My husband has MS and was diagnosed in 2008 in his early 40s. I am late 30s. It was a sizeable attack that took him down in one swoop from working and playing sports to using a walker and wheelchair and being unemployable.
We have no children and have been together for 19 years.
The marriage has been vanilla and basically sucked all these years. It's non-violent... it's non-everything. We are like roommates with comingled finances. But he has always looked down on me and corrected everything I did. I can't drive the car to his liking, I can't cook to his liking, just everything I do is "wrong" or requires some correction. He blames me for not telling him about things we have to do... even though I do tell him the things. He forgets. I thought it was my fault. Maybe I did forget... maybe I am incompetent. Very depressed and started trying to figure out why I was so terrible.
In 2004 I packed my stuff and left. It was wonderful living so many days in a row where no one cut me down about everything I did. It was like the weight of the world off my shoulders. But of course about 6 months into it he got crazy and started stalking me and badgering me and guilting me until I finally caved and moved back in under duress. I secretly started therapy and after a year the therapist detected that my husband had Borderline Personality Disorder. I studied up on it quickly and found out she was dead on.
So I hung around figuring I can up and leave whenever something better comes along because now I can just ignore him. I had all the time in the world! People with BPD they don't remember being ignored or abused. In fact, it makes them be nicer. I don't abuse, I let him criticize me ruthlessly, and it just rolls off. But as the years pass, it gets old and I am starting to snap back.
So fast forward to 2008 and he gets hit with MS and it knocks him on his ass. The night he called and told me the diagnosis, I started crying... not because I was worried for him, but because I realized I had really screwed up and now I would be stuck here forever. My life was over. Then I felt selfish and ashamed of myself for having that internal reaction. I'm not a cold cold person, it just was a wake up call to me that this marriage situation was a bigger deal to me than I admitted to myself. Thinking I could just stroll along and leave whenever... that attitude blew up in my face.
I care for him and empathize and make sure his needs are met. I do all my caretaker duties and give him anything he wants and asks for because his condition is terribly painful for him. He has to give himself shots, takes like 30 pills a day, is devestated that he cannot run or play sports anymore. I would never want to have MS. It's a dreadful life-robbing disease once it gets to the point that it affects your mobility.
And so now I have a depressed, cranky, non-working, spouse with MS who still has Borderline and the combination is just ridiculous. His relatives come around now and they are finally confiding to me that he is impossible to deal with because he does the same stuff to them and they don't appreciate it. Lucky for them that it is not their job to live here.
So I am 18 months into the MS situation and starting to look around at whether I can really suck it up for the next 20-30 years. I work FT, I have to tend to the pets, and he won't do any housework. I have to worry about maintaning health insurance for the next 2 years until Medicare kicks in and so that limits my choices in life. So I am becoming angry and bitter and don't like it.
I have friends and support. I'm having more trouble dealing with the relationship issues that were there before the diagnosis. But now with the MS diagnosis and debilitations, I have guilt that he will never get another woman to love him, given his bag of hammers. That is the only thing I feel guilty about. His family gets it now that they have been around him more lately so I think I could survive the bad press of being the woman who abandoned the sick husband.
He would be happier if someone better came along who bought into his crap, but who will put up with an advancing case of MS and BPD disorders? It is intolerable for me, but I don't leave. I wish we could just be friends since that is all we are anyway... except I am trapped under the same roof and don't have permission to meet someone else and try again for a better relationship.
If I can muster the sense to move on, I already know that I will have to pay him alimony and provide his health coverage until Medicare kicks in, even though he gets a sizeable disability check and he will receive a large inheritance from each of his parents when that day comes. I have a FT job, but on furloughs so it will leave very little for me to live on while he has the house, cars, a disability check, his lump-sum award from SS, and an alimony check from me... but I would pay it all out in a heartbeat to wake up tomorrow and know that I can be happy.
So I suspect I may find myself in the same place as Anon, trying to put up the good fight until one day I decide I deserve a good life that is persecution-free in my own home. Its the only way I will be able to find out what is worse: waking up in 20 years realizing I wasted my life caring for someone who was mean to me, or waking up in 20 years feeling guilty that I wasn't there for him and that I got to have a good life.
