Dear Sugar,
A half decade ago, I met a man and fell in love with him and then moved in with him too fast, as people do. Once I moved in with him, I realized our incompatibilities were so vast that I wanted out.
He’s older than me and he’s of the opinion that men don’t talk—after the ecstatic intimacy of falling in love, he’s become cold and stonewalling. I’m a ferociously warm person who wants to share everything with my intimate partner. He’s sexually unadventurous and not giving. He doesn’t care about the things I care about.
We were in the middle of a civil break up when somebody broke in to our apartment. The intruder attacked me and I got a spinal cord injury. I’m never getting out of bed again. We’ve been to the Mayo Clinic, we’ve been to specialists who decry the Mayo Clinic, we’ve visited healers even though we’re sworn atheists. The damage done to me is permanent. I need help bathing and eating. I can’t walk. There aren’t any interventions to try—I’m on heavy narcotics and a host of other medications to make being bed-bound bearable. I’m in my thirties.
My partner and I got married a few months after my injury—a gesture on his part to show me that he was supportive and could be the partner we both wanted him to be. But he has not been a stable pillar of support. He’s helped me with everything imaginable and financially supported me, but he does not love me. He’s complained every inch of the way about being burdened by me, even saying in the first years that he couldn’t see himself living the boring life of a caretaker—we have a paid caretaker in the house several hours a day, who we pay privately—but my husband knows that without him, I’m fucked.
We’ve explored options to separate. I receive federal disability. I don’t have any living family. I’ve gone to live in nursing homes that accept state funding. I gave several a try—for weeks and months at a time. They were horrific. Some negligent, some abusive, some letting me sleep in my own piss. My condition deteriorated every time to the point that my husband pulled me out and declared that he loved me; that he was going to keep his marital promises and take care of me.
This man and I would not be together if I had not gotten the spinal cord injury. We’d have dated for six months and then split as friends. He says this isn’t true; he says he’s glad to have me in his life, even if it happened for a terrible reason. But he also won’t be emotionally intimate with me and I do not feel his love. He bickers with me. He makes me feel small and dependent. If he’s in a terrible mood, he reminds me that I have nowhere to go. He resents his obligations.
I believe in real love, not grudging obligation. We’ve been to therapy and a therapist visits me. She’s advised me not to rock the boat—to realize that the love I need to feel from my husband (the only person I see other than medical professionals) isn’t realistic. That my demands for big, true affection are only making me disappointed. She’s advised that I make myself impervious to him and accept that situation for what it is. There isn’t, I’ve learned, a safety net for my condition. I need the financial support. I need to give up on getting the emotional support. I need to just steel myself to him and not let it hurt me any more.
Sugar, I can’t do that. I know I’m being impractical. I know I’m making myself miserable, but I don’t want to be trapped and appeasing. More than anything, I don’t want my husband to be trapped.
Ideally? I want the big love he says he feels sometimes and that I do feel for him. Yet? For all the putting me in nursing homes and not wanting to take care of me? I hate him. I really believed that my injury had brought us together when we got married. Now I see that it made us cell mates. I have so much anger, and all my feelings seem impotent.
He says he doesn’t want the relationship to end. He doesn’t want me to go into a nursing home. I believe his resistance to getting a divorce is some kind of honor, or commitment for commitment’s sake. He’s said—and it stings my heart like battery acid—”Don’t go. I don’t want to be Newt Gingrich.” And I hate him. I hate my situation. I don’t know how to make sense of any of it. How can my relationship with this man be meaningful? I feel like we have no choice, like my injury holds us captive. Like the best we could ever do is Stockholm syndrome, even if we did recover that love we have for each other. I never thought this would be my life.
Heartbroken and Spinal Cord Broken
Dear Heartbroken and Spinal Cord Broken,
I think your injury is holding you captive, sweet pea. I think something so profound and life-altering happened to you five years ago when you were attacked that you’re still trying to make sense of it. I think you’re angry and you have a right to be angry. I think you’re directing your fury at the only person you can: your husband, a man who has essentially done you right.
Your letter is a litany of contradictions, much to my relief. It tells me there is a space between what’s perceived and what’s possible. You tell me your husband doesn’t love you, then that he says he does. You say you wanted to leave him years ago, then that you feel “big love” for him. You imply your agency in the decision to move to a nursing home, then that it was your husband who cast you out. You write that he has not been a “stable pillar of support,” then describe a man who is.
I don’t blame you for your rage and imprecision, darling. Your life has taken a grievous course. There are layers upon layers upon layers of loss and sorrow that go along with an injury like yours. I am sorry such a terrible thing happened to you. You got the life none of us expects or wants. You feel trapped because you are.
