I wrote this poem in 2006.
The wind makes the plants and branches dance,
Like our lives dance everyday, sometimes slow,
Sometimes fast, sometimes soft, sometimes rough
Will we ever find a steady rhythm,
A steady beat –or
Do We dance to different tunes until the branch breaks?
What is the name of the soundtrack of our lives?
I wrote this poem in fall of 2005 when I was feeling overwhelmed by my responsibilities of being a mother, a girlfriend, a student and a worker. As usual at that time, I took on too much and was trying to be everything to everyone. One trait of BPD that I’ve carried throughout the years is over extending myself sometimes to my detriment in order to make other people happy.
Feelings I can’t turn off
Quickly come in droves
Don’t know what to do
My options are few
Do I follow my gut?
And get away from this rut
Or do i stay here ?
And become what I fear;
A woman that settles
And lets others meddle
A woman with no mind
And with everything, she is fine
But can I turn off the real me?
And stay so unhappy
I wrote this poem in 2006 about my tumultuous relationship with writing. I love to write and it’s saved me more times than I can count. However, I tend to beat myself up if I’m not writing enough.
Instead of tears from eyes that long to spill,
I will spill words onto these pages.
Words that make sense,
Words that don’t make sense,
Many are in fact nonsense
I will let my emotions, the wind
And my surroundings guide me until
I fill up these pages
Full of nonsense, prose,
Poetry, ideas, and everything I can think of
This will be a new phase
this new phase will be full
of promise and potential
And it will also be full
of what I hope is the inspiration
that leads me to share my relationship
to the world.
this will be my fourth baby
Another one I will nurse and raise until it is
As beautiful and complete as my
real life ones.
This is the promise I make to
my pathetic little beast.
I wrote this poem in 2006 in college. I’ve always been kind of introspective when it comes to the possibilities of life.
The full moon strikes full of unseen possibilities
Possibilities that dwindle as life goes
Through the process of aging or does it?
Perhaps we are the ones who put limits
To our potential to be anything or do anything
Perhaps it really is true that we are the writers of our own destiny
It was April of 1996 and I had just broken up with my boyfriend of 3 months after he had grown distant from me. I was in a world of despair and teenage angst and longed to no longer exist. I was feeling this rush of intense sadness as I was walking home from school. I looked at the cars on the street and thought about how easy it would be to end my sadness if I got run over by one. As I was alone in my thoughts, I stopped paying attention as I crossed the street and wasn’t aware that a car was coming. It stopped within inches of hitting me and the driver honked at me and yelled at me. I continued to walk in shock of what had just happened. I didn’t know then but I would be walking into many more BPD episodes like this one.
Fast forward to the summer of 2021 and I’m 40, the mother of 3 kids, work 2 jobs, and have a complicated love life. I decide to go back to therapy due to some recent trauma and driving anxiety. I do a 3 hour assessment and when the feedback comes back, it’s there on my concept map: I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I expected the driving phobia but the new diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder was definitely unexpected.
What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
According to Mayo Clinic, “Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships.“
What are the signs and symptoms?
Causes for Borderline Personality Disorder:
Risk Factors include:
Learning about this disorder has been overwhelming and also life changing. Some of my friends didn’t think it was possible for me to have BPD because I’m too nice. I was also kind of in denial at first until I did the research and thought damn, my life finally makes sense to me. I’ve been coping with intense emotions since I could remember and have a pattern of risky and impulsive behavior and sometimes self sabotaging my own success and romantic relationships. One minute my mood can shift from happy and joyful to full on anger and sadness if I am triggered by feelings of rejection, abandonment, being criticized or judged. I also have a tendency to villainize people if I feel threatened by them. Also, when I feel like my life is “too normal” or “too boring”, I seek out an adrenaline rush and create chaos.
