The Winner Takes It All

I was in your arms thinking I belonged there. I figured it made sense building me a fence, building me a home thinking I’d be strong there. But I was a fool.

Losing Mark to suicide left me unbelievably vulnerable. Don’t get me wrong when I say I know there’s no point in comparing relationships or losses, but there’s just something about losing a spouse to suicide that feels way more hurtful than losing a family member you were stuck with at birth or someone related to you by blood. Mark and I CHOSE to be together, and then he CHOSE to take his own life. I’m clear on a logical level that his choice to do that had everything to do with him and nothing to do with me, but emotionally, it’s the ultimate betrayal.

Just imagine for a minute what it would do to your confidence if your chosen partner in life killed themself.

Now try to imagine how the fuck you would come back from that.

You probably can’t answer that because you probably can’t really imagine such a nightmare. It doesn’t even seem possible, or if it does, it’s too frightening to truly consider. Personally, I never could have understood without having gone through it myself. There’s just no way. It’s outside the realm of ordinary experience. I definitely worried about it on a subconscious level while Mark was alive, but it was overwhelming to think about it actually happening. So I just pretended everything was fine and dealt with the little bits of our addiction-tainted mess of a marriage at a level I could manage. Clearly, that didn’t work. Not that my actions alone would’ve kept Mark alive. Suicides are NEVER the result of one event or issue, but there’s no point in arguing that that things I DID do were effective because they weren’t. In the game of marriage, I had failed BIG time, even before he died, considering I told him two days before his suicide that we were going to get divorced.

Do I dare crack a joke about having the worst divorce ever? Why yes, I do! I mean, really. Think about it. People talk about having a “good” or “bad” divorce. You think YOU had a bad divorce???? How about one that doesn’t even come to fruition and is diverted by one of the participating parties taking their own life?

I digress. Don’t mind me and my dark humor; it helps me get through the day. And considering our relationship sort of ended twice that week (first with my saying we were going to divorce and second with Mark’s suicide two days later), my redemptive desires were at an all time high. Said another way, for all you normals who can’t relate to this on my level because you’re not widowed by suicide, I was ready for a rebound, the way we all are after a breakup. And I sought redemption in the arms of a married man whom I affectionately refer to as ‘Andrew’.

And by ‘affectionately refer’ I mean ‘whisper in code’ because I’m not a COMPLETE idiot. Several of my friends met him, and most of our mutual friends don’t seem to mind, but I’ve lost a few relationships because of this very poorly chosen one. So, ‘Andrew’ it is!

Disclaimer:
I do not recommend getting romantically involved with a married person.

Disclaimer to the above disclaimer:
I am aware of how dumb that sounds. However, I must preface the following this way considering that I don’t actually regret any of what I did. It’s not my proudest experience, but given what I was dealing with, it made sense at the time. I understand that by sharing all of this that I do nothing to counter the common myth that widows go after married men. Life has a funny way of teaching us the things we need to learn; apparently, in my case, it took multiple disastrous relationships to even begin to see that MAYBE at times I SEEM to use romantic relationships as a way of avoiding dealing with other issues. Perhaps. I’m no psychologist, but one could make that argument. I do know that I didn’t do it on purpose, nor do I regularly find myself seeking out other people’s husbands. But people fall in love in all kinds of circumstances. I personally know couples who ended up together quite happily after having been unfaithful to their previous partners. It’s not kind, but it happens, and who are we to tell others not to be happy?

All that aside, my participation in that relationship was NOT that. Instead, as you can probably imagine, I was just a hot fucking mess who desperately needed to be held, loved, cared for, hugged, kissed, heard and appreciated by a man on an intimate and romantic level so as to not feel completely abandoned and unworthy of love. I had no idea at the time how little confidence remained in me after what Mark did, but I found it, or at least a (somewhat inebriated) semblance of confidence, with Andrew. Though I wasn’t present to it, in some ways I thought that if I could make it work with him (or anyone) that I would somehow be fixed. Redeemed. Normal. Happy. Atoned for how extensively I fucked things up with Mark.

