I’m very sorry to hear you are in, this place, in your life. All support systems are not necessarily physical. We could be your support system, right here, in cyberspace. It might be freeing for you to open up to somebody/anybody/a bunch of strangers about your stuff. It might be easier to be 100% honest using the anonymity cyberspace provides. It is no burden, as you’ve described it.
It’s not that I want to know your business. But I worry about people who talk like this, with good reason. Please, I implore you, find someone who you can talk to about this. Doesn’t matter if it’s a pastor, a therapist, a friend, a caring stranger, a suicide prevention line. Please don’t let another day go by. Find a way, I implore you.
First is the layer of lies this man was living for years and was finally caught. The paragon of virtue and model of the community blah blah blah has a string of affairs and loses his job and is disgraced. Frankly speaking, is this kind of behavior surprising anymore out of ministers and politicians?? I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t grafting on the side as well. Call me cynical.
The second is dealing with the aftermath of his suicide. The emotional hotmess Paul has left everyone in. The world revolved around HIM. When the facade of his life ( all our lives are a facade, some more than others.) cracked, he cracked.
Frankly speaking, I suspect there is a whole iceberg waiting to be discovered about your dad’s friend. If all the sleazy politicians who can’t keep their pants on and the serial cheats in Hollywood all offed themselves over a string of affairs, we’d have new elections every few months and open auditions for every new movie.
Suicide is about the internal pain and ending it. Worthlessness and bleakness. It is also very selfish and self centered and there could be a buttload of mental illness that hasn’t been diagnosed.
What your father cannot dismiss is that this couple were there for him and good to him and your mom when they needed them. They were better than excellent neighbors and excellent friends. Your dad was in no way responsible for his death and could have never stopped it.
I knew I was being pretty harsh, but what I wanted to get across was that it sounded like Paul had done some pretty crappy things to several people. You show me a guy who repeatedly cheats on his wife, and tell me his organization is facing financial hard times, and I’m gonna wonder about the possibility of embezzlement - or at the very least irresponsibility. Just saying, the guy actively and volitionally betrayed more than one relationship. That’s a far cry from someone who develops cancer, or something not entirely due to their own actions. So I was thinking that in my mind acknowledging as much might help your dad feel less guilty/responsible, even if he hadn’t been there for him - which I think he was anyway.
In response to your situation, I don’t know whether the “desperate times” you face are due to your bad actions, or forces beyond your control. To me, that makes a difference as to how you deal with them. If you did it, then you have to admit as much to yourself, and then make a plan for digging your way our. If you are the victim of circumstances, then you still need to assess the worst possible outcome, and figure out how you’ll recover from that.
Dinsdale was right…Paul was a fuck-up and pretty damn selfish even to the end. He cared not one iota for his wife or his friends like your Dad. I know there’s a lot of camps about suicide, but I am firmly in the one that thinks that it mostly the selfish assholes way out. And I speak as someone who has had someone very close to them that committed suicide.
Your Dad can continue being the friend to Mary, as she’s the one left holding the stick.
As for you Duke, remember there are people that love and care for you, like your Dad. Don’t deprive him of being with you for the rest of his life…you owe at least that much to him. Share with him your troubles and maybe he might have some pearls of wisdom to share with you that might be helpful.
See, I think that’s part of the reason I feel so conflicted myself about everything that went down. Up until Paul admitted the affairs about two months ago, I don’t think you could have found a single person who had anything bad to say about him. He did go out of his way to take care of my mom–and to help countless other people in the community. My dad actually stopped going to his church a couple of years ago (I think it was hard for him to continue to go to the places he and mom went to, and he found another place to go) and Paul still checked on him to make sure everything was OK. The stuff that had happened up until then seemed more like bad luck than anything else: the church finance issue was largely due to overconfidence by the church elders, the failure to sell his house was the result of an oversold market (and my dad wanted to sell his own house too but didn’t bother because of Paul’s trouble in selling his), and the rental family trashing his house was just an asshole move by someone he and others thought could be trusted.
Believe me, his admission of having affairs was a complete shock. When I heard about the affairs I was just as conflicted as anyone else. My ex committed an affair that broke up our marriage, I’ve known other people who’ve committed affairs that broke up marriages, and you think I’d know people but…well, you can’t really. It’s why it’s just so hard to say, “Yeah, Paul was a fuck-up, and maybe the world is better off without him.” We’ll never know why he did that. Honestly I don’t think he’d be able to tell you, if he were still alive.
As for me, things are sliding. I’m holding on and getting help. But it hasn’t been easy.
People aren’t just one thing or another. Paul wasn’t all slimebag or all saint. The friendship he offered your family was real - just like the disappointment he showed his wife. Why did have affairs? Surely it’s nobody’s business but Mary’s - no, not even the church officials, get a say, imo. He was human; he fucked up. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
You don’t have to hate him or feel guilty for missing him. You’re seeing a different side of him that you didn’t know about. But the side you did know - the side you cared for - was real, too.
I’m glad you’re getting some help. Take care of yourself, Duke.
Some perspective on self-blame. In many fields of endeavour (law, sales, helping professions and stacks of others) you have to believe that there is a magic formula of words or actions that will turn a bad situation around. You have to believe that there is something you can say to get the verdict, get the sale, get the patient well, because if you didn’t you’d give up. You couldn’t do your job.
But all of that belief is for before the critical result or event. It serves a functional, motivational purpose to think like that. But if the sale goes bad or the verdict goes against you, you have to change mental gears and recognise that the previous mindset is not actually true.
There is not always a way of changing someone else’s mind or heart. There is not a magic formula of words or deeds that would have worked. Recognising those beliefs about our power to change things for what they are kind of helps in the process of learning to let go and not beat yourself up for not finding, or doing, some imaginary thing that would have turned things around.
Thinking you can change things like that is, when you think about it, pretty grandiose. And as I said above, there is a time for believing it. But there is also a time for recognising we are not all-powerful and for thinking more humbly about our power to intervene. It is nice to be autonomous - to be free to make choices. And it is nice to live in a world where other people are too. If grief is the price we pay for love, bad choices that hurt us (made by ourselves and by our loved ones) are the price we pay for autonomy. You can’t control that, or autonomy would cease to mean anything.
Your Dad couldn’t have been with Paul 24/7, and he had other responsibilities in his life, not least of which was the business trip for which other people were relying on him as well.
In short, no-one has a crystal ball. Neither you nor your Dad have to torture youselves for not having had one.
I’m sorry and echo what MPB said above. Now is the time to help Mary as this has to be devestating for her. She was good to your family when your mom was dying. It will aslo help you with your grief.