But you know what? Your husband isn’t. He could have left after your injury and few would have blamed him. In addition to the tremendous burdens of your physical condition, the two of you were in the midst of breaking up, after all. He had an out. He didn’t take it. He married you—a bed-bound woman who requires lifelong financial support and around-the-clock care. People don’t do that as a “gesture.” People don’t stay because they’re afraid of being compared to Newt Gingrich. Your husband may not express his love the way you would like him to, but that does not negate the fact that he so very obviously cares deeply for you. That he feels obligated to you is not evidence that you’re nothing but a huge pain in the ass; it’s proof that he’s willing to honor his commitment to you in spite of the hardships.
Of course you should expect him to love you better, Heartbroken, to express his feelings with kindness and respect. I applaud your insistence that emotional intimacy with your partner is essential to your life and I think you should do all you can to get it. But first I think you need to make a mental shift in the way you think about your marriage, to change the story you tell yourself about your man, if you will.
I’m not suggesting you delude yourself. I have no doubt that your husband has failed to be your ideal partner in a number of ways. But I think it would serve you to let go of some of the assumptions and negative emotions that you’ve been holding onto these past years—emotions that likely helped you survive. In your letter, you write that your husband claims to love you and also that he wishes to continue to live with you and care for you. What would happen if you believed him? What if you released the guilt you feel about “trapping” him into the life you have and you simply accepted it for what it is? What if the jumping off place for the conversations the two of you need to have in order to come to grips with each other wasn’t this isn’t love, it’s only grudging obligation, but rather we are committed to learning how to love each other better, in spite of the profound complexity of our situation? Can you feel the light that just entered the room? Do you see the difference between opposition and collaboration?
It is from a collaborative stance that you must proceed if you are to find a more fulfilling union. You will only have the kind of big love and deep joy that you yearn for with your husband when the two of you become allies, sweet pea. Being allies means you’re on the same side regardless of your differences. It means you’ll ride out the truth even when the truth is hard. Being allies means you make an honest attempt to lovingly accept the other person for who he or she is and receive the same in return.
Are you up to it? Is he?
You’re married to a man you had every intention of leaving five years ago because he was incompatible with your desires. He’s married to a woman who is entirely dependent on him, for even the most basic physical functions. You want emotional intimacy. He doesn’t know what emotional intimacy means. You’re angry. He’s resentful. There it is. Pow. That’s what’s true. There’s probably a bunch of other stuff that’s true too—good stuff. Beautiful stuff. Stuff that allowed the two of you to make it through the most profoundly difficult, dream-destroying life changes imaginable. I hope you’ll dig up some of that too, should you go to the trouble of digging up the hard stuff.
I don’t know if you’ll ever be happy in your marriage, but, as you know, the stakes are so incredibly high that you must give it a serious try. I suggest you talk to your husband and find a new therapist that you can see together (one who doesn’t encourage you to simply make yourself impervious to your husband). I hope, as you work on going deeper as a couple, that you will also consider branching out from each other. That medical professionals are the only people with whom you have any contact aside from your husband is dreadful—for both you and him. We all need a community to thrive. You both need support that doesn’t come from each other.
Obviously, you’re online—you found me—and I assume that you know there’s a whole world of people with spinal cord injuries in cyber space. I hope you’re connecting with others who are struggling with the same things you do each day (if you’re looking for one, there’s a really good blog by a 29-year-old woman named Christina Symanski, who suffered a spinal cord injury five years ago, called “Life; Paralyzed” ). Online friends will likely be invaluable to you, but I strongly encourage you to do all you can to reconnect with real, live friends too. Surely you had some before you were injured. Might you contact some of them? Having other relationships, and therefore other sources of support, will make it easier for your marriage to work because you won’t need to rely on your husband to meet your every need. It will also make it easier for you if in fact you opt someday to divorce or move into a nursing home.
You are only five years into this new life of yours, Heartbroken. You are paralyzed physically, but your life will remain dynamic, like everyone’s life. That may seem hard to imagine now, but it’s true. Several years ago, I worked as a care attendant for a woman who was a quadriplegic. She’d been injured in a car accident at thirteen; paralyzed from the tops of her shoulders down. Like you, she needed help doing everything. It was only after I’d dressed her and hoisted her from her bed and onto her electric wheelchair and strapped her in and attached a number of devices to her wrists and hands—which she could flap like wings with the help of her shoulder muscles—that she could do things like push the button that would propel her wheelchair around or get a spoon to her mouth or type on her computer with a little stick she wedged into her wrist brace.
By the time I worked for her, she’d been a quadriplegic for twenty-five years. She was living alone in a small house she’d bought herself in a rough part of town. I was her weekend attendant—working one long shift straight through from Friday to Sunday. On our days and nights together she told me stories about her life. How she’d lived with her parents in the years right after accident, but by eighteen longed to be free; how she’d moved into a nursing home and lived there until she was in her mid-twenties, though the conditions were terrible; how later, she moved into a communal house with a couple of friends who also had spinal cord injuries; and how, a few years after that, she’d worked out a way to live by herself, against great financial and logistical odds, in the house where she lived when I met her.