Your husband killed himself? Just go be with somebody else! That will fix everything! You’re not at all likely to mess this one up or choose the wrong guy. Nope, not at all! You’re functioning so well right now, so this is the perfect time to go start a new relationship! It’ll be great! And he’ll be great! And hey, if he’s married, no problem! His wife will understand and will finally leave him so he can be with you. LOVE! So much love. Their marriage isn’t working very well anyways, so maybe you and Married Man just need to disastrously end your marriages so you can be together. Yup, his wife will TOTALLY understand. She’ll never text you to tell you not to ruin her husband the way she seems to think you ruined your own. Nope. Neverrrrrr.

Without going too far in defending my incredibly irresponsible choices, it wasn’t a secret to others that Andrew and his wife weren’t exactly happy. All of that started long before I came along. I did not destroy their marriage, nor was I at the source of their issues. Andrew was unfaithful for years with goodness knows how many women, and I don’t blame his wife for lashing out at me. The circumstances were different in our marriages, but knowing I did that to another woman is not something I brag about. It sucks being lied to by your partner, and that’s something she and I both understand far too well. I do think she was a TAD misguided in her assertions that I was to blame for Mark’s suicide considering she didn’t even know him. Just a tad. And perhaps a touch crazy. Like, you couldn’t in your wildest dreams think up the shit that she pulled because it was just. So. Crazy. The illegal, dangerous, and perhaps committable kind of crazy. But hey, I actively tried to start a relationship with her husband knowing that he was married, so I’m clearly not one to judge anybody else for the ways that they deal with life.

I know now that nothing Andrew did was ever going to complete me. The same went for Mark and anybody else I’ve ever been with. My personal insecurities stem from childhood, not the poor victims of my dating life. Even recently it was appallingly apparent to me after a few weeks of seeing Band Man (my latest short-lived romance) that my default coping mechanism is to distract myself with a man. Sadly, society seems to support the point of view that getting into a new relationship will make up for whatever didn’t work in the previous one. We have a habit of seeking peace with ourselves in others, but it doesn’t work that way. Someone’s spouse dies and we’re THRILLED when they find “someone new”. We rejoice about how they’re “over” their dead spouse and have “moved on”. Much to my chagrin, I too bought into that idea. Anything was better than spending my time thinking about what happened with Mark. Some people CAN’T WAIT for me to be in a new relationship, but it won’t fix anything, especially considering there’s nothing about me to fix.

Not that Andrew didn’t try! Men are wired to FIX things, including women, and I felt at times that my being so forlorn was what he was most attracted to.

Even so, he got me through a lot. As inappropriate as it was from nearly every angle, and though its ending (or each of them, as there were many endings during our nearly year-long affair) left me more heartbroken than I imagined was possible given I’d already survived “the worst”, it was in many ways completely appropriate for my emotional needs. The good ones, that is. To be clear, it was mostly a clusterfuck, but it did remind me that I’m lovable; I learned that, if and when I find the right person who is worthy of my time, energy and love, I deserve damn well to be treated like a goddess and loved unconditionally in return.

But that was definitely not the case with Andrew. We weren’t so much “dating” as we were battle buddies who happened to be in love (like, SO desperately in love) and sexually involved. He was traumatized; so was I. There were things I could tell him about my PTSD that I couldn’t say to anybody else, and as far as I know, I know way more about his PTSD than a lot of people, even some of his Marines.

Did I mention that he was one of Mark’s Marines? No? I wasn’t ready to share that detail until now, but while I’m at it, let me keep spilling my guts!

Andrew wasn’t the first of Mark’s guys with whom I got involved, nor was he the last. But he was the only one I fell in love with. The others remain some of my dearest friends, minus one. We let bygones be bygones and even laugh about it. Also, I haven’t slept with ALL of Mark’s Marines. I’ve been a floozy, but I have SOME morals. Some of us have relationships that are completely platonic. They know about Andrew and don’t mind. That’s the good thing about those guys; they don’t judge, at least not most of them. As for the guys who have other opinions, their views are completely valid; they’re just not my concern.

Interestingly enough, Andrew tried at one point to be my boyfriend. His idea, not mine. And yes, he was still married, though they were separated at that point. Don’t ask me to explain that one; just let this be an example of how misguided and emotionally unstable each of us was at the time. He talked to some of his guys about me. He took me as his date to a semi-formal party. I’m pretty sure he asked his dad for advice on our relationship - not on ending it, but on how to keep things moving forward and deal with his feelings about me being a widow, which I actually appreciated at the time.