Throughout the years, I’ve leaned some healthy coping mechanisms like journaling, writing poetry or blogging, exercising, mediocre dancing and singing. I’ve also had some unhealthy mechanism like drinking, binge shopping, binge eating, having sex for only validation purposes. I’d like to think that I’ve gotten better with time because I’ve become more self aware of myself and my need to survive not only for my myself but also for my kids.
I’m hopeful that with this new diagnosis of BPD and therapy, I’ve have way better coping mechanisms to become a better version of myself. I’m hopeful that going on this new journey, I’ll not only be surviving but I’ll be thriving. I also hope that I heal the girl in the picture above who was a teenager trying to find love for within the arms of a any dude because she didn’t know how to love herself.
I wrote this in 2019 when I was reflecting about the way men have often objectified in a way that they almost always seem to just want the fun and sexy part of me but seem to often have problems seeing the rest of me. I’ve almost always felt like I’ve been good enough to be their lover but never good enough to be introduced to their mother. Do I still feel this way? I honestly don’t know. I like the attention and validation I get from men because of my looks but sometimes it feels so hollow.
Tell me I’m pretty, tell me I’m sexy
Tell me I’m beautiful
Objectify me, fuck me,
Forget about me
And then
Try to come back to me
And when I deny
your lust filled request,
Put me down, threaten me
Try to hurt me-
Your words mean nothing to me
You’re not the first
But will be the last
Who tries to destroy me
You’re not the first
But will be the last
Who treats me like a doll
to fuck at your convenience
You’re not the first
But will be the last
That tells me I’m not good enough
Tell me you miss, tell me you want me
Tell me you’re sorry
Be persistent in your quest
In trying to get me in your bed
with empty promises
about how this time it will be different
Sorry to my past, my present, and
future lovers-
I am pass being the girl
that’s just used for fun-
I am pass being the lover
you never introduce to your mother
I’d rather live in a world
of solitude and calm
than to once again fall
into the objectification trap
My last year in my 30s ended up with me being an essential worker during a pandemic while being a mom of three and being involved in two different romantic liaisons. I could look back on what I have not accomplished in my life and be sad but instead I’ll focus on my growth and my goals for the next year. I’ve made a lot of progress this year both financially and personally. I’ve improved my credit score by 100 points by working 2 jobs and paying debt off. Also for the first time in my adult life I’m in a healthy romantic relationship with a wonderful man. This time last year I didn’t think either was possible and at times I don’t feel like I deserve all of the good fortune in my life. As I look forward to my next year and my new decade, I hope to really focus on becoming a confident driver, submit my writing everywhere and try to get published, and continue to work my two jobs to save up to buy 2 houses. I’m kind of excited for how the next decade looks like. My thirties taught me I can survive what I once thought would not be survivable. During my thirties, I felt myself merely surviving. In this next decade, I look forward to thriving.
I wrote this in December of 2002 about John. I had only known him a couple of weeks and had already become so infatuated with him and obsessed.
Could I be the one
who makes you stop having fun?
Could I be the girl
who becomes your whole world?
Could I be the light
in your darkest nights?
Could I be the passion
who becomes your inspiration?
Could I be the hope
Who helps you cope
Could I be the love of your life
and possibly even your wife?
Me and Valentine’s Day have a history – well a sordid kind of history full of trauma and drama. Since I can remember I’ve always wanted a Valentine Day where I had the perfect day with my special someone. To me that would feel like a hallmark movie. This hallmark movie would include chocolate, flowers, lots of hand holding and kissing in, romantic dinner and a grand romantic gesture from my partner. The gesture would be so thoughtful, it would make me tear up with happiness. Yes, my expectations were high on this day but hey don’t blame me – I grew up on 90s rom coms and Telenovelas. Let’s talk about my history with this day.
