My 19-year marriage to a narcissist left me hanging by a thread. Then an unexpected meeting with an older man changed how I see love
There’s a story I tell that brings tears to everyone’s eyes.
When I share it, the reaction of each human has become so predictable that I carry, and regularly restock, tissues in my handbag.
It is 100 percent factual, and equally improbable, beginning with my feet firmly in the quicksand of a life-sucking marriage I was desperate to get out of, and ending with a miracle.
The first serendipitous moment was when I interviewed a widowed 90-year-old World War II veteran with macular degeneration named Bob for a magazine cover story in 2013.
After our initial interview, I asked if I could come back and read him my rough draft. Which is how, one week later, I came to be sitting opposite him in his study in silent reverence.
He was quiet and reserved that day, which was the opposite of our initial interview. I thought perhaps he was not feeling well. Then, after a few minutes, he broke the silence with these words.
‘I missed out on marrying the love of my life. I don’t know if she’s dead or alive, but I need to find her and ask her for forgiveness.’
Gobsmacked, I asked him: ‘What did you do?’
Kara Kavensky was ‘in the quicksand of a life-sucking marriage’ that she was ‘desperate to get out of’ when she met Bob
Bob served in the US Army and trained as a professional photographer at Paramount Studios in New York City
Bob replied: ‘I never asked her to marry me.’
He had not spoken of this woman in 67 years.
Her name was Joy.
Bob served in the US Army and trained as a professional photographer at Paramount Studios in New York City, which the US Army then owned. He served in the Pacific and came ashore with the second wave of troops at Okinawa, Japan. He earned two bronze stars during the war.
After returning stateside, he became a pioneer in medical photography, spending his career with Eli Lilly & Co, and was the first professional photographer they ever hired.
He even earned global recognition for his advances in medical photography, including accolades from the Royal Photographic Society.
While Bob’s adventures during the war and his subsequent career are impressive, nothing could have prepared me for what unfolded between us. His confession of regret unleashed my own heartache.
Long before the word ‘narcissism’ became mainstream, my therapist indicated that, in her professional opinion, my then-husband (let’s refer to him as Derek) likely had narcissistic personality disorder, based on the long list of characteristics and idiosyncratic behaviors that I had shared with her.
This included: gaslighting, criticism, being told that nothing I did was ever good enough, no compliments, no empathy and his habit of boasting about himself incessantly.
When I first met with Bob, I was limping toward the emergency exit of the marriage. It took far longer than I had hoped to get divorced. I had created an exit strategy in order to work around my children and my career, all the while in furtive therapy.
Bob lived to regret never asking his first love, Joy, to marry him
My awareness of what and who I had married inexplicably switched on during an argument in our garage while I was five months pregnant with Baby Number Three. I refer to this moment as the ‘five-alarm-fire’ argument.
Throughout Derek’s tirade, deafening sirens blared in my head, drowning out his words.
Instantly in my brain, multiple detonation cords snaked backward in time, playing a movie reel of lowlights from our relationship. Each scene depicted every awful moment when I should have identified his, my and our unhealed baggage, which foreshadowed this fight.
The clinical analysis of our relationship is that we carried the dysfunctions from our childhoods and normalized them in our marriage. When you grow up with red flags, it feels like home to meet someone with similar patterns from their family.
What I witnessed between my parents was all I knew about marriage, and their example was terrible. I’d chosen someone familiar. When I initially met Derek, a couple of giant flashing neon signs should have dropped in my face reading, ‘Not Him’ and alternating with, ‘Heal Thyself.’
Instead, I fell in love with how we met – on a plane. I fell in love with our meet-cute story, not with him. I had given up on love.
One night, long after the five-alarm-fire argument, I ugly cried in the shower and screamed into my washcloth. I was held together by duct tape and twine, and in that moment of desperation, I prayed for help from the universe.
I yelled out something to the effect of: ‘Whatever this is, it’s not working for me.’ I required reinforcements.
My next life-changing, pivotal moment happened 16 hours later. This is when I met Bob.
He sent me on a mission to find Joy when I needed it most.
When he shared what he could with me about his lost love, which wasn’t much, I did my best to prepare him for bad news. It was exceedingly unlikely, if not impossible, that Joy, an 85-year-old woman, would be living nearby, single, healthy and willing to see him.
But my month-long sleuthing proved fortuitous: I found her. I should have purchased a lottery ticket that day. Although, in many ways, Bob and Joy are my lottery ticket.
It took some time, but Joy softened to the idea of reconnecting with Bob. He proposed immediately, telling me: ‘Time is of the essence.’
However, Joy wanted to play hard-to-get and made the man sweat it out for a week before she acquiesced.
A news clip of their wedding went viral in 2014.
Joy, Kara and Bob together after Joy helped the couple reunite in their nineties
Joy made Bob wait a week before she gave him an answer to his proposal
I had the luxury and good fortune to spend most of my Wednesday afternoons with this nonagenarian couple who, unbeknownst to them, showed me through their example what a loving relationship really looked like.
Bob and Joy’s tenderness and respect for one another were hard to witness without being in tears every single visit.
One of the many miracles of being around them was that they saw one another as they had been when they were 23 and 18.
When they reconnected, Bob said to Joy: ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
She replied: ‘Your eyesight really is awful.’
They would sit on the davenport and hold hands. They danced. They flirted. They laughed. They were tender with one another and always remained calm.
My demand of the Universe sent me a miracle in an unlikely package: a nonagenarian couple who altered the trajectory of my life. The word ‘transformational’ only scratches the surface.
With Bob and Joy’s example as a guidepost, I was finally able to get divorced. Their role modeling assisted with my healing process.
Witnessing a miracle is one thing, facilitating one is another and living one every week for a few hours can only transform your life in unimaginable and fabulous ways.
The unintended consequence of interviewing a 90-year-old man ultimately restored my faith in love.
Life hack: When a 90-year-old asks you to find the love of his life, you say yes.
Tell Me About Joy: A True Story of Love, Regret, and Second Chances by Kara Kavensky is published by Sourcebooks.
