Watch Out, Marriage can be a Victim Too

Having a family member diagnosed with mental health problems puts a kind of stress on a marriage tough to overcome. After learning our son’s diagnosis, we blamed each other and wallowed in the self-pity, guilt, and shame that hung over us like a thick cloud. His condition tore at the frame of our marriage. It was hard to remember we were on the same team, and together it was our job to raise our kids. We opposed each other and assigned blame to the other, hoping to find relief from the guilt and the worry that swallowed us up as parents.

Phrases like “not happy,” “better than this,” “move out,” “why didn’t you…” were used to describe our feelings. Fear of our son’s diagnosis and resentment of each other’s failures got the better of us. My husband thought I overreacted to our son’s condition and circumstances; I learned he did not understand my fears.

I had to dig deep, but when I did, I knew in the bottom of my heart, my husband loved us even if he didn’t like us right now. His intentions were out of love, not out of spite when he adamantly disagreed with how I saw our world. Our son wedged himself in the middle of us and created constant chaos. It was hard reconciling the two versions of my husband–the man I married and the father of our son.

Automatic thoughts and actions needed rethinking if we were to move forward. We must go deeper within ourselves, or it can’t be salvageable. Returning to the basics, I saw the problem. We didn’t like each other anymore. It didn’t get more basic than that. Every time we saw the other, ruminating thoughts took top billing even if we couldn’t express them aloud. They controlled emotions and prevented joy. In its place were anxiety, insecurity, doubt, resentment, anger.

The next step was to search why we no longer communicated with each other. The best we did was to speak at the person in the room, about safe topics–dinner menus, chores around the house, schedules - nothing of substance. When we were brave enough to discuss the behavior of our son, it turned into a blame game: “If I had just…, If you could understand where I am coming from…, When is the last time….?”

I lost sight of the man I married and lost confidence in our ability to parent through the diagnosis. I did not want to live this way; neither did he. We were both desperate for honest communication with each other but found it challenging to have conversations without being overheard by little ears. In essence, we were trapped in our own home. We were afraid to leave our son at home alone because he ignored rules and did whatever he wanted while we were out, culminating in explosions of rage when we returned home.

To reconnect, my husband and I began coffee dates on Sunday mornings. We started early in the morning to avoid feeling pressure to get home quickly. What teenager does not sleep late on the weekends? At first, it was like pulling teeth for us to speak with each other. We didn’t know what to discuss, and we struggled. I tried very hard to see the man I married, not the one I could not agree with anymore. There was no flow or rhythm to these conversations. After several miserable attempts, we finally relaxed enough to talk. We asked questions, made plans, and listened with a more open mind. Hope appeared once we learned how to better communicate with each other; hope that there was more to our marriage than managing our challenging child.

Our semi-success at coffee led to other ideas for how to get out of the house together. One day my husband told me he was off to run an errand. On an impulse, I told him I would go too, remembering how before kids, we would run errands together and talk in the car. This small gesture forged a path for more opportunities to get to know each other again outside of parenting. Soon after, we were grocery shopping, running out for quick drinks, and exploring Farmers Markets together. We carved time outside of our home environment because we had to. 24/7 pummeled us with negative feelings.

Yes, when we came home after our brief escapes, we had to deal with the consequences of leaving our troubled son home alone. But the balance of power had shifted. Now when our son would try to manipulate situations, my husband and I were on the same team, working together to solve the problem. There was a new hope, that we were getting back on track, and that our marriage could exist in the same space our parenting did — both essential roles, but separate.

Once my head cleared of the constant negative thoughts towards my husband, I realized it was time to focus on myself. For years we were so consumed with stressful situations with our son we had no energy for additional thoughts, goals, or dreams. It was exhausting to parent under stress and fear and to parent alone because we could not talk to the other. It was a relief to be a team again. I then found the courage to create time for myself without feelings of guilt for abandoning my family. It was a luxurious way of thinking. One I could not pursue in the past because every time I let my guard down, I would find myself in the middle of a new crisis with my family.

I began power walking in the mornings for an hour. This hour was my time away from it all. I ignored phone calls and texts and instead focused on my senses: observing flowers, trees, houses, listening to music, and feeling the occasional breeze as it hit my sweaty face. But mostly, I enjoyed escaping from my thoughts and fears, my stresses, during that hour.

