Why is He Nameless?

“Can’t you call him Bob or something?”

My editor wrote these words in her initial feedback on my memoir. She was balking at the use of “my husband” instead of naming the man. As a reader, she found it off-putting that a person with so much airtime in my book remained nameless and she was suggesting that I give him a different type of secret identity if I wanted to protect him.

Then as the PR push began, media wondered, “Is he someone famous? Is that why she’s hiding him?” As girlfriends read the early work, I heard, “Don’t you want the world to know what a shit he is? Why not tell everyone his name? He sure deserves to be exposed!“

All of these people misunderstood the point of his namelessness. I wasn’t hiding his identity to protect him, and I this book is not a revenge story. Instead, I view it as a sad love story. In my view, giving him a made-up name would have been fueling his secrets, allowing them to continue unchallenged, when exposing the truth of my life, finally, was one of the reasons I wrote.

So, why is he this amorphous nameless being?

As the loved one of an addict, I spent decades with alcoholism always the undercurrent of our life, placing focus on his needs, his problems, his struggles. And it is what I needed to do for my family. I willingly chose that fight. But now, this book is mine, this story is mine. I do not need to let booze and pain and my former husband’s mental health challenges control the narrative of my life.

Namelessness was a way to minimize him. This is my story, not his anymore.