Are You a Chump In Other Parts of Your Life?

Fifty years ago my therapist told me that I have “problems with boundaries”–and she didn’t mean I trampled others’ boundaries–a product of my FOO, in which I was cast as the “service provider,” notably in managing my mentally ill father’s moods. My mother used me to calm him; he used me, including sexually, to calm himself. No wonder I ended up with the husband I did, master of the sad sausage tactic, and although at the time I thought he was nothing like my father, it turned out he was merely a covert, rather than an overt, narcissist.

Learning to stand up for myself and establish boundaries and defend them took me decades. When after 32 years of marriage my now-ex revealed his secret sexual basement and what went on there and with whom, I at first said “I’m leaving,” and then, after a sad sausage’s direct plea for “comfort,” I reneged on myself and not only stayed but did the horizontal pick-me dance. It took three years of screwing up my courage, examining and testing out my options, years in which I found both Chump Lady/Chump Nation and the posters on Straight Spouse Network, who all enlightened and supported me, before I told him I was divorcing him.

The divorce process was me, self-protectively asserting my boundaries. I hired a lawyer (he didn’t, just whined and fumed about “fairness” while expecting me to go along with his preferred division of marital assets), and I did all the paperwork. I told him I didn’t want him in the court room for the final hearing. True to his passive-aggressive, covert narc ways, he blustered and whined about ill treatment, but he caved and complied. I was more than fair, by the way–he emerged from the divorce with more than 50% of our marital assets, although I extracted what I considered a token amount from his retirement account just because I knew the court would support me–but throughout the process I had been gauging what I thought he would tolerate before deciding to hire a lawyer of his own, and I just wanted to get out of that marriage ASAP. I consider my assessment of what he’d tolerate without pushing him over the edge of hiring a lawyer of his own one of the better legacies of spending three decades managing his emotions. I also considered, and still do, the money I let go as the price of my freedom.

My ex and I were college profs in the same academic department at a small liberal arts college, and many of our friends were therefore colleagues. After the divorce I dropped some of these, who revealed themselves as Switzerland friends, and, with others, have established tight boundaries, in the form of no talk about my ex. I stopped going to a years-long established weekly pub meeting with ex-colleagues from our department, but during the pandemic established “Porchfest” at my home, a weekly gathering of the other retired women in the department (that’s still going, although it’s now twice-monthly). I’ve made a few new friends (fewer than I would like, fewer than I hope I will), and reciprocity and mutual respect are my touchstones in those relationships. Given my past patterns, I don’t see myself with a new partner. I also value my new life and self, both so very hard won, too much to risk either.

I’ve become what I think of as a lot less compromising and harder, a lot more self-protective. Maybe because my father was a geologist, and I think in metaphors, I see the process I’ve gone through as metamorphic. If there’s such a thing as a “spirit rock,” mine is gneiss (pronounced like “nice”). Gneiss is made from granite–itself an igneous rock– that’s been through immense pressure. It has yielded a similar kind of distinction between “nice” and “kind.” To me, “gneiss” is “kind.” “Nice” is old boundary-less, accommodating me. “Gneiss,” like “kind” comes from strength and density of character. And after all I’ve been through, I’m no longer “nice”–I’m “gneiss.”