This Is Yet Another Cry for Help

Everything I do, including writing this, is a cry for help.

Yesterday was another pivotal moment in my life’s journey. My partner and I had our final couples therapy session. We had signed up for a 20 hour couples intensive that started in late February. My partner announced in our fourth session (out of 7) that she no longer wants to be married to me. The therapist used a combination of Terrence Real’s RLT (Relational Life Therapy), Richard Schwartz’s IFS (Internal Family Systems or parts therapy) and Juliane Taylor Shore’s boundaries work, primarily pulling from her fine book, Setting Boundaries That Stick. For couples interested in repairing and resolving the issues in their relationship, these modalities provide excellent tools and, I believe, a good chance of learning how to shift into a loving, caring, mutually respectful way of relating.

In the session yesterday, it hit me that due to my early childhood PTSD I’ve been imprisoned in a time capsule; I carry inside me an abandoned child screaming to be picked up, yearning for love, full of primal terror, even feeling like he’s going to die when the threat feels like too much to handle. For the people in my life who are able to hold healthy boundaries with me, this may not be evident to them. For the people in my life who hold similar trauma experiences, we can often relate and support each other. For my partner, who has been deeply wounded by my consistent cries for help, it’s an impossible situation for her to hold.

My cries for help take many forms. The most common one is texting with a friend about what happened to me that day where I often present as a victim of something or someone. Realizing now the intention behind those texts, a cry for help, I know I’m perpetuating the cycle of pain that I’ve created and this pattern has become an addiction, a way to sooth my suffering. Essentially, in each text, I’m asking someone to fill a need that I have not been able to fill myself. The need being the seemingly bottomless pit of unfulfilled love that I’ve carried with me throughout my life. The texts are a mild, perhaps benign form of my cries for help. I believe I can find evidence of this in virtually everything I do including writing this reflection this morning.

Fundamentally, my partner has been making a case for her own humanity in our relationship and has been increasingly frustrated and sometimes infuriated by my inability to see her or hear her. She’s felt dehumanized by me, especially in light of recent revelations. Until recently, I’ve been playing the game of whataboutism in our relational dynamic, pointing the fingers back at her, which has only served to make things much worse between us. I’ve also been struggling to make sense of how and why I don’t seem to be able to grasp what I’m not doing, or what I’m not seeing. I’ve offered every kind of amends I thought possible, coming clean about all my faults, revealing difficult secrets I’ve held, but it’s never been enough and, up to now, I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, how I was coming up short.

Yesterday I asked the therapist to help me with this (another cry for help?) and she asked me if I was able see the humanity in other people who are struggling. Immediately, I thought of the people of Gaza and I said yes, of course I do. She asked what I saw and I told her I see their suffering, their desperation, the extreme violence inflicted upon them, the injustice, etc. She nodded her head and then it hit me, I see them because I don’t need anything from them. I’ve been asking, sometimes begging, for my partner to fill the hole in me, to save me, to pick me up and hold me, and the simple fact is, she’s not my mother, it’s not her job. I’ve been asking her to fill this impossible endless gaping hole since the day we first kissed in an Irish bar on the upper west side. Yesterday, I finally understood it. I’ve never been able to see her fully through my cries for help. I only saw her through the lens of my pain, therefore her humanity became secondary if not non-existent from my gaze.

My entire relationship with my mother, up the moment she died in November, was a Shakespearean tragedy of epic proportions. Today, I can see that her whole life was also a cry for help. She wanted me to save her and I couldn’t because it wasn’t my job. Also, I was too busy perpetuating the cycle in my own relationships. Through the lens of her pain, everything was my fault and she was the martyr, a victim of me, yes, but really the entire world. Eventually, probably by the age of 13, I became dominated by anger and righteousness on one side of the spectrum and self-flagellation and victimization on the other side. I raged and I sobbed. I sobbed and then I raged. When I felt loved and safe and held, I felt okay. If life veered off course, if I felt a tiny bit of rejection for example, the sky fell and I was back in that abandoned pit of despair once again. For a long time, anger and righteousness prevailed and I could get by with those parts driving the ship. When that no longer worked, starting about 12 years ago when my partner and I separated for a year, self-pity and martyrdom took over and I’ve been dominated by those parts ever since. I’ve embraced the classic triangle of dependency - perpetrator, victim, savior. My cries for help have been the engine of the boat and, through rough seas, served to keep me afloat.

My major addiction is to finding someone to save me. So far, I’ve failed because this is not the solution. I’ve looked to my marriage, to my partner, as a potential lifeboat and that ship has now sailed. As Mary Oliver said in her virally shared poem, The Journey, the only life I can save is my own. I realize if I commit to that path now, maybe I’ll be more capable of seeing others through the lens of love rather than need. This is one of the main intentions of my recovery.

In the session yesterday, after the realization that it was impossible to see my partner’s humanity through my constant cries for help, I said, through the tears, through the intense weeping, in the midst of falling apart…

I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.

The therapist asked me to repeat that.

I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.

Repeat.

I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.

Repeat and this time include yourself.

I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I don’t want to harm myself anymore.

Repeat.