[Nas]

Posting this here as it’s Vanisher adjacent.

Today, the Fourth of July, is the anniversary of the day I woke up to find my husband gone.

I don’t mention that to anyone. I don’t put a lot of weight on anniversaries anymore. But even though I have much heavier, more stressful, scarier, more important things to deal with in life, this weekend, as I probably will to some degree every July 4th weekend, I obviously have reflected a bit on all the things that happened.

Yesterday I went on a hike with my friend and her husband and another woman, who is an acquaintance of my friend (a mom of one of her kid’s friends), and her boyfriend of several years.

So I was basically the fifth wheel, which I didn’t mind at all.

At one point, the three of us women stopped on a ledge that was pretty high up with a gorgeous view. And my friend proclaimed that she would like to toss her husband right off that cliff, I guess for committing the apparently unforgivable offense of trying to make her laugh by singing along to Garth Brooks in a Southern accent.

And then along the way I ended up talking alone with this woman for a decent stretch of trail. We were having a good conversation, laughing and chatting. Until the part where she, this person I had known at that point for less than two hours, said to me, “Jesus, sometimes I think I wouldn’t even be that sad if I woke up one day and *he* was gone.“

She had absolutely without a doubt emphasized the word “he,” referring to her boyfriend, with the unspoken part being “you know, like your husband did.”

There was a long uncomfortable silence and I could tell by the look on her face that she realized she had just said something completely inappropriate. This woman I had never met knew a version of my story that I’d never told and I realized that to her, I was *that* woman, the one she’s definitely gossiped about, the one whose husband just up and vanished one day. And not only was she referencing it to my face, she was making light of it.

She tried to backpedal and started spewing a bunch of crap about how my former H must be insane to have left me and “you deserve an actual prince” and blah blah blah. 🙄🙄🙄

I left right after the hike instead of joining everyone for lunch.  And later on when I was alone, I thought about relationships of convenience, how some people, like this woman and her partner, get together and then stay together, often for a long time, simply because they think it’s better than being alone, and usually it’s a “fine” relationship and they aren’t particularly happy or particularly unhappy, and when holidays roll around they know they’ll have plans, and on their birthdays they’ll have someone to buy them a card that says something really nice inside, and when it’s time for them to die, they’ll have someone to grieve them and I suppose that means they’ll have mattered and who doesn’t want to matter to someone, right? Right?

I mostly think I’d rather be alone than be in a relationship just to not be alone, but if I’m honest, there are those fleeting moments when “just fine” sounds better than alone, actually. I listened to fireworks I couldn’t see last night and out of nowhere I started to cry and couldn’t really pinpoint why, but it wasn’t about my former H. I don’t feel much anymore when I think about him.

https://youtu.be/xgFHo-Fhi28

Anyway, Happy Monday, and happy Fourth of July to the US LBS.

[MadLuv]

Nas-
 After hearing that hike I think I would have had a little private cry also. Not like you said about your husband, but maybe for the fact that people take for granted sometimes what they have. Focus on the small things instead of looking at the positives and those are the same people who view others misfortunes as a way to make their life they don't appreciate better, but mostly I think I understand the tears not for your husband, but for the fact the one thing she did say was right. That he was a fool and you did deserve better. And that it is also unfair that they put you in the victim roll for what HE did. I also hate being viewed as the one who had it all until her husband left. What I realize is those that view it that way, well their life must not be going that well.

[Treasur]

Well, that sucks, Nas.

Sometimes life is hard solo, isn’t it? Tiring in a way I don’t remember being part of a family and a partnership was. Better than a toxic partnership, of course, we know that. But hard and bone-crunchingly lonely sometimes in a way that is quite hard to put into words even to ourself. I find that I can do solo quite well, but being solo is occasionally painful to the core. We’re not alone in that experience, of course. Like the Eleanor Rigby song, there’s a lot of it about for different reasons but I suspect we humans are naturally small pack animals so it’s not always easy.

I think there are some kinds of life-altering experiences, of which a vanishing spouse is one, that are almost impossible to describe to someone who has not experienced something similar. And of course dealing long-term with a serious illness is another. These kind of experiences have a lot of layers, don’t they? But people tend to only see a couple of the layers from the outside. Even emotionally intelligent and naturally empathetic people....which this woman obviously isn’t. There is just a lot that people don’t see and if they are unwise or lack life experience, they judge it based on their own rather limited window. If I had to make a list of the gut-wrenching things that came along with, and because of, and followed along after what happened....well, i’d need an unfeasibly large bit of paper and would run the risk of exhausting any listener into terminal decline. I would not wish my experience on anyone and there is no way I would have volunteered for it.

Perhaps that’s why, long after we have chased our newbie MLC tails, it is still a comfort to have a place here where we know that at least some folks get what we can’t frame in words. Somewhere to feel a little less solo.

I’m sorry that it sucked. I hope not all of it sucked, but i’m sorry for the bit that did.

[Nas]

It didn’t really suck, it just RE-magnified the fact I’ve always known, that this huge life altering thing that happened in my life is pretty inconsequential to others. Same thing with other deeply painful or difficult things that have happened in the past few years (or my whole life). If things don’t directly affect others, those things don’t matter all that much to others.

