Redux: Moving On, Part 2 | Dear Sugars

The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart sick.

The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears.

I'm Steve Alman.

I'm Cheryl Strayed.

This is Dear Sugar's.

Oh dear son, won't you please?

Yeah, some little sweet days would be.

I check my bell vibes every day.

Oh, and this sugar, using my way.

Hi Steve.

Hi Cheryl.

So, we're in part two of our two part series on the topic of moving on.

Last week we talked about moving on after the death of a loved one.

And this week we're going to look at moving on from a different angle.

How do we move on from our regrets or the mistakes we've made?

What are your biggest regrets to you?

Oh boy.

One thing that I don't talk about a lot is that I was a twin.

When you're born into a twin ship, it's a special thing.

Like I bonked my head on the crib a certain number of times and Mike bonked his head.

Bonk bonk bonk bonk.

We drive my parents crazy.

That's true.

It's true.

When we walked to school as kindergarteners, we walked literally shoulder to shoulder leaning

into one another on the way to school.

That's how we move through the world.

And what I realized this we got a little bit older was that he was keeping a secret from

me. Actually, I didn't consciously realize it, but I knew that he was treating and withdrawing

into a kind of private world that I wasn't a part of.

I dealt with that by feeling incredible anxiety and confusion.

I remember him going to sleep over at a friend's house for the first time and I literally

in my body was like I couldn't sleep.

I was racked by anxiety.

It was like my God.

My other half is gone.

At any rate, I could tell without he's moving away from me.

We were drifting and I couldn't reach him.

I only came to realize much later in my, I mean, you know, when we were in college that

he was struggling with realizing that he was gay and coming out of the closet in a very

macho household that for all the psychological insight that everybody had, there wasn't a lot

of emotional communication.

And I told you this story of when he came out to me and how utterly shocked I was.

I literally thought that he was fooling around with my girlfriend.

That's how out of it, I was.

Yeah.

And I can even remember visiting him at college and he had a photo of maybe his boyfriend

and him sort of scantily clad and I remember it was by his bed and he put the photo face

down and he looked at, he didn't look at me.

He just said, you're not ready to see this.

And was he right about that?

Maybe.

I hope not, but maybe he was.

Did you counter that statement?

Honestly, part of what the regret is bound up in was the recognition that he was

and this is so, I mean, this is what pisses him off.

He was ashamed about something.

He shouldn't have been ashamed about.

And I was wrapped up in that as well.

In other words, I was reading off of, I better not intrude because this person is already

in retreat from me.

And I'm just going to say enough that I don't scare him off anymore.

And the image that comes to mind when I try to really interrogate why I didn't say

more, why I didn't say, how is that?

Are you okay?

Is sort of like, we used to be two little fauns or something who just did everything together

and we're bounding through forest and pasture together.

And then when he was letting me know, I'm gay in these very small and elliptical ways,

it was as if if I moved towards him at all, he would startle and go running back into

the woods.

And the shame of it is that there weren't any woods.

Nothing to be ashamed of.

You love who you love.

And that's very clear to me sitting here at 51, but at 21 or 19 or however old we were,

what I was picking up on is he doesn't feel safe sharing this part of his life with me.

And if I try to do too much, if I knock my head on the crib, he's not going to knock back.

And now I can look back at them and say, my God, you dope.

You need it to be there for him.

This was a time you could have come through for him.

And I think maybe the central regret of my life is that I've never been able to go back

to that twin ship.

And I have not come through for him.

And I have not been there in the way that a brother should be there.

And you know, that's something that you carry.

And I should say it to him, but I don't.

But to me, the hopeful thing about that is the story isn't over yet.

That's right.

That your brother is still there and you're still here.

And so much of the mistakes we made in the past can be remade.

As you always say, you can make that bad story into a good one.

And maybe even more powerfully so that this break between you and your twin could be

mended and you're stronger for it.

Because you're brave enough to say, how do we use this as a way to be intimate again?

The risk always of doing that is one that you admit what you've done wrong, how you have

and I'm by you, I mean me, how I have failed, how I have failed him.

But regret operates that way.

