One fine day, in the mountains of Montana, Laura Munson's husband said to her, 'I don't love you any more. I'm not sure I ever did. I'm moving out. The kids will understand. They'll want me to be happy.'
What is the normal reaction of this kind of announcement? You can sob and wail and get down on your knees and beg. Alternatively, you can pick up a meat cleaver and, when the car skids off the driveway, cut the crotch out of all his suits. But Munson did none of these things. She wasn't going to let him get away with this. She said, 'I don't buy it.'
He apparently looked surprised. The next thing he said was, 'I don't like what you've become.'
At this point, Munson says, 'a shroud of calm enveloped me.' Again she said, 'I don't buy it.'
Part of me thinks this is weak. How can she put up with being talked to like that, treated with such little kindness or respect. But part of me knows she is strong.
I need to memorise her words.
His words really were sticks and stones, it turned out.
She also asked him, 'What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?'. When he ranted she again said, 'I just asked: what can we do to give you the distance you need.'
She explains: 'Then he can't play victim. He has to take responsibility for his own well being. When you don't engage in the drama, it bounces back to the person who flung it in the first place.'
She uses the analogy of a child having a tantrum and shouting out that they hate you. You don't join in or answer back. You ignore the tantrum and walk away. Not that he was being a child. The spiritual malaise was a very profound personal crisis. But he needed time out. She had destructive thoughts. But kept her composure in front of her husband and children.
And the moral of it all? It's all about letting things go. Suddenly, the minute I let go of ever getting published, and of my marital outcome, that is when everything turns round.
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