On Friendship

​About two weeks ago, my spouse of 39 years of marriage-who has been completely out of contact since moving out December 27, 2025, left an email in which he “requested” that I not “disparage him or his friends” on my public media -social media, meaning Instagram. I have not done that and I do not do that. Not happening. I previously discussed this here.

He went on to repeat that request several times in a couple more emails. There are so many things that he could email about that are so critically important to my life. That told me everything. Someone must have spoken to what he’s really done. Someone that matters. So thank you, it has been a nightmare dealing alone with this.

One of those critical issues is actually my health. How are you doing?

Another is about our three children. We share three children. One needs daily discussion, to not do that is just a disgrace. The worst cut of all really.

Another might be about the upkeep of house and the ongoing bills- responsibilities-or the situation of his switching from an income to a retirement. How to not lose my house.

He could be emailing About Our Family, or he certainly could be emailing to talk about how he left here and why he’s done what he’s done -and then discuss it’s critical effect on my health. Surely that merits concern. Better in person but I’d take an email. 

He could’ve been emailing to talk about 40 years of our life, and what happened inside him that he did not ever share. To rectify this awful situation so I can live with grace. But his agenda appears to be entirely set by someone who he is involved with- while married, one who has a big beef with me. Well that’s social media and its users. 

But it’s got me today thinking about friendship -treatises on friendship -things I know about friendship, and this term friend, that he used to characterize the people he’s surrounding himself with now, really they are entirely a female who has invaded my marriage, and then her large “family”. Plus a few folks that once knew him for some kind of gain. None have met me and I’ve not met them. Those are his “friends” now. And I suppose his newfound family. In this alien universe he stepped into -to now live. Have you known anyone who at 65 completely in a day shed their marriage and went away- maybe Gauguin?

You know at one time I thought a friend was someone who just cared deeply about you.  They shared either your workspace, or your home space, or your life space for some period of time- you got to know one another and then had ongoing situations that you shared, or conversations, or you wrote to one another, or now had someone to talk to -or with media -you read their comments and the things that they’re doing, their posts or pictures, and you just hold a warm place in your self for them. 

They matter to you because they help you be better.  At its heart they build a better you. That’s the most fundamental piece. You hold memories of them,  it forms an image of you at your best. It’s someone who you found supportive and caring, who helped you to feel life was less lonely, or who celebrated your talents or saw in you some qualities of goodness. Who developed in you a you that shines. You are better for knowing them. They don’t break your family or job. Or insist you do something out of character. 

I know my friends have been all those things. They’ve often helped me be in balance. I have over my lifetime read different religious or philosophical writers that have offered their friendship definitions and their thoughts on friendship -you know some of the writers that I really enjoy wrote friendship into their works -right into their beings so you know their novels or their work in such a way that you shared that friendship experience -of two characters deeply bonding- enriching our understandings and perspectives. Been thinking lately of the Lord of the Rings as a study of deep friendship. So a friendship means a lot to the arc of a lifetime story. It means a lot in your own life arc. When I hear the word I place it really in these fundamental meanings.

I always thought my spouse was my friend. We knew each other from college and met at a time when your life is shifting from being in your family situation, to expanding your world, and figuring out your life together- and we shared a lot of of those concerns of evolving our life- then the death of his parents- the death of my parents -we lived for a good deal of time with my mother. Her life I felt such care and compassion for -because of her stroke and divorce and how her mother died.  He now calls this being saddled with “a package deal”- but I saw it as a sacred trust that he implicitly understood was my behaving with decency. Boy, I’m just wrong. We raised three kids together. And they had things that were wonderful and terrifying. We saw the life and death and times of a number of shared friends. Ones I’d like to hear what they’d tell him about this betrayal. I thought that friendship thread of ours was unbreakable. I thought this was someone I could bring any problem to, or take my own health to - my fear of death, someone to know my heart and fears. I honestly thought we had committed forever to each other- to not hurt one another, and to live a life together -and to find out that I was completely wrong in all of those perceptions, and completely alone in them- just being fooled basically, lied to, and used. It’s been so difficult. Beyond me.

 I’ve worked on this happening to me-trying for acceptance of the distortion of the truth and the reality-tried so hard for nine months -a trauma wounding unlike any I’ve known. I’m not a whole lot closer to any form of acceptance, but to be told that I am “disparaging his friends” is especially revealing of our true relationship and what a lie it all really, really was. Now it’s “His” friends. How truly sad.  How horrible to try to face this situation everyday worse than the last.