It's like a one way mirror onto our mistakes and our shortcomings.

Dear sugars, I'm a serial codependent.

I've married and had children with two addicts.

My first husband was mean, narcissistic and controlling.

My current one who looks great by comparison is agreeable, intelligent and holds a job.

But he's never fully present for me or our children.

He quietly hides money and empty bottles and disappears into his phone or video games

at every opportunity.

He's been to rehab and we've had all the tough talks, but I'm tired.

I deserve more.

For the last year, I've been working on my own recovery through an online set of programs

and a support group of women that's similar to Alan on.

I now do the work to take responsibility for my own life and happiness.

And I feel confident that I will be able to prevent another codependent relationship in

the future.

I'm excited about what my future could have in store with or without a partner.

But what do I tell my kids?

How do I explain to my 15 year old that I chose poorly and therefore I had to blow up

his family twice?

How do I navigate the aftermath with my extremely sensitive seven year old and my very intense

controlling perfectionist five year old who is prone to aggression and anger?

How do I break the news that we might have to sell our house and go back to renting

and sharing rooms after we recently bought a home and decorated room for each child?

Is this too selfish for me to justify?

I'm fine with breaking my own heart sugars, but how do I break my boys' hearts?

I'm fine.

Mommy messed up.

This is such a tough letter.

We don't have an easy answer for you.

What you should hear is that you are trying to change your life and trying to improve your

life.

And a part of that is that you have to disrupt an equilibrium that was unhealthy.

You describe your second husband as having been to rehab, but he's hiding money and empty

bottles and that means whatever was happening in rehab hasn't stuck.

And so you've realized I'm not in a safe circumstance and your kids don't need you to be perfect

and they don't need you to make decisions that they always will understand.

They need you to be honest and to make the decisions that you think will be the healthiest

for you and for them.

And that is going to cause disruption for your kids and they're not going to be happy about

it, but you have to think with kids in the long term.

You have to say, if I'm going to get to a better place, even if it's a smaller house,

if it's more filled with love and harmony and honesty, that's a better circumstance.

And there might be temporary disruption, but that's better than them growing up with

an alcoholic father who's not dependable for them emotionally and psychologically.

And I think about the decision that Aaron had to make to step away from her parents for

a time.

And I think that's a decision that's made her a happier and healthier person.

And our kids were upset by that and they remain upset by that, but it's the right decision.

And kids are not sophisticated, but they are highly absorbent.

They will pick up on that.

And I say that to you, mommy messed up.

You are not messed up.

And what you need to say is mommy who is getting her act together, mommy who is understanding

that she wants to give her kids a better stake in things.

And that's difficult and disruptive work, but it's the right work for you to be doing.

And I praise you for doing it.

Yeah, I think that's just exactly right, Steve.

And I want to point to these last two lines of your letter, mommy messed up.

Is this too selfish for me to justify?

I'm fine with breaking my own heart, but do I break my boys' hearts?

And I suggest that you reframe that placement.

It's not you on one side and your boys on the other.

That's right.

You know, this life that you're changing is the life that you have with your boys.

So there's nothing selfish about saying, I know that for myself and my sons, there's

a healthier and a happier home environment.

And I think that sometimes what I think a very healthy way of thinking about any kind

of divorce, I know I certainly thought about this in my own divorce, which was very different

because I didn't have kids and I was in my 20s.

But I remember, you know, I felt the most at peace with it.

And it felt the truest when I would say, this is not the end of a relationship.

It's the transformation of one that we are altering the terms of our connection.

You know, we like to think that everything is severed in divorce, but a lot of people

in real life, and especially if you're co-parenting with somebody, that relationship

continues.

So now the question is, how do you continue the relationship with your husband after

you separate from him?

And that can be, you know, a very important psychological shift that will allow you to

make decisions that are about the well-being of your family that have nothing to do with

you being selfish.

Yeah.

I want to just underscore something you said, Cheryl, that I think it's so important

for you, mommy messed up to here, which is it is not selfish to say I deserve more.

Yeah.

A greater share of happiness, a greater share of stability, a greater share of honesty

in my relationships.

