Sunday, April 27, 2014

What does love have to do with all this?

Even after we discover betrayal, even after "the knock on the door" We still love them. And they say they need us. Most of them want us to save them, make bail, visit, put money and cigarettes on their books. Stand in line at the prison. Deal with the bills, with the neighbors, the in-laws, the kids. Deal with the courts, the social workers, the guilt over something that we didn't even know about until we were so rudely awakened by unavoidable reality. And we can't just "kiss reality and make it all go away."

We can't. We don't have the power to "fix" this. Anyway, we too are overwhelmed. We are angry. We are depressed. We wish we were dead. And we want to kill someone...almost anyone will do. We are sooo angry. So torn. We would like to believe him when he denies what he did, when he tells us to understand, says that he too was molested, when he says he is so sorry. Right before he gets ugly about how we aren't doing enough to get him out of this mess...

And we still "love" them. Some of us try to stand by our marriage vows.

But we love the person we "fell in love with" the one we thought we had married. Not the stranger  we found out he had been all along. Not the sex offender who molested our child, or a neighbor's child, or a school child entrusted to him...We don't want to know but we have to face that this person we thought we knew,  is the person who fell for the police "sting" on the internet. The person who violated our trust and his marriage vows.

And in the wrenching process of going through "all this" (for years sometimes) we eventually come out the other side different people, different women... we can't help it. All "this" changes our lives. "It" changes us. Eventually, we are not the woman he chose either.

And even if we continue to love him, even if he still looks like the person we fell in love with...well he has got to go through the pain and in the process he has got to change too. Of course it is unfair that so many people are so prejudiced at the very sound of the label Sex Offender. But we are not the sex offender. He is the one who offended. And he has to do something to change his own sexual obsessions. And there will be plenty of resources for him. He will be forced to either change or "program" and pretend he has changed.

And if he does or he does not become the person we wish he had been all along, well, life goes on. Children grow up. If our lives meet someday in the future, if once he gets through treatment, once he changes, (if we believe we can trust that he has changed, that he is safe around children...safe around our computer even) then maybe there will be hope for our relationship. In future. But not before.

In future, maybe our paths will cross (and if we had children together believe me our paths will cross eventually) but when we meet again we will have become different women, older, wiser, more self confident. Hopefully they will be different men too. Men who keep their word. Men who can be trusted. Compassionate men who took responsibility for turning around their own lives. Who aren't still blaming us because we just never did enough, never fought hard enough to save them from facing the consequences their actions set in motion.

We may want to deny he is a stranger, say we are still "in love," that marriage at least is forever, we freeze time together in visiting, (or at home "in a bottle") but we can't perform miracles. Even through the glass in visiting, even with only those extremely expensive phone calls from prison to remind us of the life we thought we had chosen, change happens. And not always equally to both and not at the same rate.

But even if we, each one, are able to change...If we find we have each done the separate work necessary to be "transformed" there is no guarantee that, since each of us has changed, will those two different people we realize we have become not have moved on? Will those two different people even still want to resume life together? Oh. we may look like the same people but are we now people still attracted to each other, who will even want to fall in love all over again? Will we even want to revive a resuscitated love?

I think it is his problem to change himself and ours to say good-by to loving the man we thought he was all along. It is a risk to let loose of our Happily Ever After dreams and get on with changing ourselves and our lives. Especially if  we still think we love them...we can hope that they are also willing to let go and risk becoming the changed men we could love. Let go of their abusive selves and risk becoming the newly compassionate man that we might consider loving again. Or maybe we will just want to be "friends" for our children's sake...if we can trust him around them. If we can trust recovery. No guarantees.

So....I loved you.    Until we meet again?


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