At 14, I was super hyped about this day because I finally had a special someone to celebrate this day with, my first boyfriend, Jude. We went to the Valentine’s Day Dance at the school where we slow danced to the most romantic 90’s songs. Picture Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey playing in the background as I feel myself falling in love. Jude even bought me a rose and unexpectedly gave me this nice sterling silver bracelet and I teared up. I felt like wow, this is so romantic and magical, is this real? Is this too good to be true? Well, ha-ha it was. A week later he broke up with me around my birthday because he realized we were better off as friends. Also, he needed the bracelet back, it has been his mom’s that he had stolen to give it to me. It would be my first taste of drama and trauma surrounding this holiday.
In my late teens and early 20s I was always single on Valentine’s Day. Because of that I would get salty as all my partnered coworkers would get flowers delivered to their office or talked about their stupid romantic plans. One day me and my close friend/coworker Mary- said fuck it, we’ll be each other’s valentine. We’ll send flowers to each other and go out to lunch. It was a great Valentine’s Day that year. We had our own kind of Galantine’s before Leslie Knope made it a thing.
After that, I was with my co-parent/roommate, and this is what I wrote about that day in 2014:
“Valentine’s Day is a waste of a day for older married couples with kids. I suppose that sounds slightly bitter and biased based on my own experiences. I don’t ever remember my parents celebrating Valentine’s Day and they’re still married. So much importance and consumerism is given to this particular day it makes one wonder -how did we as a society eat up all the hype concerning this particular holiday and regurgitated it with “oh so much love, kindness, flowers, chocolates, cards, etc.” The world would be a much better place if love and kindness was practiced more often. It could be part of the new movement called “love and kindness” awareness and it could be marketed with T shirts, pins, and don’t forget the Bumper Stickers” Somehow I think this already happens with the movement “make America kind again” after the last brutal election. Anything can be marketed and consumable by the masses if it makes them feel good about themselves. And that’s why Valentine’s Day is still such a big deal. People that celebrate “their love” can now prove their awesome love by snapchatting or instagraming that shit. Valentine’s Day is just another symptom of the curse of consumerism. `
I was obviously very bitter and jaded when I wrote this. To be fair to my coparent/ roommate, he did try his best some years to fulfill my unrealistic expectations of the day and well- he couldn’t. I do have to mention that one day-I was pleasantly surprised that he bought me a coach perfume, I mentioned wanting it as a joke. I didn’t think he would get it for me, but he did.
In 2018 we opened our marriage and started hooking up/dating dudes. I was also going through a period where my hypersexuality was very intense. I was at a social event drunk, and I got the bright idea that I needed to hook up with someone, anyone that night. So, I met this random dude at the hotel room. I met him from an app, and he had no pictures-and that was for good reason. Ugh, he wasn’t attractive at all, but I was drunk, wanted to have sex, and I was too cute to be alone on Valentine’s Day. Drunk me + hypersexuality +God Complex =no standards for hooking up. Anyways me and this guy have incredibly hot sex and he’s talking dirty. This is all normal except then he starts saying weird things like “I could picture spending my life with you” or “I can see us really falling in love” as he’s ramming me every which way. I don’t want to ruin the mood, so I just figure its weird kink and go with it. I don’t want to ruin the mood and figure, maybe this dude is just lonely or whatever. So, after we have this hot sex, we both go our separate ways. I don’t expect to hear from him. Well, the next day, he blows up my phone wanting to hook up again and I respond telling him “No, it was a onetime thing”. He responds, “we had good chemistry and I’m falling in love with you”. I responded, “I’m not looking for anything like that”. After that what follows are texts, slut shaming with every name in the book “whore, bitch, slut, while also trying to convince me that according to him “we could be so good together”:” I do call him out on his misogyny, but he doesn’t want to hear and says he doesn’t care and continues to insult me while trying to convince me to see him. I’m confused and think “wow, this happened to me as a consequence of my own actions, maybe I deserve it, Idk”. I do proceed to block him. It could have been a nice memory of hot sex of Valentine’s Day but once again it’s marked by trauma and drama. Will I ever have a nice Valentine’s Day? I just want to feel loved and be loved on that day? Why is it so hard?