You know, the hiding of the bottles both suggest a problem with alcohol, and also as we know

with addiction, a problem with deceit.

And you know, for all those reasons, saying I deserve more is modeling for your kids that

they shouldn't be in relationships that don't nourish them.

They shouldn't be in relationships that they don't feel attended to as if they're invisible.

And so rather than beating yourself up about choosing to get involved with two partners

who were addicted, your kids have seen that.

And if you do a full accounting of your regrets, that's true.

You made those decisions.

And the only way that you can address that is to say, I no longer consent to making those

decisions.

You're doing exactly the thing that you should do.

If you're going to put yourself on the hook for getting involved with men who have substance

abuse problems, give yourself the credit for saying, I no longer am going to do that.

I'm going to find healthier relationships and I'm model that for my kids.

Yeah.

You ask what you should tell your kids.

And I would say different things based on their ages and their situations.

Your 15 year old is old enough to have that conversation about, you know, what does it

mean to be codependent?

What does it mean for you to have realized that you are and addressed it through the recovery

that you've done in your online groups and your women's groups.

It's like, Alan, I would even suggest doing this if you can in a therapeutic context.

Maybe go to a family counselor with your 15 year old and allow him to have a deeper understanding

of what codependency is because you know, by 15, this kid has had you for his mom, a

codependent mom, and an addict for a dad and an addict for a stepdad.

Yeah.

15 year old has had many years now where he's grown up in that kind of dysfunctional environment.

And I don't say that as a criticism of your parenting, but rather an acknowledgement

of the system that you've identified.

And so, you know, do what you can to really actually help him, you know, help him in his

life, not replicate some of the mistakes in your own.

So I would be very honest with him.

He's old enough to hear the truth of your life at least, you know, a lot of it.

The other kids, the seven year old and the five year old, who I assume are the biological

kids of your current husband, I think that that's a different thing.

That announcement is about you separating and possibly divorcing.

That announcement is about making them feel safe as the dynamics of your family shift.

And the codependent stuff and the addiction stuff, it's, I think it's probably not a conversation

you need to have with kids of that age.

You know, and one thing that happens, I will say one note of hope that I've observed in

many of my friends who's who got divorced when they had kids about this age, from partners

who were kind of like you describe, you know, sort of not present, retreating into the

phone.

We don't know what will happen after you separate.

We don't know how what kind of father your husband will be.

But what happens inherently when you aren't on the scene is you don't parent for him.

He's going to sometimes be alone with those kids.

And he's going to have to be more present than he's been.

And so many of my divorced mom friends are like, wow, you know, my ex is suddenly a better

dad because he has to be.

And so, you know, be open to the possibility that frankly, this could be better for your

kids than staying together in this dysfunctional family system.

Yeah.

And with the younger kids in particular, especially the perfectionist five year old, I have

one of those.

It's important for you to be as honest as you can without being explicit that they understand

this is a decision you're making in part because you and your husband are imperfect people

to make it clear that it's not because of them.

I think kids oftentimes, and it's a natural impulse.

They say, oh, well, all this discord must be my fault.

It's their way of trying to sort of exercise control and a kingdom of childhood where you're

mostly powerless, right?

So I think it is important to at least try to impart to them that this is a decision

you're making because of your imperfections.

And that's not what matters.

Not that you make the mistake.

It's that you apologize for it, that you acknowledge it, that you have a discussion about

it where they see you saying, I'm not perfect.

I'm just doing my best.

If we're perfect as parents, we do not equip our kids for the world, which is imperfect.

We wish you luck, mommy messed up.

We should do.

But it will suggest a different signature.

Yes.

Mommy's doing her best.

That's right.

Mommy's getting better.

So keep doing it.

Keep doing it.

So keep doing it.

Keep doing it.

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So we are back and ready to talk more about moving on from regret.

We've enlisted a great helper and ally in that effort.

Dr. Harriet Lerner, who is one of the nation's most respected voices on the psychology of

women and family relationships.

She's the author of 12 books, including The New York Times Best Seller, The Dance of

Anger.

And most recently, why won't you apologize, healing big betrayals and everyday hurts?

Let's give her a call.

