Twice-divorced, Thomas Fiffer digs into his past—without dissing his exes—to distill wisdom for everyone on dysfunctional relationships.
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I had a sucky first marriage. And a crappy second one, too. Some of it was about my partners. But a lot of it was about me. And all of it was because of me, meaning because of my choices—not just the partners I chose to be with, but how I chose to behave in my relationships, how I chose to respond, what I chose to believe (or deny, or delude myself into believing), the story I chose to fabricate for the world, and the courses of action I pursued—courses that may have been in my self-interest but surely weren’t in my best interest—along with my inability to distinguish between the two. That was a long sentence, but I was married for a total of 18 years, so I have a lot to say.
I’m also going to hold my tongue. This post is not an indictment of my ex-wives. It’s about taking responsibility for my own contributions, and helping other men and women who have been in, are stuck in, or are trying to exit similar situations get a handle on what’s happening and take appropriate action, as well as preventing others who have yet to experience the exquisite torture of a dysfunctional relationship from unnecessary suffering. So here are the seven things I wish I’d known before my two dysfunctional marriages.
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I thought I could do it all, especially given my secure, love-filled childhood, my seemingly endless patience, my people-pleasing skills, and my superior intelligence, which I didn’t realize was sorely lacking in its emotional quotient.
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1. My emotional resources are not infinite. As we get older, we acknowledge we aren’t going to live forever, but it often takes a lot longer to admit we can’t love certain people forever—that we can’t soothe every ruffled feather (real or imaginary), absorb every intentional or unintentional blow, tolerate the poison of every toxic outburst, and navigate the floodwaters of constant negativity without our own reserves of love, goodwill, emotional energy, and sanity running dangerously dry. I thought I could do it all, especially given my secure, love-filled childhood, my seemingly endless patience, my people-pleasing skills, and my superior intelligence, which I didn’t realize was sorely lacking in its emotional quotient. High SAT scores and an Ivy League degree don’t prepare you to deal with dysfunction—your own or someone else’s. Compulsive givers always think we can give just a little bit more … until we realize we can’t. And then, we feel like a failure, and we try to keep giving—from emptiness. Giving from emptiness creates that horrible hollowed-out feeling and embodies the phrase, “he’s just a shell of his former self.” Focus on those words—former self. Because when you reach the end of your emotional rope, the self has been lost, abandoned in the fruitless quest to please another, and that loss has happened in the same way Hemingway describes bankruptcy in The Sun Also Rises: “Gradually, then suddenly.”
In the movies, you see actors get riddled with bullets but keep on walking as if nothing has happened, then finally fall. You can only walk wounded for so long.
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2. Damage to the psyche is cumulative. This is the devastating corollary to number 1. We feel hurt; we get over it. We feel hurt; we get over it. Early on, the hurt seems bearable with sufficient pauses between injuries, our recovery fast enough, and the possibility that it will stop real. We think we can take it (I did), and we convince ourselves that pain will make us a stronger, better person. But as time passes, our damaged areas, tenderized by relentless assaults, become weeping open wounds that never heal completely. Damage to the psyche is not like a cut or a bruise, or even a broken bone, which can heal satisfactorily with few or no after-effects. Damage to the psyche has a half-life, and the stronger the damage, the longer it remains. Hurt a person at the core, cut him or her to the quick, and every new attack not only aggravates the old wound but precludes it from closing up, knitting together, and sealing over with healthy new skin. And damage to the psyche is also silent. This is why people in dysfunctional relationships reach a tipping point that often surprises both partners. In the movies, you see actors get riddled with bullets but keep on walking as if nothing has happened, then finally fall. You can only walk wounded for so long.
I was born with a gift for helping hurt people feel better, but I put too much stock in my own power.
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3. Broken people have to want to heal themselves. I was born with a gift for helping hurt people feel better, but I put too much stock in my own power. Healing and being healthy is a choice, and as partners of hurt people, we can only facilitate, not enact their healing. You can’t make people take care of themselves, or address their psychological and emotional issues, especially if they don’t admit they have any. Even a diagnosis doesn’t always set the scene for treatment or a cure. Broken people who devote their energy to breaking others so they can feel better about their brokenness have a lot invested in the lie that there’s nothing wrong with them—and that it’s all you. Their whole philosophy and world view are at stake, and dissing the diagnoser is much more appealing—and requires less effort—than dealing with the disease. They also find it preferable to use you as their happy drug, while blaming your inadequacies—some of which are real—for their misery. When you care about someone who’s broken, it’s excruciatingly painful and may even break something inside of you to realize that no matter how much love you pour on their wounds, and no matter how often you suture, you can’t heal them, that you can only surrender that healing to their own motivation, modern medicine, and God.
