My life was all about you, and always had been. We had the fairy tale middle-class life, 2.5 children and the house in the suburbs—the very definition of the American dream, but I had never felt more alone in all my life.

I lived from counseling appointment to counseling appointment for years, begging to be told what I could do, how I could change to ease the anxiety and outbursts coursing through the veins of my home—and while yes, there were definite codependency and caretaking behaviors that I would have to stop to break the pattern—I was repeatedly told, year after year for over a decade, by more than one counselor, that I could not change the madman at the control of my roller coaster life. Sólo podía cambiarme a mí. Así que... Por fin. Lo hice.

Durante los últimos años de nuestra vida juntos, establecí límites saludables. Cambié todas las creencias, suposiciones y reacciones posibles. Perdoné. Escuché. Soporté. Afirmé mis propios pensamientos, creencias y necesidades, como aprendí que es sano e importante hacer. A veces metí la pata y volví a viejos patrones, pero aprendí. Me hice más fuerte.

Te mostré gracia a ti y a mí mismo. Intenté escuchar cualquier cosa real y tangible a la que pudiera agarrarme detrás de toda tu rabia y ansiedad. Hice todo lo posible por conectar emocional, espiritual y físicamente contigo, el hombre que me había dicho toda la vida que yo era el amor de su vida.

Me aferraba a ti durante y después de hacer el amor, intentaba girar físicamente tu cabeza para mirarme a los ojos, y tú girabas el cuello hacia otro lado, siempre con una excusa a mano, siempre una razón grandiosa por la que no podías mirarme a los ojos y conectar conmigo. Todos los días me decían que me querían, así que ¿por qué no me sentía querida? Era una locura. Me lo preguntaba una y otra vez, y al final todos los consejeros y mentores de mi vida me decían de un millón de maneras diferentes que lo que te pasaba no era amor.

I was not crazy. I was codependent. I was a caretaker to someone who would never care for me, and the only thing I would ever be able to change would be myself. My head knew but my heart had stubbornly refused to acknowledge the reality since I had pegged you as my soulmate at just fourteen years old. Thirty years later, if this wasn’t love, what was? And could I ever know it?

Tuve que venir a aceptar que se había acabado. No blame. No shame. It is what it is. Life doesn’t always fit in pretty little boxes wrapped neatly with perfect bows. I had tried everything I had known for longer than anyone I’ve ever known, to fight… for you. I could honestly say we had tried. Though it will always be hard for me to fully grasp, I accept that you too did everything that was possible for you to do.

I could easily make a list of things I wish you had done, but I choose to give credit where it’s due—you did some counseling and you even allowed for an evaluation that clarified what we needed to know about the possibility of our future together. You were pleased with the results—no head injury issues.

For me, that just summed up what I had been saying all along; either there is a solid explanation for the hurtful behaviors or there’s not. Now we had it in writing, there was not. We had given it our all, and it just was apparently not meant to be. You could or would not be the man I needed, and I could never go back to the old ways.

Hay un cambio de paradigma que es irreversible: when we see a truth, we can never ‘un-see’ it. Nunca podría desaprender todo lo que Dios ha iluminado y sanado dentro de mí durante la última década, ni querría hacerlo. Hubo días, cuando te dejé por primera vez, en los que me enfrentaba a tanta incertidumbre al mirar el camino que tenía ante mí, que a veces me preguntaba si podría volver atrás, fingir que todo iba bien, ser los novios del instituto que todos querían creer que éramos.

But I couldn’t. I can’t. And I never will be able to.

I won’t ever reduce myself to a former lesser version of myself. I have finally begun to define who I really am, and I like her. And everyone around me loves her. I am so deeply saddened that I cannot be the real me with you… the only man I have ever truly loved. And deep down I know that you will never find a love like mine, even if you find someone to mimic it for a time. You will know it’s not the same. And even as much pain as you have caused in my life in our many years together, I still hate that for you.

Pero no estoy triste que por fin estoy despierto y vivo de nuevo. Me río. Amo. Me relajo. Sueño. Sonrío. Todavía lloro de vez en cuando y me duele lo que me hubiera gustado estar contigo, pero enseguida me levanto y tiendo la mano para ayudar a los demás y permitir que los demás me ayuden a mí, ya que conozco a muchas mujeres que están recorriendo este camino no elegido hacia una nueva vida. Tengo esperanza.

Un día, encontraré un amor como el que tengo para dar. Alguien disfrutará del amor que tú nunca aceptarías. Un amor que florece con mi tiempo, mi amor, mi energía y todo mi ser. Doy golpecitos con el pie al compás de una nueva vida que apenas empieza a descubrirse.

(But, let me guess, this is all exactly what YOU were going to say…)