Hello.

Hi.

This is Cheryl Stray.

I also have Steve Alman here on the line.

Hi, Dr. Lerner.

Hi.

Let's do it.

We're going to have Steve read the letter and then we can discuss it.

Great.

Steve, will you read the letter?

I shall.

Dear sugars, three years ago, while I was very much in love but in a very long distance

relationship, my boyfriend came to visit me and our time abroad together resulted in

an unplanned pregnancy.

While we were both in our 30s and financially secure and I felt excited to become a mom,

we hadn't been together terribly long and there were 8,000 miles separating us.

After my pregnancy was confirmed, I immediately flew home to the US where we spent a week talking

it over, fighting and crying.

I've always wanted a child and despite our difficult circumstances, I was ready to make

it work.

Perhaps I could take a leave of absence from my job or he could move abroad with me.

We could get married or not.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted both the baby and my boyfriend in my life.

Unfortunately, he didn't feel the same way.

He was worried we didn't know each other well enough to have a child and he felt the logistics

of our situation were too complicated.

He refused to leave his job.

He also expressed serious concerns about my history of depression which he didn't want

to pass on to a child.

He said he wasn't ready for fatherhood so my boyfriend insisted that I get an abortion.

He said I needed to have an abortion because our relationship wouldn't survive having

a baby he told me to choose.

Because I loved him and was hopeful that we would one day have kids in the traditional

way, I allowed myself to be convinced.

We went to the doctor and with obvious relief he watched as I swallowed a pill to begin

the chemical abortion.

He sent me home to lie on the couch and bleed while he went back to work.

About a week later I flew back to my job across the world as if nothing had happened.

I closed my heart and worked blindly through the next few months unfeeling and unthinking.

I refused to acknowledge what I already knew deep down was the biggest mistake of my

life.

After another few months my boyfriend proposed marriage, I accepted, quit my job, moved

home and began what I hoped would be our path to parenthood.

Sugars I probably don't need to tell you that things didn't turn out as planned.

The sadness and anger I had buried for so many months began to emerge even as we planned

a wedding and shared our first apartment together.

I began picking fights with him, bad ones, and lay in bed day after day deeply depressed.

This only confirmed his worries about my mental health.

We went to couple's therapy, postponed the wedding, at his insistence, and fought and

fought until one day it was just over.

Three years later I'm 36 and staring down serious fertility issues.

I'm going through early menopause and I'm too financially strapped to try expensive

procedures to preserve my fertility and my insurance won't cover them.

I know intellectually that the abortion was my decision and I don't want to blame my

acts, but I feel so sad and full of regret.

I'm jealous of my friends who are mothers, I'm deeply anxious and increasingly isolated.

Dating feels impossible, how could a man ever understand what I've been through who

would want to marry me now?

Meanwhile my acts is dating a string of pretty young women and has become a partner at his

law firm.

He has all the time, money, and freedom in the world to have a family.

I care about him and I wish him happiness, but everything feels so unfair.

I've told him about my fertility struggles and he is never, not even once, apologized

for the choice he asked me to make.

Sugars, how can I stop hating my acts and more importantly myself for this horrible

life-altering decision?

Some days I feel certain that I'm going to die alone, a barren spencer, all because

I let someone else make a choice that should have been mine.

How do I take responsibility for my actions and move forward even in the shadow of this

mistake that can't be unmade?

Signed full of regret.

Wow, that's a hard, deep regret.

Harriet, what do you make of this letter?

When I listened to this letter, I wish that she could look at this quote, horrible life-altering

decision with more objectivity and more self-compassion.

It was a young relationship.

They didn't really know each other.

They were large logistical problems.

They were 8,000 miles apart.

He wasn't ready or willing.

She didn't have a crystal ball.

What's interesting to me is that even though she has a significant history of depression

that predates this relationship, that she views her reproductive decision and it's after

math as the sole cause of her severe anxiety and depression and isolation.

It's a good example of how in trying to make sense of how bad she feels, she has constructed

a narrative.

The narrative itself is a problem because it's so narrow and has a fixed focus on a decision

which can't be undone.