Seriously guys, if you’re going to date a widow, talk about how you feel about their circumstances, with both them and others. It’s nice to know you’re thinking about it and willing to have conversations that address your own emotions and opinions about their past rather than letting your concerns fester.

But all the while, separated or not, he was still married. Ultimately, I stopped talking to Andrew on the day he got jealous of me spending time with some of my Marines. (They are some of the guys with whom I am NOT inappropriately involved. Just saying.) That “breakup” is what had me start this blog, actually. I had finally decided that the whole thing was a bit too ridiculous for me to handle anymore and started writing about my widowed adventures.

See? There’s hope for those of us who make poor choices in dating!

I haven’t the slightest idea how Andrew is doing now, and at times, that really bugs me. He played a significant role in the most emotionally tumultuous period of my life. How could I not miss him? Every loss since Mark’s suicide leaves me with the same panicked feeling, practically flailing at the thought of never being able to speak to that person again. I know this is typical for survivors of suicide loss, but it’s mildly terrifying. What would barely have fazed me before can now level me.

More than anything, it pisses me off, as do most things these days. For example, I discovered this week that Band Man (my most recent romantic interest that ended on apparently not-as-mutual-as-I-thought terms) blocked me on social media. This downright annoys me. We said we’d be friends, and I was all about it. Aside from feelings, of which I have about a hundred a minute, thus rendering them completely unreliable and not a good test for anything going on in reality, I don’t have a single good reason to not be his friend. Plus, he’s a great guy and someone who shares my level of immaturity. We find a lot of the same stuff funny and entertaining. To me, that’s enough for a chuckle or a smile with a friend. But then, in a not-so-shocking turn of events in the world of tindering and “dating” in 2018, Band Man blocked me. While I can logically understand somebody not wanting to talk to me anymore, as there are many people I have chosen to no longer interact with in order to maintain my own sanity, it still initially reminds me of what Mark did. I can’t help but feel a bit abandoned in my emotional reaction.

And BINGO! I now understand the meaning of the term “ghosting”. How fitting. And I would know. Just saying.

My emotions are not Band Man’s fault; it’s my responsibility to deal with my own shit. But it still pissed me off that he did that. And while I’m being pissed off, I also would like to assert that when men say they want to be “just friends” they’re absolutely full of shit and should be mocked for telling such ridiculous lies. Have you considered that the woman might perhaps actually be capable of being friends with people they once got involved with? Hmmm? Did you think about that? I don’t know if you think you’re letting us down easy or what the heck is going on, but there’s no need to lie. Seriously, guys, if you don’t want to be someone’s friend, just fucking say it. You can’t possibly like everyone, and we can’t all be everyone’s cup of tea, but let’s not be childish about it. Just tell the truth. And if you’re simply not capable of putting your own shit aside, at least own up to it. We all have shortcomings and are assholes at times, so you may as well embrace it instead of being a chicken about it. Odds are, nobody will die if you break up with them.

Except in my case because that’s actually what happened with Mark, so I’m basically the authority on people dying as the result of a breakup.

But it is HIGHLY unlikely, so you may as well be honest. Telling Mark I wanted a divorce was one of the bravest things I ever did, despite having the worst possible result. Had I known that standing for myself would’ve been the final piece that caused Mark to pull the trigger, I can’t say for sure that I would’ve done it. But I’m damn proud of myself for being honest about what I needed to have my own life work and for not backing down in those last two days. Even when Mark went missing. Even when he made multiple suicide threats. Even when I was sitting in a cop car waiting for SWAT to decide whether or not it was safe to enter our apartment where Mark killed himself. Even with ALL OF THAT, I get to be proud that I stood for what I wanted for myself without hiding like a chicken from the person it most impacted. I’ve made a lot of mistakes (clearly), but at least I’m not a coward.

Fortunately, I’m aware of my own shortcomings and can do something about it. Unfortunately, the only way to overcome the intensely irrational (and irrationally intense) panic over a breakup is to try dating other humans. Then, in the midst of the intensely irrational (and irrationally intense) panic, all there is to do is practice calming myself down and remind myself how unlikely it is that anybody will kill themself over said breakup, and also that there’s likely another human out there in the world who will be a good fit for me. At some point. Someday. When the intensely irrational (and irrationally intense) panicking has calmed down and I haven’t scared off every man I go out with.

On that note, men, are you scared yet?