When we accept emotional cruelty, we redefine love as allowing another to violate our boundaries, instead of a willing, conscious choice to open our heart.
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4. Emotional cruelty is never acceptable or excusable—ever. People—and especially intimate partners—get angry. Mostly, we get angry because we care. But there’s a huge difference between anger and cruelty. Anger is about expressing your own feelings of hurt, frustration, and indignation, with the goal of getting better treatment. Cruelty is about inflicting hurt on someone else, causing that person to feel pain. Cruel words hurt, but it’s the lies we tell ourselves to excuse those words that hurt the most. “He didn’t mean it.” “She overreacted.” “It was the heat of the moment.” “She has a temper.” And the worst, “I deserved it.” No pain, no gain may apply in exercise, but certain kinds of emotional pain don’t lead to growth or offer any benefit. On the contrary, this pain shrinks us and causes us to withdraw into ourselves. We begin to believe that our punishment is merited, that our partner “has a right to be angry,” and that we don’t deserve love. When we accept emotional cruelty, we redefine love as allowing another to violate our boundaries, instead of a willing, conscious choice to open our heart to a respectful person who deserves to inhabit our sacred space. Emotional cruelty is infidelity that occurs within the relationship.
When discomfort becomes embedded in your everyday life, as mine did, it starts to feel … normal.
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5. If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right. It’s really that simple. Let your instincts be your guide. When something’s wrong you feel unsettled. Nervous. Nauseated. You tremble and twitch. Your health starts to falter. If it feels forced, you’re forcing it, even if that’s uncomfortable to admit. In a blog post a while back, I described what I called “Situational Dysfunction.”
… a feeling of discomfort, a nagging sense that things are not as they should be. Given that many of us probably feel this a lot of the time, it is difficult to attach the feeling to its root cause. Often in dysfunctional relationships we find ourselves doing things that we are not comfortable doing, such as covering for another person’s inability to function or hiding—from ourselves as well as others—what is truly happening. What makes this even more difficult for us to understand what is happening is that the discomfort becomes pervasive, constant, and expected, and therefore starts to move from the conscious foreground of our experience to the subconscious background.
When discomfort becomes embedded in your everyday life, as it did in mine, it starts to feel … normal. And your understanding of normal becomes reversed. When you accept a dysfunctional relationship, you tolerate continual assaults on the self, and as the self weakens you become less able to trust yourself, less able to assert your needs, embrace your values, and be who you are.
I had it wrong. I thought you put the relationship first and kept sacrificing.
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6. Never sacrifice yourself for the sake of the relationship. For this piece of wisdom, I credit my therapist, because I had it wrong. I thought you put the relationship first and kept sacrificing. He helped me learn to put myself first, and that the health of the relationship depends on that choice. When we sacrifice ourselves, we begin to feel resentment, which is the root of martyrdom and self-justification for treating a partner as badly as he or she treats us. If your partner truly loves you, there should be no objection to your protecting, preserving, and defending your self from harm, and from preventing your self from being sacrificed at the feet of another. Recently, Maya Angelou appeared on “Super Soul Sunday” and offered similar guidance in response to Oprah’s asking what was the best advice she’d ever given.
There’s a place in you that you must keep inviolate. You must keep it pristine, clean, so that nobody has a right to curse you or treat you badly. Nobody, no mother, father, no wife or husband—nobody. Because that may be the place you go to when you meet God. You have to have a place that you say, “Stop it. Back up. You must not. No. Absolutely.” Say no. When it’s no, say so.
If you cede the place she is talking about to another, if you allow someone to trample on your sacred ground, you experience a soul-withering combination of loss, bitterness, and regret that renders you unable to be a full partner or even to function as a fully actuated person in the world. Don’t do it. Please don’t.
Unfortunately, there’s no Surgeon General’s warning on people, no label that says, “This potential partner is hazardous to your health.”
