Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls by Nina Renata Aron

Author:Nina Renata Aron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2020-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

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I had brought a new man into our lives but I couldn’t let my husband go. I wasn’t ready to; I loved him. I didn’t want to leave my life behind, it was just that when I was with K, that life fell completely away. It was as if none of it had ever happened, as though I hadn’t already sworn myself to my husband. Time flattened, there was only now, a string of nows, an urgency both insistent and soothing, or maybe soothing in its insistence. To placate my new lover, I had to pretend I didn’t care about my husband’s feelings, but I was plagued by guilt. Every day I wept in shame and anguish, but I still continued on the path I was on. I felt sorry for my husband, who had to live in the humiliation and confusion of our dissolving marriage. I felt sorry for K, to whom I had pledged my undying devotion and who was waiting for me to free myself from my marriage. Mostly, I felt sorry for myself, for having to lead a double life, to metabolize my husband’s pain, my child’s confusion, my lover’s anger. It didn’t seem fair—I was only trying to be happy. Life just kept happening to me in such unfortunate ways. I was a victim of love, and felt further victimized by not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.

The people-pleaser’s divorce is a nightmare not because it’s dramatic, but because it can scarcely get off the ground. It can scarcely be decided whether it is in fact happening at all, whether it should. I felt so uncertain about whether I was doing the right thing, about what any right thing was, ever—whether I had a right to happiness, a right to inconvenience others, to bring pain and heartache upon them. Another regularly circulated truism of codependency is that we don’t know how we feel. We don’t know how to access that thing people call a “gut feeling.” Because the bonds that feel closest in our lives were forged in chaos and caretaking, we don’t know how to access that inner truth that is meant to guide us through our lives, keep us out of danger, direct us toward well-being. And even if we can locate a feeling, we often can’t express it. I never, ever, ever, EVER just say what I mean, a young man once memorably said at an Al-Anon meeting. Rather, we seek the outcome we desire through blaming, manipulating, or controlling others, or simply through inaction.

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