This is not to minimize the real pain of her terminating the pregnancy and facing infertility.

It's to say that we have to be aware of the stories that we tell about ourselves because

we become them and a story like the one she's constructed is so narrow and fixed that it's

going to edge out all other stories about her past and her present and her future possibilities.

The first thing I would say is that how she frames the problem keeps her from moving

on.

It also keeps her from looking at the real culprits.

It's interesting.

I'm so often on the show we do talk about these bad stories we tell ourselves and so much

of healing is learning to tell truer and better stories.

But I'm really struck by what you said about how she's really narrowed the focus.

Her regret is in so many ways constructed on an exclusion of the facts.

You make everything about this terrible one decision that was made while forgetting that

you actually made that decision for some pretty good reasons.

Exactly.

And one of the culprits of that kind of narrowing of her story is anxiety.

And anxiety has certain predictable effects.

It narrows and rigidifies our focus.

It blocks us from being able to gather new information and then creatively and explore

our options.

It makes it impossible for us to hang on to a positive thought for more than five seconds.

And instead we wake up three in the morning, nursing past grievances and worrying about

future catastrophes and anxiety interferes with self respect.

And she has entirely lost sight of her competence, her capacity for love and creativity and joy.

And I think it's important for all of us to know the effects of anxiety as well as depression

and shame so we don't confuse them with who we really are.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, as I read this letter, it's so sound like an odd association, but I thought about

Lily Bart, the heroine of the House of Murth, the wonderful Edith Warton novel.

She's a character who moves through an arc where she wants certain things in the way of

a companion, a maybe even motherhood, but circumstances within herself and around

her conspire against that.

And she ultimately ends up feeling incredibly distraught about that.

In this letter, you've sat down in a very clear, right way, the history here.

And the fact that you wanted this baby and your boyfriend in your life was at least by

my reading impossible.

You couldn't have both because your boyfriend refused to leave his job.

He said he wasn't ready for fatherhood.

And then he said, you need to have an abortion because our relationship won't survive

having a baby, which is essentially a hostage situation.

I mean, he, it's quite explicit.

It's not as if you were making that decision of your own free will.

And it's easy to rewrite the story of your life where you aced it to him and you should

have had the strength to say, no, I want to have this child.

But of course, you didn't have the information that you have now.

We never do.

That's Lily Bart's dilemma.

You didn't know that at 36, you would have fertility issues.

You couldn't have known that there would be an onset of early menopause or difficulty

with affording a fertility treatment.

That wasn't even on your mind.

Or that that relationship wouldn't last.

That's right.

As Harriet points out, the crystal ball, also, you know, in addition to having a very

narrow view of why you made that decision, you're looking in a two limited of a way at the

reasons for the demise of that relationship.

You say you buried your feelings of sadness and anger for so long that it began to emerge

and that was what destroyed your former relationship.

But, you know, I think that we can't really always know where that stuff comes from.

Did it play a part in that, probably?

But there are probably reasons that other reasons that that relationship ended as well.

And it might be helpful to gain some perspective on that it's usually a more complicated reasons

that contribute to the end of any relationship.

But it's not just about this one thing that may be another way of interpreting the past

is to think it's maybe a good thing that you didn't have that child with him because

this is somebody who you're not compatible with, who you would have been now bound to for

life.

And I would say that the chief symptom of that is that he hasn't had the courage and

personal integrity to reckon with the decision that he pressured you to make.

Right.

That's a very bad sign that he's not somebody who you are ultimately going to be safe

with.

He doesn't have to beat himself up, but he did say certain things if we take your letter

to be an accurate reflection of the events.

He leaned on you to have an abortion and he knows that you're living with the regret

of that.

And he hasn't even thought to make an apology to me.

That's a person who's not living truthfully and who's being ruled by a shame.

Well, what do you think about that, Harriet?

You have written your latest book is about apology, right?

Well, we can see this through so many different lenses.

From my perspective, it was his responsibility to clarify that he did not want this child,

that he believed that he could not stay in the relationship if she had the child.

And of course, in some ways, he absolutely behaved as a jerk, like sending her home on the

couch to bleed.

Yeah.

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