Episode Transcript
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Hi, this is Rachel and recover. We're back with esther and she's going
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to tell the rest of her story. How has your faith helped you through
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this and how has it challenged your
faith? So, hope is a big
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conversation in Christianity. UH, there's
a lot of conversation about hope, and
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at one point I had lost all
hope. I didn't even know what the
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I began to believe that hope was
not possible to even achieve. And so
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I'm would be sitting in Church and
the pastor talking about hope and I'm thinking,
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I guess hope is only in death, like your only hope you have
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is dying and going to heaven,
and everything else is there is no hope,
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there's no hope in anything. Everything
else is dismal, miserable, depressing.
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Everything else on this earth is just, uh, I don't know,
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I just felt like horrible. So, Um, I think that I have
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seen this too in churches where people, Christians will change or only absorbed part
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of the message of the Bible.
Um, and we'll make uh well,
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will change the message of hope into
something that that suits their story. and
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Um, if you're in a story, if your situation is a story that
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is hopeless. Um, Christianity will
take it and say, well, you
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always have hope in eternal life.
Well, that's all great, but that's
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not the entire story. That's not
the message of the Bible. The Bible,
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UH, says in my interestingly enough, my ex husband would quote the
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scripture that God has designed us to
have life and have life abundantly. And
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that was not the life that my
children and I were living. And,
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interestingly, as my husband x Husban
went quote that scripture, his life was
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not abundant, he did not live
an abundant life. It was more like
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a day dream for him. Um. And so I would say that being
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in Church and hearing sermons was actually
Um, it was like a North Star
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for me because, uh, what
I was experiencing at home was not a
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Christian home. There was I did
not have a Christian my husband did not
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have Christian behaviors. Um. And
so being in church, actually being hearing
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the word of God taught actually helped
me continue to keep my mind straight and
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completely instead of falling into an abyss
of confusion, which is where I was
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constantly being pulled into this vortex of
confusion, because we were constantly in this
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uh, what's black is white and
as white as black reality, and I
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was always beginning to question even my
did I even have a pulse on reality?
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And being in church was the only
thing that kept me from completely falling
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into that vortex. And hearing and
reading the word of God and seeing what
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God said is good behavior, this
is what this is what it means to
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be a Christian and this is what
good behavior looks like. Is What actually
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helped me recognize where we were and
how dysfunctional our relationship was and that there
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was nothing godly or Christian about it. and Um, that was hard for
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me to accept because we had spent
our whole life supposedly trying to be that
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Christian couple. Um, I question
God a lot. Um, I still
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sometimes question God. I question God
even more after I got a divorce,
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because I couldn't, I didn't understand
end how you could work so hard to
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to try and do what God's will
is and end up in a divorce,
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Um, and end up in the
marriage I was in. But I also
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came to the point where I had
to recognize that Um, in order for
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a family to be living in God's
will, all members of the family have
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to be willing to live in God's
will and do behave in the manner that
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God says is is good. And
what I found through even counseling, secular
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counseling, was that their practices and
their beliefs, the things that they teach
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you in secular counseling is the same
principles of behavior that are found in God's
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word, and I was able to
match those two things together. So it
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helped me stay strong in my faith
because I was still seeing that these things
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that Um, we're in Christianity,
that are being taught in the Bible,
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the word of God, as principles
for life, we're also taught in secular
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therapy on principles for healthy relationships,
and that was really good for me to
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make that connection, Um, and
it kept me from just abandoning God and
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Christianity, because what I saw was
what's true is still true across the board,
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what's right is right across the board. There it is not an interpretation
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of who who says what, and
it's not an interpret it's not just up
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for me by saying my standards were
too high, Um and again I think
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I mentioned my friend that came to
me at one point she were I was
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discussing that with her and she said
she was horrified actually, that I would
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say that, that I would even
suggest that my standards were too high,
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and she was horrified that he would
suggest, as a as a Christian,
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that my standards were too high.
Um. I really struggled with my I
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think my faith. Where my faith
struggled the most was with other Christians.
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Um, because the majority of the
Christians that I have encountered defended him,
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partly because he was the one that
did all the talking, Um, and
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I didn't. I kept I guess
you could call me a secret keeper.
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I kept his secrets, I kept
things, I kept I tried to protect
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him. Even to this day I
find myself doing things to try and protect
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his reputation. Um, and keep
try and paint things as in a better
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light. Um. But especially Christian
women were the hardest, uh, and
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have been the hardest. They have
been the most judgmental. They often encouraged
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greater sacrifice, not realizing that my
sacrifice that I had done up to that
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point was to the point of death
and dying. Um. They they were
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much more accepting of his behavior,
Um, excusing it for giving it whatever
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they felt like they could, that
he was able to you could change him,
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which, of course, I thought
I could change him a long time
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too. Men, Christian men,
were the ones that, for the most
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part, was very interesting. Um, they would if I talked to them.