It’s such a low blow email and delivered in such a mean and dictatorial manner -much like the end of this marriage has been -so out of the character or mask I knew of him, just so cruel. I know I never saw him openly display that sheer deceit filled meanness before.  It’s been encouraged and developed. I do name it as relative absolutely to the company he has chosen to keep. Absolutely. I probably cannot write much on real friendship now.  I clearly don’t understand what it means -if it means his new definitions. If those people are “friends” then I do not understand the term. I do not understand something fundamental. 

If someone approaches a married man and begins a romantic relationship -even remotely considers it a possibility- where you’re concealing that relationship from an entire family and wife, during a time when their son is suffering, in deep mental illness and is violent, homeless, and unable to be reached, and has had your wife literally living in their room, locked away for safety, for several years -if this is a time when a person can then forge something meaningful outside of the bonds of matrimony with someone that’s a relationship of “friendship” thru this illicit job ending relating -I don’t understand the definitions of friend. Or marriage. 

I am completely dumbfounded that a friend would ever put another friend in a position in a workplace to engage in adultery and in infidelity and beyond anyway. If married. To break a bond of matrimony. To discuss such stuff. Plan it. If just the simple facts of my situation now-of the behavior- then to go on to write a statement that he has no idea why “I would disparage his friends” -it is almost beyond all sane comprehension. What is going on with you? By your deceptions I am trapped.

I mean, I’ve been incredibly quiet and self-contained. I’m clearly Waiting. I certainly made no phone calls, no mail effort beyond asking for what I need. I’m completely put in “no contact” about very important things. (I’ve been harassed with two off the wall threatening phone calls and nasty despicable communications to my children by this “friend”) and through it all I’ve just tried to understand how someone could violate me and my life so profoundly. How is this possible? Where is my friend? What happened here?

 

To try to project that back as all on me -and my reaction to this-then I can only reach for labels like avoidant, dismissive avoidant, narcissist, or really pathological liar -labels I loathe that don’t quite really do it for me, all over the Instagram though.  No adequate job of talking about this as I’m experiencing it. I thought my spouse was above all my dearest friend on earth left- above all else. I thought he had the capacity for loyalty. I always knew him from a frame of loyalty. I thought he had the capacity to understand us -that we do get older. 25 has gone by. Our looks change, sometimes we’re not able to do the things that we did younger, or to sustain a surface beauty of a certain kind. What was really going on in his mind and heart?

I mean when I look at him he doesn’t look too much like he did when I first knew him either-he looks older- kind of like a hound dog. He certainly makes no effort as he did at the beginning of our relationship to be the warm and joyful and protective partner. Happy to see you. He pretty much just became somebody that was surprisingly deeply resentful and unavailable, forcing me to chase him down even for simple family communication. Oh how I hate remembering that. The deep pain of that obstructing and the defiance. And always distant.  And eventually I found out to be routinely capable of profound betrayal without even a remote understanding of what that might do to another person apparently. Or no concern for how my days are passing. He has apparently just lost capacity for empathy -or has shown me none-so he has no capacity it seems to know what this is really doing to his children, grands, or to myself.  The severe pain. Daily pain. The removal of all care, concern, safety, and presence.  Thus far more damage to his children beyond this -that done because of watching their mother be put into something like this -that is not something that friendship can ever explain. This is no bond of friendship. There was no bond of friendship. Nor is this done by someone incapable of using the term or understanding its meanings.  He knows. This year the fact that he could not spare any effort and time to basically explain he was unhappy- or considering such a move, or that he could flirt while my son is so sick and engage in some fantasy land relating- is just beyond the bounds of anything that you could define is found within friendship. Or love. It’s beyond my capacity to ever understand. 

So one of the hardest things for me to do is to accept that I have built an entire human out of thin air in my heart and mind, because nothing that I knew of him would have allowed something like this. Ever.  Ever.

Nothing that I believed and nothing that I worked for, or nothing that I engaged in, could be done in my life under the premise of someone capable of something like this.

I have spent 40 years adrift from all reality. Apparently.  That breaking of my safety and trust, that realization that I have been just so completely wronged, it’s so difficult and it doesn’t deserve some order given by some third-party that I be made to not say anything about it. Say what? I’m doing what? By being on my Instagram? 

