Staying Married is the Hardest Part: A Memoir of Passion, Secrets, and Sacrifice

by Bonnie Comfort

I loved the blues, but I stopped playing them. He taught me to enjoy Beethoven symphonies, Mahler, Handel, Vivaldi, all beautiful.

Wow. She really is a pleaser.

I’d given up photography, and I was no longer listening to my favorite jazz and blues records. It happened so seamlessly, so subtly, that I barely noticed.

Just merging all her needs into his. Yikes.

I was at this point dedicated to my third psychoanalysis, the treatment of choice then for the “worried well.” Struggling with self-doubt and mild depression

So that is what it is for.

After fourteen years of liberated women’s clothing choices, I began wearing tight jeans, filmy dresses, high heels, form-fitting low-cut blouses, and yes, on many occasions, lacy garter belts, and stockings.

I feel for her. She is way down that rabbit hole now, though.

I was barely conscious of my underlying strategy: whatever you like, that’s what I’ll be, because I’m afraid to risk you not liking me.

Oof.

I’m a personality prostitute, I realized. Whatever you want, baby, that’s who I’ll be.

Good label.

Somebody loved me enough to choose me and let the world know.

Never thought about it that way.

It came down to this: I was still a bit shy about masturbating in front of him, and for some reason, the vibrator seemed easier, or its power overrode my inhibition.

The avoidance is goi g to catch up w/her.

I was a saver. Bob was more likely to make imprudent decisions based on strong feelings of the moment, and now I was financially dependent on him.

Oh boy--money is always an issue.

I knew my posing and smiling was playacting for love, an act of cowardice on my part, and I had to bury my shame.

So sad.

It damaged our connection. I withdrew inside myself. I knew it was wrong for me, and I didn’t want to do it again.

Left her with shame-the most damaging emotion.

You know something, but you don’t want to know it. You ignore, suppress, and distract yourself. You tell yourself it will get better. You live around it, not in it. You don’t shake yourself by the shoulders like

It makes me feel sad.

Most of all, it hit me in my self-esteem because I was violating my own values and desires.

Never works out long term.

covered what came up when people wanted to try “open marriage.” The consensus was this: it was no solution to marital frost.

Marital frost cover

It’s a love trance. It can’t last. Gradually and inevitably, we grow less patient and willing to sacrifice what matters to us for the sake of the other. We withdraw some adoration and instead assert more of our individuality. Old habits return, and we want the other to accept them.

Exactly

An orgasm may last twenty seconds if you’re lucky, but a funny line can entertain

…for a long while.

You could say I was calculating about it—making sure I could support myself if I left Bob—but I didn’t want a divorce.

Thank goodness she was taking care of herzself financially.

The next day, in a clinical conference, I presented the case, and it was pointed out that his hypersexuality was typical of bipolar disorder, and I had missed the diagnosis because he didn’t come across as manic. He was a high-functioning bipolar, and his horse was very relaxed.

Wow. What a case!

This is how a marriage goes forward: You get enough of what you want to forgive your partner for the ways he doesn’t serve you, and you also forgive because you understand why he makes the choices he does; his particular brain map of relationships has been laid down long before you, and it’s not his fault.

This is the core truth of a long term relationship

Sometimes, I thought, the only thing that separated us from the patients was the desk.

Amen.

When I brought Bob to see my new office, he said, “Beautiful!” and we immediately had sex on my new sofa. Odd venues and me in my professional clothes were his jam.

His. Jam.

It felt like we each had a terrible personality flaw, me in my way just as fucked up as he was in his.

True.Their avoidance is stunning in its depth.

Here’s what you get in a marriage: a whole package, some of which is great and some of which is terrible, and if the great outweighs the terrible, you stay.

Seems like a very b&w POV.

Bob stretched out on the bed, turned on the TV, and completely ignored me. I couldn’t stand the whole thing—the anger, the silent treatment, the earlier scene of pressuring me yet again. “I’m going for a walk,” I said. He didn’t even look at me before I left.

Wow.

A power struggle is normal in marriage. Working it out requires stepping outside your own view and trying hard to see the other’s.

This one is big.

Only genuine acceptance and the willingness to compromise can get you beyond the power struggle.

True.

My compensation for that loss turned out to be writing. My deepest thoughts emerged on the page, things I didn’t even know I thought until I wrote them.

The giving up of her patients.

