Dear Cary,
I feel helpless. My husband almost died two weeks ago. I coerced him to the ER at the last minute where he collapsed trying to get in the door. Once in there, he vomited so much blood all over me and all over the ER room that it looked like a crime scene. I didn’t realize he had been in pain for quite some time. He was diagnosed with an illness and spent a week in ICU, then got strong enough to bully his doctor to let him out and come home. He was so weak he could not stand, but he is slowly building his strength.
I am a natural caregiver. I want to care for everyone, but I cannot force it on anyone. My husband does not want my help nor does he want anyone else’s. We just muddle our way through the days. He is not depressed. He understands that his condition is somewhat treatable and he could live many more years. He says it wasn’t the time to say in the hospital. Now’s not the time to go to a doctor’s office. It’s not the time to get that blood work done. Cary, it will never be the time. I cannot do this for him. I cannot compel him through sheer force of will to get treatment, to see a doctor, to eat, to simply want to feel better.
He tells me I have every right to be angry. I feel like he wants me to yell, wants me to scream to the heavens. I’m not angry, only sad. Sad that he doesn’t want this for himself, sad for me because he will die from this and I’ll be all alone. He sleeps most of the day in my home office while I try to work remotely. I often look at him dozing, all scrunched up on the small couch and feel such overwhelming love for him, but in the end it is not enough. Why is my love not enough for him? How can you convince someone to live?
Live and let live
Dear Live and Let Live,
Damn. This is one of the hardest things. You love this man, you want him to live, he does not seem to care, you fear he may die needlessly, you would like to prevent that, but you have a sense that there may be nothing you can do.
That is hard.
You speak the truth when you say, “I cannot do this for him. I cannot compel him through sheer force of will to get treatment, to see a doctor, to eat, to simply want to feel better.”
I hear the desperation and heartbreak in your voice when you ask, “Why is my love not enough for him? How can you convince someone to live?”
Well, you can’t. It’s as simple as that. What you are asking is why you can’t do the impossible. If I can do anything useful, I can tell you this: What you are asking for is impossible. That is the hard truth. But let’s not look at this as a situation of hopelessness. Let’s look at it as a test, a hard test, a trial of your soul through which you are going to learn something priceless.
Let’s assume, for educational purposes, that you are on a journey of attaining knowledge, that this circumstance is a university, or an apprenticeship, it is a course you are being offered that will allow you to learn something you need to learn. The thing you need to learn is hard. It is something few people actually learn well. The only way you can learn it is to face something like this.
It is a simple thing, so simple it can sound stupid: You can’t control other people. It sounds so incredibly simple! Or it sounds wrong. You say, Of course I can control other people; there are just some who are very hard to control but I will keep working at it and eventually I will succeed. Eventually, if I love him enough, he will do what I know is right.
I would say that that is the wrong answer. It is the wrong answer you may keep giving and giving until you learn what the test is trying to show you. It’s a hard, sad thing the test is trying to show you. But it is also a pretty great gift. It’s a gift because once you fully realize that you cannot control your husband, you cannot force him to love life as you do, you cannot force him to honor his own body and take care of himself as you would, once you fully see your place in relation to him and to the world, the limited but spectacular place each of us has in the world, once you see that, you will be free.
Once you are free, you will be able to detach with love. You will be able to look into your husband’s eyes and know that you are free to let him go if he has to go. You are free to let him die if he has to die. You are free to be by his side if that is what you want, but you are also free to detach, to let go with love.
From this place of detachment you can review your options. If there is help you can provide for your husband, through experts you contact, then you can do that. If there is a situation he is making worse, if he is making disorder around him, if he is creating chaos, you can arrange for the chaos to be straightened out. As long as you keep in mind that you are not managing your husband, rather you are managing the situation caused by your husband.
It is like a coyote gets in the house. The coyote causes chaos and afterwards you call for help in straightening up what the coyote has destroyed. But you cannot catch the coyote. The coyote is gone, as your husband is, in a sense, gone.
I feel for you but I am compelled to try and present to you this hard message. Otherwise I would be in there with you, trying to catch the coyote. We would both be in trouble, you and I, two blind fools.
So then, if you can achieve this act of detachment, what about you, your life, your prospects for happiness? Your husband is not behaving like a man who cherishes life. But you do cherish life. You can take life-affirming actions that will bring some peace to you.
There is help to be found in groups of people who have faced similar situations and have found a way to live happy, productive, strong lives.
I would suggest reaching out to a group like Al-Anon. Your husband may not be an alcoholic, but your problem is similar. You are living with a loved one who is endangering himself in a way that you have no control over and cannot fix. That is the situation that Al-Anon deals with.
