“What is happening? What is wrong with me?” – me
When I started going gray at 26 years old, I started to color my hair. My mom prematurely grayed too, so I wasn’t surprised when my dark brown hair started to get white strands in it. I colored my gray hair every other Sunday for about 20 years before I finally decided to try to blend the grays into blonde highlights. I was tired of the skunk stripe at the part in my hair and I needed a change. My hair was only getting more gray and it was becoming more and more obvious. My hairdresser and I took years to transition my hair to the point I could go 6-8 weeks between touch ups. I transformed slowly into a blonde and he never missed an opportunity to tell me how much he disliked my blonde hair. He’d lament weekly about the way I used to look with my dark brown hair. He’d remind me he had married a brunette. Stubbornly, I’d think to myself, as I looked at his balding head, “Yeah, and I married a guy with a full head of hair.”
We had both grown older and weren’t the young kids we were back when we first got married. That had been over twenty years before! We all change with age and it’s natural to go gray or to bald. I can’t tell you how many times I almost gave in and recolored my hair to dark brown. But I didn’t. I kept the blonde because I liked it and I felt pretty as a blonde. He hated it. I knew that and I didn’t care. That was a small thing I did only for myself and not for him. I think subconsciously I needed to have something, even if it was a small thing, I could control and feel good about.
Another thing that crept in without me even realizing it was the amount of responsibility my husband’s ambition would require. As we aged, we diversified our income. We bought rental properties. We parked the camper and bought a cabin. Every new purchase was fun and exciting, yet each one also required a commitment of time and attention. The rental homes were great when they were rented or didn’t have any maintenance needed. They were a big responsibility when we needed to find a renter or take care of needed repairs. The cabin sounded fun until the lawn needed mowing every week in the summer or it took half a day to put all the toys away on a Sunday. With every major purchase, I noticed the fun drain from our lives. Life had been so easy and carefree when we had old cars and a tiny, little house. I often wished for that simple life, thinking if we could only have that life back, we would be happy.
I remember thinking about 10 years into our marriage that the old adage of “There are only two guarantees in life – death and taxes” should have been amended to “… death, taxes and whatever decision I make.” Honestly, I could be at an intersection and turn right and my husband would tell me I should have turned left. I could tell him about something that was broken right away and he’d tell me that I should have waited to tell him until the next day when he could fix it. I can’t tell you how many times I weighed two decisions over and over again and finally chose one only to find out I should have chosen the other. If I got up in the mornings before he went to work, he would get angry with me. But, if I slept in, I was being lazy and I’d hear things like, “It must be nice to sleep in. I have to get up early to keep this whole thing afloat.” I could never win and I knew it. So I eventually stopped trying.
I had been subtly trained to temper my emotions, my responses, my feelings and my actions for years. I could pretty much decipher what was safe to say and when, and definitely knew what not to say. I knew when to not push a subject, when to just nod, when to keep quiet, what to not argue about, and on and on. I know now that is a fawn trauma response, to temper myself, my words and my emotions to keep the peace. I had been using this trauma response for years without actually knowing it was a trauma response. It was just my everyday life and it kept me somewhat emotionally safeguarded.
Another way I reverted to the fawn response was to tell myself I’d never measure up to him. I’d never be able to work as hard as he did. I’d never be able to make as much money as he did. I’d stopped sharing things that were important to me because his things were more important. Whenever I said I had had a tough day at work, I was told, “Did you see 75 patients today? Did you start work at 7:00 this morning and work all the way through to 5:15 this afternoon?” Nope. I definitely hadn’t. There was always such a one-upmanship to our relationship. No contribution I made or work I did could ever compare to his greatness. No struggle could measure up to his struggle. No challenge I faced was comparable to what he had done. So I just quit trying. That was just another little piece of me that got chipped away slowly. In losing that piece of me, though, I also began to lose my self worth.