Fast forward to last year, when I was in love with my recent ex, the second Andrew. That year I had all of the ingredients for my hallmark movie like Valentine’s Day, right? We celebrated V-day on Feb.13, the Saturday before it because of my hectic work schedule. It was really close to perfect. There was good food, wine, butterflies in both of our stomachs cause we’re in love, and dancing. He even makes a grand and thoughtful gesture and I’m so touched I’m almost moved to tears. This is my Hallmark real life movie. Fucking finally, right? I’m so happy and I feel so loved, I share that happiness out in the world with a tweet. Now my relationship with the second Andrew is polyamorous so I’m careful that I don’t tag him and make sure his other partner Sharon is not following me on twitter. I don’t want to hurt any feelings. I ‘m just so grateful to feel loved and be loved by this wonderful man, it’s important for me to share it out there in the world. Among everything crazy and chaotic in my life, I have this perfect memory of love. It’s almost too good to be true right, and it was, a few days later, I hear from him how Sharon’s feelings were hurt by my tweet. I told him about how I made sure that she didn’t see my tweet, but he tells me I’m accountable because my twitter is public. So, to smooth things over, I felt forced apologized for tweeting out my fucking happiness. It was great (insert sarcasm). I remember afterwards feeling this incredible sense of shame and guilt for Sharon’s feelings being hurt by my tweet and at the time I wrote in my journal, “maybe we should break up so she can have him all to herself, I don’t have the time or energy to fight for a man”. I didn’t of course but maybe I was starting to see the cracks in my relationship with the second Andrew. There is a lot more to this story about the second Andrew, but that content will be shared much later this year or next year. I could say that I wish I hadn’t been informed about Sharon’s feelings, but I’ve learned to accept that it happened, and it is what it is. It was just annoying that it was once again another Valentine’s Day followed by drama and trauma.
This year, I decided to flip the switch and rather than feeling sorry or pity for myself to for
being alone; I’m turning this day which is traumatic into a triumphant one. I have declared it my self love day where I’m my own Valentine. I’ve made it so that the only one that can ruin the day is me. Lol. My plan is to take the day off and do the following:
It looks like I’m finally getting my own romantic movie starring myself after 25 years. Except we won’t call it a Hallmark movie, it’s more of an Indie film. I will post an update on how it all went on next Valentine’s Day.
I wrote this in 2002 about Matt, my oldest son’s bio dad. I was about to see him and having a lot of feelings about it.
My past hangs over me
like a song that keeps
repeating itself over and over again
The more I try to run away from it
The louder and closer it gets
I don’t want to do it
But I will have to face him someday
It is better sooner than later
So I can start looking
Forward to my future
On the eve of the New Year, I reflect on the crazy and wild year that was 2021. It was a year of great transformation for me. There were a lot of changes this year. Some good, some bad, some that made me want to die. Lol. To end this year on a positive note, I will concentrate on the lessons I’ve learned this year:
1. My superpower is my resilience. Life may get crazy and really rough shit may happen to me but I still get up the next morning and show up for myself and others no matter what. It’s important for me to keep moving. This might not work for everybody but it works for me. I may want to lay in bed and dwell in my misery on some days but the fighter in me says “no bitch, get up and do your thing”.
2.It’s okay to say “NO” and sometimes it might be crucial to my mental health to do so. As a former people pleaser that used to love to accommodate for the needs of others, this was a hard lesson to learn. People in your circle will understand that “NO” is a complete sentence and will not try to turn your “NO” into a yes to fulfill their own selfish needs. For me, it’s really a boundary that cannot be crossed.
3.Don’t compromise your authenticity for anyone. I used to have this need to be loved or liked by everyone and sometimes I did this thing where I toned myself down or compromised who I was to the point that I would lose myself. Yeah I don’t do that anymore. People can get tired of me and leave and then what do I have left after I’ve changed into this edited version of myself for them to swallow; a freaking hot mess with a lost sense of identity. Nah, from now on, everyone I meet gets the most authentic version of me. If they don’t like it, they can leave. It’s not a good thing or bad thing, the people that are meant to be in your life will stay.