Complete silence. 

I have my thoughts and generally share what my situation is -to better know it.  I sit integrating this time in silence -but not in keeping the images of two people who are capable of something like this a big fat secret. That you cannot ask. Or demand.

You know you start to reach for these labels like narcissism because that is the MO of the narcissist- that is how they behave. Secrecy and distortion and lies always around their image. I fought this battle with my dad. It’s always the profound front and center issue. Not the damage to your heart and soul. Just what others might glimpse.  There’s always so much that can’t be spoken or shared or dealt with openly -or discussed -and of course, if any of this had been engaged in a different way I wouldn’t be here seeking to comment, or look at what is safety, what is betrayal? What is friendship? What is a reasonable expectations for how something like the ending of a 40 year relationship might occur?  

I don’t believe for a minute that the blame for this entirely sits on my spouse, but a huge amount of it does, and I don’t believe for a minute that I have anything to do with making a choice like choosing infidelity. No matter how obese. I know under no circumstances on this planet have I ever betrayed him in a similar way, or in anyway-and I know under no circumstances would my loyalty and my gratefulness and my heart and my dedication to my family allow me to hide so much and be so disgraceful in my conduct. It’s unfathomable. That’s the gist of this.

I can’t imagine a situation or a day where I would just go for it with some happy camper- because you “only live once” and become engaged with a person in my workplace in a romantic entanglement -kept secret from all other parties, then when discovered I would not give any basic information or even basic respect to my spouse -and be off on new trips and new adventures and hoteling and doing then things with other people. In my new improved life. Breaking those whose basic crime is loving me -however imperfectly-and then those being related by birth who are plowed under by the tsunami.

Those who are related to this new improved perfect person he’s gotten himself involved with-there’s no day of living this life that I would have engaged in something like encouraging this infidelity -out of respect for my kids, my spouse, God‘s order, rules- just so I could look myself in the face. Basically. So I could then live with myself. How’s that working?  Where is your decency?

I have the capacity to put myself in other people shoes and to be forgiving, and I have the capacity to be full of raw judgment and/or to be accepting of reality. To be fair. But I am not disowning what’s happened to me. No.  I mean, we all have the capacity for those awful sinning things but well, I have it, and while I know in friendship, sometimes there’s just an awful lot you accept about who you’re honestly engaged with. But there are my human limits. Geeze.  I also know there are things that are so wrong here -wrong with this email- or several emails -that are just so symbolic of what I think. It’s  just telling what’s happened. It’s so far beyond the pale. It’s not what is called for now.

Is it called disparagement now when you’re actually just reaching for reading, and finding out about, and listening to people, who have experienced something somewhat similar in betrayal and when you’re openly saying I’m in trauma, or I have had suicidal ideation, or when you’re talking about an inability to cope with something in another person -and I’m talking about this is inflicting so much pain that you’re completely disabled from making judgments or knowing where you are in reality? But you can’t share Instagram content that makes you feel seen?

You know, I read the email. 

My stomach sank so far. I was so afraid to open it and then it was even worse than I thought it would be. It was far worse because it had no capacity to care about me whatsoever, no inquiry about my health at all, and it was issuing an order to me- that implies something- when something like that is going on —and when you’re being ordered-I was mocked for being fat, for being crazy, for being a racist. Nothing about all that stuff. I have been mocked by this partner and friends that he’s engaging with, when you’re at a point when someone is bringing something like that your way -what is right action then? 

Here is supposed to be the person that has sworn that they love you and that they hold your safety above all else. And they demand your silence. They about face a no divorce promise- sue you for divorce a half hour after you have surgery-leave you destroyed. Two days after your birthday in front of your jaw on the floor middle child. I’ve known for quite a long while- when he let my son’s mental illness frighten me, that he had long lost the capacity to recognize me as just a human-as somebody he needed to protect or care for- no idea-there was something just unbelievably not right that he was capable of just saying- oh I’m so busy at work. I’m taking a call from a lawyer. I’m doing this. I’m admired by others? Texting a board member. Busy. Working my ass off. Whatever I’m doing - he just couldn’t stop for a minute to find out if I was going to be OK. That’s all. No capacity to come and sit with that.  Are you ok?  

