I learned to keep my wallet on me even at home

One day I was with Karina. The next, I wasn’t. I met with a lawyer right after moving in with my eighty-something-year-old parents.

*  *  *

Karina and I had great chemistry. Yes, I promised to be with her forever and grow old united. Yes, I loved her bold personality and sharp mind and sardonic take on things. We had fun together, but her knack for hostility was a challenge. Things could escalate to me being grabbed, pulled, pinched, clawed, and certainly yelled at.

Whenever things reached a point where there was no way to defuse a volatile Karina, I would escape. I had to. She was skilled at getting in my way. And as soon as I realized she wanted me to grab her, I quickly learned to box her out—the way you get into position on a basketball court. I’m a terrible rebounder, but when the guy you’re backing into is a 5'3" woman, I was pretty good.

During one squabble—over my ability to communicate or my relationship with my daughter Ellie because our issues always circled back to those two topics—she pulled out a butcher knife only to—I'm speculating—get a reaction.  

I learned to keep my wallet on me even while at home. If I didn’t have my car keys in my pocket (and couldn't get to them before getting out the door), I’d walk all night, pretending I was a Green Beret. Worry got me nowhere. If the texts that followed me outside were full of spite, I’d ignore them, hoping her anger would wind down. 

I could rationalize sleeping in a storage closet in the commons where old paint, moss control and a sawhorse were stored, or walk to a hotel. At first, pride got in the way of calling a friend, but I would eventually contact two different people in separate circles. After the third time of wandering in the dark, I spoke up, explaining a possible need for a safe house. My friends didn't see the humor in it.  

All of this drama was so foreign and bizarre to me, I assumed it would pass: Karina would wake up one day because she was smart. She knew German, Polish, Czech and some French, after all. She was capable of many things. We’ll make this work. Things would get better. She'll change.

When I sought the perspective of one of Karina’s closest friends, the friend told me—as a matter of fact—"Karina has never be able to be in a healthy relationship with anyone." Good to know, but we were already married.  

It was impossible to give Karina as much reassurance as she needed. At first, it was just an endearing quirk. Aren't we all a little neurotic?   

There were also her occasional anxiety attacks—all new to me. Then I wondered if there were deeper things, such as overcoming serious and debilitating shyness as a young adult. I also considered the emotional shrapnel caused by an angry father—a hard-drinking Polish immigrant who died when Karina was 22. One of her demons, she confided, was that she was glad when he died.

Still, I thought love conquers all. Time heals. We’ll figure it out. With true love and support, anything is possible. 

Karina was really good at transforming a nice morning walk into something entirely different. 

If I’d say “Oh no, that’s awful,” she always seemed to think I was saying something along the lines of "so, what’s the problem? What should we do for dinner?” 

When she would say I diminished her feelings, I took it to heart. I might’ve even over-compensated until a counselor suggested that would get me and us nowhere. The counselor pointed out there’s a difference between diminishing feelings and enabling people who spend time worrying about things beyond their control. On the other hand, who am I to judge? Ultimately, I learned not to be an arbiter of what’s gripe-worthy. Feelings are feelings.

 

Karina and I took part in a series of intensive two-on-two talk therapy sessions with a pair of lesbian doctoral candidates. They applied a Japanese approach to bringing couples together with—what I assumed—was a good-cop/bad-cop strategy, which in hindsight was more like soft talker/loud talker. The soft talker was from Denmark or Norway, so our counseling duo was one part English-as-a-second-language therapist and one part Vermont drill sergeant. What did I learn? To breathe. To be more direct and slow down with expressing and hearing feelings and connecting with the feelings behind the feelings, and also to be clear with what I needed. And be mindful and present.

I was all in, but five sessions and five hundred dollars later, I was getting skeptical because of the results. There weren’t any.

Total appeasement—concession after concession to demonstrate my unconditional support—wasn’t sustainable. Banging my head against the wall wasn’t healthy. Even the pretending among friends and family that everything was great took its toll.

Time after time, I'd feel it deep down: my marriage (and everything, actually) was headed over a cliff.  

As soon as I admitted to a cousin that I was no longer afraid of failure (that is, a second divorce), I started to realize I could take my life back.

Karina’s reaction to my departure fluctuated between resentment and anger and sadness and remorse. After some delicate conversations and makeup sex over the holidays, we agreed that any future divorce talk wouldn’t involve a lawyer.

“We’ll do it ourselves,” we agreed. We even shook on it.  

With me living at my parents’ house, we would put some thought into planning time together. Seeing Karina served as a welcome respite from dutiful caregiving. When I was with Karina, I wasn’t cooking, cleaning, bandaging, or wiping. On the other hand, I had reservations for obvious reasons, but the misgivings fell away to taking a day at a time and—why not?—second chances after second chances. 

We even started talking about selling her house to start fresh. 

It was a good idea, but we never got that far.