She wasn’t an upbeat woman. She struggled mightily with the rage and depression brought on by her situation. She never really got used to the lack of privacy or freedom being a quadriplegic entailed. But I’ve never met anyone braver. Her courage literally made me ache. When I put her into her bed at night she was stuck there until someone came and lifted her out. She could only move her head and shrug her shoulders. But when something wasn’t working she changed it, even if it took her years to do it, even if it seemed utterly impossible. She found ways to build a life that felt to her like the happiest version of her life that she could build.
You can build that life too, Heartbroken. We all can. Good luck.
Yours,
Sugar
48 responses
Man. This is awe-inspiring. Now I understand why you call yourself “Sugar”.
This letter has wrecked me for the whole day. I wish you peace, letter writer, and also the love that you desire.
Damn it, you’ve made me cry. Again.
this is ridiculous, you are encouraging someone to stay in a borderline abuse relationship because they are disabled. I am disabled as well and this is very very very bad advice. We don’t have to put up with unhappiness such as the writer describes due to circumstance we find ourselves in. You basically tell her she’s weak and she has no CHOICE but to make the most of a situation that is not making either partner remotely happy.
Today you changed me, too, Sugar. When I read the letter, I was angry at her husband right along with her. Thank you for seeing through to the inconsistencies and offering an entirely third option for her.
That’s what advice should be about: bringing into the discussion an outside perspective.
It was beautiful, and I really hope it helps Broken
If the original poster would like to contact someone who has been in a very situation and has found a way to get out and be independent and as a result far happeir, my email is suehiett@gmail.com. Sugar’s advice, though well intentioned I am sure, reinforces helplessness that those with disabilities have pushed on us by the culture at large. I used to be a fan but not anymore.
Thank you, Sugar. This is great advice.
This is amazing. Just amazing. I want to cry and kick myself and celebrate at the same time. What an eye opener. Sugar, you are the sweetest.
Sue, I don’t think it’s fair to call this an abusive relationship. It might be, but we’d need a lot more information to come to that conclusion. Here’s what we’re told:
“But he also won’t be emotionally intimate with me and I do not feel his love. He bickers with me. He makes me feel small and dependent. If he’s in a terrible mood, he reminds me that I have nowhere to go. He resents his obligations.”
That sounds like a lot of relationships. In the majority of relationships, and the majority of conflicts, both sides have to take some responsibility for making things better. But in a truly abusive relationship the person has to get out. I just don’t think the information is here to make that judgement.
Great column, Sugar. And Sue, with all due respect, I don’t think
Heartbroken has described an abusive relationship. Her husband doesn’t
sound like he’s perfect, but the behavior Hearbroken describes is
pretty typical of a marriage under these sorts of stresses (and far
lesser ones, frankly). She also describes ways that her husband has
been good to her and she says she loves him too. If you read Sugar’s
advice, you’ll see that she is not encouraging Heartbroken to accept
the situation as it is and stay even though she’s unhappy–as her
current therapist is. She’s advising Hearbroken to work with her
husband on making their marriage a happier one, which also includes
her working on her self and getting rid of some ways of thinking that
might be destructive to growth and change. It would seem this is a
good route for any couple, but especially for Heartbroken, who has no
relationship with anyone but her husband and whose only other option
appears to be to go live in a nursing home.
Thank you for answering the hard ones Sugar. I get impatient for your column every Thursday but I know true compassion like this can’t be rushed.
I’m with Stephen. Also, I don’t think it’s fair to suggest Sugar is reinforcing Heartbroken’s sense of helplessness. I think she’s encouraging her to move beyond whatever part of that sense of helplessness and lovelessness is imagined.
I’m still digesting Heartbroken’s letter and Sugar’s response. I think Stephen is right – there’s not enough information to know what’s going on in the relationship, though at the same time, the possibility of an abusive dynamic needs to be considered.
Years ago, my then partner was caring for a friend who was in hospice due to breast cancer – my partner had medical power of attorney, was facilitating care when and where she could, and spent many a night by our friend’s side, talking, being there, helping out. At one point, as our friend’s life was fading and ending, she and my partner had a falling out (ostensibly over a disagreement about what the doctor said about Fentanyl dosing), and my partner was essentially “fired” from being the primary person (and other friends had to step in). There was a reconciliation towards the very end of my friend’s life, possibly, but this was literally days before she passed away, and in such emotionally charged environments, it’s so easy to interpret things the way we wish for them to be interpreted (and one can talk about cognitive failures, morphine, brain metastases, etc).