4.Do whatever it takes to get through the day even if it seems or feels crazy (within reason). One of my favorite phases I’ve come up with for myself is “I may be crazy but at least I’m creative as fuck”. In July, I went through a rough time and had to find new and rather innovative ways to survive. I restarted my blog,I have written more than 100 poems /essays/writings since July, exercised so much I lost 20 lbs, and my most favorite, beat a specific phobia (I’ll blog more about this later on in the new year). I also made loads of videos since that time frame to document my progress and growth.
5. Stop apologizing for your feelings and/or over-explaining yourself. Before you start apologizing for your feelings or over-explaining yourself, ask yourself why you’re doing it. I used to do this a lot as a trauma response.
6. You never stop growing. I’ve learned this year through therapy that there were still these parts of me that were emotionally stunted due to trauma. To be honest with myself, I have to acknowledge that sometimes when I get super angry I go into this type of age regression where I convert back to being an impulsive child that acts out. It’s cringy to say the least but I think that when I get to this stage in my anger, I’m in survival mode and do this to feel like I’m in control of a situation. Now that I’m aware of this, I’m so much better at practicing the pause and mindfulness when I’m angry or I take my impulsive bratty inner child for a run. Lol.
7. No one or nothing can save you from the emptiness, sadness, and feelings of worthlessness you might feel except yourself. I used to think that I needed someone or something for me to feel complete but this year I realized I don’t. If I felt empty or numb, I would chase a new job, a new man, new friends, etc to try to have this feeling of being enough or complete. I won’t say I was wrong; I was just doing the best I could with the information I had at the time. This year I learned to really pause and take the time to appreciate the life that I do have. I also really learned how being alone can be really empowering. It was hard at first but slowly I really started to enjoy my own company. The transformation from being this needy and almost codependent woman to being this confident and independent woman has honestly sucked. However, after many therapy sessions and tears, for the first time in my life, I have a new feeling of self worth and confidence that I’ve never felt before. In all honesty, I feel like I’m finally the powerful woman I always wanted to but didn’t have the courage to be until now.
8. It’s important to take time to rest. I say this acknowledging that I’m privileged enough to take time off from both of my jobs without any consequences. At my second job, when my manager would ask me to stay later or work an extra shift, I would say yes because I felt I had to or needed to. I learned this summer to say “no” and draw my own boundaries with them. I learned that it’s crucial to me to have time to myself for my own well being. And in all honesty, I’ve used work as a way to avoid living my own often hectic and chaotic life especially when it got too overwhelming. Now, I finally have the life I want that I don’t feel the need to run away from.
9. Live your truth out loud. This year I’ve made the conscious decision to be more honest about the life I live. I used to be ashamed and I tried to mask certain parts of my life. I no longer really do that. Most of the people at both my jobs and family know about the complicated personal life I’ve had, my diagnosis, and other areas of my life I thought I needed to keep private. To my surprise, people are incredibly support and not judgmental at all. I’m incredibly lucky that in this area in my life, people are really rooting for me and not against me.
10. It is important for me to feel my feelings and ride the rollercoaster of overwhelming emotions when it comes and it doesn’t make me a weak person. Before being diagnosed with BPD, I used to get so mad at myself or felt shame whenever I felt the intense emotions rise up within me when something upset me or made me sad. I felt weak and irrational and tried to rationalize and fix whatever was wrong with me right away. After my BPD diagnosis, I learned that there is nothing wrong with my emotions. I also learned that it’s important to honor my emotions. It’s important for me to observe my intense emotions and listen to what my mind and body needs. If I’m cranky, maybe I need to rest. If I’m super angry, maybe I need to write salty poetry or exercise. If I’m sad, maybe I need to listen to sad music and cry . 99 percent of the time, honoring my emotions like this has worked and what use to take days of misery to get over now takes hours
I don’t know what lessons 2022 has in store for me but for the first time in a long time I’m excited about life. I’m excited about all of the growth and progress I’ve made this year even if it has been rough at times. I’m excited that right now I’m disciplined enough and have the right tools and environment to continue to make progress with my emotional and physical health. A year ago, I was miserable, tired AF and working at my 2nd while people were feeling sorry for me but today I’m at home in my PJ spending time with my boys and I’m full of optimism. A lot can change in a year and while 2021 was bitter sweet, I’m thankful for the lessons. Here is to 2022 being another year full of lessons, full of growth, and full of hope.