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7. Making emotionally healthy choices the hardest thing we do. It seems like it should be easy. We try to eat right, exercise, avoid unhealthy habits like smoking or drinking too much. We take all sorts of precautions to protect our physical and financial security. But when it comes to allowing emotionally unhealthy people into our lives, we have an enormous blind spot. There are two reasons. First, unhealthy people meet deep psychological needs. They provide us instant gratification—the intense love and admiration we’ve dreamed of. They offer constant validation—until we cross them. They present a shiny surface of love and brightness and potential—while engaging in machinations, indoctrination, procrastination, and endless explanation as to why it’s all our fault that things aren’t working. They’d be better if we only loved them more. And we have a tendency to believe them, especially if we lack confidence or have low self-esteem. Choosing self-interest over best interest, we rationalize getting all the good stuff as a worthwhile tradeoff for occasional pain and intermittent abuse, mixed with equal parts of degradation and disrespect. We treat these things as anomalies and fail to see the pattern. The second reason we end up with unhealthy partners is our failure to acknowledge our own unhealthiness, to see that in choosing someone who harms us, we choose to harm ourselves. Unfortunately, there’s no Surgeon General’s warning on people, no label that says, “This potential partner is hazardous to your health.” But if you take the advice I’ve given here to heart, you might just spare yourself a lot of heartache.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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After reading several of the author’s articles, I think it’s safe to say I have a little crush.
Thank You. I need to keep this handy to remind myself of the pattern I get myself in. This will help hold me back from going back to someone I care very deeply for. He has been an abuser to all his past women. I don’t need to be another notch on his belt.
Thank you. You’ve provoked a fire-storm of response, which is a tribute to pertinence of your remarks. After 33 years of marriage, I discovered that I was in a ‘Mixed Orientation Marriage’, when my wife came out to me and to herself that she was really a lesbian. My emotional resources, despite antidepressants, are indeed seriously depleted. There has been cumulative damage to my psyche (and to hers), and on her side, an unwillingness or an inability to heal or understand herself. But no emotional cruelty. That’s the one element that for me, thank God, is absent. There WERE things… Read more »
This is the best piece of writing I’ve ever read on the subject. Which is saying something, because I’m also twice divorced (both spouses were narcissists with personality disorders) and I have therefore read EVERYTHING on the subject! 🙂
Thanks for the candid, compassionate, and practical advice. I’m sharing this with everyone I know!
Blessings –
Thomas, this is the best article I have read on relationships in years. While you mention personal relationships, your “tips” also work for jobs and religious organizations too. Sadly, your common sense is not so common in society and runs counter to much of the romantic and religious advice we receive. Thank you and I will share your wisdom with others.
Thank you so very much for this informative article…It really hit home for me as I suffered thru 26 years of torture loving a woman who practically destroyed me..I am not over the hump yet as I still have deep feelings for her, but I am moved on feeling that I never want to love anyone so much again. My ex had mental and substance abuse issues, but no what matter what I did, I was always the evil one, the destroyer…She had this power over me where I started feeling like I was useless, no good, etc…. Its a… Read more »
20 years. 19 of them like this. An epiphany when I saw my 11 year old becoming a bit independent and the rage and belittlement unleashed on him. I realized the pattern of abuse would continue unless I could stop it. Separation, counseling and then a return!… of to resurrect, the failure of the counseling told me it was futile. The return was by plan: model strong and self controlled and non accepting behaviors for my son. Teach him strength and value in not taking abuse. 10 years later, by plan, ended it. The 10 years was cool or cold,… Read more »
Thomas, I juat want to say how impressed I am for your response to each and econversation. one of the posters here. They have expressed their hurts and vulnerabilities and you have responded individually with courtesy, grace and an open heart. There are many articles here on yhe GMP about what it is to be a man, and I believe what you have shown, your questioning of self, taking responsibility for yourself and voicing your doubts as well as really listening to others is just about the epitome of what a man is. A woman too for that matter. So… Read more »
Mark, Thank you so much for your comment and your generous compliment. When one of my articles resonates in this way for people by touching their pain, and they come forward to express it, I feel a responsibility to listen be present. It takes a great deal of courage for people to comment publicly online, even behind an avatar or pseudonym, and I respect the emotional effort involved. I agree with you completely about dropping the gender thing and just focusing on being human. We are all flawed, all frail in ways we’d care not to admit, all in need… Read more »
Thomas, your piece took my breath away. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me how common our human experiences are, and yet, what you wrote could have been my words verbatim. Our experiences, and conclusions, with the exception of the fact that I’m a woman, are virtually identical. I’m grateful to you for putting it into words, for organizing your thoughts and expressing yourself the way you did, and I think I’ll need to revisit it again when my heartbeat slows down. I’ve read many articles and essays in my life that speak to me in one… Read more »
Heather, Wow. Thank you for letting me know. Your words give me hope that the book I am working on, which draws from my own experience, will resonate widely and deeply with many people.