When my partner was ‘fired’ she (my partner) had a conversation with one of the hospice nurses about what was probably going on. Sometimes big things – like dying of f*ing cancer – are just too much to deal with, and people dying may lash out over little things and lash out at people at whom it is “safe” to lash, because sometimes being mad at the Big Thing is too much to bear.
I don’t know if there is some of this – whatever psychologists might call it – in what’s going on with Heartbroken and her husband, but whether it is or not, I am rooting for Heartbroken and husband to do what they can to find a good solution for everyone involved, to find a nurturing community or communities for both. Maybe advice that makes sense for the next month doesn’t make sense for the next year, but I hope all options are considered and that ultimately a life can be built eventually, even if it’s built little by little out of many small but good choices to come.
Well, to remind a person who literally CANT go anywhere that they “have no place else to go” is a classic symptom of abuse of power to me. And I write this as I am guessing, the only person who has actaully been in similar shoes.
I was really almost keeping it together until the last couple of lines. Here’s to building the happiest possible versions of our lives. xo
I found Sugar’s advice here to be thoughtful and well-considered. I would have also liked some words to address concerns like Sue’s. I’ve worked with a number of folks who were dependent on family, loved ones or caretakers due to physical disabilities, and its important to acknowledge and validate the possibility of those people being more than just resentful.
With that said, I found this quite moving, and potentially imperative if the relationship can be salvaged: “What if the jumping off place for the conversations the two of you need to have in order to come to grips with each other wasn’t this isn’t love, it’s only grudging obligation, but rather we are committed to learning how to love each other better, in spite of the profound complexity of our situation? “
I agree with sue @#14. Sugar is right that the LW needs somehow to break out of her conception of the situation, but the bit sue quotes is like a giant red flag alarm bell in my mind. And my intuition–without having all the facts– is that statements and behavior like that is precisely the thing that is hindering the LW’s path toward acceptance and further growth.
If someone is literally dependent on you for their physical needs, you have an extra responsibility not to take out your frustrations on them. Otherwise, the result, as the LW intuits, is Stockholm syndrome. That’s how brainwashing works in POW camps. It’s how abusers gain power over their victims. Things that would be mildly hurtful in a non-dependent situation can be devastating when dependency is involved, especially when the dependency is the means or matter of attack.
Providing for someone can be a kind of love, but it is not and cannot substitute for emotional intimacy or tender affection. Not to mention sex, which no one has mentioned. The LW needs to get these needs met, somehow. (And so does her husband.) If they can figure out a way to do that for each other, that’s great, but to me it really seems like they don’t want to. In fact, the relationship sounds so toxic that physical need and safety are the only things that I can imagine making continuing it possible to consider.
It is an abomination, by the way, that financial constraint should prevent any disabled person from living independently.
i am wrecked for the day, too. sad and unbelievably moved.
letter-writer, i kind of want to write to you. do you correspond w/pple? pls advise.
i am ashamed to call the bumps in my own road ‘chronic conditions’ even though they have been diagnosed as such, because my life is three hundred times easier than a lot of people’s actually, and if i had an injury of this extent i dont think i would survive. i don’t think my soul would survive. i can’t imagine what kind of courage that takes.
you both amaze me (sugar and heartbroken). thank you.
I think Stephen’s right that we don’t have enough information. And while I do think that some of the things Heartbroken reports are somewhat emotionally abusive, I think they’re also pretty common in stressful relationships, and are approachable and resolvable in some cases, rather than gigantic DO NOT ENTER signs.
But it sounds like Sugar intuited the biggest problem here: Heartbroken did not want this relationship, and now feels trapped. However her husband feels, that is a giant, horrible load to lay on anyone. It is going to *feel* abusive, even if the partner is always kind, loving, and caring.
So the advice to branch out, rebuild connections, and create choices is key. Once Heartbroken has a social support network outside her husband, she can then begin to determine whether she *chooses* to stay in this relationship… and simply having that choice may substantially change how the relationship feels. It’s absolutely the next step.
Oh, Heartbroken! I imagine you to be like my mom, who also became paralyzed in her 30’s after a car accident. She has been living in a nursing home to this day.
Before the accident, my parents constantly fought. It was violent and heartbreaking for so much of my upbringing. My mother was diagnosed as being clinically depressed. The word, “divorce,” was thrown around a couple of times and it was always with the intention that it would happen when my brother and I were both at least 18. My mom’s accident happened before that.
She was in a coma for 3 months. During this ordeal, I saw my father cry for the first time. I also saw his force of will used for something good. He began to fight for my mom to regain consciousness with every day visits and conversations. He fought with lawyers about a missing street sign that could have possibly prevented her accident.He fought with social workers and health care providers to see what services could be available. It was a time when his bitterness and anger made the clearest sense to me.
