Why I’m Giving My Ex a Christmas Gift
By: Martha Manning
Tags: Relationships, Mental Illness, Divorce, Christmas, Depression

OK! I can almost hear what you’re going to say:

NOTHING!

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?

YOU HAVE MAJOR “ISSUES”!

DON’T BE SUCH A FOOL!

And probably a lot worse. I know. I’ve said those things to myself. Three years ago, my first Christmas alone, I couldn’t even look at him. There were no decorations, no tree, no anticipation, no magic.

Two years ago, when I had gained some distance, I bought a tree the size of my hand that fell over with the first ornament. I was Scrooge, entertaining myself with “Grinchy” gift possibilities, although I had no intention of giving him anything but heartburn. I thought a snake would make a nice statement. I considered a beautifully wrapped box of air. There was always the lump of coal.

You can really get going with this if you have the anger and the time.

Things change

But the reality is that this year, my separated husband and I will be giving each other a gift on Christmas. We may even share a meal.

I struggle with how weird that is. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it to anyone. Our 43-year marriage came apart following his infidelity and cohabitation with “the bitch,” the original name I like to call her.

The bond that remained intact was with our grown daughter, whom we both adore. She was extremely wounded by what happened. (When we talk about the impact of divorce on children, we usually neglect adult children whose worlds are rocked by what they perceived as their parents stable marriages).

The thing is, as a psychotherapist, I enjoyed years of a ring side seat, not only to the ways marriages dissolve, but often, the ways they eventually resolve.

There’s the marriage and there’s the relationship. They aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Sometimes the relationship ends long before it’s actually pronounced dead with the formal end of a marriage. Sometimes the marriage collapses, but the relationship continues on.

What happened?

When I learned of my husband’s infidelity, I labeled myself as the clear “victim.” Despite the fact that we had been together since I was 15 and he had never treated me badly, he was instantly the villain. 100%. And I was also the “fool,” for not seeing it clearly. In the midst of my hurt, my rage and the huge blow to my self-confidence, I worked with a therapist to regain solid footing in my life.

What became clear is that, while she was the “other woman,” there was another interloper in our marriage, long before she came on the scene.

What we don’t see coming

From my late twenties on, I suffered on and off from serious, debilitating depressions. They came with little warning and required everything from psychotherapy, to medicines, to electroconvulsive therapy, to several hospitalizations.

The depressions lasted many months at a time, and combined with vicious agitation, constituted a very serious illness and a threat to my well being and my life. Our house was a tomb.

As therapists, my husband and I knew the facts. We knew how to get good help. But we weren’t prepared at all for the tsunamis that hit. He jumped into caretaker mode, for me and my daughter.

Losing

He suffered the loss of a wife and the addition of a patient who was far sicker than anyone in his practice. He was, as many people observed, a “saint.” But a saint is not what you want to be when you’re trying to keep a boat from tipping into mean currents. Over time, you are likely to fall in, and possibly drown yourself.

But he never gave up — through episodes in my 30’s then my 40’s and 50’s. When each new episode hit, it had two names on it — his and mine. He did what we cautioned the spouses of our own patients not to do. Don’t put your lives on hold when you help them through another siege.

The good times

In between, we loved our life as a family. Possibly because we knew how fragile our lives were, we cherished the smooth, happy time. When I was well, I was loving, successful and funny. But we lived under a constant cloud. When would it happen again? What would it take to get it under control? I never really noticed the way it had flattened my husband over time. He was instrumental in saving my life again and again. And my illness was instrumental in cheating him of his. Until he caved.

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

Marriage is fragile

Marriages are often the casualties of hardship and loss. When one member of a couple suffers a major depression, the marriage is twice as likely to end in divorce than when neither party is affected. In the case of other assaults, for example, the divorce rate increases for couples who have lost a child.

Sometimes the pain, and the exhaustion from coping with it, leads people who love each other down roads they could never have imagined. When we make our young, innocent vows to sustain through everything, it is typically at a time when we are the least vulnerable to the lousy things that happen in life.

It’s not that there was too little love, it was that there was too much suffering.

Couples work out that imbalance in all kind of ways. We had to come apart to keep ourselves together.

What now?

Am I angry about the affair? Rabidly. The person I trusted most in my life betrayed me. It’s hard to get past that. But we were in danger for years before that. The bottom line is that this man, whom I loved since he was 17, is the best friend I’ve ever had. We have been through the “best of times and the worst of times.”

Right now I am where I need to be. I am getting better at being alone. It’s not where I want to be, or ever thought I’d be. But compared to where I’ve been, it’s enough. I am healthy, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

This morning, my “ex” and I loaded a large box with gifts from him, from me, and from us together, to our daughter who is 4000 miles away. We laughed at some of the silly, stupid things we got. We lapsed into moments of silent sorrow. And then we packed some more. The three of us will be apart on Christmas. But the bottom line is that we’re all essentially OK. We have found a new way back to each other. Not like the “good old days.” Different days.

Another way

In the Christmas story, there is a narrative that has something for everyone, even when you don’t “believe.” The three wise men journeyed to visit the infant Jesus, relying on a star as their GPS. They were unknowingly encouraged in their travels by King Herod who wanted to locate the child and kill him. But before giving Herod their location, the wise men were warned of his treachery in a dream. They had to their throw their plans out the window and work to find a new direction. Like many of us, in the lyrics of an old James Taylor song, they had to “go home by another way.”

In my small family, we are still trying to find a way home “by another way.” We probably always will.

The gift

So, yes, I will be giving the man who was my husband a Christmas gift. I’ve even already chosen it — Selected Poems, by Irish poet, Derek Mahon.

I love the line,

“The sun will rise in spite of everything…”

Followed by the deeply reassuring and seasonally hopeful affirmation I need to hear this Christmas, and all the ones to come:

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.