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They were the ones that helped me
also recognize that these behaviors were never
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to be accepted among any man,
or especially Christian men. Um. Men
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were the ones that were the first
to speak out to me about his behavior
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and say this is unacceptable behavior.
No Man should ever treat his wife and
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children this way. This should not
be acceptable, you should not accept this,
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Um. And then, at times
they would even take it so far
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to make it even Christian men should
never be able to do this and get
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away with this. So Um.
The sad thing was this Christian women often
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assumed that his accusations against me,
Um, were true because I was an
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attractive woman and they would just believe
them. So I would say that the
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women, the Christian women, were
probably more spiritually abusive in my and my
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experience, than even the men were. Um. However, men have their
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fault in the fact that they might
call the behavior what it is, but
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when they but they also maintain friendships
with those same men that they acknowledge or
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are abusive. And so I law
women friends and I lost male friends,
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Um, over all of our situation, and he got to keep a lot
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of them until he burned those bridges
too, because he's good at burning bridges.
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Um. Let's see, I had
a male friend who was who was
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probably very instrumental in bringing us to
a point of getting counseling because he was
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actually horrified by his behaviors. Um, he saw them, he heard about
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them and he challenged me not to
accept it. Um. Of course,
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when we did get into counseling,
finally talked my ex husband into getting into
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counseling, he assumed that we were
in counseling because I needed fixed and I
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had had an affair. That was
his that was his story. He tried
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to push that and he still tries
to push that. He says that that's
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the case. Um. The sad
thing was is even during all the counseling
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we did, he never showed up
to work on himself. He only showed
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up to work on me. And
so I showed up to work on me,
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he showed up to work on me
and I got the best benefit.
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One thing I did want to talk
about, though, Um, was daring
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counseling. The counselor told me he
kind of gave me an illustration of what
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it's like to be in a relationship
with someone with borderline personality disorder and it
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described our relationships, it described his
and my relationship and our relationship with others
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perfectly and it has continued to hold
true. Um, and that is the
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character of pigpen Um in the peanuts
common strip, uh, in the snoopy
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cartoon. So pig pen is known
as an amiable but exceptionally dirty, dirty
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character, and he had tracks,
a permanent cloud of dust everywhere he goes.
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At one point, UM, he
even cleans up a different times through
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the shows and over through the comic
strips he cleans up and he's always cleaning
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up to impress somebody he find Um. Uh. It's it's so interesting to
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watch the characters and how they interact
with pig pen. So that the counselor
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told me. He said when you
interact with pig pen, he said it's
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this huge cloud of dust. Nobody
knows what's really happening in that cloud of
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dust. It's like a big there's
a big fight that's happening and it's like
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in the cloud and all they can
see is an arm and a leg sticking
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out of the cloud and nobody knows
what's happening actually in the cloud, who's
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swinging, who's doing what? But
they all come out and they're all dirty.
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And that's what it's like being in
a relationship with somebody with borderline personality
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disorder, because you can never get
the real story, you can never get
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down to what's actually happening, because
their their story, your story will always
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be different. And that's how friends
feel, Um, friends of couples with
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borderline personality disorder. The friends don't
know what to believe. They don't know
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who's a fault. The court systems
don't know what to believe. They don't
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know who's a fault, because somebody
with borderline personnity disorder can take exactly the
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very thing that is their problem and
they are so good at projecting it onto
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somebody else and they can make it
look like everybody in the room has the
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same problem. Um. So it's
like everybody gets dirty and nothing ever gets
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solved. And that's the life of
living with the borderline personality disorder. You're
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never going to get to the bottom
of it. And that's why I say
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boundaries are so important, because boundaries
are the you need to stop arguing about
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the things that you can never solve. You're never going to get it fixed,
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you're never going to get to the
bottom of it. Boundaries are the
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only way to move forward. And
people with borderline personalities sort of they like
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their dirt. They attract more dirt. They want it to they want to
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stay in the dirt and they want
you to join them in the dirt Um.
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And the problem is is people without
that disorder don't, can't survive in
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that environment. They survived just fine
there. They enjoy their life like that.