Thank you for an amazingly thought-provoking and honest article. After years of being in love with someone who refused to give anything more than sex, I often questioned ‘what’s wrong with me’? Now I can say that although I do take partial ‘blame’ for the relationship, I can feel comfortable in knowing that my willingness to accept the responsibility for the lack of progression and intimacy beyond the bedroom was not totally my doing. Over time I learned many things that I thought to be true about his background, but the unrelenting bell that continued to ring in my head… Read more »
Cookie, Thank you for your comment and for sharing your experience—which mirrors that of someone I know. Coming to the conclusion that we can’t change our partner’s perceptions or heal his or her wounds is a huge accomplishment and one that brings clarity along with disappointment and sorrow. Your last sentence speaks volumes.
Insight and the courage to share it. Wow. This was hard to read. I am in the process of ending a 30+ year relationship that at one time and for a very very long time, was the happiest time of my life, with someone I loved and trusted beyond any other, ever. It took so much, more than I thought I could bear, to come to the realization that sometimes, there is no explanation for how we end up so far from where we were and from where we thought we’d be. Lots to get through yet. So much of… Read more »
Jai Dee, Thank you for sharing your experience. Sometimes there is indeed no explanation, only acceptance, which takes time.
“Emotional cruelty is never acceptable…”
He would make the most nasty comments when I least expected it…almost under his breath…as if to see if I was paying attention…or to see if he could get away with it….if I called him on it, he would say he didn’t mean it…or it just slipped out…or some other poor excuse…
I am amazed that I put up with so much sh-t for so long in the name of love…and as I look back…it was not love at all…it was something so sick and twisted…it was all about power and manipulation and humiliation…
Leia, You are right. It was definitely not love.
My sister emailed this article with the title, “I’m so glad you got out.” I was in an abusive relationship for 3 years and left him just as were planning our wedding. And it is just as you say, there was a feeling in my stomach that something wasn’t right. Normal wasn’t normal. He was draining my energy in every possible way, and the demands kept coming, I was never good enough. He kept threatening me that he would leave me, and of course, that only made me fight harder. And in between fights, I was crying uncontrollably by his… Read more »
Karla, I’m glad you got out, too, and before the wedding, as untangling the legal bond can be a complex and ugly process. Armed with the knowledge you have, you can not only hope for something—and someone—better, you can expect it.
Thanks for the read! After a 12 year marriage that I knew was going down the drain, my ex-husband chose to pull the plug because basically he had the bigger set of balls that day. I was so angry at him for about a year but after some counseling and a lot of self reflection I realized that I also helped kill the marriage. I’ve been single since my divorce (dated but nothing serious) because I know I have to be in a place where I’m happy with me and fully understand what I need to give in a relationship,… Read more »
Brandi, Thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad you’re in a good place now.
So you are not dissing your exes but you are the sane loving partner to their dysfunction?
hmmm…seems totally balanced to me!
Jerry, I was part and parcel of two dysfunctional relationships. Note I didn’t say my marriages to crazy spouses; I said my crazy marriages. I’m not blaming my exes for who they were or how they acted or how I acted or reacted. I can only look at my own contributions and what I learned in the process. Enabling people who bring their own issues to a relationship to perpetuate those issues does not do those people a service or contribute to their growth, and I would say that both my exes and I were guilty of that. I hope… Read more »
So glad I found this – I am all of these and worse my son is “learning” to follow me therefore having read this I now find I can be strong enough to leave the emotionally abusive toxic one and hope my son will choose to spend time with me at wherever I make my new home. Something I read elsewhere,
the relationship failed not me. Thank you again for putting this together and letting me know I am not alone with this.
Malcolm, Thanks for your comments. You are definitely not alone. You are in company with millions of others, most of whom suffer silently knowing something is wrong but not being able to get a handle on it. Good for you for getting out and moving on, and best to you and your son.
I’d just like to add one more thing. Walking away was the best thing I’ve ever done for my own personal growth. We were separated for about a year before the divorce, and one night in the car it hit me that I had a considerable part in the entire mess, not just me as she wanted to believe but certainly not her either. What we’d been doing with all the fighting was really keeping ourselves engaged with one another. Goofy outlook but it was true. So I called her from the car, apologized for my part, not asking to… Read more »
Mark, You hit it straight on. There’s the issue of our own contribution (which is why I believe there are both primary and contributing dysfunctional partners) as well as whatever our payoff is from staying. My therapist asked me after hearing several months of my complaining, “Well, why are you still there? Why haven’t you left yet?” It was a hard question for me to answer, but once I came to terms with my own unhealthy need to keep dancing, I was able, like you, to stop.