After my mother regained consciousness, my father was by her side daily for the years she has been in a nursing home. He started telling her he loved her and kissed her on the lips (something I had only seen in photographs of them when they were dating). At the same time, my father would still have moments when he became angry with her. He felt burdened with some of the caretaking he had to do and would blame her ( there was a time when he could take her home for a little while on weekends and he would have to change her, stuff like that). My mother never complained. She never argued back. I remember getting so angry at my father’s insensitivity but as time passed, it became apparent that their relationship was the best it has been in at least a decade. That is still not to say it is perfect.
In fact, I think my mom compromised a whole lot. But she is alright and doing the best she can. I see them both as individuals who no longer depend on each other as much as they thought they did, and this has made life better.
I hope, Heartbroken, that Sugar’s advice enlightens you in some way. I hope my reply helps you see how another couple is going through a similar situation. Your letter shows a self perseverance that I hope will only get stronger. Thank you for writing it and giving it to Sugar.
Thank you, Sugar. You arrested me again.
So, there is the serious possibility this IS horrendous abuse. There is also the serious possibility that it’s the (pardon the expression)”garden variety” kind we all receive from partners who are really hurting. I think you’ve all brought up excellent points about our not having enough information, so I won’t belabor the issue, but what of this:
In the case that it’s not serious abuse: the letter-writer does not mention any feelings toward the intruder who injured her. She feels so much anger and resentment toward her husband, whom she feels trapped by. Perhaps she’s already worked out her anger toward her attacker, but might it also be possible that the anger toward her attacker is so great and so difficult to process that it has just been easier to direct it at her husband instead? This is not to minimize the pain and anger that the letter-writer is so justified in feeling–rather, just a redirection of the exploration to a place where it might do more good in helping her to heal.
I think Sugar once said that people pretty much do what they want to do, and I think that’s true. Husband is getting something out of this relationship, even if it is a difficult one that often turns him into something of a monster. He’s there for a reason. Couldn’t it be love, letter-writer? I hope that you do believe it’s possible for others to love you in your condition–it is. And if he DOES love you and you come to believe him, he will not feel so harshly judged by you for loving you, and things may improve.
Sugar’s advice to branch out and rebuild a more full life is sound. This is the only way to see the situation more clearly, with more distance, and potentially expand the options if this marriage really is the totally wrong thing.
The letter-writer is so sad because in her old life, the marriage she’s in now wouldn’t have existed. But there is no “what if”. If she’d been handicapped before she met her husband, they may have gotten together anyway, just with less guilt and baggage associated with everything. But in any case, you two have a shared experience, a shared trauma–there is no stronger common ground than that. Can you redefine the sides? Can you think of it as “us vs. them,” if that would help?
Sue, there’s no reason to stop being Sugar’s fan merely because you think she’s wrong. You said yourself that she’s well-intentioned. Sugar’s taking a huge chance by putting herself out here to help–if we discourage such courageousness, the world will become a miserly place devoid of advice columns and full of people who keep to themselves to everybody’s detriment. In this world, we cannot always make the right choice. What we CAN do, is make a good choice.
I really feel you have an ethical responsibility to expand your advice. It’s not that your interpretation of the situation is impossible, but if your interpretation of the situation is wrong this is extremely unhealthy for both of them.
It helps to remember that people often intuit incorrectly. It’s also a red light when we ask people to ignore what there very gut and heart is telling them. Deeply, deeply problematic.
People DO stay to take care of people they’re in relationships with out of guilt, feeling bad for the person, fear of being judged, and feelings of moral responsibility. It happens A LOT. That means there’s a flaw in your reasoning, a very big one. So your assessment of the situation is incomplete. It could very well be that this man is staying with this woman for the reasons I’ve just stated (and this is what he’s actually said and what the woman herself feels Should that be ignored?) If this man is indeed staying with her for one of the reasons stated above, should she really be staying with him?
And it could be that the woman is simply not and will never be in love with this man. Physically disabled people can and do fall in love. Should she be denied the chance for a truly loving relationship because someone doesn’t want to feel guilty?
Really hoping you do expand the advice you gave.
from,
A Loyal Reader who’s hoping to see you do the right thing
OK I need to know, once and for all, are these real letters or is this a fictional ‘performance’ column? Someone answer me. Dammit.
Why are the detractors assuming that Heartbroken is unable to make choices for herself? If she doesn’t feel that Sugar’s advice is valid, she doesn’t have to take it. When someone writes to an advice columnist, they know that the advice may not be pertinent. How could you possible give the columnist the whole story? You simply don’t have the space to tell it. Allow her to decide for herself what she wants to do and stop presuming that she can’t
Sugar does not deserve to be condemned for trying to help a fellow human. She gave,as she usually does, loving advice.