As I said, I think of you as a person who in a position to learn something. The thing you need to learn you will learn by taking certain actions suggested to you by a group like Al-Anon. Don’t just do that. Also contact whatever social service agencies are available to manage the immediate situation. Contact whomever you feel will help you. But please, also embark on this journey of attaining wisdom about this very particular lesson. Look up Al-Anon, contact them, ask if there is a group in your area, ask how you can attend. If you take this action, I believe it will help.
Hi, I’m the original letter writer. I just wanted to thank everyone so much – Cary for the reply and for all the comments. In the time between writing the letter and now, I tried to straighten up the chaos from the coyote. I said fine, you want to fucking die? Well, I don’t know how to do that so let’s call a hospice because they do. I thought he would call my bluff but instead he welcomed it. Cried and thanked me because he hadn’t thought of it. And Cary, hospice really does know how to let people die. With grace, without pain, and without heart broken wives forcing painful and ineffective treatment on them. It turns out that I was the one who was deluded. A lot of people don’t live many more years with pancreatic cancer and I just thought my husband would naturally be the exception. He’s not. We don’t have much time left, but we moved an actual hospital bed into my office so he can be comfortable while he sleeps near me. That room has the most windows of any room in the house. He likes to be near me, hear my voice and look out at the trees and squirrels. I just want to thank you for understanding and for giving me that damn coyote metaphor. Fuck that coyote! I hate it! But we are managing the chaos and finding our own separate ways forward and that is a gift.
Oh thank you so much for writing, for allowing me to hear your voice, to hear the rest of the story. It’s so sad, but knowing what is happening makes it possible to deal with it, to accept it. I really appreciate hearing from you, I did not know what it was. This line just gets me: “We don’t have much time left, but we moved an actual hospital bed into my office so he can be comfortable while he sleeps near me.” It seems strange for me to feel grateful to someone for making me feel so sad but that’s what I feel. Peace be with you on your way home.
Everywhere I look around me, I see men and women who are caught in a trap that is not necessarily of their own making, of trying to feel what it means to be a man, and what it feels to be a woman through frontal opposition to each other, and antagonism. Establishing difference and.. autonomy ? through antagonism.
That reminds me that a very long time ago, at 19 years old, in great despair, I told my mother that I wanted to die, rather, that I didn’t want to live any more. And she said to me (after trying to console me, probably, for a long time) : “if you feel that this is the only way for you, then perhaps it would be best”.
That smacked me in the face. It took me many, many years to work through these feelings, and the despair, but my mother’s response was a very good beginning. She wasn’t taking the opposite position.. even out of love..
We live in a civilisation that seems to assume that love is only a positive value. But… it’s not. It has its drawbacks. Personally, I feel that the drawbacks are part of the facts of life, and to be accepted.. AS the facts of life, but it takes a long time to get to those conclusions.
I also happen to feel that we live in a civilisation that has reduced health care to the treatment of organs and diseases, and not men and women patients, and puts an absolute value on preventing suffering of any kind, and denying our mortality. That puts many of us in a position where one of the only ways that we can express our human-ness is by resisting this terrible bulldozer of treating organs and diseases, and not us. Being human involves suffering, and dying, and we are not going to get rid of human suffering just… displace it elsewhere.
Cary:
Your opening granted her the relief she seeks–until you pointed out so gently that it is in error!
She needs someone who needs her! Then the rest of the motif is present to be filled in. Their mutual attempt at isolation seems highly successful–but it’s not! She needs her back to him to find the path to “the rest of her life”! That first step is the one she fears to take. You have done what you can!
That was kind and lovely advice. I wonder also, what is the husband’s message? What is he saying, without words? What is it he wants her to witness for him? My guess is that he is very afraid of the illness, of dying, of the tests and what they may show; it may be easier for him to ignore the particulars in the face of the grand fact of impending death. Perhaps he feels he is sparing her from trying to save him.
Detaching with love is the work of an entire lifetime.
This letter read like a pure love. It did my soul good and I hope it has the same effect on the Letter Writer.
I find it curious that he chooses to rest on a too-small couch in her home office where she can see himall day. This behavior could be key to his actions. Does he love her and wants to be near her but also wants to die? Is he filled with anger towards her and wants her to witness his demise? Either way it’s a terrible head game and your advice to detach is her only hope.
Linda,
That is a very good point. The husband is choosing to be very near his wife, while going against her advice and neglecting his health.
This bit gives an indication of his attitude: “He tells me I have every right to be angry.” That does sound passive aggressive to me.
He may be longing for a reaction from her. That is her own interpretation: “I feel like he wants me to yell, wants me to scream to the heavens. I’m not angry, only sad.”
I wonder about this man’s relationship to his mother, and other women family members. Does he wish to be rescued by the strong woman, who will take any difficult decisions for him? Hard to say.
Like you, I agree with Cary’s recommendations.