What do you do if YOU are the unhealthy one…. When I’ve dated emotionally healthier people, I get steamrolled because they have such a greater sense of self, are more comfortable with distance, and are shocked by a lot of my emotional expression. I end up being the “traumatized one” in the relationship, although I do learn healthier patterns from observing them. It can be exhausting dating people with issues like mine (and the first point in the article spoke to me), but on the other hand, these people can be uniquely comforting and understanding to me, because they can… Read more »
What a great, self-aware comment! Thank you. There is absolutely no need to demonize emotionally unhealthy people. In many cases, the hurt they cause is a form of self-soothing, and with appropriate professional help, they can heal. That doesn’t make that hurt less painful or these partners easy to live with, but if someone is honest about and takes responsibility for his or her issues and commits to doing the work of becoming healthier, growth can result.
Thank you Thomas for putting into words my experience of the last 15 years. I am going to share this with family and friends to help explain the “why.” It has been difficult for me to explain to people who have not experienced this type of relationship. I have spent years trying to fix myself and searching for ways to heal myself not realizing that the problem was that my emotional well had run dry. I had completely shut down emotionally as a type of self preservation. I recall early on in our relationship being hurt by his words and… Read more »
Carrie, Thank you so much for sharing the outline of your story here and letting me and other readers know how much my words resonated for you. Abuse can take many forms, and the patterns of dysfunction I describe are more common and prevalent in relationships than most people think. I’m glad that what I wrote helps you explain to people who haven’t experienced it. Thanks again for your comments.
Thanks for writing this – it was very well written. Bravo! I too could relate to what you went through and also see myself in you
Thanks, RJ. I appreciate your comments.
On reflection although I think the post is excellent I really disagree with the chosen image to hook the reader. It implies men are helpless victims and women are perpetrators of some sort trying to capture us and drag us down the aisle. Counter productive macho bullshit in my opinion and disrespectful to the very high quality of the post.
Killer post! “When discomfort becomes embedded in your everyday life, as it did in mine, it starts to feel … normal. And your understanding of normal becomes reversed. When you accept a dysfunctional relationship, you tolerate continual assaults on the self, and as the self weakens you become less able to trust yourself, less able to assert your needs, embrace your values, and be who you are.” Wow such an accurate articulation of a incredibly tricky situation. “The second reason we end up with unhealthy partners is our failure to acknowledge our own unhealthiness, to see that in choosing someone… Read more »
Michael, You’re welcome, and thanks for your comments and sharing of your own struggle. I wish you and your partner the best of luck. As for the image, I admit it’s a hook. I had looked at a photo of a Greek vase showing Sisyphus carrying the boulder up the hill in the exercise of futility, but the one I chose struck me as more clearly embodying the substance of the post. It was not meant to suggest that men are victims of women or get dragged into marriage—only to evoke misery and marriage in the same image.
Oh my did this posting ring home….. I have just gone through this and I will never commit emotionally to someone before I have an upfront psychological evaluation done for us both . I am very open book and I will show my colors upfront , but I am NOT UP for any nasty shocks again ! done and dusted and really living with someone who has huge holes and problems which you cant plug, does not matter how much you sacrifice, give, bend , accommodate, compromise etc… well that behavior in itself should of been a loud enough warning… Read more »
Angelica, I guess your upfront psych eval is like an emotional prenup. I hear you: once burned, shame on you; twice burned, shame on me. Your example is dramatic, but it captures the depth of emotion and frustration we feel in dysfunctional relationships. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the self pity note. Surprisingly it was all about YOU. How you were a victim, how you sacrificed, how your suffered and how you (hopefully) learned.
I want to bet, you didn’t. Basically one sided and ambiguous…
How can it be from any other side? All he can share is his perspective. It wouldn’t be right to speak for his ex wives. And it’s not pity it’s called self realization. He’s trying to share his experiences to help others . Negativity only begets negativity.
Dina, I said at the beginning the article was about me, not my exes. Anonymous (above) is correct: it wouldn’t be right for me to speak for them. The point was to focus on how I behaved and how that behavior didn’t serve me.
Oh how I relate. The walking on eggshells. The denial of self. Believing in the hope of change (how many times did he promise he would change!) I swear he took 10 years off my life from the stress of trying to please him. I remember the day I finally left I pulled up to a stoplight and looked over at the car next to me. A man winked at me and we each drove off. I remember vividly thinking that until that moment I had been a horse who put her own blinders on, just to (almost always unsuccessfully)… Read more »
Patty, Yes—the walking on eggshells part is familiar to so many, and the book by that title is so helpful to awaken people. The stress of trying to please someone who takes pleasure in your failing to do so is unbearable, and I am glad you have moved on to a much happier situation. Thanks for sharing your story here.