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You, no one else can survive
it Um. So there's some interesting
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I went through this uh, this
comic strip, and looked up some characters
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about the comic strip and it's really
interesting to watch how over the years that
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this comic strip developed and Schultz,
who developed the comic strip. He it's
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kind of known that he really didn't
like the attention that pigpen got in his
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comic strip. It really bothered him, but I think the fact that he
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kept pigpen and pig pen was a
character in his comic strip speaks to the
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fact that I think that he,
the way he manifest pigpen, manifests at
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the character throughout the comic, is
that I think Schultz had a borderline personality,
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a sort of person in his life
and that was how he put it
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out there. And you don't like
it, you don't like the attention that
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that person draws. But pigpen always
draws all attention. He's got like a
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magnetic personality and he attracts all this
this dirt. Um. There's a time
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when Patty and violet they're mocking pigpen
Um and at one point they try and
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shame him into getting clean by making
him look in a mirror Um, and
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his response to that is well,
on the contrary, I didn't think I
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looked this good. And that's exactly
what it is dealing with someone with borderline
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personality disorder. They're much like a
narcissist. They cannot see their own dysfunction.
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They see themselves attractive, they see
themselves and how they want. If
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they saw themselves, how they really
really are, they emotionally would crumble.
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They would not be able to handle
it. Um. In fact, at
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one point pigpen is proud of his
own dirt and he even describes it as
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a royal influence. He's it's the
dust that's trod on by Solomon Nebuchadnezzar and
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got Genkis Khan. So he saw
his dirt as like a badge of honor.
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Like you know, I've got famous
people wrapped up in my dirt and
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Um. So he had a way
of turning his dirt to be where it
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made he saw it. He twisted
it to make it look make himself look
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good. Um. There's one point
where snoopy is disgusted by pig pens distress,
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dirtiness, Um, and he refuses
to take food from pigpen because all
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pigpens food is like he has gum
drops in their black and his food is
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dirty Um. And he's really revolted
when pig pen tries to pet him and
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when and leaves him dirty from being
petted. That that was really revolting to
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snoopy and that's some people's response to
being in a relationship with borderline personality stores.
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Sometimes you're just revolted by the filth
that's around them and you don't know
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how to deal with it. How
do you become? How do you how
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can you be in a close relationship
with this person, because it can be
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very revolting at times. Um.
At one point, Trot Patty tries to
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change pig pen and the reason she
does that is, Um, pigpen manages
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to clean one side of his body
and he keeps it clean and she believes,
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because that one side is clean,
that's the only side she can see,
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that he's completely clean. Um.
So she she starts trying to change
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him, to keep him, keep
him that way, because she sees all
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the value in him that no one
else can see. So, you see,
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that's Um. That's also how people
interact with borderline personaliosaurs. Do you
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think, Hey, there's so many
good qualities about this person. They're they're
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redeemable qualities. This can be this
can be a good thing, and people
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get involved and they don't realize that
that other part is always there. It's
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never going to go away. Um, and pig pen actually likes that part.
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Um. So when they animated,
when the animators animated the cartoon,
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what they did was they made it
so that the dust cloud was a moving
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part of who he was. It
was part of the character of who he
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was. Um, it was even
to the point of being just an extension
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of him all. Um. There
was a game that came out called snoopy's
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street fair, and pig pen in
that game owns a circuit, a flee
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circus, and I found that to
be very interesting too, because, uh,
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if you think of flees, there's
they multiply rapidly. They're disgusting.
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Nobody wants flees around. Um,
they hop and jump around and UH,
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borderline personalities disorder people often are are
said to have flying monkeys, uh,
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like a circus of flying monkeys,
and they those. They keep these flying
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monkeys around to do their bidding.
Um. And I found that to be
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an interesting correlation because borderline P personality
people have flying monkeys and pig pen had
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a flee circus. That and the
correlation is very accurate. Um. So
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uh, in two thousand and fifteen, this is another interesting part of pig
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pen character. In two thousand fifteen
there was all laundry detergent commercial. We're
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snoopy dressed as a magician and he
puts a cloth over pigpen and instantly makes
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pig pen clean. Uh. And
but the bad, bad thing is is
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snoopy. It caused snoopy to get
all dirty, which makes snoopy mad.
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And and that's what it's like.
If you can get, if you can
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get there's a lot of people that
try and help borderline personalities, disorder people.
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They think, Oh, I'm gonna
get involved, I care about them,
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this is this is like I said, this is redeemable. We can
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help them, we can get them
well, and I think that that was
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a lot of my belief when I
got married Um to him was that together
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we could build a life, together, we could do things. You have
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problems, everybody's got problems, and
I thought that it would end up in
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well, and what it did was
I ended up leaving with filthy crap all
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over me and he looked amazing,
and at least that's how he liked to
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portray it, um. So I
find that the fact that my counselor brought
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that up when we were doing marriage
counselate. It has had so many interesting
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correlations to my life and and I
just find it very interesting. And I
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really do think Schultz, who developed
the H Charlie Brown cartoon, the characters
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of Charlie Brown, snoopy and pig
pen, that it was interesting because he
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was really just probably portraying people that
he had relationships within his own life.
