agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Carolyn: I am a 26-year-old man and don’t feel like I can unload this on anyone I know. My parents’ divorce is ripping me up. I feel like I’m going to burst into tears at random moments of the day. My mom left my dad because she found out he’d been cheating with an 18-year-old girl, so the divorce is messy. Dad is alone in their gigantic house, gutted because it’s over with his girlfriend and he lost my mom to a short, stupid affair. He wants to save their marriage, but my mom won’t even talk to him, and he’s going crazy. My mom is heartbroken and wrecked in her own way and has moved to my aunt’s.

I’m splitting my time visiting them both two or three times a week. I feel responsible to check on them, more so my dad because he’s so depressed. It’s scary, but I am losing hope that things can get better for any of us.

When I’m not working or with them, I read and work out to stay busy, but it’s not helping. It sounds pathetic, but I just wish someone would pat me on the back and tell me it’s all gonna be okay. I don’t believe it anymore because I lost the family and childhood home I knew. I am trying to avoid self-pity, but I don’t see a good outcome.

Torn Up: It is all gonna be okay. Maybe not right away, and maybe not in any way you ever had in mind for this stage of your life.

But there will be an “after” and you will adjust to it and it won’t always feel raw and unimaginable.

That much I feel confident saying.

There is too much going on here for a column(ist) to cover, but you can get to it in depth with a therapist. That’s the “anyone” to “unload” on, always. It’s basic health care. So lining that up is Step 1 and other steps can wait; my resource page suggests ways to get started.

Some things to keep in mind as you wait for an appointment:

* There isn’t one outcome here for all of you. You are still a family with ties that will outlast even a divorce, yes, but ultimately you’re free-standing adults who have to find ways through this for yourselves. Each of you has countless “good” outcomes available to you; you just haven’t been able to envision them yet.

* It’s normal for big feelings to block your vision. From the sound of it, you’re all still reeling, wondering what just happened — so give yourself the care you need, encourage the others to do the same, then give time a chance to do its thing.

* The “childhood home” you thought you knew was:

** Gone before this happened, I’m guessing, because middle-aged married people who are feeling super healthy about things don’t blow up their lives in bed with teenagers.

** Going away sooner or later regardless. We all lose our childhood home. If we’re lucky, we get to watch helplessly as it fades to vanishing vs. losing it abruptly to divorce, other trauma or Florida. But it vanishes no matter what, and any return is always to something changed.

So much for my sunshine-and-rainbows optimism … but I still see positives. Your nuclear family blew up and that’s wrenching and terrible no matter how you look at it. But you are launched and adult and complete no matter how you look at your nuclear family or where you go for Thanksgiving. That’s my point. And you want to show your parents you support them both as they stagger through this, which speaks really well of you.

So keep seeing them, but only as often as you can without letting them swallow you whole, because this is between them.

If you can’t make out where their ordeal ends and where you begin, then put a rush on the counseling and rethink the purpose of your visits. Companionship, yes; codependency, no. Relief, yes; rescue, no. A son, yes; solutions, no.
Trust love and time with the rest. We are built to get through devastating things.

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Ooof.

1. Unless LW's dad is suffering from some serious neurological crisis, he absolutely blew up his own life and if he doesn't like the consequences of his actions then he ought to have made other choices. If you are old enough to have a child old enough to have graduated college, you are officially too old to date teenagers. Yes, even if they're legal adults. The best thing anybody can say is that it's skeevy, and doing it while cheating on your spouse is not making the situation any better.

(Also? Dad is "alone in his gigantic house"? WTF. Why does he get to stay in the house? I hope it's because he has no family left that likes him other than his son, so he had nowhere to go. Otherwise, fuck off, Dad.)

2. LW may be an adult - and a more grown-up adult than the young woman his father was schtupping! - but he's still pretty young. It's not his job to manage his parents' emotions, especially his adulterous father's. None of this is his responsibility, and I hope he can get that appointment with a therapist sooner rather than later.

3. LW is not going to understand Carolyn's point about seeing the parents "only as often as he can".

It sounds like he's alone because Mom left and refuses to discuss anything with him, even who gets the house, so staying in the house may be the one thing here that's not on him. Selling it and giving her the money would have to come later in the process (she probably doesn't want to set foot in it for awhile anyway.)

And yeah, Carolyn needed to push your 3 a lot harder I think, though I doubt it would get through regardless.

Somebody actually needs to tell the parents, especially Pa, that a 26 year old son (? their only child) is not meant to be their emotional support animal. They are the ones who should be getting into therapy (it has surely gone beyond marriage counselling, right?).

This guy is deeply enmeshed with his parents. There is a line between healthy affection and codependency, and his relationship with them is far over it into the bad place. Visiting them multiple times a week! (Although Mom may not have the heart to tell him to stop, Dad is clearly into having an audience for his suffering.) At 26, LW should not be obsessing about his childhood home. He still has a family, too, although one member is an asshole.