Should I Tell STBXAW About Health Issue?
 

My STBXAH and I have not spoken more than a couple words to each other since May. Our divorce is pending - the only thing that needs to happen is for her to sign the papers, though it's been several weeks since we signed the term sheet and it's not really clear what she is waiting for. I had surgery yesterday to remove a cancerous growth. I haven't told her about the health issue, or anything, because she said through her lawyer back in August that she doesn't want to talk (I had reached out to see how she was doing). I would want to know if she had a serious health issue (in addition to her CD issues, which are serious and mostly untreated). I'm not sure what I expect if I were to tell her - probably just an email saying to take care. As with most things involving divorcing from my active AW, it isn't clear to me what to do in this situation.

She's your Ex...
 

...and she has asked you not to contact her. Don't contact her. Are you going to Alanon? If not, for your own happiness please start. Your post made me think of many questions I'm going to share with you for you to consider. I don't need you to answer them here, I just want you to consider them in your head. If you do want to answer them here, please consider them for awhile before actually posting.

1. Why is this difficult for you when she already told you not to contact her-- how on earth is this confusing?
2. Why do you think that because you would want to know something like this that she also would want to know so much it justifies ignoring her boundary?
3. Are you unable to respect boundaries?
4. Why do you feel the need to contact her?
5. What are you doing to understand your role in what happened?
6. Do you just want to tell her to passive aggressively evoke some kind or response?
7. If you haven't yet gone to an Alanon meeting, why not?

If you don't go to Alanon please start. It will make your life better, especially if you are facing a battle with cancer. IMHO, it's just as good for diseases as it is for alcoholic wives (they have a lot in common-- A LOT). As for your ex, she's your ex. She soon won't be your wife anymore-- she's a chapter in your life. Learn from it, or replace her with another just like her.

Cyranoak

No contact, respect her wishes and focus on you. Sorry for your health issues.

I would have someone else who knows both of you tell her. You're humans, you were married, you shared a life together - she'd want to know. I sure would!

I want Cyrano to come live next door to me. I was going to say "maybe you can have someone else tell her" but he's right. She said not to contact her. So don't.

And I think the main question in my mind would be what you would want to achieve by telling her. What reaction would you like out of her? Are you hoping maybe this is the thing that will make her see the light, after all? Are you hoping to find sympathy and connection and friendship there, after all? If you scrape under the surface -- is there maybe something more and deeper there than "I think I should tell her because she should know"...?

I know for me, there would be. And it would be, "THIS will make her sorry for all the bad stuff she did to me." And that's not going to happen.

When people say "Don't contact me", that generally means "Don't contact me." In my experience, making contact for something like what I consider a newsworthy issue (yeah, I thought for sure that would hit the magic button and they'd really care), it didn't go over well. Usually I got, "I'm sorry, but you can't just think I'm going to do xyz because of this. I really cant do this anymore." If I even got that many words out of them. She said dont contact her. The least you can do is respect her wishes instead of being passive-aggressive and probably just ticking her off.

Hi quillan68, I'm so sorry to hear about your recent health problems. I hope that the biopsies and other tests will reveal that the surgeons were able to remove the entire growth. Will you have to receive further treatment such as chemotherapy or radiation?

I have a slightly different take on the whole 'should I tell her' question. I'm not going to tell you how codependent you are to feel the way you do and to want to tell her. I certainly understand that. I'm not going to tell you that the 'least you can do' is respect her wishes, but I will say that perhaps the BEST you can do is care for yourself during this health crisis.

I'm more concerned about how you would feel if you told her (or had someone else tell her), and her reaction was no reaction or even an angry accusation that you were making it up to win her sympathy. Making yourself vulnerable to that kind of pain when you struggle with this kind of health concern could be, IMHO, detrimental to you.

Please consider focusing all your attention and energy on yourself and your healing. You will be in my thoughts and prayers.

Hello quillan, and pleased to "meet" you :)

I think what you need to do in that situation has already been done. Perhaps that is why it does not apear clear to you.

I divorce my ex some time ago. Once upon a time she was a lovely, wonderful lady. She became addicted to pain pills and everything fell apart. After we divorced I developed a nasty disease which I have been fighting ever since. Some days are awful, other days are good.

Just like you mentioned, I wondered if I should call my ex and tell her how sick I was. In my case it was just an old habit, I had always shared my life with her, good and bad. What I realized, after a few al-anon meetings, is that I has _already_ done what needed to be done.

This woman I had married was no longer capable of reaching out to me with kindness and compassion. She had at one time, but not anymore. What I needed to do, as a result of being diagnosed with a horrible disease, was to surround myself with good people and keep away from those who just make my life even harder.

I had already done what needed to be done. I divorced her and moved out of town. What I needed to do next was _reduce_ the stress in my life, not increase it. So I went to lots of meetings of al-anon, made new friends, got a new sponsor, started a new life. Taking care of my own life has made a huge difference. I have lived far longer and in much better shape than my docs predicted, I've seen new places and done things I never imagined I would. All of that simply because I followed a few suggestions I heard in al-anon.

My life isn't over just because my past life is over. My life is just starting because there's a whole new life starting for me right now. You can have a new life too, Quillan. Just look at the thousands upon thousands of people right here on this forum that are making a new life for themselves, one day at a time.

Mike :)

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies, and also for those that are slightly less, um, nuanced. To clarify, she didn't say "don't contact me" - she said that she wasn't "comfortable" talking on the phone right then, and if I wanted to communicate, to do so in writing and through her lawyer. I do attend Al-Anon meetings, regularly, and it has been incredibly helpful. After asking for lots of advice, from Al-Anon, AA, here, and with non-program friends, I think I'm not going to tell her about the cancer, at least not right now. I may change my mind depending on the results of the biopsies, but for now, there is no benefit to any additional stress, and AW has proved repeatedly that she is incapable of providing any type of meaningful support. As lillamy suggests, if I interrogate my motives, there is probably something going on beyond a desire to share important news. But DesertEyes is right that sharing news with the person who for a long time was the most important in my life, even if that has dramatically changed over the past six months, is a perfectly understandable habit. Still, I can identify at least one ulterior motive - to see whether there is still a connection and find out if she is doing anything to treat her CD. The reality is that I set a significant boundary - get treatment or we are through - and she decided she'd rather leave and continue to destroy her life with drinking and Xanax than stop. There is no reason to think that's changed, so I will continue to take care of myself and try to let go of the past.

Time is on your side. You don't have decide to tell her now. Should the situation become, instead, like a terminal one (God forbid), you can reassess then and maybe things will be different by then on her end as well.

Wait. That is an action, as we say in Al-Anon.

I think that if you two had kids together, I personally would tell her. Even then, the questions would be "When?"

At one point I was so unhappy that I was considering suicide. AH's response to this was to seize the topic and point out how trivial my problems were to his. Not one word of compassion, not one iota of empathy.

YMMV.