So today marks my 10 anniversary since starting this blog. I’ll admit that until the summer of this year I didn’t take this blog as seriously as maybe I should have. I started this blog in December of 2011 after my house was broken into and we were robbed. It was traumatizing to me and my family and I needed a way to process it so I started blogging. Here is that blogpost:
Hola/Hello
Since starting this blog, there have been a lot of life changes. I’ve blog about those life changes few times when just writing it down doesn’t do the trick. The way that I have explained it to friends and family is that the blog is like screaming into the void of cyberspace. In October of 2019, I started posting my poetry and this was another level of intimacy for me because I don’t share my poetry with just anyone. I will share my poetry or writing with one of my close friends or sometimes at open mic at my local pub .Then I started a second job and I didn’t have the time needed to dedicate to this blog but I always kept writing. Then I got into a relationship that lasted until July of this year. While I’m not getting into how that relationship ended or why (that’s blog content for late next year-lol) it was one of the reasons I started blogging again. The demise of that relationship was unexpected and devastating for me so I turned to my first coping mechanism-writing. Shortly before my breakup in July, I started therapy and was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and that was a lot to process in itself. Being broken up while dealing with a new diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder felt like I had experienced 2 really horrible car wrecks within a week. I compare it to a car accident because that’s probably one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life. Except this time, it wasn’t my car that was totaled and unrepairable, it was me. I felt like I had lost part of my identity since I was no longer someone’s partner and I gained a new part of my identity in being diagnosed with BPD. I felt completely overwhelmed with no sense of direction; I honestly didn’t know what to do next. All I wanted to do was lie in bed and cry while Alexa played my sad girl playlist from Spotify. Here is that playlist:
Playlist: For the Brokenhearted: Sad Edition (the one where you cry)
And while I did do that some of the time; I understood I still needed to get up every day and show up for myself somehow. And showing up for myself meant writing. And so I wrote every day in my journal and in my numerous notebooks. I wrote letters at 3 AM that I would never send, journal entries full of immense sadness and rage, and tons and tons of poetry.
A few days after my breakup, I decided to blog about my diagnosis to start to make sense of it and here’s that post:
A New Diagnosis: BPD
After writing that post and it got more than a few views and a couple of likes, it made me realize that there are other people like me. I also got the idea at that time that healing for me would look like me revisiting past traumatic situations through my poetry and reflections or writing a blog post. And this was chaotic in itself because I started posting poetry from all stages in my life. So around late October and early November, I started posting poetry for the most part chronologically from the early stages of my writing with the very first poem I wrote when I was 15 and here’s that poem:
Poetry: Another Mate
My writings and poetry are confessional, sometimes childish, and at times super emotional. It’s meant for people who have felt misunderstood in their anger and grief, it’s meant for people who feel everything at once and feel overwhelmed by it, it’s meant for people who have traumas they’re still not over, and it’s meant for people who have given their trust and vulnerability to the wrong people only to be broken over and over again by doing this.
My future plan for this blog is to continue to post poetry, essays, playlists, and other writings. Without intending to, this blog has become a storytelling blog. And it’s a story about a woman who is far from perfect. It’s a story of woman who lies, who loves hard, who hates even harder, who loves sex, who has been abandoned by lovers and who has abandoned lovers, who’s crazy, and who feels immense sadness and rage when trauma hits. It’s a story of a woman who fucks up continuously but still manages to get up and try to become a better version of herself than she was yesterday. It’s also a story of a woman who has continued to triumph after trauma. Most importantly it’s a story of a woman who is done accommodating to people’s and society’s expectations of who she should be and at 40 has realized that being authentic and true to herself is the only and right way for her to be. I may have changed a lot within a decade but what will never change is my love for writing and my purpose to continue to share my story.