Oh for goodness sakes! Heartbroken has asked Sugar for advice; Sugar responded in a kind, careful and empathetic way. As Sugar indicates (very gently but clearly), there are a lot of contradictions in Heartbroken’s story and it might help her to own them. Love is complicated, perhaps more so when there are disabilities involved. Sugar hasn’t told Heartbroken to stay OR leave: she has simply encouraged her to know her own truth and be clear about what she is doing and why she is doing it. Thanks again for a beauty of a column.
I’m not disabled yet I deal with these issues in my relationship. I feel resentful, trapped, obliged, loved, dependent, lonely, angry and desperate amid a wellspring of other feelings including joy every great once in a while. This sounds like a relationship to me. Man, can they be hard. Thank you Sugar.
I agree with Rod, after 20 years of marriage. There were years we both felt so trapped and angry; yet we did what seemed masochistic at the time-we honored the commitment. There were times when how he reacted and treated me could be cast as abuse. But I railed against it. Like Heartbroken, I wanted Big Love, and like her husband, he was more comfortable with small love. Then I did what Sugar suggested. With a leap of faith I jumped into his tiny pool of love, and opened to it. It struck me that maybe I had been judging him. After all, I don’t have his circuitry for doing math. Perhaps he doesn’t have mine for loving. Valuing his “weak” love seemed to make his love grow stronger though. I know our love is not huge, but it is not limited either. And for what it’s worth, it’s love.
Heartbroken, you write, “… but my husband knows that without him, I’m fucked.”
That’s got to change. You’re giving him the power by accepting that. Paralysis is a recent monster in your life. It has physically stolen some of your abilities. Please don’t let yourself hand what’s left over to him. You are obviously a good, thoughtful writer with a solid mind. Have you let the hand-wringing paralyze your inner life and keep you from moving forward emotionally?
It seems to me that you need a plan. You’ve tried nursing homes, but that option didn’t work. Look for another one. There is a hard physical reality here that maybe there AREN’T any other immediate options in that regard. Could you pursue a career? Any job that can be done via telecommuting could be a possibility. Financial freedom would be one way to gain your physical freedom from your partner, if that is indeed the route you need to take. In the meantime, you can pursue other ways of getting the emotional support you need, such as the bloggers and online communities Sugar mentions.
You say you want to feel “big love” coming from your husband. I ended a perfectly good marriage looking for “big love.” But you know what? Sometimes, maybe most times, “big love” doesn’t just knock on the door one day. It sneaks up on you after 10, 15, 50 years together. It happens despite the day-to-day bickering, not instead of. Your injury is young; so is your relationship. Perhaps it’s a question for your therapist: How much of what you feel is typical of a relationship at about the five-year mark, regardless of your physical condition? (Then figure your condition is going to increase all the negative stuff by oh, I’d say, about 700 times.)
In our fantasies, a partner would respond to your paralysis with constant love and support, a real rock in your life. There would be no hesitations on his part, no wavering, no struggles to deal with his own new reality. He would take it in his stride with no discernible struggles. In reality, most people just aren’t that strong.
Life’s not a Hallmark Channel movie where all we need is to find that one perfect someone and we’re magically happy and fulfilled. It has to come from within. You need to find a path, if not all the way to happiness and fulfillment (and who can expect to find that anyway?), at least a little further down the line.
I’m going to send out a Daily Rumpus email with a longer response to this article and some of the comments.
Okay, Heartbroken, I get it that he isn’t giving you Big Love. You’re not exactly giving him what he wants either, but he’s stuck it out. So he said some pretty crappy things. I’ll bet you did too. There are two sides to this story and the truth lies somewhere in between. If the tables were turned, would you take care of him in the same way?
We spend large amounts of energy wishing people would do what they aren’t doing. We also have strict rules about love– what it is and what it isn’t– and get mighty resentful if our lovers don’t buck up. Love never lives up to our expectations. One thing I’ve learned about men is that a large number of them show their love with their actions. It’s not necessarily what women want, but it’s a type of love nonetheless.
I think it’s time you took a long, clear, compassionate look at yourself and ask: What kind of person do I want to be? You say you’re trapped, but you still have options. You can choose to love your husband for keeping you and leave it at that. You can find purpose and relationships outside of the marriage and take the pressure off. You can decide to be happy. Heck, you are alive! You are able to feel the warmth of the sun on your face, eat a delicious meal, laugh and cry. You are not rotting in some hell hole, treated like a vegetable. The grim reaper is just around the corner, Missy.
xxx
I think “figure out a way to get out of the relationship and find true love” is the easy, obvious advice. It doesn’t ask Heartbroken to make any real emotional efforts–just financial, strategic ones. The harder choice is to figure out how to really, really make the best of the situation–forgive the past, figure out a way to move on. I think if she really wanted out she would have found a way and may have been looking for someone to tell her that the easy choice–find a way to leave, to start over, whatever–was the right one. Sorry, champ, you didn’t write to “Dear Easy Way” 🙂
I agree that there isn’t enough information to say whether there’s been abuse. It sounds like the nursing homes were the real abusive situations, not the actual relationship. In my opinion there are 2 adults struggling with a difficult situation, certainly one they never expected. Disagreement is a natural part of any relationship and there’s the added challenge of Heartbroken’s disability here.
