Before I start feeling sorry for Stanley, I am going to feel sorry for myself. I’m sick. My kids gave me some horrible funk that they managed to live through with a few Motrin here and there, missing one day of school each, and I have been down for the count since Wednesday morning. I mean, sick. My throat feels like there are razor blades back there. Those kids are on my shit list. This is one weekend where I was glad I had off, just so I can go to bed and stay there.
Poor Stanley has it too but he was able to spend the last few days in bed whereas I was on with kids and didn’t.
Poor Stanley is messed up.
Physically that is. I feel for the guy. He came in last Sunday night for next exchange and he was on crutches. After our divorce, Stanley started running. At 46 years old. I thought at the time that it probably wasn’t the best idea. He doesn’t do anything half way (except marriage) so I knew he would over do it and true to form, he told me over the summer he had decided to run the marathon in December.
Now he has a hip fracture (no fall, he’s just old man trying to run) and is on crutches for 8 weeks.
True to form, I felt guilty.
Why, you ask?
Because during the 14 years of our marriage, Stanley went to the doctor 1 time. Once, and it was because Jumping Bean poked him in the eye with a crayon and he had a corneal tear. Since our divorce, he has had one physical ailment after another. In the past 3 years, he has become a borderline diabetic, has had ear surgery twice, and now has a broken hip.
The poor guy is falling apart.
Last year I went to a conference and spent 3 days learning about the mind-body connection and how mental stresses will make you sick.
(In addition, my new bae, Dr. John Gottman, shared in his couples therapy training that research is indicating that when you observe a couple fighting for 15 minutes, the number of contemptuous statements one makes to the other during that time, is parallel to the number of illnesses that the receiver will have in a year. Crazy? I think not. See Anderson Cooper discuss here. )
Now, in my humble (but not completely uneducated opinion) someone needs to research how many illnesses men get in the few years following divorce. (Maybe someone has, maybe I am completely uneducated. I am way to sick to look it up.) Statistics show that women initiate divorce more often than men, therefore one can assume that men, like Stanley, are more often surprised by the news that divorce is actually happening. Like Stanley, some men find it’s is too late, the woman is done, and therefore grieve the divorce at the time of it’s happening instead of before like many women do. I started grieving my divorce 3 years before it happened. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was sick a lot during that time.
The bottom line of all of this feverish dribble is that I felt guilty because Stanley has been sick a lot. He was healthy and now he seems like a broken down old man. I made him sick because I divorced him. If he was still married he would be going on blissfully down life’s rode with me doing everything and being ignored. I’m bad. I’m happy with my lover even though I have a sore throat.
Knocking on wood because I will get deathly ill or break my neck since I said that.
Jack Nicholson always makes me feel better.
Stanley never does anything halfway (except marriage) – I snorted inappropriately at that one.
Dont feel too bad. If he was only to the doctor once during all that time, he was well overdue. Nothing to do with you. Feel batter CM.