Ad copy

My wife hasn't relaxed in 14 years of marriage. She's always doing something. I thought it was her personality. I figured out it's not. It's something else. I'm 44. I'm posting this because someone needs to read it. My wife Jen does not stop moving. She wakes up at 5:30 AM. She runs. She comes home. She makes the kids breakfast. She makes their lunches. She drops them at school. She works until 5. She comes home. She makes dinner. She does the dishes. She helps with homework. She does laundry. She returns emails. She checks the kids' backpacks for tomorrow. She lays out their clothes. She sets the coffee for the morning. She gets in bed. She is on her phone reading until midnight. She has been doing some version of this for 14 years. In the early years I thought she was just driven. I thought I had married a Type A woman. By year 4 I had started to notice she could not sit through a movie. She would get up to do something halfway through. She always had a reason. Folding laundry while watching. Cleaning the kitchen "since I'm up anyway." Checking the kids. By year 7 I had noticed she could not be on vacation. We would get to a beach somewhere and within 24 hours she would be reorganizing her suitcase. Or planning the rest of the week. Or making lists for when we got home. She could not lie on a beach chair. I once timed her. She lasted 11 minutes. By year 10 I noticed she could not sit on the couch with me without doing something. Her phone. A book. Folded laundry. Mail to sort. There was always something between us that she was doing while she was sitting next to me. I asked her once if she was happy. She said yes. She seemed surprised by the question. I stopped asking. I did not stop noticing. By year 12 I had a shape in my head for what was happening. My wife was a person who could not be in a room without a job. Without a task, she did not know what to do with her body. She did not know where to put her hands. She did not know how to be still. I thought it was her personality. I told myself she was just made that way. Some people are calm. Some people are productive. I had married a productive one. Last year something changed. Her father had a heart attack. He survived. Jen drove 6 hours to be with him at the hospital. She handled everything. She talked to doctors. She updated the family. She stayed for 4 days and slept maybe 6 hours total. When she came home she did not sit down. She started a load of laundry. She made dinner. She returned emails she had missed. I watched her from the kitchen doorway. Her father had almost died. She was making lasagna. I asked her: are you okay. She said: of course I'm okay. I'm fine. I just need to catch up. I asked her something I had wanted to ask for years. I asked her what she was afraid would happen if she sat down. She did not answer for a long time. Then she said: "I don't know. I've never tried." She had been married to me for 14 years. We had two kids. She was a partner at her firm. She was 41 years old. She had never tried sitting down. I asked her to tell me about her childhood. She had told me before, in pieces. Her parents had stayed together but they had not been okay. Her father had been emotionally absent. Her mother had been depressed and unpredictable. Some days her mother was warm. Some days her mother did not get out of bed. Jen had not known which mother she was going to wake up to. That night she told me what it had actually been like. She told me she had learned by 6 that if she kept moving, the day went better. If she made breakfast, her mother sometimes got up. If she folded the laundry that had been in the dryer for 3 days, the house seemed less heavy. If she was the one who had it together, her mother was less ashamed. She had never stopped moving since. She had simply never had a reason to. And now she did not know how to. She said something I think about every day. "I think if I sit down, I am going to find out what I have been running from for 35 years. I do not think I am ready to find out." I do not think I am ready to find out. I wrote that down. I still have it. A few weeks later I was up at 1:47 AM. I was on my phone. I had typed a lot of things looking for help. "Wife who never relaxes." "Wife always doing something." "Why can't my wife sit down." I found a thread. Adult children of alcoholics. People raised in homes where one or both parents were not okay. People raised in chaos. Their adult patterns. The hyper-vigilance. The over-functioning. The inability to be at rest. The way the body had learned to keep going as a survival skill at 5 or 6 or 8 and never been taught to stop. The thread described Jen so precisely I read it twice to make sure. It mentioned an app. Liven. Said it had asked the questions a therapist had not asked in 10 years. I sent it to her the next morning. I said: "Read this. I love you. I think this is what's been happening." She called me from her car at lunch crying. She said: "I have been telling myself my whole life that I'm just a hardworking person. I am not. I am a person who never learned how to stop. I never learned because if I had stopped my house would have fallen apart. I have been keeping the house from falling apart since before I could read." I know. She took the quiz that day. She said yes to almost everything. The not being able to sit. The needing a task at all times. The way her body did not know what to do without a job. The way she had been the responsible one since she was 5. Here is what I watched over the next few months. Week 1: She tried sitting on the couch for 5 minutes without her phone. She made it 90 seconds. She got up to fold a blanket. She told me about it that night. She had cried in the hallway after she got up. She did not know why. Week 3: She made it 8 minutes. She still got up. But she noticed she had wanted to. Week 5: She sat on the back porch on a Saturday morning with coffee. She did not bring her phone. She sat for 22 minutes. She came inside crying. She said it had felt like she was waiting for something terrible to happen and it never came. Week 8: She watched a whole movie with me without folding laundry. She held my hand. We had been married 14 years. She had not held my hand on the couch in 8. Week 12: She did not work on a Sunday. She did not work. She read a book. She had a nap. She made lunch and ate it slowly. She told me at the end of the day that she had not understood what people meant when they said they were "having a slow day" until that day. She had thought it was an expression. Week 16: We took a long weekend at a cabin. She did not bring her laptop. She did not make a list of things to do when we got home. She lay on a hammock and read for 2 hours. She told me later it was the longest she had ever sat still in her adult life. Week 20: She was sitting at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning. The kids were asleep. The house was quiet. She was not doing anything. She was just having coffee. I came in. She looked up. She smiled. She said: "Hi. I'm just sitting here." She had never said that sentence in 14 years of marriage. The thing she said to me last week: "I am 42 years old. I have never been at rest. I am just now learning that nothing terrible happens if I stop. I am also learning that the part of me that has been working since I was 6 is exhausted. She is so tired. She has been waiting for someone to tell her she could put the broom down." I am posting this because I know there is a version of me reading this who has a Jen. A wife. A girlfriend. A sister. A friend. Someone who never stops moving. Someone who works through dinner. Someone who cannot sit through a movie without doing 3 other things. Someone who is the most productive person you know and the most exhausted. She might not have a personality problem. She might have a survival skill she learned in childhood that is still running her at 42. If you are her, reading this. If you have been moving since you were 6. If you do not know how to sit. If you are afraid of what you might feel if you stopped. It is not who you are. It is what you learned. And it can be unlearned. Slowly. With practice. The body that learned to keep moving at 6 can learn at 42 that it is safe to stop. Liven has a quiz. A few minutes. It asks questions a therapist might miss. Take it before you start your next task. Link is below. P.S. Jen knows I am posting this. She read it first. She added two sentences. She said tell them about the kitchen on Saturday morning. She said tell them she had to learn how to be in a room with herself at 42 and it is the hardest thing she has ever done. The photo of her sitting at the kitchen table is from this morning. I took it. She did not get up. She said: "Tell them I do not know who I am yet. Tell them I am finding out for the first time. Tell them it is not too late." I am telling you.