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My husband has MS and was diagnosed in 2008 in his early 40s. I am late 30s. It was a sizeable attack that took him down in one swoop from working and playing sports to using a walker and wheelchair and being unemployable.
We have no children and have been together for 19 years.
The marriage has been vanilla and basically sucked all these years. It's non-violent... it's non-everything. We are like roommates with comingled finances. But he has always looked down on me and corrected everything I did. I can't drive the car to his liking, I can't cook to his liking, just everything I do is "wrong" or requires some correction. He blames me for not telling him about things we have to do... even though I do tell him the things. He forgets. I thought it was my fault. Maybe I did forget... maybe I am incompetent. Very depressed and started trying to figure out why I was so terrible.
In 2004 I packed my stuff and left. It was wonderful living so many days in a row where no one cut me down about everything I did. It was like the weight of the world off my shoulders. But of course about 6 months into it he got crazy and started stalking me and badgering me and guilting me until I finally caved and moved back in under duress. I secretly started therapy and after a year the therapist detected that my husband had Borderline Personality Disorder. I studied up on it quickly and found out she was dead on.
So I hung around figuring I can up and leave whenever something better comes along because now I can just ignore him. I had all the time in the world! People with BPD they don't remember being ignored or abused. In fact, it makes them be nicer. I don't abuse, I let him criticize me ruthlessly, and it just rolls off. But as the years pass, it gets old and I am starting to snap back.
So fast forward to 2008 and he gets hit with MS and it knocks him on his ass. The night he called and told me the diagnosis, I started crying... not because I was worried for him, but because I realized I had really screwed up and now I would be stuck here forever. My life was over. Then I felt selfish and ashamed of myself for having that internal reaction. I'm not a cold cold person, it just was a wake up call to me that this marriage situation was a bigger deal to me than I admitted to myself. Thinking I could just stroll along and leave whenever... that attitude blew up in my face.
I care for him and empathize and make sure his needs are met. I do all my caretaker duties and give him anything he wants and asks for because his condition is terribly painful for him. He has to give himself shots, takes like 30 pills a day, is devestated that he cannot run or play sports anymore. I would never want to have MS. It's a dreadful life-robbing disease once it gets to the point that it affects your mobility.
And so now I have a depressed, cranky, non-working, spouse with MS who still has Borderline and the combination is just ridiculous. His relatives come around now and they are finally confiding to me that he is impossible to deal with because he does the same stuff to them and they don't appreciate it. Lucky for them that it is not their job to live here.
So I am 18 months into the MS situation and starting to look around at whether I can really suck it up for the next 20-30 years. I work FT, I have to tend to the pets, and he won't do any housework. I have to worry about maintaning health insurance for the next 2 years until Medicare kicks in and so that limits my choices in life. So I am becoming angry and bitter and don't like it.
I have friends and support. I'm having more trouble dealing with the relationship issues that were there before the diagnosis. But now with the MS diagnosis and debilitations, I have guilt that he will never get another woman to love him, given his bag of hammers. That is the only thing I feel guilty about. His family gets it now that they have been around him more lately so I think I could survive the bad press of being the woman who abandoned the sick husband.
He would be happier if someone better came along who bought into his crap, but who will put up with an advancing case of MS and BPD disorders? It is intolerable for me, but I don't leave. I wish we could just be friends since that is all we are anyway... except I am trapped under the same roof and don't have permission to meet someone else and try again for a better relationship.
If I can muster the sense to move on, I already know that I will have to pay him alimony and provide his health coverage until Medicare kicks in, even though he gets a sizeable disability check and he will receive a large inheritance from each of his parents when that day comes. I have a FT job, but on furloughs so it will leave very little for me to live on while he has the house, cars, a disability check, his lump-sum award from SS, and an alimony check from me... but I would pay it all out in a heartbeat to wake up tomorrow and know that I can be happy.
So I suspect I may find myself in the same place as Anon, trying to put up the good fight until one day I decide I deserve a good life that is persecution-free in my own home. Its the only way I will be able to find out what is worse: waking up in 20 years realizing I wasted my life caring for someone who was mean to me, or waking up in 20 years feeling guilty that I wasn't there for him and that I got to have a good life.
October 17, 2009 - 7:40pmThis Comment
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