03/10/2010 1:00 am
Life
He's History, You're Not – wOw's 'Divorce Doctor' to the Rescue: Is the Cheese in That Tunnel?
Get answers to your divorce questions from author Erica Manfred.
Editor’s Note: Erica Manfred, author of He’s History, You’re Not: Surviving Divorce After 40,
is answering your questions about divorce — from how to deal with
betrayal, to surviving the first year, to dating again, to finding a
new career. Our "Divorce Doctor" looks forward to hearing from you.
Leave your questions for Erica in the comments below or e-mail submit@wowOwow.com. For more, visit www.heshistory.com.
Lisa Asks:
I want a divorce but I am so afraid of making a huge mistake and losing everything that I have built in this marriage. I am afraid of losing my financial stability, my house, my vehicle, my pets and ending up alone and destitute. My husband does know that I want a divorce. I told him so earlier this year.
I have never felt happy with this marriage. The reasons I want a divorce are: He is an alcoholic, he controls all of our finances, he prefers spending countless hours with his friends over me and his children, we have intimacy problems, we rarely have sex. He behaves irrationally when he is drunk and is verbally abusive.Erica Answers: Lisa, first of all you should know that your dilemma is extremely common. Alcoholism and verbal and physical abuse are two of the three main reasons older women leave their husbands. The third is infidelity. Your husband is a typical Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alcoholic. You stick with Mr. Hyde hoping that Dr. Jekyll will re-emerge. You will never get any cheese from that tunnel but you keep trying. Here’s a great quote from The Book of Est by Luke Rhinehart:
The reasons that I have stayed in this marriage for 22 years are: When my husband is being the man that I married, he is smart, kind, caring, loving and a great father. We have four children together and staying together as a family was my main priority. My husband is a valuable, impeccable employee and has never missed a day of work. He is very faithful to me, his family and career.
In the 22 years of this marriage, I have done whatever I can to improve our relationship. I have gone through counseling, attended an alcoholic support group, went on to college, earned my degree, have taken good care of my health and put all of my efforts into raising my children, improving myself and working on our marriage. All of my efforts toward improving and maintaining a good life for my family have been done alone with no help from my husband. He refuses to go to counseling, to seek doctor’s care or to do any work toward saving our marriage.
My children are almost all grown up. My oldest is 24 and my youngest is 14. The older three children have since gone on with their lives being on their own in college, working and maintaining their own households. I want out of this marriage and feel I have done enough to try and make this work.
The main thing holding me back is a sense of doubt. I am afraid to try to make it on my own. Also, I am afraid of hurting my husband.
"Look. If we put a rat in a maze with four tunnels and always put cheese in the fourth tunnel, after a while that rat will learn always to go to the fourth tunnel to get cheese. A human will learn to do that too. You want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel, there’s the cheese. Next day you want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel and there’s the cheese."
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8 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
She should be afraid of what lies ahead of her if she divorces. She made the unfortunate mistake so many other women have in life, and that is to put all of her trust, faith and dependence in the hands of her husband. I call it the Donna Reed syndrome. The antiquated idea that she can stay home and take care of the house and kids while her husband is the sole bread winner. "Surely he will never leave me, we’ll always be together" Never once preparing for the event of being left alone.
If I were giving her advice I would tell her to take the focus off of her husband and his alcoholism and verbal abuse. Her primary focus should be on becoming independent and learning to be okay with being alone. Chances are 90% that she will end up with the house, car and financial support. However the fact that she chose to stay with a man that was verbally abusive for so long has done damage to her psyche. If she doesn’t deal with that damage, long after her husband is gone, any man she meets will potentially be another version of him. She will attract the same negative energy that she thought she had escaped.
I hate to disagree with the writer but he has not been "faithful" to her. If he had been she would not be writing. There is more to faithfulness than just not having sex with someone else. He left her. He just happens to come home still. If he will not, first, see a doctor about his health and face his drinking problem then, yes, she should start making arrangements to end the marriage. And that would include taking charge of the finances and getting a job.
I love the cheese parable. Going to have to think about that one.
Regarding the cheese parable, I’d take it one step further and note that we human beings will run down the fourth tunnel even if the cheese was never, ever there. We’ll go down that tunnel because we believe that the cheese is supposed to be there, and will someday appear if we run down the tunnel enough or in the perfect way.
In many ways, mice are a lot smarter than we are.