[Two Pronged] Are anxieties over house renovation causing my husband’s health to falter?

Rappler’s People section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer,

I am 65 years old, my husband “Alfonso” is 77. I never noticed the 12-year difference between us. He keeps up with current events, is energetic when it comes to pickleball and other sports as long as it is with his friends, and is adventurous when it comes to trying out new things.

At least, not until this year.

We planned having our house renovated last year. We hired a building contractor, with his own firm of architects, etc. to give us an estimate of the costs and schedules, and agreed with his offering. We also hired an interior decorator who would help us design our home. Even if it cost a lot of money, we were willing to hire all these experts.

The contractor confirmed we could add a balcony to our house and also another bedroom so the children would have their own room when they came to spend the holidays with us.

A month before we were to start having the house built, Alfonso got heart palpitations so worrying that we postponed the renovation. After the cardiologist ran some tests, reassured us that it was nothing to worry about, we planned to start the renovations one more.

But then he got insomnia. We tried all sorts of supplements. They would work a few days but then stop working. Finally, he tried valium, which worked very well…until we again discussed starting the renovation. Now he can’t sleep again.

I am losing patience. Where was the strong man I married whose marriage vows included to love and protect me?

You will suggest we communicate with each other, but whenever I try to, he insists he wants the renovation too. What else can I do? HELP!

– Marissa

Dear Marissa,

While it may seem as though the renovation is ostensibly the problem here, the real issue is in fact your relationship with your husband, Alfonso.

Here is a man who is 77 years old, has had heart palpitations and is now suffering from insomnia. In other words, his body is sending out a message that this renovation is seriously affecting him and all is not well. Your response has been to continue to press ahead with the renovation project and complain that he is no longer the strong man that he used to be and that he is not upholding his marriage vows, in particular the injunction to love and protect.

Yet, do you not think he has an equal right to ask the same of you? It seems prima facie that you are prioritizing a mere building project over your own husband’s health.

As we age, we face changes. At 77, a major home disruption — noise, disorder, decisions — may feel genuinely overwhelming in a way it wouldn’t have say at 60. Alfonso may also be one of those men who have difficulty expressing their feelings, especially if they are suggestive of weakness, so their bodies speak for them, hence the anxiety and insomnia.

It seems that you need to explore this crisis with Alfonso and find out more about his concerns at this stage of his life. He may just need your reassurance of your support, or the support of friends, or perhaps therapy. Whatever it is, he needs to be encouraged and to be heard. This is the building project that you should be concentrating on. The balcony and additional room can wait.

All the best
– JAF Baer

Dear Marissa,
Thank you very much for your letter. I am astounded by how well you and Mr Baer have each zeroed in on this problem: Mr Baer, with his “the renovation is ostensibly the problem here, the real issue is in fact your relationship with your husband,” statement; and you with your “You will suggest we communicate with each other, but whenever I try to, he insists he wants the renovation too.”

You are both right: Communication is key.

You present the situation as one where you are ready to communicate, but when you try to, your husband “Alfonso” lies and says he wants the renovation too.

But isn’t it possible that what Alfonso says is true?

He too wants the renovation, but something about it is metaphorically giving him the shakes (here presented literally by heart palpitations and insomnia). Alfonso seems anxious, Marissa. If this continues further, he will most likely have an anxiety disorder (if he doesn’t have one already).

You present your husband as someone decrepit, all of a sudden unable to handle a renovation. I think it is you he cannot handle at the moment.

It seems you both feel the scales have fallen from your eyes. You are very clear that yours did. You used to consider him a companion walking by your side as though he were not 12 years older than you. You are dismayed because you feel you now see him for who he really is — a decrepit old man, shuffling behind, trying his best to keep up with you, but failing to.

It is just as likely his view of you has changed too. From a lighthearted, confident woman you have behaved like a child having a tantrum by accusing him (if only silently) of feigning palpitations and insomnia simply to stall the renovation.

Author Sarah Wilson wrote the book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety in 2017. It was not the first bestseller she wrote, but it is the one that has helped so many who have been crippled by, and judged for, their anxiety.

If you can get hold of this book, please do so, Marissa. And it might be a good if Alfonso read it too. If you both can manage it, perhaps you can even agree to read the same chapter and then talk about what resonates the most with each of you. That would be a less scary way for you to start communicating with each other-focusing on what affects you most about the chapter, rather than trying to analyze why the other is acting the way s/he is, and why the other has now started to disappoint you.

Among the many insights to be gleaned from the book are that anxiety is not a malfunction. It is a message we haven’t learned to read yet. We have been taught to treat anxiety like a fire alarm going off in an empty building, loud, disruptive, embarrassing, something to silence as quickly as possible. Wilson asks a different question: what if the alarm is right?

What if Alfonso’s heart palpitations and insomnia are sending each of you a message you just have to listen to?

Neither of you can hear the message if you feel the more sensitive among us are weak. What Mr. Baer wrote earlier is spot on! “Alfonso may also be one of those men who have difficulty expressing their feelings,… especially if they are suggestive of weakness”…the way you have interpreted his insomnia, etc, to be a sign of. But, as Mr Baer says, “their body speaks for them.”

Ms Wilson follows up Mr Baer’s thoughts by saying: “People who feel are not broken. They are built for depth.”

Dr Holmes follows up Ms Wilson’s and Mr Baer’s words (though alas, not as poetically) by reminding us what somatic and trauma therapists have tried to tell us again and again: “You cannot think your way out of something your whole body is living”

So what do you say, Marissa?

Will you give it a try? Instead of looking at Alfonso’s somatic difficulties as an enemy, treat them as a shy friend who has to trust you enough before it can finally speak clearly. Perhaps you can also look within your fierce (and wonderfully articulate) mind and heart and listen — instead of argue with — the fear and angst (disguised as anger and disappointment) you too are undergoing now.

My belief is that you are both suffering from anxiety. I hope you can individually (and then as a couple) befriend these initially frightening feelings so that, in time, these fears – AND Alfonso – are not the enemies, but just feelings (AND a person) to be understood more deeply.

Good luck (and I say this with all my heart, Marissa) and all the best

– MG Holmes

– Rappler.com