I’m emotionally ready to date again and have been for a while, but in other areas of my life, I’m struggling and that’s also a big frustration.  It would be nice to have someone who thinks you matter. There was a song in the tv show The Affair that went something like, “love is watching someone die, so who’s gonna watch you die?”
I watched that show during the 3-week period a few years ago when my parents died and my cancer progressed and my brother told me (at my mother’s wake no less) that I had to get out because his twentysomething gf was moving in and wanted “privacy.  I was absolutely convinced I was going to die (I mean ABSOLUTELY, totally, completely convinced; ptsd/anxiety really had my brain on overdrive). It was so hard to hear that song. It took my breath away. No one was going to watch me die. No one is still, but it doesn’t feel imminent anymore.
*(interesting sidenote for anyone interested in the psychology of asshats: my therapist is convinced that every single time my brother takes up with some very, very young girl, moves her in and funds her life, he’s attempting to “save” me over and over. Which, if so, is a repeating cycle of his that I’m really unmoved by at this point. I haven’t seen him since early pandemic and I don’t even think he’s with that particular twentysomething anymore… )

Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve had to even think about my vanisher in conversation with irl people, so I wanted to share. Just a little annoying to still be taking baby steps on a difficult road and to hear so many people I know complain so much about their partners…way more annoying to hear anyone joke that they wished they could have a vanisher.

[nah]

Hello clanishers, it’s been awhile.
Nas, I was just reading your interaction with that woman and I have another take on it. Now, I wasn't there so I could be way off, I have no problem you responding with, “nah, you are so far off, but —
This woman might just have been reaching out to you. She might have been attempting at a confession that she just can't take one More day. I have had people reach out to me with their problems. Kind of like, I've been through so much so I must have all the answers. It’s far from an insult.
Just a guess.

[Nas]

Nah, good to see you pop in. Hope you’re having a fun summer. 😀

I definitely don’t think she was trying to reach out to me. If she was, I would’ve just told her she needs to talk to her boyfriend anyway. If she truly couldn’t take another day, if she was that unhappy, he deserves to hear that before a stranger on a hiking trail.

People just say mean things about their partners so often, it just falls off their tongue like it’s nothing. I actually think, like in the case of my friend and this woman, they’re so secure in the stability of their relationship that they feel safe saying truly awful things about their partners because the thought of the relationship ending is truly unimaginable to them. They can joke about being abandoned because in their mind, there is no way in hell they could ever be abandoned. That’s something that happens to other people.

I mean, if I wanted to be real honest with her, I could’ve told her she didn’t have to wait for him to disappear one day and leave her to deal with a pile of humiliation, shame and reawakened trauma (and, as in my case, empty bank accounts, mountains of secret debt, etc). She’s got free will, she could leave. They’re not even married.  That’s how I know it was just a flippant joke. She’s not going anywhere.

I didn’t really think too much about all the vanisher-y stuff after I wrote my post last week. But this weekend, I seem to have fallen into a real deep funk, and being reminded of that old BD feeling isn’t the cause but it probably added another layer on top of a lot of other heavy, heavy stuff. Summer now holds a lot of bad memories. The last few summers have been a haze of endings, oncologists, anesthesia, exhaustion, instability, and way, way too much of an old familiar fear. And as the years go on, intense birthday depression.

Last thought about the woman on the trail, it is interesting to me though to see people get into a relationship and then complain about it. Especially at our age, how do you not know what you want and not settle for what you don’t want?
She was right in one thing, I do deserve “an actual prince.“ Except that my definition of a prince is simply someone I can have meaningful conversation with, someone who doesn’t sit around all year round drinking beer and only talking *at me* about sports. I can’t imagine getting into a relationship with someone who does that, knowing that’s not what I want, and then endlessly complaining to people about it when I’m the one who chose it.

https://youtu.be/QAlOrSEX0Ok

[nah]

Oh, I see what you’re saying Nas. Often tone means everything.

My current husband and I joke about our relationship, just not in a mean way.
For example, I was making scrambled eggs the other day, and he asked for a piece of American cheese on them. Normally, he prefers provolone or Asiago on just about everything. I gave him a look, “oh no, it’s happening again” (He knows the Leaver flipped a switch and started to change everything he liked),
So we started to joke that Mustangs are stupid (current husband's favorite car) and Brian Wilson is overrated (Of Beach Boys, current husband’s favorite), next he will be shopping for spray tan and jeans with glitter. 
Other people around us might not get the jokes.
Acquaintances definitely wouldn’t get it. The hiker’s “joke”, definitely didn’t hit like she thought it would. Maybe it’s how they joke with each other, who knows. People can be weird.

I get the “funk”, I get it too sometimes. I’m not sure if it’s age or what we have been through, or a mixture of both. I just to remind myself to live in the now and this too shall pass.

[Nas]

I don’t know how I feel about your mustang slander, Nah. 

I don’t think it’s how this woman and her partner communicate. It was actually weird, she was a totally different person when he was out of earshot. It felt like she was really repelled by him but pretending to his face. Between her and my friend who was complaining about her H, the tension was uncomfortable.
I never would have treated my husband like that, and I especially wouldn’t complain to others and not communicate with him. Kind of reminded me that it really wasn’t my fault and I’m a really respectful partner/friend. He was lucky to have me on his side, he just didn’t recognize it.

[nah]

Yes.
I think most of the people in this group are a certain type. We’re authentic. That’s why we spent so many hours in this group trying to figure out the betrayers. We just couldn’t understand how anyone could do the things our exes did to us. It was so foreign to how we think.

[Nas]

Yup. No lie spoken there, Nah. (Except
the kind of treatment wasn’t foreign to me, it was just that I had fooled myself into thinking that I’d escaped that kind of treatment and when it happened with him after so many years of faux security, it was a real shock to the system).

I found out that the woman from the hike told my friend after the fact she had “accidentally” referenced my vanisher situation and felt awful and wanted to know if I’d said anything my friend about being upset by it. (I hadn’t.)
Funny, she didn’t come directly to me to say she felt bad. She might’ve been afraid it would elicit a conversation in which I made the concept of a vanishing partner all too real. (Of course I wouldn’t have talked about it. I’m used to keeping reality to myself - irl, people can’t (or don’t want to) handle the painful truth of another.