Looking back, living in an abusive environment became so normal to me that I couldn’t imagine life any other way. I couldn’t imagine not dreading him coming home from work or a days-long hunting trip. I never knew what kind of mood he’d be in or what I’d be in for when he got home. That tenseness became normal in our daily lives. I couldn’t imagine him putting his arms around me and telling me he loved me. I don’t even know what I’d have done if he’d have done that. I couldn’t imagine feeling safe and secure with him. His disappointment with me had become normal in our everyday lives and I had slipped into an unknowing acceptance of his attitude toward me. If you would have asked me, I would have told you I deserved it.
Narcissism, in my personal experience, was a knight in shining armor that gradually turned into an unrecognizable monster. Yet, my husband didn’t appear that way to anyone other than our immediate little family. That was the confusing part. That was the part that was impossible to reconcile in my head. How could his patients and employees adore him as this incredible human being when he was so mean and crabby to his family at home? How could he be two totally different people in one day? Where was the disconnect and how could I repair it? I labored over this question for years. I went through so many emotions. I was hurt. I was angry. I was jealous. I was sad. I was confused.
I tried, I really tried, to be what he wanted me to be. I helped where I could. I mowed the grass or cleared the snow from the driveway until they became points of contention to him and not the help I was intending them to be. I took over roles at the office that needed to be filled. I tried to make his life easier. I never asked for help around the house. I let him relax after work or in the evenings. I wanted to be the person he wanted me to be. After failing for so long, though, I think I just gave up. I didn’t feel as though I could win with him. I quit trying and became a shell of the person I once was.
I turned all my love and attention to my kids. I watched his relationships with the kids drift away. They couldn’t turn to him with their emotional problems. If they did, he would insist they do things his way and get angry when they wanted to try something else. They needed a sounding board and encouragement, not decrees and judgement. He let his entire relationship with our youngest daughter disappear, then was jealous of her and the attention I paid to her. How could I fix that? Where could I start with that? How could a dad be jealous of his own daughter and her relationship with her mom?
I am ashamed to say that I used our kids as buffers to try to get better, nicer behavior out of my husband. That last year, I invited our youngest daughter on trips she shouldn’t really have been on to help keep the peace between us. That wasn’t fair to her. It wasn’t her responsibility to be our buffer. I just knew he seemed to be nicer when other people were around and I wanted that nicer version of him to show up. That was selfish and wrong of me. I wish I hadn’t done that.
I tried so many different things over the years to fix our relationship. I tried to tell him how I felt. I tried to share my feelings. I tried to treat him how I’d like to be treated. I stopped mentioning things that bothered me. I’d stay quiet. I’d listen to what he had to say and try to make changes in myself or in my attitude. I used sex as a tool to keep him happier, even when the love I needed wasn’t present. Nothing seemed to work. I could never win. I could never get through to him. So I eventually, slowly, quit trying and backed out of the relationship.
In his eyes, the house was never clean enough. I could never show him enough appreciation. I was never satisfied. The kids and I were financially sucking him dry and even that wasn’t enough to satisfy us. When would it end? How much more could he do? He nearly died trying to make us happy. His frustration with us was constantly evident. I think my dissatisfaction with our relationship was evident to him too. He was frustrated that whatever he did wasn’t enough. His answer seemed to be to throw more money at the problem and that wasn’t what I needed. That wasn’t what we needed. So the dysfunctional spiral we were in continued on and on for weeks, months and years.
Yet all this time, from the outside in, we looked every bit the perfect couple and the happy family. Our Christmas cards looked perfect. There was so much to be thankful for when I looked at our lives, but the things that were most important were sorely missing from our family. We needed a head of our household that looked on his family with love and compassion. We needed a husband and a father who treated his family better than he treated his staff and his patients. We needed someone we could trust with our emotions, someone who built us up instead of knocking us down. We needed a man to embrace us, not criticize us. I know I never felt that I could be what he wanted me to be and I couldn’t make the kids into his ideal children either. There was always something we could do better – better grades, more helpful around the house, more thankful for what he provided, better at sports, less us and more… something, anything, else.