"It has be better than THIS" or "How I spent my 20s and 30s"....

 

They sat across the room from each other.  Her with a baby nursing calmly, him in an armchair across the room.  These late-night discussions, disagreements if you wanted to call them by what they really were…happened regularly. 

She sighed heavily, her anger at the rotation of days for the last few years. 

Slowly she just said, “It HAS to be better than this.”  This can’t be what it is.  They’d been married almost 15 years and she was holding 3-month-old baby number four at her breast.  As usual, she was having a hard time understanding why her home and family were so, so difficult to manage.

She sunk into the couch and into the baby and glared his way.  “It, it just HAS to be better than THIS.”  The years of torture had built up.  The accusations from him of indifference and him constantly telling her she was looking for reasons to be angry, storming through her memory. 

He glared back, he was condescending and stiff, as usual.  No tenderness, just the same matter-of-fact assertion.  He had these had specific mannerisms whenever they would “talk.’  He would rub his eyes and head as if the conversation was giving him a headache.  He would tell her she was “talking too loud.”  He would literally even plug his ears with his fingers at times.  “This IS it.  We are a normal couple.  These are normal couple problems.  This is as good as it gets.”

She couldn’t believe that.  Wouldn’t believe that.  The last 7 years of her marriage had been about working on IT.  The ENTIRE marriage had been working on IT.  She had fallen deeply in love with him at 19 years old. Engaged at 20.  Married 16 days after her 21^st birthday, to the smartest and oldest man she had ever met, dated, or loved.  She was from a broken home and raised by a single mom, somewhat in the wild.  He was the oldest what he called the “perfect family” with the “perfect parents.”  They lived in the pattern of his ideal upbringing.  The first many years she was in a honeymoon bliss.   She was learning, giving, changing, molding, and so, so comfortable with that. 

The 7-year itch is a real thing.  Not that either of them strayed (or so she thought at that time – but later she’d know differently). By 7 years there was a disconnect that hadn’t been there prior. They never argued, in fact that was a bragging right.  “We just always agree,” he would say.  She would say, “we just have such respect for each other.”  But after 2 babies and managing on a tight budget, cracks were inevitable.  A stay-at-home mom, working part time from home to supplement income after having two babies in 19 months had left her exhausted and overwhelmed

She remembers the exact day of the first disagreement around 8 years earlier.  They had left the kids to go on a whitewater rafting day trip.  It was so much fun, but a long drive.  On the ride home, they were talking about his employment.  Money was tight, she was working from home part time to help.  They were stretched, tired, and short most months.  His job had not brought the promised transfers or opportunities in the 7 years they were married.  She was encouraging him to consider other options, she was encouraging him, she thought.

He snapped at her.  She didn’t understand how business worked.  He didn’t want to sell himself to other companies.  His reaction was so blunt and quick she felt the emotional slap sting her soul.  She soon learned that she should not give her opinion when it comes to his job.  How could she argue?  She was barely 28 and he, 35 years.  Weary, she sat back and concentrated on the things she could influence.  And she did so love being a mother.  HIS work smarts meant she could stay home with her babies all day.

So, she learned to shut up about his employment and focused on mothering.  That would be her domain and she wanted things done her way.  But, by this time and this moment nursing  her fourth baby she’d had enough of being told one thing to her face, and his behavior and actions telling another story. 

She had, by now, spent her twenties and almost all her thirties trying to appease this man.  She always blamed herself for the problems.  He had come from “perfect.”  The problems, had to be because of her.

“I didn’t tell you about that business trip for your own good” and “I didn’t want to get your hopes up, so I didn’t tell you,” And her least favorite of all, “I don’t remember it that way.”  At night, he would tell her she wasn’t “spontaneous enough”.  With four children, spontaneous is holding a vomiting child over the trash can in the Walmart bathroom.  It was her fault that they were “just co-babysitters” that didn’t have enough intimacy in their lives together.  He oversaw planning their “perfect” futures together and she wasn’t doing the right things to support that.  By the time this fourth baby had come along…he had demanded that all she wanted to talk about was the children and planning, and often he would tell her, “Don’t talk to ME like I am one of the children!”

And the way he could stop a conversation before it even started, “FINE.  I will change, ok?  I will do whatever you want.  I will CHANGE it.”

She was too naïve in relationships, in partnered conversation, in communication – not skilled enough to continue the conversation to recognize this stop sign tactic.  So, it worked.  Every. Time.  Once his emotional temperature hit that raised voice, accompanied by the promise of shifting into doing what she was requesting.  She would allow the conversation to stop. 

But there never was change.  He ALWAYS “forgot”.  After this many years of the action not matching the promises and words…she started to go a little mad.  “Don’t you remember?” She would say, “we TALKED about this a few nights ago?”  But no, he did NOT remember.  In fact, it was “like she was saving all the ammunition to use against” him.  Her constantly anxious mind just couldn’t make sense of it.   Her hyper vigilance grew out of control as he continued to maintain, "This is JUST the way I am."

He was angry.  All the time it seemed.  She tried to be the buffer between the kids and his anger, but it was exhausting.  She wasn’t without anger too.  She was figuring out the parenting virtually on her own.  Her attempts to discuss the child rearing details with him were more support for the “non-spontaneous-co-babysitters” label.  It was “just supposed to be” like his mom and dad’s perfect…but he “couldn’t remember” exactly what they did to make it that way.  There were just rules to follow, her job to make the children do them, and his job to point out and discipline when they weren’t done just right.

Thus, her life by that point had become a constant roller coaster of “trying things” to make it better.  Men are from Mars, Women from Venus.  The Five Love Languages.  Fireproof.  Lots of prayer.  Lots and LOTS of prayer.  Date nights, more sex, more spontaneity, more, more, more TRYING.  Some things would work for a while, but this night as she sat across from him all she felt was resentment.  She was out of ideas.  She was tired, she hurt everywhere physically and emotionally and his not remembering things was starting to seem like a sick and twisted game.

In the car, on the way to their first couple's counseling session a few weeks later, he would tell her, "I have been looking into castration medications to just get rid of it.  Then we wouldn't have to worry about that part."  Her sick rollercoaster of a world went way up and way down constantly.  How could this be normal and like every other married couple?

She, an uneducated woman with 4 children to care for.  No career resume, no bank account of her own.  It began to dawn on her that this marriage and family was no safe place, not the haven she thought she was creating…but a prison.   He was the warden of her. She would rationalize daily, “he doesn’t hit us….” But the cycle of the emotional and verbal roller coaster would ultimately damage everyone involved in different and lasting ways.

She said something she had never thought of before. She just looked at him sunk in his chair, the posture that indicated she was “attacking” him with questions.  As usual, he had no answers and was angrily indicating that the conversation was over and that he would “just change."

That night, that time she didn’t beg for change.  Didn’t try to convince him to remember the promises.  Didn’t cry or get mad with frustration.  She simply said, “It HAS to be better than this.  This can’t be IT.”  For another 10 years she would keep trying to believe all he told her.  To believe that’s  “just the way it is.”