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Um Charlie Brown is an interesting character
in that, in that as well,
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and that he's the only one who
throughout all the comic that believes uh he
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even though he's disgusted with pig bend
he is. He gets caught up in
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defending him um against all the his
friends and even tries to be like pigpen
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at one point. And that's that's
another thing I see with people that interact
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with borderline personally disorder people. They
get caught up in trying to be like
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them or trying to normalize the behavior
and make it so that it's it's okay
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and and the bottom line is it's
so not okay and it's so unhealthy.
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Um Lucy at one point trains pigpen
like a patient. That's another way that
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people treat borderline personality disorder people and
that's how I at the time. That's
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moving forward from at the point when
we got divorced. That's where I was
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kind of at that crossroads where I
was like this my husband is now going
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to become a patient in line where
I have to care for him, Um,
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and you do you get to where, in a relationship ship like that,
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you spend a lot of time telling
them how to fix their life,
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how do they get clean, Um, how to not get dirty again,
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how to do this, how to
do that, and you become a mother
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figure to that person, and men
don't like having their wives be mother figures,
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Um. So I see myself in
all the characters surrounding pig pen and
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I see other people that have jumped
into his life and tried to be the
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characters surrounding pig pen. And and
the end of the day, through all
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of it, pigpen is still pigpen
and pig pen never changes. And that
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is a sad part of borderline person
personality disorder, but it is also a
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real part and I think the sooner
you recognize that and accept it, the
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sooner you can live a healthy life. Okay, yeah, well, and
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my mom at one point sent me
a book called previous right before it was
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during the very discouraging, dispressing time
of our marriage where I was sure that
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we were about to be we were
on the verge of divorce. I knew
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it. I can sense it in
my spirit. I could sense it in
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counseling and I was keeping my parents
up to date with how we were doing.
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But I told her Um, about
our situation and there were two things
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that she told me. One was
she sent me this book called how how
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to have a new husband by Friday, and the other was she uh her
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personal experience, which I need to
get back to that too, just as
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a point of reference and a perspective
on our relationship versus her relationship. But
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in the book how to hasn't have
a new husband by Friday? Um,
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I just skimmed through it because at
that point I was done. I was
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done reading advice on how I could
fix our situation. And our counselor was
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the one that really challenged me to
back up from that. He said,
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as long as you're doing a dent
of the work in the relationship, he
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doesn't have to lift a finger.
And he said if your relationship is going
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to survive, he has to pull
his part of the weight. And so
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I backed off from reading all the
books and doing all the things and started
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trying to focus on the fact that
Um, and this was a concept,
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because I came into marriage believing that
each person has a relationship. Um,
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you have a responsibility for your relationship. If you think it's fifty fifty,
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you're bound to fail. But what
I didn't recognize in that belief system that
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I was living in was that no
matter how hundred and ten percent you show
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up for your hundred percent percent,
you're still only responsible for of that relationship,
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because without somebody else pulling their fifty
of that relationship, you don't have
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a marriage, you don't have a
healthy relationship, and so both people have
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to pull a hundred percent of their
fifty. And when he gave me that
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illustration I recognized finally, and nobody
had ever said it to me that way,
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that it is really true, like
you can't be married to somebody who
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puts zero effort into being married.
You just can't. It's not possible.
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And so it helped me. That
was a boundary issue for me where I
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started trying to work on my boundaries
of my fifty percent of the relationship,
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what was mine and what was not
mine. Um, my mom, oh
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in this book how to Change Your
husband by Friday, I did skim it
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and he said one of the biggest
problems with people is they marry a zebra
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and they expect to get her horse
out of it, and he said the
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best way that you can have a
new husband is to accept the fact that
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you've married a zebra and not a
not a horse. Horse will never be
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a zebra and a Zebra will never
be a horse. They might look the
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same and you can like try and
bleach their hair or paint on one of
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them, but they will never be
the same animal and that was really good
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advice. But it also confirmed everything
that I knew, was that I didn't
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have the horse, I had a
zebra and I had to recognize am I
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okay with the fact that I'm going
to have a zebra? And again I
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was fully committed until, uh,
my life became in danger and realized that
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that was not a reality that was
in within my choice anymore. But Um
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my mom at the time, I
told her that we were in a race
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where we were going to get we
we I thought that we were going to
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get divorced. We hadn't done anything
about it yet, but I just told
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her I felt like I felt like
our relationship was ending, and she looked
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at me, and she had been
married for thirty seven years at that point
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and she looked at me and she
said, but in thirty seven years of
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marriage, I have felt like I
would die if I stayed married any longer.