No, I’m definitely not ok. Adultery is not ok. Not going to be ok. Not with this-not with what you’ve done. Not ok. Never will be ok. Because of what you’ve done and how. You did something beyond my capacity. You broke me. I’m broken. That’s entirely on you. 

…even-when I would be in these terrible pain sessions in December from all of these kidney stones. So afraid. So afraid.  I was told “I don’t need any more of your shit” when he disappeared to a hotel for three days and I’m wondering where has he even gone. Trying to think how to get to the ER. Yes his life was imploding. I know. Caught. And then dealing with somebody so hostile and so broken and so blind and so incapable of friendship or understanding what it is -or how it works- yes, I have all the empathy. He was in such deep trouble-  the greatest harm of which happened. A battle for your basic goodness. Completely lost. I have empathy. I have capacity. But I was under great stress too. 

But I don’t want it to be used against me to this degree- my capacity to understand his motivations, his actions,  and to look at his childhood- look at the things going on -look at his fears about his son. Look at this -look at that -I gave 40 years of my life looking. I birthed three children and raised them. And though I have sacrificed enormous amounts personally for his education and career,  I have been a loyal and good person and a listener, and obviously in his eyes that’s not good enough. That just didn’t count, or I didn’t do it well enough -in his/her eyes. I don’t look back at his own choices and his own part and in his basic capacities -he has to look at what he’s done. This is his work, and he hasn’t done it. He’s distracting himself and then emailing me on command. 

 This is such a fundamental violation of the definitions of friendship and love and marriage and being human. I really am on the ground. I don’t know where to start. I’m leveled. 

You know you say to yourself -thinking-well you gave your word to honor me above all other people- you could’ve at least come to me and said I no longer recognize you as my spouse. I mean, at least I could get a heads up that you gotta go over here and “date” somebody for it looks like years- gonna hold that person in their life above your children’s and above me and above everybody else. And that’s worth some time for me to face and discuss and have your family understand you’ve taken off. Forever. It’s not something you give at Christmas to family and me to make your point. 

But that’s not what happened. No apology.  They’re just so many human violations, I could just list them and list them and list them-of basic tenants of friendship and love and being married, and I wouldn’t even begin to be making my case.  I don’t even understand. I have been so disparaged, so violated, so hurt, about so much.  I have been so damaged in the last year that I will never be capable of finding the person who started out on the planet as Sarah. Who was that person. Before you came along. And it’s just been utterly blown apart and destroyed and he’ll injected into this life I had -in a way to create the complete destruction of my being. A dose of horror.  And if saying so -it that then is the real disparaging -and of his friends -then he and his friends need to have some long hard looks at themselves. That they would be capable of engaging in such a process against any human being like this, done in this way.  I would never have entered into this person’s life, taken over this person’s spouse, and used my position, like this -no way- that’s just wrong on its face, and then there is a social order, or a God, you know we have our values -and engaging in adultery is so clearly against mine and should be against theirs. By this point in life.  The codes of behavior- it is not disparagement to say you’ve done this and this has been the cost to me and my life. 

My blood pressure is alone insanely elavated. 

This is a day in my life. 

This is how it is going.

I am trying to process betrayal while ill. While in financial crisis. While scared for my son. Terrified. At 67. In bad health. While trying to understand and be a fair and good person. Having passed a kidney stone two days ago that leveled me while driving my son to a job interview. While functioning for him. While processing my life’s value and meaning. Processing while asking myself if I want to live like this.  While being fair to myself. While being hurt and having my stability and safety completely destroyed. While trying to find a reason to be here today.  That isn’t a reason like-I have to just do it. 

And it’s a hard slog. And I’ve explained why. I’ve modeled on this blog from day one perspectives as a person, woman, teacher, mother, spouse, to talk about my being a flawed human- through this attempt at an art. And living. Here is the art of my self expression. Performed by a completely unwanted and artless being. I’ve tried to make something from my nothingness and create meaning. I tried to be a friend in my marriage. I failed. I was failed.

I’m not going to do that processing by disparaging anyone. Not disparaging me either. Nor am I going to turn the wrongs into rights.  I’m going to allow truth to out. I’m going to say what is.  In sickness and in health I’m going to honor my vows. Expect apology, rectification and repair. Demand decency. And kindness. And I will always dispute that I disparaged anyone by telling what happened to me on a day in the life.