My husband noticed a change. I appeared more confident and relaxed. I had more energy and was a little happier. Things were turning around in my marriage. The resentment lessened. If we were not away from home for too long and also accepted he would play his video games in our absence, it was a fair trade. All of us were a little happier in this arrangement. There was hope again.

As we reconnected, we shared our frustrations about being held hostage by our son. Discussing how his environment made things worse, we found commonality in assigning blame elsewhere—at school. Doing so provided relief from thinking it was all our fault. We needed this other environment to blame for his breakdowns. We grew closer by examining our son’s issues through this different lens. Seeing him through love, as a victim, and not as the perpetrator who caused chaos, we understood. Without realizing it, a narrative to tell others was forming as we discussed our fears and concerns.

Circling the wagons, we saw the threat as other students and their families at his school. Through sports and the tight-knit community, we knew there would be gossip as our son’s condition worsened. We worked very hard on understanding his public episodes and then went into full damage control. Speaking with select parents, we provided minimal versions of our son’s world, painting a picture of why he wasn’t scary or unbalanced. I blamed it on ADHD, on being impulsive and tried to get in front of the problems to control the outcomes.

Together we were a team solving problems, and both on the same page for once. But once we delved into our home environment with a therapist, that is where our teamwork started to unravel. I wanted to put it all out there for my son, but I was conflicted. I needed help to fix things, and my husband didn’t believe we needed any. It was a phase, he thought. His behavior is healthy, and it is what boys do. Here is where we split.

I have always disliked conflict. Friendly disagreements over policy or politics would make my heart race, and my insecurities rush to the surface; I would check out of the conversation. I felt personally challenged to have definite opinions and express them in a way that crushed the other person. That is not my style; it is my husband’s. He enjoys arguing as a sport – even taking the opposite view of arguments, ones he does not believe in, just for fun. He gets a rush when he “wins.” However, I have been crushed over the years and learned, for me, taking part in these wasn’t worth the negative feelings that came with it.

I avoided conflict as much as possible, probably because there was so much in our home environment. It overwhelmed me. I would go deep inside of myself and wait for it to go away. My avoidance was unhealthy for myself and the family. But now we were at a standoff. My husband, who without a sense of urgency, and a somewhat resentful attitude in sessions, did not believe therapy was beneficial. And my growing fear that my son was changing into someone to fear.

Our son’s mental health took a turn for the worse. When he became a threat to our family, to me, in particular, I could see a version of our family where my son was no longer a part of it. My intuition was screaming at me that we were at a crossroads. To prevent losing our son forever: from possibly being in jail or addicted to drugs or even premature death, because he could not control his rages, I had to find a way to save him, regardless if I was scared of him.

As hard as we tried, my husband and I were not on the same page. He put the fate of our son into my hands as he washed his. There was no agreement that we needed to step up our son’s mental healthcare. Supportive of my efforts in front of our son, he privately thought I was overreacting. I knew that it did not matter if he believed me or not; we needed a drastic change. I would fight for my kid, even if it meant fighting my husband. Our marriage, once again, was threatened.

Starting out with a conversation about my safety, I tried to explain that our son was a threat; that it was a dangerous situation waiting to happen. I laid out my safety plan and told him it was the only way I would continue to live at home. It was the line in the sand that would determine if we had a marriage or not. I asked him to choose between his wife and his son.

He struggled with being supportive of both our son and me, and my demand upset that balance. I saw the struggle in his eyes, the way he became distant and lost in thought. I broke it down for him in the most direct way possible; having a plan was vital for my escape. There was no luxury of being wrong about having this safety plan. If my husband was not right, there were no consequences to him. If I was wrong, it could be catastrophic.

My husband put himself in my shoes and realized my safety plan was not something for him to solve. I wasn’t asking permission, or for him to plan against his son. The ask was for him to acknowledge I had a plan and know that I would use it, and not to dismiss or trivialize it or me. He decided he could be the man I needed at that moment, and the father our son needed. It was then I knew our marriage would make it.

Together we brought our son to a facility, and they admitted him. We were terrified. We worried about his safety away from us and what being in that environment would do to him. But together, we agreed that we could not continue the path we were on. This began our next steps in healing our family.