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And I looked at her and I
said, mom, you might feel
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like you would die and that's your
choice. I said, I am not
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going to die in this relationship.
I said I want to live. I
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want to live and live my life
and if I can do it and be
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married to him, I will do
it. I said, but if my
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requirement is that he kills me in
order for me to stay, I will
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not stay. I said that's my
that's my line, and that became at
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some point. That was the choice
that I had to make. When I
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had friends telling me that, Um, they felt like he was setting me
321
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up, Um to kill me,
that's when I said I'm getting out and
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um I never made the first move. He did, and so that was
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I have no regrets. I don't
feel like I did anything to cause the
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failure of my relationship. I feel
like I did absolutely everything within my power.
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I still UH. It still grieved
me deeply to this day, um,
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that I had to live and experience
that kind of dashed, dashed hopes
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and dreams and it has grieved me
still to this day with my children that
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they've had to live through such a
difficult, Um, difficult experience, the
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00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:03.960
abuse that they have gone through in
their lifetimes because of my choice to marry
330
00:29:04.039 --> 00:29:08.839
him has grieved me to no end. The fact that they've had to continue
331
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to navigate relationship with him and with
it, my absence has grieved me deeply.
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But it came to the point where
I felt like maybe if I got
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out of the picture, Um,
and I was not in the middle of
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his relationship with the children, that
maybe he would behave better to them,
335
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maybe he would rise up and be
a better dad. Um. I think
336
00:29:30.319 --> 00:29:36.880
that having the courts involved in our
situation made him behave better. Um.
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00:29:36.920 --> 00:29:41.599
He realized that he had to do
certain things. He's still not always behaved
338
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well, uh. He still has
done abusive things, but the kids won't
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00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:51.720
speak out against it at this point
and therefore, Um, it's my ex
340
00:29:51.759 --> 00:29:56.920
wife word against his word. Um. So I just look vindictive and mean
341
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on that front. Um, I
don't think. I think that there are
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some things in life that you never
get over and I think my relationship with
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him, the grief that I went
through, the sadness, the despair,
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Um, is something that still it's
changed my life. It's changed how my
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brain works. It changes. It's
changed how, Um, I handle stressed.
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Um. I feel very susceptible to
stress. Um and it I worked
347
00:30:30.880 --> 00:30:37.279
very hard at staying in healthy place
mentally and even having this interview. You
348
00:30:37.359 --> 00:30:40.880
know how long it took me to
have the interview, because it was a
349
00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:45.119
triggering conversation for me. Um,
because I don't have to have this conversation
350
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if I don't want to anymore.
I don't have to talk about it and
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I'm in a good place. I'm
in a good place with my new husband,
352
00:30:52.279 --> 00:30:55.799
Um, most of the time,
and I'm in a really good place
353
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with my kids, except when it
comes to conversations about their dad, and
354
00:31:02.440 --> 00:31:07.319
it's just I I really uh have
to not say a word and let them
355
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kind of figure out things on their
own, and it makes me sad.
356
00:31:10.720 --> 00:31:15.079
Um. It's been really difficult to
be a parent, uh in these situations,
357
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because I have been told by attorneys
to not have conversations about him.
358
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We're about his parenting with my kids, and my kids have then been left
359
00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:33.839
sadly to their own many times to
try and navigate through difficult circumstances, and
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I think that's probably the biggest injustice
to my children, as they have had
361
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no wise parent to step in and
help them navigate difficult situations. Um,
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and that probably has made them feel
abandoned and alone, and I'm sure they
363
00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:53.119
blame it on our divorce. But
I'm hoping, I do hope that someday
364
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they will get to the point where
I can have better conversations with them,
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00:31:56.799 --> 00:32:04.119
adult conversations, and and that they
can understand things from an adult perspective.
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Um, and maybe they'll find some
resolution as well at some point. I
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think that covers everything. Thank you, esther, for being on our show
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and telling your story, as I
was triggering as it may be, I
369
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think what you say will help a
lot of people that are in the similar
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situations, that are fighting this very
same battle. Thank you, guys.
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Thanks for listening. This is Rachel
and recovery. Tune in on Thursdays at
372
00:32:50.440 --> 00:32:54.640
ten am on your favorite podcast or
follow us on your favorite social media platform
373
00:32:54.839 --> 00:33:00.240
and, as always, go to
ww Rachel and Recovery Dot Com. Thanks
374
00:33:00.279 --> 00:33:02.680
for listening. M HM
