First Love....Lost

Do you remember your first love? Do you remember what a pain in the rear end you were during that "inbetween time" after the break up and when you finally "got it" about moving on with your life? Oh...wait a minute. I just remembered. Not everyone DOES move on after a break up with their first love. As a matter of fact, there are probably more of us out there who have hung onto the shreds of what used to be long past its expiration date...

Take Sheila for example. I met Sheila when I was eighteen years old and scored my first "real" job post graduation from high school. Sheila was to me the quintessential "Calfornia girl" even though we were all stuck here in SE Michigan. She was tall, thin, tan, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed. Sheila was also IMHO "addicted" to her first love named Ted.

Ted and Sheila had been together since jr. high school...but were already broken up for some time by the time I met her. That didn't stop Sheila. She was all about Ted morning noon and night. So much in fact that years later, she ended up marrying Ted after he fathered a child by another woman. Sheila and Ted eventually divorced and he remarried someone else. You would have thought that this would be "it" between Sheila and her supposidly former first love Ted. Not the case. Sheila went on to have two children with Ted post divorce. In the end, Ted ended up dying and Sheila continues to talk about him as if he's still with us. To say that Sheila couldn't let go and move on beginning about 36 years ago is without a doubt the absolute truth...

I guess if Ted had been Jesus in pants...I could possibly understand Sheila's devotion and dedication to him while he was alive. Yet this was not the case AT ALL. Ted was a severe alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, verbally abusive to Sheila, and a man-whore. Not that Sheila herself was perfect once you looked past the packaging. Sheila was obviously codependent beyond anyone's wildest imagination, extremely insecure, and horribly misguided when it came to "the power of love".

I find this issue regarding "the power of love" to be at the heart of why so many men and women hang onto the fantasy that no matter what, "love will prevail" when first love is found---and then lost.

Here's the reality of that. Love is great and finding your "first love" can appear even greater still. Yet when there are underlying issues and problems (which there always are no matter who we are talking about), those issues and problems MUST be appropriately and consistently addressed with one another in the context of the "love" relationship! The goal, once addressed, is to either SOLVE, RESOLVE, or DISSOLVE the issue(s) and/or problem(s) at hand. Unfortunately, too many men and women choose to DISSOLVE the problem(s) they see with their beloved partner..without the beloved partner even knowing what's going on! Need some examples? No problem! "I know he drinks too much, but he never got a DUI!" Okay. Inotherwords, you'll overlook his drinking habits and patterns because..?? (He never got a DUI!) Unfortunately, many people choose to dissolve the problem(s) in their primary love relationship because they already know their partner is NOT interested in changing for the better. Period. Like Sheila with Ted. Like Joe with Vanessa. Like you with your "first love" whom you just can't let go of....

Reality may bite, but what bites worse is when a person puts their own life on hold for a dream that won't be happening ever...let alone anytime soon. A batterer will always be a batterer without intense and ongoing treatment; an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic without practicing sober-living on a day-to-day basis and all that goes with it; a cheater will always be a cheater without appropriate and ongoing professional intervention. That's the way it is. Nobody gets better just because "the power of my love is at work here". Spare me. Get over it. If you don't pick a healthy-enough partner in the first place---you are deluding yourself by thinking you are capable of changing, fixing, and/or rescuing them through your "love" and "care".

So---there you have it. There's a reason why first loves are lost ladies and gentlemen. It's because the problems that were identified by one or both partners were NOT appropriately and consistently dealt with and then successfully overcome! And you can't change that. No matter how much you "loved" him or her...and no matter how hard you worked at "fixing" that other person. Move on. Treat yourself like the gold you are. Don't end up like Sheila who is still alone and living in the past...

The Twisted Tale of Casey Anthony...

I'm a current events junkie, especially when it comes to all things criminal. As such, I have been riveted by the Casey Anthony trial currently underway on True TV. I won't get into the details of the case here because that's not the point of this blog. Instead, I want to focus on the pathology of the Anthony family and Casey Anthony, the "tot mom" being accused of having murdered her two year old daughter back in June of 2008.

What scares me about this case is that Casey Anthony and her family remind me of so many other "good looking" families in America who function on the hairy edge of "virtuous" living. Casey's dad was in law enforcement for many years; mom Cindy was a home home health care provider. Brother Lee was a "marketing wiz" engaged to his girlfriend. And then there was Casey. Casey who is strikingly pretty and had a beautiful baby daughter who looked much like her mom....and who ended up dead and discarded like garbage in some woods very close by to the Anthony family home.

If you have followed the trial at all, you are finding that Casey Anthony, more than anything else, is a pathological liar. She initially claimed not to know where her daughter was at all (for weeks)...and then told her mother it was "Zanny the Nanny" who took Caylee and disappeared. Turns out there was no Zanny, no nanny, no nothing that had anything to do with the "truth" about Caylee's whereabouts. After 31 days of Casey's lies to everyone and anyone involved Casey's life and this case...Caylee's body was found.

