From the very first day that JM came into our lives, keepers have know (full well) how blessed we are to have been given such a wonderful soul mate on our journey through life. But, it would be a lie to say that our lives together have always been easy. In fact, the exact opposite has been true for a large percentage of our years together. Our commitment to each other has had to be strong enough to overcome or work through some very special challenges that have been unique to our relationship.

For the entire 38 years that we have been together, people have been saying to keepers that we are so lucky that a man like our JM would even bother with us. We have had therapist say this to us time and time again. In fact, we had one therapist who told us time and time again that the only sickness in our JM was that he felt any love at all for keepers. Even our external children would ask him why it was that he would even put up with keepers in the first place. You see, for as long as they lived in this house–their father was the perfect parent while keepers were garbage under their feet. Friends, family–everyone–always held JM in high esteem while seeing keepers as not worth their time in any way. The only one who ever treated us as if we had value in this relationship was our John Michael, himself. Never once has he made keepers feel like a lesser part of our marriage in any way.

Still, the major part of our marriage has been spent with this being a huge bone of contention in our marriage. This was true for several reasons. First, it was very hard for keepers to live a life of trying very hard to do good only to be taken down twenty or thirty pegs at a time when someone would let us know that JM had married far below his status in life. On top of that, people’s words often made our JM quite angry because he saw how much they hurt keepers. He continually reassured keepers that he had no desire to be the perfect person. He just wanted to be a man who loved his wife. Still, the strain of people making JM pure perfection while making keepers lower than low put a gigantic strain on our marriage for many years.

Secondly, our JM has always been the only one in this relationship who has held a job. He has spent nearly every day of his life out there in corporate America making a living that had to support all five of us in this family. At times, that meant him working two jobs to make ends meet. When our external children were quite young, keepers did take in baby sitting to make ends meet but as our therapy progressed and our inabilities became more prominent, keepers were dissociating too much to continue with even that. So, keepers became stay at home moms for a great many years. To do our fair share, keepers were room mothers and den mothers and brownie leaders for our children but we were not adding to the family finances in any way.

Our JM never complained about this being the situation of our lives–largely because he was seeing what keepers were going through in doing our therapeutic work. Still, the world at large was constantly calling keepers spoiled and lazy for not being out there in the work world each day. Even our external children were highly critical of keepers not working because the mothers of all their friends worked full time jobs on top of being moms. So, the fact that JM was the sole support of our family when other families had already become based on two incomes was a huge source of strain between us. Not because of how our JM felt about it or even because of how keepers felt about it. Purely and completely, the strain between us came from what other people said about keepers not having a job or career.

Another source of difficulty for us both was that JM was always out there in the corporate world and saw things from the point of view of being a professional and a business man. Keepers had never been in that world in any way so we had no concept of his perceptions or understanding of how the world works. Much of our lives it was JM thinking like a man while keepers thought like women. It was JM thinking like a business man while keepers thought like the home bodies we had always been. And, then, JM saw the world through only one set of eyes while keepers had this kaleidoscope view of everything in life. So, for us, even finding a common ground for communicating often proved to be impossible.

Another problem that has seemed to be unique to us is that keepers lived every day of our marriage (for a full thirty years) believing our JM would walk out on us one day. He would either go to the store and never come back or head off to work one day without ever returning home again. JM always swore to us that this would never happen but keepers lived in fear of it until about five years ago when we really did begin to believe that we were both in this marriage for the duration.

In truth, these are all issues that have been laid to rest in our lives (for the most part). Keepers know that JM values us as much as we value him. We both understand that our relationship has been what is right for us and what other people think of that does not really matter at all. And we have learned to work very hard to keep the lines of communications open in every way possible. JM and keepers agree that we have a very special and very loving relationship that most people will never understand at all.

Keepers wish that our relationships with JM could move forward without any new stumbling blocks getting in our way.  But the truth is that no relationship is ever perfect–especially since keepers are abuse survivors which has left parts of us scarred in ways we know not how to fix.  And, JM, as wonderful as he is, often brings his own baggage in to stir up the difficulties we have between us.  But, the bottom line is, both JM and keepers value our relationships so much that we will deal with whatever comes our way and hold on to each other for dear life.  That is the way it has been around here for the last 38 years.  And the way it will be for the next 38 years.

peace and blessings,

keepers