It’s always a choice whether to be miserable. I have to remind myself of that often, even when it feels like I don’t have options. Sugar’s advice is a challenge for Heartbroken to truly evaluate the situation and decide if she can forgive and try to love. Sounds like the hardest thing to do…but potentially the most rewarding. aint that always the way.
Chuck Truck – Like you, I’ve also questioned whether the letters in Sugar’s column are real, but seeing the great number of responses provoked by this one, perhaps Sugar’s column is best viewed as a vehicle for soul-searching as well as fodder for public discourse.
What would Heartbroken’s life look like if she had been single when her injury happened? Would this couple really be together were it not for the pressure of moral obligation and a sense of duty? Can love blossom out of obligation? Can two people who were never well matched find contentment with each other just because they need to? These are the questions that arise in my mind.
I think that Heartbroken’s story parallels the too-common story of couples, who otherwise would have split, staying together because they accidentally made a baby. How many of those couples make a genuinely happy life together? Of those that do, how do they manage it? Do they generate love out of thin air or does ‘doing the right thing’ give their lives meaning? I’m curious.
This whole concept should be fleshed out into a novel, and I didn’t even realize it until Alison Ruth Barry’s comment.
I just discovered Sugar a couple of weeks ago via Stephen Elliott’s Rumpus email. I don’t always agree with Sugar but I find her responses to be amazingly insightful, thoughtful, challenging and compassionate. Here is some advice for me to live by: Even if it seems impossible with courage you can find ways to build a life that feels like the happiest version of your life that you can build.
sue, can you PLEASE (I’m serious) explain to us all how Heartbroken could leave her husband under these circumstances, if the choice boils down to him or a nursing home.
I’m not disabled, but my father was, and I am well aware of what insurance pays for and what it doesn’t, and what it’s like for a partner to deal with the situation, and hell, I do not see how the hell leaving him is going to make her life any better. (I say this not feeling at all sure if he’s abusive or not or just under major stress, I don’t think I can figure that out from this letter.)
Nursing homes tend to be godawful bad, especially if you are young and fully cognizant of just how bad they are, and I think Sugar probably has the right advice to try to find a way to stick with it if she can, rather than try to figure out how to leave.
I read this last week, and I cannot shake it. Maybe because I think it is both a good answer and unfair. I usually agree with Sugar across the board, but with this one, I don’t know. My father is in a wheelchair, and he chose to go into a nursing home over living with his father, because the resentment built between them was too much guilt to bear for him. Because while the writer does have conflicting ideas, I think that stems from her own guilt about leaving her husband, rather than love or even dependence. I felt like what she was asking is “Help me figure out a way to leave my husband,” not “Help me figure out a way to stay with my husband.” I do not believe as the others have said that her husband is abusing her. Not only is there not enough information, I just think an unfair victimization of her. Personally, that is just the suckiness of a marriage with real, flawed people, we say mean things sometimes when we are stressed, even if one of those people is wheelchair bound. But I do think some people, and maybe her husband is this kind of man, are driven by reputation, and so being in a joyless relationship with someone who is staying with you out of fear of being seen as a man who leaves his wife after she is seriously injured feels pretty terrible. And while Sugar, you seem to think she should stay in this relationship, I don’t. If her husband wants to help her, and loves her and is all those thing you think he is, maybe he is willing to financially help her. Maybe they should figure out a way to have a 24 hour nursing staff, and her own apartment, and allow her to be alone, after all, there is nothing wrong with being alone, and nothing wrong with both of them flourishing alone.
Like it or not, people who do write to an advice columnist are going to take their advice pretty seriously. Sometimes it’s really their last hope and their last resort. So yes, this advice column is going to have a lot of impact for this woman, especially since it sounds like she’s so isolated. I really can’t blame Sue if she doesn’t read this column again, especially since her objections and her experience have been disregarded by the columnist. Sugar is a great writer, but that doesn’t always make her advice great. In fact, no one can give well-rounded advice all the time. That’s not reasonable to expect. But owning up to it is. And not even saying that you were completely wrong, but just acknowledging that maybe the writer of this letter, the person who’s actually living this life is really telling the truth when she says this guy and her were ready to break up had she not been injured and that guilt and dependency is what’s holding their relationship together. Not love.
I really hope the writer of the letter is reading all these responses. Sugar’s advice may not be what she needed but hopefully in some of these responses (the ones supporting the writer of the letter and not Sugar) she will find the strength and love she needs, for HERSELF, not for some man.
