Therapy

One day shortly after returning from that trip, I got Marisa, Matt and myself into family therapy. I think many professionals would agree that was a very wise choice.
I called a local woman who specialized in addiction in the family, or so she said.

It was a MISTAKE. I'm not sure if it's because she was in Malibu, and believe me I have spoken to more than one professional in the field who have told me that many doctors would not consider setting up a practice here because of the calibre of help given by the local doctors, etc.

Well, I hadn't realized that at the time, I just wanted to heal the family the only way I knew how. I went alone and several times I took the two kids.
The advice that I was given was the beginning of the end of my happy marriage.

This woman who was my first therapist, was telling me what to do. Something I later learned is not done. I was so desperate to "fix" the situation at home that I listened to everything she told me to do. Including leaving Bob at home and going on our planned vacation to Hawaii without him.

At the time, she told me it was the only way to assert myself and it would be a lesson for him that he could no longer rage against me verbally, which was happening a lot since his relapse. Bottom line is all roads were leading to the end of the marriage.

Looking back it seemed ridiculous because neither one of us were planning on ending the marriage at that time. We loved each other, but couldn't tolerate the behaviour.
Quite a conundrum to put it mildly. It was almost like my therapist wanted to break up the marriage. She did nothing that I can recall to help me save it.

After a few short visits Matt refused to go back to see her and so did Marisa. We never did get any help as a family, or help as individuals for that matter. It just made things harder at home.

I just terminated the sessions and was left to try and pick up the pieces myself.

What does a family do when there are addiction problems? Everyone agrees that it is not easy to be married or in a relationship with a practicing addict, but here we were once more, Bob wasn't drinking, he was just so angry all the time.

It was the year that Bob and I started fighting more and more about his daughter, which had become a really hot topic of conversation from this point up until the end.

He would go on and on about her and how he felt used. He could say whatever and all I could do was just listen, because if I said one thing he didn't like, he would turn the fight on me. I wasn't used to fighting about his daughter, we always got along great. For all the years she didn't want to come to our house I could always manage something to say to put the fire out in his head. I could no longer do that.
The truth was starring him in the face.

She would not speak to him, the family condoned it, and he was still giving her money through his father. The resentments were mounting, and I can't say I didn't agree.

I must say, if my child did to me what she did to him I would have stopped paying her tuition and let her mother deal with it. But once again Bob was always filled with guilt. He didn't know how to stick up for what was right because of it.
She simply got her cake and she got to eat it too.

That year was the ultimate slap in his face, he was never comfortable with confronting Marisa or her mother, who actually was quite happy to encourage the bad behavior of Marisa, that was until just about one year into the silence that Marisa had a car fire after installing a new radio in her car.

Now she finally needed something from her father bad enough to finally give him a call. Bob was so happy to talk to her he welcomed the fact that she was only calling because she needed something from him.

Her car was totaled and he was the registered owner. The insurance money was going to be sent to him. I guess she didn't hate him enough not to need the money for a new car. Her mom would put in half for the new car and if he agreed to give her back the insurance money that would buy her a new Jeep. As usual he told her of course. What he told me was a totally different story.

Once again I got the brunt of his true feelings. He was pretty disgusted with her and her mom hitting him up for the money. After all, didn't Marisa tell us all that her Mom was going to take care of everything for her and she didn't need him any longer? And on and on and on. He was always treated that way. Once she even told us that we got her all the cool stuff and her Mom would buy her the basics, pajama's underwear stuff like that.
I have a feeling that year was hard for her without that credit card of his soon after that she got the use of it back. Some things never change.
She was speaking to him again and using his money again. Funny how that worked out.
A pattern that never ended.