Later, I thought about how Min’s grooming us to defer to men played into the difficulty I had in being more sharply confrontational with both Nate and Bob.

It crippled her ability to be honest with him.

He said, “From now on, I’m going to be a better husband. You’ve been wonderful. And I don’t want you to be unhappy anymore. If I get well, we’re going to move back to LA, and I’ll never ask you to expose yourself to other men again.”

Finally.

Bob wouldn’t talk to anyone, Bob the intensely social one, the raconteur. I had to field everything—friends and family calling and sick with worry, running errands every day for something he needed. My back went out, and I ate too much just to soothe myself through each day. I started going to physical therapy.

Coping any way possible.

said, “I can’t live in LA. I’m sorry. I know what it means to you, but I can’t. I just can’t.” I sank down on the bed next to him, shivering in the warm room. This was his truth, and I could no longer fight him about it. My chance for us to have a life here if he recovered,

…over.

He said repeatedly, “You saved my life. I wouldn’t have made it without you,” and we both knew it was true.

Glad he voiced it.

Late morning coffee rose up in my throat, souring my mouth. “I’m happy to do that with you! I just don’t want strangers to see.” “But you don’t get it.” His fingers picked at the brass studs. “Those strangers are me. I’m the rejected, lonely guy who can’t get a date. And when you show your panties to a guy like that, it feels like you’re accepting me.” I sprang up from the sofa, my skirt tumbling down to my ankles. “No, you don’t get it! I feel like your puppet!”

Well well. Its finally being talked about.

And isn’t that just like me, I thought. Can’t swallow it, can’t vomit it up.

Sad for her feeling trapped this way.

The Reckoning. The Reckoning is a phase when the most difficult work of marriage is required. You see clearly whom you’ve married, and you must learn to tolerate the “otherness” of the other. It pretty much happens to every longtime married couple.

Terry Real uses the same phrase.

Each situation is unique, but if that glue keeps you together for a substantial amount of time, a new phase of your life often emerges, where some of the things about your partner that so plagued you in the past fade in importance.

Exactly.

Now, we had reached rock bottom. I was completely fed up with the sexual fights. Fed up. Once

Fed up enough?

Love puts a soft-focus lens on everything, and every personality trait has a light and dark side. You hope, or you wouldn’t get married.

Same thing I tell couples.

Even though, at that moment, I didn’t want to expose myself to that guy in the tree outside our hotel window, I did it out of love and empathy and concern for Bob. Where does consent fit into that? Isn’t it okay to make a sacrifice sometimes for someone you love?

In the moment she chose her higher value. VaLuesz dec can be situational.

What was the point in continuing to pitch his beloved ideas? “Nothing’s going to come of them,” he said.

His identity is so tied to his work. If he could decouple it, it would help.

herself—a talented woman whose ambitions had been flattened by the culture of her time.

That would be my mother.

“50 percent of the men who have REM sleep behavior disorder—and it’s mostly men who develop it—go on to develop Lewy body disease. The other 50 percent do not.”

A very hard dx.

“Speaking of dying, here’s my advice: trust people, but always cut the cards, and don’t sign anything without reading it.” We laughed.

Min's advice

“Always know you were loved dearly. Remember that. I love you more than life itself.” She was so small and so big at the same time.

Min telling her

Doing therapy is like being a tea bag in a cup. You let the patients’ stories and feelings flow through you and fill you up, but you remain intact inside your own silky boundaries. Then, when they leave, you withdraw yourself from their cup and get ready to submerge yourself in the next one.

That is why I like "women are like tea, stronger in hot water."

A good long-term marriage is earned slowly through forgiveness, acceptance, and devotion. Mutual empathy and admiration give the marriage strength

Yes.

You can’t stay in a long-term marriage without sacrifice. No matter how much you have in common, you’re two very different people, and inevitably, there are times when what one wants is mutually exclusive from what the other wants. You either give up something you want because what you have with this person is bigger and matters more to you than that thing, or you leave because losing that thing is intolerable.

True.

When we fought, we would both regress to avoidant strategies, withdrawal, distance, and silence, but we were able to repair, sometimes just by holding hands. Feeling heard, accepted, and appreciated ultimately kept us together.

Another truth.

He’d lost nineteen pounds in one month. A

That's lewy body; people waste away rapidly near the end.

We had hurt each other badly, each in our own way, yet marriage is a complex agreement between two people to give each other what they can and learn to accept what cannot be given.

Another truth.