I won’t be checking in on this column again. I just can’t read an advice columnist who won’t acknowledge that maybe she didn’t give the best advice to a woman in this situation and won’t even discuss the worries of her readers, especially those who are disabled themselves.
To me, the issue here is would you give the same advice to someone who was not disabled? I understand the extraordinarily difficult situation the parties are in, but to tell a person that because they are disabled they should live in a marriage that is passionless at best, mean spirited and somewhat emotionally abuse at worst, seems to reinforce that the physically disabled are NOT whole people with real needs for real fufilling relationships. I hate to say but I think Sugar missed the mark here, and I do think it should be acknowledged.
Damn, that was a beautiful reply Sugar. You’re a saint. Thanks for publishing this. You really touched me today.
You’re in my prayers Heartbroken. Stay strong.
It’s hard to form a reply to this question because it is so terrifying to even begin to comprehend what this woman is going through, physically. But what I keep coming back to is that Heartbroken needs to learn how to become more independent in this new life of hers. If that takes her to the gym to get some upper arm strength, then she needs to do that.
Also, what does she mean she can’t “work”? Sure, she can’t do any heavy lifting, but what does she think writing for money is? Hello Stephen Hawking! Not to mention programming (and there’s whole libraries online dedicated to learning how to code!). Bonus: A lot of freelance work is being telecommuted nowadays.
To those who so righteously will never again read Sugar, I am so confused as to how you read “no choice but to stay” into Sugar’s advice. Did you miss this line: “[Building other friendships] will also make it easier for you if in fact you opt someday to divorce or move into a nursing home.” ? Did you miss the fact that the anecdote at the end portrays a woman in a situation similar to Heartbroken’s who does NOT rely on a spouse for support? Subtle advice, yes. Gently put. But not negligent.
Sugar’s advice to Heartbroken is a simple 3 step process: 1) give your husband the benefit of the doubt 2) find a therapist who honors your emotional needs as well as your physical needs 3) build a support network outside of your husband (so you can leave him if you want to!!!)
I have been in abusive relationships and have received counseling for victims of domestic violence and can say that this is sound advice even if Heartbroken is in an emotionally abusive relationship. Furthermore, Heartbroken has not used this label herself and I find it disempowering that other people here think that they can label Heartbroken’s relationship for her based on “he reminds me I have nowhere to go”. It is important for Heartbroken to consider that this relationship might be emotionally abusive. And it is good that some comments here address that as a possibility for Heartbroken to consider. However, it is Heartbroken’s right alone to identify her marriage as such and then determine what to do about it. In the meantime, giving her husband the benefit of the doubt (if and where doubt lies), getting a good therapist and building a support network is still the way to go.
Dear Heartbroken and Spinal Cord Broken,
Here is a story that I hope will help you embrace the light at the end of the tunnel you’re in.
A good friend of mine is a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down in an ATV accident over 25 years ago. He has his faults, as we all do. But while he needs help physically, he is otherwise one of the finest human beings I know. He listens with empathy and consistently acts from a place of kindness and humor. I think he’s generally a great guy.
He’s also getting married. After years of being on his own, his life has been turned upside down by a beautiful (inside and out) woman who also happens to be a quadriplegic. It’s messy and unpredictable for my friend at times, but the song in his heart is unmistakable.
You’re here, you have a heart that deserves to be cherised. Start by cherishing it yourself. Don’t settle.
Oh, and both my friend and his fiance work full-time, and they have shared custody of her children.
Hi Sugar,
Just came across your column….love you honey!
Just wanted to share that my closest friend has been married to a quadriplegic for 20 years. I think Sugar’s advice is spot on. Make the best out of a bad situation…it is a reality-based solution that still has the possibility of mutual love.
For all of those that have no idea what this situation entails for the caregiver, STFU! My friend has been taking care of an ungrateful, thankless, self-entitled asshole for 20 years. He will even criticize her for how she cleans him up after he shits all over himself. He never says please and/or thank you. It is a nightmare and one that she can not easily extricate herself from. There are many who would bail out at the first opportunity, this guy has chosen not to. He did an honorable thing.
Good advice Sugar!
I think it is unwise to refer to Christina Symanski’s blog in an advice column, since she did ultimately commit suicide. It isn’t really comforting that way…
Tanja Guven,
I think it is worth pointing out (for the sake of commenters like me and you, who are reading this article for the first time years after it was originally posted) that Dear Sugar wrote this article in December 2010, a full year before Christina’s death.
Should Sugar have gone back and edited out that link after Christina decided to end her life? I don’t know. I think, if I had been in Sugar’s place, I would keep the link there because the way in which Christina died doesn’t cancel out the valuable parts of her life and her writing. Christina’s blog isn’t comforting, but it is true. And sometimes truth is more valuable than comfort; putting a happy face on everything and erasing the messy and complicated parts of reality does not help someone who is living in the messy and complicated parts.
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