As the trial opened last week, Casey's defense attorney stated that Casey was sexually abused since the age of eight by her father George...and that he had first found Caylee dead in the swimming pool at the family home in mid-June 2008. Further, Casey was forced by her father into joining him in an elaborate coverup of Caylee's death. As such, Casey knew all along that her daughter was dead...even when she entered a "hot body" contest at a local club a few days after her daughter's death. Casey also knew when she was telling her parents in taped jailhouse conversations how she felt "Caylee is close by" and "I know Caylee is o.k. in my heart".

I thought Macbeth was the screwiest family saga I had ever been made aware of in my life. Clearly, I was wrong. It's the Anthony family who beats Macbeth hands down when it comes to family dysfunction.

So now we all have had the chance to see the Anthony family nightmare broadcast on national television each day...while watching the talking heads (like Nancy Grace, Dr. Drew, and Jane Velez-Mitchell) analyze what the hell is up with Casey and her family of origin.

The answer to that question is quite simple actually. What is up is nobody knowing whose problems belonged to who in that family for a very very long time....and the legacy that incest, deceit, drama, and God knows what else left behind in the mind of a little girl now on trial for the murder of her own little girl.

Only God knows who did what within the Anthony family that led to the death of little Caylee. Yet there's only one person being placed under scrutiny for this terrible tragedy. Seems to me there aren't enough chairs up at the defense table to hold all the other family members that should be seated on either side of Casey Anthony...

Then again, when have we as a country ever focused on solving the problems that can grow a person from a victimized child to a murderous perpetrator anyway?

I'm just asking....

The "Good" Wife...

Darla (not her real name) was a friend of mine going back to when we first met at age 18. She was beautiful...she was kind...and she was a very good friend. At that age, I didn't pay much attention to how Darla behaved when with her boyfriend. Back then, just getting a boyfriend was a big enough deal to merit not paying attention to much else. What I did notice, however, was the pace in which Darla seemed to lose and then acquire "new" boyfriends. To me, Darla would be a fantastic catch for any guy who dated her. Yet something seemed to be rotten in Denmark somewhere.

Then one evening when we were all together having a little party in Darla's apartment, I finally "noticed" what I hadn't allowed myself to see regarding Darla and her boyfriend(s). It turned out that Darla would transform herself in the presence of her current boyfriend to be exactly what she felt "he" wanted or needed her to be in any given moment. Now that I'm a psychotherapist, I would call what Darla did as being a "codependent-by-the-moment" kinda gal. Actually that night, it was very hard to watch. If Sven (believe me, that wasn't his real name either!) didn't feel like having another drink...neither did Darla. If Sven was cold, so was Darla. If Sven wanted to leave and get something to eat, you guessed it! So did Darla. What struck me that night was how all of us girls LOVED Darla just as she was "with us" (girlfriends)...but damn! When she was with Sven---she was someone else we didn't recognize at all. She was a mini Sven. Or under the influence of this Sven-gali (no pun intended there! LOL!) at the very least. Where was our Darla? Worse yet, what if "our" Darla wasn't even being herself with us as her girlfriends? Who in the hell was Darla in the first place?!?!

I'm telling you this story because lately---I have had way too many dear girlfriends realize that their functioning as the proverbial "good" wife didn't work (after 10, 20, 30, and even nearly 40 years) when their spouses turned out to be way "more" dysfunctional than they ever dreamed or realized. Which is sad. All those years of stepping and fetching...and for what? Only to find out that no matter how "good" they tried to be in loving their spouse day in and day out---something was seriously rotten in Denmark for a long long time. Which is sad. And tragic. And unfortunately so very very common.

Being a good wife doesn't cut it when your spouse is in need of "real" help for his consistently inappropriate, self-gratifying, and damaging behaviors.
Your doing whatever he wants...or agreeing to whatever he says...or accepting blame for whatever he rages about...these are NOT the reasons why a spouse will "get it together" sooner or later! All of your "I can fix this" behavior only leads to more hurt, more disappointment, and more self-loathing (as a "good" wife). If you really want to do your spouse a favor, encourage him to get into psychotherapy either alone or with you to face these difficult issues. You don't have to sort them out or figure them out or work them out "for" him. You just need to ask him to go get some help with or without you...and if he says "no thanks"...well then, you've got your answer. He's not interested in getting better. Then the question becomes "Are you?"

Good wives come and go and in the end, everyone needs to feel and be free to be THEMSELVES in the context of their primary love relationship. We are all imperfect and we all make mistakes---but what a tragedy when someone really and truly believes the lie that being a "good" wife is the answer to what's wrong in the marriage.

Until we meet again....