So I wrote this essay a couple of years ago as I was reflecting about the end of my marriage:
As my eight year marriage comes to its inevitable end, I’ve been rewatching the series Mad Men. When I first watched the series, I admired Joan and Peggy for being strong female characters in the show but I always thought there was something about Betty Draper that I could relate to. It’s strange to think about considering she’s a white upper class sixties housewife in New York and I’m a working class millennial immigrant Latina woman in Georgia. It’s hard to grasp that there would be any similarities between but there are many indeed.
(Me and Hubs at my brother’s wedding reception)
Betty feels trapped in her suburban idyllic existence and often times feels frustrated; I’ve also felt this way throughout the past fifteen years. Betty wonders if there is more to life than what she is living which is rearing children and being a good wife; I’ve constantly wondered the same thing except that I have the added burden of working.
Don, Betty’s husband acts like she should be happy with her life and gets mad at her when she shows real emotion, kind of accuses her of being crazy and sends her to a psychiatrist that he secretly talks to about her sessions without her consent and knowledge. My husband never went so far but for most our relationship he did accuse me of over reacting and/or accuse me of being crazy if I got “emotional” about something and/or brought up needs that weren’t being met in our relationship. It always felt that I was expecting too much out of our relationship for wanting normal things in a relationship. My husband has also acted like I should settle for what the little he can give me in terms of companionship and be happy with that since he was. For a long time, I felt that maybe I could and should settle for this but settling made me miserable for several years.
Don also kind of stopped investing time and energy into his marriage. He took Betty for granted because they were married with two children and hid behind his work and his many dalliances. My husband was never one to make time for us or continue to woo me in any sense after we started living together. Instead, he hid behind the raising of our children and the fact that he was always tired. He could never spontaneously compliment me and I was always either too fat or almost too skinny for him. Betty overlooked Don’s lack of affection for several years in the same way I overlooked my husband’s. I feel that this had to do with how women are conditioned to be polite and swallow their emotions because again–we’ll be accused of being crazy and/or hysterical.
The beginning of the end of Betty and Don’s marriage started when Betty eventually gets fed up after having one of Don’s affairs rub in her face and throws Don out but later they get back together because she finds out she’s pregnant with their third child. Don does try to be a somewhat better husband but eventually goes back to his philandering ways. There have been a few times throughout our relationship that I did try to break up with my husband but because he always apologized and said he would change, I always took him at his word and wanted to believe he would change. We even planned our third child and got married shortly after getting pregnant. I think I subconsciously did this because I thought a baby and a marriage would be the band aids that would fix “us”.
Betty eventually gets tired of Don’s lack of effort and also his lies and eventually asks for a divorce, she tells him something like, “I don’t feel anything when I kiss you”; it seems that this was when she knew that it was over for her and Don. For me, it took me a couple of years to be firm in my decision to divorce my husband. I think that I finally realized that there was no way I could continue the façade of our marriage when I realized that I no longer cared that he didn’t notice me or felt anything remotely like romantic love when I kissed him. It took him a while to understand why I wanted a divorce since he was happy with “us” and his main concerns were, “what about the taxes?” or “what about the kids?”. But like Don, he eventually agreed to it and said that he wouldn’t fight me about it. It’s kind of eerie that women like myself can still relate to a sixties housewife when it comes to relationships, marriages, and the stigma of divorce. I’m sure that people wonder why I would stay in a stagnant and awful relationship/marriage; that’s simple; I loved my husband. I thought that loving him meant that I had to settle for a marriage devoid of any real affection. I thought that the love I felt for him would be enough to change him one day.
Life on the BPD 